But the rest of the world isn't like the U.S. I visited Latvia recently, and my bank refused to let me withdraw money. Florida is full of Cuban Americans who want to send money to Cuba. Many people are imprisoned. The world is full of borders that make moving money difficult.
Bitcoin's market cap is moving towards where it needs to be to float all of those transactions. Even if no one uses it to store value, and no one uses it to buy groceries, it is still immensely valuable just as a means to move value from one location to another. Even if no one holds Bitcoin for more than two weeks, it will still have a market cap far north of a billion dollars.
That being said, there are countries attempting to control the flow of money. Argentina wants to enforce its price for the dollar. Cyprus wants to prevent everyone taking their money and running. and so on. However, most of these countries see attempts to circumvent their controls as illegal. I feel its unwise to get my hopes up about bitcoin for this sort of transaction for that reason.
Why think the man who does not exist exists? why not assume pando made him up, and made the whole story up? The story isn't so implausible that people would doubt it. If anything,the story is toogood - count the number of times the man comes across as a bad guy. Randian of the worst kind? tick. Used to work in wall street? tick. In HFT? tick. Why did he grant an interview if he was trying to keep his business secret? I don't know if the story is made up, but its ringing bells in my head...