Good question. I'm not entirely sure that we will. My is that certain aspects of the system will be distributed for efficiency and security purposes, but we'd need a central authority in charge of the currency, so we don't run into the problem of getting stuck when the economics of the situation would require a hard fork.
I've been learning about cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, but I'm far from an expert. As far as I understand, there are a few big problems with bitcoin that can only be fixed via a hard fork, not the least of which is that there's a cap on the supply of bitcoin, so if you tried to use it as an actual currency, it would be deflationary in nature, much like gold.
I'll look into the alternatives. If you have any links you'd recommend me researching, I'll check them out.
I would just prototype with a centralized database-backed system, if you don't need anonymity (and for this, non-anonymity might actually be an advantage).
This isn't an interesting technical idea, it's interesting because of the social/economic/etc. behaviors, so I'd try to do the cheapest/easiest/oldest technology possible.
More like a PayPal-style system...which ironically actually started out as a "digital currency" system on handheld terminals before they rolled it back to an email/website thing.
I've been learning about cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, but I'm far from an expert. As far as I understand, there are a few big problems with bitcoin that can only be fixed via a hard fork, not the least of which is that there's a cap on the supply of bitcoin, so if you tried to use it as an actual currency, it would be deflationary in nature, much like gold.
I'll look into the alternatives. If you have any links you'd recommend me researching, I'll check them out.