> in which case bitcoin is just a middleman doing no work
So you're saying that, pessimistically, all Bitcoin could do is disrupt the credit/debit card companies? That's very pessimistic, and still a very big deal.
No that doesn't work either because you need an existing payment system to deposit money into a bitcoin account at an exchange. You can't disrupt something by requiring your customer to use it.
It sounds to me like what we need is a single place where I can deposit my credit card info, which I trust is secure, and then all the merchants transact with me by doing some version of auth against that web service/api without ever exchanging any credit card numbers. For consumers this is great, since they never have to update their credit card info on 10 million places. It's good for businesses, too. That kind of service would undercut one of the main premises behind bitcoin usefullness.
So you're saying that, pessimistically, all Bitcoin could do is disrupt the credit/debit card companies? That's very pessimistic, and still a very big deal.
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