If there is a single person in the US that does not accept the USD as a medium of exchange then I would assume that the USD would still classify as money within the context of the US. If there are 2 people I assume it still holds. This leads to the question of how do you define where the line is drawn between money and not money within a given context? This comes back to my original question of whether or not you can have two forms of money within a single context or is only the most (singular) liquid/popular medium of exchange money in any given context?
In the Disney Land example every store accepts both USD and Mikey dollars (this is by decree/design). Both are highly liquid and easily transferable between one another. Are both considered money in this context or is there only one money within this context? What happens if there is a single vendor that doesn’t accept Mikey dollars? What about two vendors? Where is the line drawn between money and not money in this context (Disney Land)?
I agree with your first part, BitCoins are not generally accepted within any national context (US, EU, China, etc.). I do not agree with your second part. They have potential to become generally accepted because there are advantages to BitCoins (anonymous, digital and decentralized) over current monies and there is nothing stopping them from gaining wider acceptance over time. This does not guarantee success, it just makes success a possibility.
I do not have a problem with a stock based currency but I see no advantage to it over any other commodity backed currency (digital or physical). In fact, I see it having a disadvantage over a traditional commodity based currency because the value fluctuation of the underlying commodity is too variable. Gold, silver, sugar, wheat, etc. all have relatively stable fluctiations (compared to stocks) and never decrease in value to 0 (as some stocks do).
I do not believe that stocks, as they exist currently, are a medium of exchange because you can’t easily transfer ownership of a stock from one person to another without an intermediate currency. I understand that it is possible to directly transfer a stock without selling by one and then buying it by another but this transaction is not easy and cannot be completed by the average user, especially not without physical delivery of goods.
In your original statement you made this assertion:
People must be willing to exchange and hold this digital object for reasons other then it’s usefulness as a medium of exchange.
I believe this requires some qualifications in order to be true and I would assert it as follows:
Someone must be willing to exchange and hold this digital object for reasons other then it’s usefulness as a medium of exchange.
As can be seen by any current fiat money and as argued by Mises, once a currency is established as a generally accepted medium of exchange it can and will be used for it’s value in trade rather than it’s underlying commodity or historic value.
Coming from a barter economy, if I know the butcher likes apples I may be willing to trade my clothing for apples knowing that I can take them over to the butcher and trade those apples for meat. What I have use for is meat, I may be allergic to apples and have no use for them but because I know someone that wants apples I can use the apples as a medium of exchange. In this scenario I am willing to accept as many apples as I think I can reasonably use to purchase other goods. If both the butcher and the shoe maker accept apples as payment I am willing to accept as many apples for payment of goods as I can spend on shoes and meat. Now that I am accepting apples as payment the carpenter, who also doesn’t like apples, may start accepting apples as payment because he knows he can buy cloths from me with apples, even though he has no desire to buy meat or shoes or consume the apples. The carpenter is now using apples as a medium of exchange even though he doesn’t transact with anyone who actually wants apples.
The purpose of the above example is to illustrate that as long as someone wants a good then that good can become a medium of exchange given time. It can also grow in it’s user base beyond it’s original context just as the apples in the above example grew beyond just trades with apple consumers or trades with apple producers (as seen by the carpenter).
BitCoin has people who value it for reasons beyond a medium of exchange. What their reasons are is of no consequence, all that matters is that such people do exist. This means that there is a demand for BitCoins (currently small, but demand exists) and that demand can grow and expand beyond the hobbyist context just as the demand for apples expanded beyond the apple producer/consumer context purely for reasons of medium of exchange.