The pretension in the bitcoin community is starting to really wear on me. Maybe it's just me, but I can hardly read through a lot of these articles, it comes off like propaganda. Possibly the greatest innovation of our time? I suppose time might make me look the fool, but really?? And then the Gandhi quote...
Just accept the fact that a bank has decided bitcoin isn't worth the risk yet. Don't act like they spit in the face of social justice and all that is right in this world.
If you remove speculators from the picture, Bitcoin's userbase is mostly:
(a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency.
(b) The services that people in category (a) rely on.
(c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code.
You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.
I think there is category (d)-people who see that this offers possibilities that are only now being glimpsed.
Low/no trust contracts, an inflation hedge that is instant, and spendable and transferrable like cash (hi Argentina), autonomous agents that can transact freely (reddit.com/r/bitcointip), brain wallets, the ability to transfer > 10k without paperwork, micro-payments are finally viable... Just to name what my limited mind can conjure. Not to mention the things it seems like you're dismissing as reasons to be extremely bullish--that the transfer fees of Western Union is on the order of 10% and paypal freezes funds.
I don't know about you, but the Internet was innovated long before my time. So Bitcoin actually has a better claim to that pretension than the Internet because it was invented well after I was born.
Perhaps if you didn't have such a selfish definition of 'our'?
Also, are you less than 15 years old? Because most of the social changes brought about by the internet have happened in the last 20 years or so. The first web browser has only just hit 20.
Just accept the fact that a bank has decided bitcoin isn't worth the risk yet. Don't act like they spit in the face of social justice and all that is right in this world.