I think that Bitcoin payment services hold the most promise in third-world countries where credit cards haven't really become the de facto payment standard for non-cash transactions. Any company that could tie Bitcoin with low-end mobile systems available in these countries would be of great service.
I don't know if emerging markets are the right place for an inherently deflating currency. That is a lot of continuous forecasting for a financially un-sophisticated population to do, let alone one that generally needs to take on debt to jump classes within a generation.
I don't know if emerging markets are the right place for an inherently deflating currency.
I think you mean a stable or predictable currency. What you need is more volume in the bitcoin economy to stabilize the price. Of course, when the economy grow at extreme rate, the expense of that is a predictable currency. But with bitcoin, you can be certain 99% that it will never exceed 21 millions.
let alone one that generally needs to take on debt to jump classes within a generation.
But you don't need debt if you can merely save and jump classes within a generation. If you have saving, you can benefit from extreme growth in the bitcoin economy.
they already have a mobile SIM card that acts as a credit card..this is why Smartphones will take longer to uptake there due to the different SIM card not necessarily the phone device price.
The best example of this is m-pesa by Kenya's Safaricom. In Kenya the banks market share has been totally cannibalized because most people couldn't afford a bank and then when most of the population went to strictly m-pesa so did a majority of the vendors, etc. I wouldn't say bitCoin doesn't have a shot at replacing that, but it's got a long long way to go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
