What about using bitUSD/bitGLD as a reserve currency? No price fluctuation or price manipulation, pegged to the market value of their "real world" equivalent, no fiat involved, and on top of that the yield will likely cover for inflation (depending on adoption and volume of transactions). Can Bitcoin provide that much?
A pegged currency can't be a reserve currency by definition. The two concepts are in contradiction.
The reason Bitcoin is volatile is because it's *base money*. In other words, seen from Bitcoin's perspective, it's everything else thats volatile and it's static.
Also, when you say BitUSD has no fluctuation, it's not actually true in general - only with respect to a specific, arbitrary fiat currency. In the Bitshares world, it's BTS that is the base money. It could theoretically act as a crypto reserve but it's designed for a specific vertical market. It has its own priorities. That's the beauty of Bitcoin - it's the mothership which is general enough to represent everything else. (Ask yourself this, for example, when you read the price of BTS and draw satisfaction from the fact that is has risen, what are you actually gaining ? Answer: Bitcoin).
Anyway, there is no need for new reserve crypto. We've already got a perfectly good one that's well past its "rights of passage" stage and which has a proven resilience against almost every type of competition that could be conceived.
I don't see that situation ever changing now that the alts have been "seen off". Litecoin came the closest but it's dropped way back from its all time high against Bitcoin a year ago. Ripple maybe has a high market cap but there's not a single market that I know of where anything's priced in Ripple.
Also, look at it this way. We are ants living inside the "cryptocurrency barrel". We are aware of the full spectrum and the subtle differences between currencies. But 99% of the general public - what represents crypto's future market - is outside the barrel. It just sees a single big barrel and the label on it says "Bitcoin".