The biggest roadblock to Stellar is actually applying it to the real world. Sure, it’s a great way to transfer assets without actually transferring them, which has value in itself, but beyond that it’s pretty much useless… You had me thinking about why Bitcoin is so important, and you that is the part I think was missed out on here.

Bitcoin isn’t just about confirmation times, or even it’s function as a fixed supply of currency outside the control of a central government. It’s about using trustless services to remove third parties, which is incredibly wasteful in our current systems. The blockchain makes it possible to conduct contracts that are binding and can be executed based on code. It makes it possible to do things like signature gaurantees, notaries, and escrow services. It even allows for the “actual” transfer of digital certificates and titles.

There is an incredible amount of waste in our current financial institutions (I should know, I’m an AML officer at a broker/dealer). It is typically relegated to third parties, requiring approvals on documents, requiring multiple documents, requiring multiple ID and KYC checks, and requiring brokers and traders to execute transactions on behalf of clients. The list is incredibly long, and all of this adds to the cost of how we do business. I do think Stellar and Ripple serve a purpose, particularly in terms of connecting our legacy systems, but there is a whole lot they are not capable of doing.

I’d also like to point out one more fact that tends to get lost. Bitcoin is a proof of work coin, this is true. It requires an incredible amount of work to accomplish very little, and this is a point of contention among many in the community. This work though, is extremely valuable in securing the blockchain and the network. Other coins have tried new methods such as VeriCoin with their Proof of Stake. Unfortunately, MintPal was hacked, an exchange carrying more than 30% of the total supply of VeriCoins. Those Vericoins were transferrred to a single wallet and gave the owner the ability to attack the Proof of Stake and modify transactions. In a bid to save their blockchain, VRC devs did a rollback and hardforked their blockchain to before the MintPal hacking. This created some losses for users who did transactions in that time, but most importantly it showed the weakness in the Proof of Stake system.

In the real world, you can use Bitcoins to buy things. That alone puts it far ahead of any other crptocurrency or alt coin.

Have you looked at open transactions? http://opentransactions.org/wiki/index.php?title=About I think it handles the asset/currency/exchange mechanism in an interesting way. (tldr Triple Signed Receipts for transactions with multisig vaults for counterparty risk)

(Clarification: read the the first half of it. Had put it down for a year and want to reread from the start when I get a moment because the plans-within-plans styling makes me feel like I’m not entirely following along if I read chapters as they are released.)