The game is totally afoot now. BitRated, the latest creation from a BitCoin entrepreneur, exploits the technological underpinnings of BitCoin to enable buyers and sellers to revert transactions in the same way that traditional payment networks like VISA do.

This starts to address two of the core arguments against BitCoin – that transactions are too final for consumer purchases, and that BitCoin is too hard to use for consumers.

We’re now getting to the point where BitCoin transactions will be insured by trusted arbitrators, and that big companies like Amazon can essentially self-insure (which neatly avoids the tax they pay VISA today). As far as the consumer is concerned, it will be just like using a credit card if they stick with trusted/insured merchants.

We’re now seeing cryptocurrency’s value expressed through the computerization of trust. Having computers and distributed networks of people handle trust will, I predict, prove more efficient than the existing mechanisms, which suffer from corruption and imprecise incentives for market players.