Silicon is not the best transistor material ever. For example, gallium arsenide can run at a switching frequency of 250 GHz thanks to faster electron velocity and higher electron mobility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#GaAs_advantag...
For the digital people, building a ring oscillator with N stages will cause the output to divide by N, and just make sure that f/N is in the range of your oscilloscope.
To actually measure things up in the THz range directly, there are more exotic methods: Superconducting bolometer is one that I've been involved with. But those are a PITA for a bunch of reasons.
"Best" is a funny word, because it means different things to people who care about different things. Silicon can be built with better gates / insulators than gallium arsenide, so if that's what you care about, silicon is better.
Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman have a great book out on measuring novelty, and using it to search large parameter spaces for interesting behaviors.
Gavin argues that 1000x is possible. With the latest features of header-first syncing, and simultaneous multiple downloads of blocks, we're doing pretty well.
It's a bit too soon, but at some point, one of the large banks(probably coinbase or circle) will be issueing USD on the Bitcoin chain. At that time, the pot-shop will accept BTC, which will immediately convert into COINBASEUSD. Problem solved. Junseth articulated this pretty well: http://junseth.com/post/109579766177/the-blockchain-isnt-goi...
Bitcoin is an amazing Payment Mechanism. But it's not a good unit of account, and possibly not a great store of value. As such, the solution to the problems posted in the parent will likely involve transmission of USD over the Bitcoin network. Banks will be the ones to do this.
When you say, "one of the large banks" I think of Chase, BofA, Wells Fargo, etc. And, my experience with these entities is that it takes 3 days for them to do ACH transfers (well, the originating account is debited ~immediately, but the destination account doesn't see the $ for 3 days). YMMV.
There are easy to use solutions on the market for accepting bitcoin payments and converting instantly to USD. Bitpay and Coinbaes both do this. On Bitpay it goes straight to your bank, on Coinbase you can do the same thing or even leave it on the site as USD to be withdrawn later. You can change the bank you're withdrawing to at any time.
BitShares does solve, or try to solve the volatility problem (with BitUSD) but that Blockchain is not big enougth yet, and credit is also not happening at the moment.
Maybe if the early adopters actually spent them into circulation, rather than treating them as an "investment", waiting for the "mainstream" to buy them at higher prices.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Rome was not built in one day, but with small steps. If you wish change then you take small actions that of course do not build a palace today, but might do in 10 years.
That basically translates to use bitcoins alongside dollars and slowly transition to bitcoins only.
Yeah, I've never understood the logic that using Bitcoins insulates someone to the normal financial system. If you want a loan, put money in a bank account, or hedger risk, or do anything with your money that isn't just moving it from address to address, it is still needed to have banks.
Or have cryptocurrency fans figured out a solution that I can't think of now.
It's similar to the idealist trope that tearing everything down to rebuild it will somehow not be subject to corruption and perversion the next time around. As though they've found some way to control human nature. It's unavoidable systemic entropy.
