Topic: Bitcoin as a Mainstream payment method (Read 394 times)

Bitcoin as the mainstream payment method could take place, and rhe same needs lots of support. Not only from the government, but from the consumer side. People haven't prepared to consider bitcoin as a mainstream payment method than investment. So, when people start using bitcoin little by little we were able to gain support, without that this is going to be completely an impossible task.

Personally, I don't think it's gonna become a mainstream payment method. People will still be using fiat because you don't need to pay for every transaction when you use it and it's less volatile.

But despite that, it's obvious that payments with bitcoins are getting popular nowadays and a lot of people want anonymity or don't trust banks with their money. But I don't think everyone will be like this in the future.

So I think bitcoin will just become another method to transfer/hold/withdraw and invest money. It would be somewhere in the middle of all those things.

Scalability obviously is the biggest improvement and if this issue will be solved we'll be able to solve most of the other problems in bitcoin. Quicker block times will also be another one because after doing a payments it's not that easy to wait for 10 mins to get a clear confirmation of the transaction being made. So block time is also one of the major issues other than this I think most of the problem aren't that big which  could affect it's usage as a payment system.

One of the things needed is Government involvement and acceptability, for instance, if the Nigerian government give recognition to bitcoin to be used together with fiat as a mean of payment many people who have seen bitcoin as nothing will be interested.

Exactly! As of now people are still lazy when it comes to managing their own property, just like some traditional assets we have that most rich people either use it as a tool to earn more or just store it all away managed by other people. I've got a feeling that those rich people that wants others to manage their own assets would think this way "why would I manage when I have the money to hire people to do that? Besides my time is precious, instead of watching my own backyard I can use that time to be more productive."

I think it's along those lines but that's just my assumption.

Regarding the topic, yes. I asked it vaguely knowing that there will be differing opinions from various countries, and I want to learn what is you country's current stance regarding this topic. Our country doesn't have any clear statements regarding crypto, so for us it is still an open option whether we use it as a tool, but when it comes to investment, they'll just say invest what you can afford to lose.

The most basic reason is because of the rules that limit bitcoin as a legal means of payment, so that people try not to get involved in these legal issues and other reasons because products that accept payments using bitcoin have not yet become widespread and the considerations of producers, product sellers and service sellers are the same, namely the problem of "law" applied in their country.

It is very difficult for governments to provide access to bitcoin as legal tender and it is certain that this will not happen globally. Security and Scalability are two things that must be prepared by the user, but basically bitcoin is much safer than any other method that has ever existed.

You have a major problem if the governments of the world does not want to allow Bitcoin as legal tender or a so-called currency. So, you have a choice... 1. People start using Bitcoin without the government consent and face going to jail or getting a huge fine .... OR 2. People start using their votes to get rid of a government that does not want to allow Bitcoin as a currency.

How many people do you know that will vote for such a government and are there any political parties that will support that? 

I think, Bitcoin's volatility presents a major obstacle to its widespread adoption as a payment system. The unpredictable fluctuations in its value can make it difficult for merchants to price goods and services in Bitcoin, and can discourage consumers from spending their Bitcoin.

Additionally, concerns about the potential for illegal activities to be conducted using Bitcoin can create a negative perception of the currency.

Despite these challenges, there are several areas in which Bitcoin could improve to become more user-friendly. Security and scalability are both important areas of focus.

So, improving security measures can help build trust in the currency, while enhancing the network's ability to handle more transactions would make it more practical for everyday use. By addressing these issues, Bitcoin may be able to overcome its current obstacles and become a more mainstream payment system.

Given that OP posted a vague context like what kind of barriers prevent people from using it, and what kind of the idea of bitcoin is perceived by the people. Generally speaking, it varies from country to country. It is indeed at the end of the day, it comes down to preferences, but if we dig deeper into the root causes, we should seek what kind of barriers people face and the idea they comprehend.

I believe that some people are still getting affected by FUD about bitcoin, so those kinds of people are the ones that need to be educated thus they could get the whole idea of bitcoin. As for barriers, I certainly comprehend that one of the few issues is lack of conveniences, I know that some just won't bother to do a complicated process of managing their own bitcoin. I believe user experiences need to be improved in iteration either for the application itself or the way to store the bitcoins.

Firstly, I will say general acceptability like money which is issued as a legal tender in every economy. Secondly, government acceptability for trade also is very important thanks to Binance and other means by which one can trade.

What bitcoin needs now is clarity about regulation, because in some countries Bitcoin regulation is still in a gray area, so Bitcoin adoption cannot be carried out. For those who don't like the idea of ​​bitcoin it is everyone's preference, but it also affects how bitcoin will develop in the future. People who do not like or are against bitcoin will give negative statements about bitcoin, but conversely, for those who like and support Bitcoin they will find Bitcoin as an alternative option for payment and as a more profitable commodity asset. The current government is a huge wall that still blocks bitcoin.

Less volatility for sure. Being needs to be much further in its adoption, which will mean it is less volatile until people feel better about using it. But also, once you've owned Bitcoin through on market cycle, and are therefore in profit, volatility doesn't matter so much for using it for spending, because you've made money. The volatility is really only a worry if you might lose money by spending. Once you're in profit it doesn't matter so much. Like someone isn't gonna say oh I'm not gonna spend bitcoin because this thing last week cost 30,000 satoshis but today it costs 28000 or 32000 satoshis. If any of those numbers are in profit for you you're not gonna really care.

I don't think you know how the LN works. You don't open a new channel every time you use it...then you'd just be doing on-chain payments. You'd like say start up a node and open up several channels once, and hopefully not have to open or close any channels for months. You're certainly not opening up a channel twice a day. Twice a month would be a lot. Once a month would be a lot. Opening/closing a channel should be a rare event and you should be doing dozens or hundreds (or more) of payments for every channel open/close.  To make this happen of course you need to be both paying and receiving bitcoin on the lightning network, in which case paying on-chain fees for Lightning operations would be a very rare event indeed.

Education, yes, absolutely. It's gonna take many years for the general public to be educated on Bitcoin. Right now probably like 99% of the public actually thinks Bitcoin is a bad thing! lol. It's gonna take a lot of years to remove the misinformation and the stigma of thinking Bitcoin is a bad thing from a significant part of the public. Hopefully in the 2030s there is a decent amount of the public that are educated not only on the fact that bitcoin is good, and bitcoin mining is good, but also in how to use bitcoin. But yea, Bitcoin payments are definitely not a 2020s thing haha, except for early adopters.

Keeping funds safe goes with education yeah. For cold storage it is simple enough, but for payments its harder. Though honestly the vast majority of the public will be fine using custodial services on LN just because its gonna be wayyyyy more convenient and would be more like trusting a bank, which people are used to, but you get the benefit of bitcoin payments efficiency and of course you can always add more bitcoin to your payment LN account with your long term on-chain appreciating bitcoin. For most people to get to the point of using the LN for payments, they first need to be educated on Bitcoin and get into it as a long term store of value, then once they've been holding for a while and their Bitcoin has appreciated they'll want to use it for spending, and that's where the LN (or potentially other future L2s) comes in, but the LN usage is gonna have to be as simple as using a credit card of Apple/Google play, which means its gonna be a custodial use of LN. If its not as dead simple as using current means of payment people won't use bitcoin for payments but just as a store of value / long term savings on-chain.

The biggest problem you mention, is solved as I already stated, by using custodial services on LN. On-chain cold storage for long term savings, LN custodial wallet for payments. Bitcoin purists will groan at this but 99% of people will groan at running their own LN operation so this is the only way its gonna happen. It's still a huge improvement over the banking system because you've got savings in bitcoin and stored in a sovereign way, and you have LN with same convenience of fiat fintech apps or credit card but more efficient than those.

Stability will increase bitcoin's rating among users, and more companies will accept it as payment. At the moment, bitcoin's reputation as an unstable currency is only making it worse.

It's true that despite the growing awareness of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, there are still many barriers preventing their widespread adoption as a mainstream payment system. In addition to improvements in security, scalability, and user experience, I believe that widespread education and awareness about the benefits and potential of cryptocurrencies is essential. Many people still don't fully understand what Bitcoin is or how it works, which can lead to misconceptions and skepticism.

For me, since we have a lot of issues with regulations or some government policies regarding Bitcoin, so urgently requires regulatory clarity as several countries are struggling to establish Bitcoin or cryptocurrency regulations, leading to uncertainty for investors and businesses. Creating clear and consistent rules for how Bitcoin should be regulated could make it more stable and help it grow better.

I think Bitcoin can succeed as a store of value more than a payment system. One of the most obvious reasons is the price volatility, which could cause some problems for business owners if they decide to accept Bitcoin. In addition, there is a person who holds 1 million Bitcoin, that can crash the market at anytime it moves. Moreover, the transaction fee might not be suitable for small value transactions.

For mainstream payment method it needs a few things:



1. Merchants need to accept it
    - Right now in most parts of the world it's very hard to find anywhere that accepts Bitcoin.

2. More users, and users wanting to use bitcoin for payments
    - The reason merchants don't accept bitcoin is because there aren't enough users, and when merchants do accept it sometimes they eventually stop accepting it just because they barely get any customers using Bitcoin. Specifically not just more bitcoin owners but a lot more of those owners want to use bitcoin as payment rather than just investment/savings/store of value.

3. Tax law changes
    - Right now in the US and probably in most countries, when you sell or pay in Bitcoin you pay capital gains taxes on this. This effectively prevents anyone from paying with Bitcoin because it would be a huge tax hassle to keep track of the taxes you owe. And also generally you don't want to spend money and then have to pay taxes on that money later on, it would make more sense to sell the bitcoin, put aside what you owe for the taxes on that, and then have the left over money to buy things. There needs to be tax laws that exempt any bitcoin payments with less than a few hundred dollars in profits from taxes so that people can spend bitcoin for everyday purchases without worrying about being taxed on it.

4. Lightning Network needs to get better and grow much much larger
    - Obviously payments for everyday purchases won't be done on-chain because nobody is going to want to pay a $1 to $10 fee on a small purchase, though of course on-chain can be done for large payments, but >99% of payments would be done through LN. LN works but it is still early on and is still very small and needs improvements in both how it works and in the wallet software so that the average person can use it no problem and the wallet handles stuff like inbound/outbound imbalances, rebalancing, channel closings, etc in a way that makes Lightning usage easily understood by anyone and easily handled by anyone. And the network needs to grow immensely because as said above bitcoin needs a lot more people who want to pay with bitcoin so there needs to be millions or tens of millions of Lightning users. Also as the network grows and more larger channels get opened the network effect takes place so failed transactions will be few and far between. Basically LN just needs more time to improve and more time to add many times the number of users that are on there today. But of course there is no reason to be on LN if you're aren't making payment in Bitcoin so this will gradually grow hand in hand with greater bitcoin adoption, greater merchant adoption, and tax law changes to allow payments to be done without tax hassles.

Bonus: Bitcoin education
    - The biggest thing holding Bitcoin back is lack of education, misinformation, and bad public optics because of those two things. Most people don't know what Bitcoin is, and most of the people who have a little understanding of what Bitcoin is have probably seen a lot more misinformation on it than anything else, so they usually have a dim view of Bitcoin and think it is something bad because all the information they have is from negative headlines that they then repeat to others. Bitcoin growth in general relies on combating the massive misinformation out there and also helping to educate those who simply don't know anything at all about it.



I'd say those are the basic things that need to happen for Bitcoin payments to go mainstream. It'll happen gradually and it'll take YEARS! Nobody should be expecting bitcoin payments to be a normal thing this decade. Hopefully this decade lays the groundwork for this, ie getting Bitcoin owners well into the hundreds of millions, getting many of those owners though one market cycle so they are well in profit and don't mind spending their money if given the opportunity, many merchants and most large mainstream merchants providing pay by bitcoin options, tax law change to allow bitcoin payments without hassle, lots of improvements and growth in the LN, and bitcoin becoming a bit more normalized to the general public and not viewed through the lens of misinformation so that when people hear about bitcoin they don't think "oh that scammy wasteful thing that I hear is going to zero" but instead think the truth: "humanity's hard money for the digital age". If the groundwork for all that can be laid this decade then perhaps over the course of the 2030s we'll start to see bitcoin payments become mainstream and perhaps there will be tens of millions of people using bitcoin on a fairly regular basis.

One of the most important requirements for Bitcoin to become a commonplace payment method, aside from advancements in security, scalability, and user experience, is widespread acceptance. As a result, more shops and companies must accept Bitcoin as payment, and more people must use Bitcoin in regular transactions. Increasing acceptance would result in better market stability and liquidity, which would make Bitcoin a more alluring payment alternative for both consumers and businesses. More legal acceptance and regulatory clarity would also assist to legitimate Bitcoin and promote wider usage.

forget making it a mainstream payment method, the internet access alone is already a huge problem. aside from internet problems, people also needs to be educated about cryptocurrency, and if there is no sufficient internet making them aware and teaching them about crypto will be a huge challenge. the country which I lived in is one example amongst so many 3rd world countries that are suffering from internet problems. i could say that we have a decent amount of internet in different regions to access social medias and other stuffs, but do you think that's enough?.. no it's not. you should also be aware that crypto relies mostly on modern technologies, and as the technology keeps improving, do you think those countries can keep up? let's just say they could but it'll all end up that those who can invest or use crypto are only those who can afford.

Bitcoin to be used as a form of payment is just simple. We can see this happening with more businesses, just a wallet created and the address being shared to receive the transaction. How to make this to be a mainstream payment method needs good support from the government. Adding bitcoin acceptance to every business doesn't looks difficult. Whether people use it or not just have it. In the past people doesn't prioritise wallet payment, now everything is happening out of it. So, it is good to lay the foundation and slowly we can experience better progress.

You're exactly correct. People need to realize that access to internet isn't the only hurdle. Even if people have access to internet, poverty levels within the immediate area are what matters. If internet serves as a luxury and food/water/shelter take priority, it isn't reasonable to expect these people to adopt a digital currency that has volatility in its value.

Crypto is mostly designed for the first world. Trying to make Bitcoin palatable to under developed countries is a challenge.

It is a means of payment, and that is happening, there is no drama with that, and it is not the main one, but, in fact the sacrifice or the drive to achieve that is in the hands of the users.

Everything starts from the individual plane, so, people have to try it, take risks, Bitcoin is there, th the Txs flowing.

Aside from the given strong feature by the @op, I believe Bitcoin needs stability to become a Mainstream payment method. The high volatility of Bitcoin discourages merchant from accepting it since they are afraid of the risk of losing value if they accept Bitcoin.  Regulation is another factor.  If many countries accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment then the market can easily transact with Bitcoin and many merchants will possibly take advantage of this to get more customers and sales.

It just needs the right push. How do you become pro? By gaining experience and skills. So if all the people can get a hold of Bitcoin, then they will have to use it. They will learn the way to use it by themselves. It's just the matter of availability and the person to guide them. Also not to mention massive adoption in countries all over the world. If people are introduced to new things, it seems hard to get used to it. But when they do, it becomes fun and easy.

Mainstream as in every average Joe using it daily? It needs:
- less volatility
- way cheaper transaction fees (than now), yeah, including opening a channel in LN, 30 cents might now be much but make that 2 times a day each month and you have 10% of minimum wage on nearly two continents.
- a ton of education that the average Joe is not going to get this decade
- a ton of knowledge on how to keep your funds safe the average Joe will not get either.
- the average Joe to stop hoarding it believing it will get 100x by December and actually using it

Cards are considered mainstream but from what you can see in Nigeria happening now even these have problems getting used by the majority of the population, Bitcoin is one step further away as you need more than just swiping a card at an PoS.

But the biggest problem which has obviously no solution other than entrusting your funds to a 3rd party is that a lot of people really don't like to be in charge of their funds and love to have a guy they can call when a problem arises. Despite how much we love self-custody here and considered it one of the key points in the strength of BTC one also must admit not everybody sees it this way. And simply there will be always some that they will not touch it because of that.

 

Government regulation is the main barrier most likely to make bitcoin a mainstream currency as a means of payment. But how is this possible, that's because the government has not legalized bitcoin as a means of payment in many countries. You may have noticed it already, but there is good hope for the future if the superpowers and western countries adopt it.

I do not expect fiat to be replace by crypto, and instead these two payment systems will be used where fiat will remain the main means of payment and bitcoin as an alternative. I tend to think that someone will use bitcoin more for investment than as a means of payment, I think that is the majority at this point.

Legal framework by the government. This is the only thing needed for bitcoin to become the mainstream payment method. Otherwise no matter whatever innovation is happening around bitcoin, it won't become a mainstream payment method, ever!

People still trust the governments and their backing. So unless it is in place, nothing would happen and bitcoin will remain as a parallel economy.

I'm just thinking about the wider adoption bitcoin can achieve so that more people will use it. Even though the government has not approved the use of bitcoins in their country, people can use bitcoins on the internet freely as we do today.

The second is acceptance from the government, which finally allows using bitcoin, even from an investment perspective. It will open up opportunities for bitcoin to be accepted by even more people because they will see what bitcoin can give them. And they will try to own more bitcoins. But it's probably government acceptance that bitcoin needs most because if the government doesn't allow it, people can only use bitcoins clandestinely.

You see some of the people you met on you social media platform that disliked the idea of bitcoin and crypto will be influenced to have a change of opinion when everybody around them, people that they have close relationship with begin to accept and use bitcoins. Many of them will have a change of opinion and not be able to tell you because they will know how myopic they were to not just like bitcoins then without ever using it. Before bitcoin will become a mainstream payment method, there has to be mass acceptance first.

It's got to be user experience for me, more than anything else. We're talking mainstream here, so we have to accept, for better or worse -- people don't really care about security, about sovereign money, or even inflation, and that's judging from the majority of crypto "users" I've come across.

It needs to be cool and easy to use. It needs to be simpler than an existing form of money to use. It needs to solve problems too (and less about my money's not worth anything and more about I need to be able to buy this but I can't because I don't have a debit card or PayPal).

It needs to attract the average user. Due to high volatility, in comparison with fiat currency, it's a no-no for average use. Even if merchants lowered the prices if you were to pay in bitcoin (which some I've noticed do), it's still unapproachable. We need more education around bitcoin, and more importantly: the acknowledgement that you need to be responsible with your money. Lots of people think like you can reverse anything if you become a fraud victim.

I've never heard of this social app before, but of course many people don't like the idea of cryptos. Cryptos are new, and while some humans try to push the boundaries of what's possible for humanity by inventing something new or going somewhere new, there's also this totally natural reaction to new as dangerous, threatening. It challenges the status quo, and many feel like if status quo is fine for them, they shouldn't endorse those things that try challenging it. As for what Bitcoin needs, I think it's secured enough as it is, it will need more scalability one way or another for an increase of its adoption as a form of payment, and user-friendly interfaces similar to online banking wouldn't hurt either. Another this it lack is, despite everything, more awareness of what Bitcoin is and isn't, how it works and how it's different from stocks and from fiat alike.

With respect your topic, I really think there are lots of work to be done as regards bitcoin awareness and adoption. People can only adopt something when they are fully aware of it although some might be skeptical about it but at the end they would see reasons why they need to adopt it. This is still applicable to bitcoin. What I basically know and see is that government policies strongly affect the bitcoin adoption in various nation's. Some people are yet to understand how bitcoin works not to talk of accepting it as a means of payment for services. We should know that bitcoin is volatile hence many people finds it difficult to accepting it because of the uncertainty and expectations of price fluctuations.

Isn't it recognized yet that bitcoin is already in the mainstream as a payment method for some? Yeah, some because many consider it as an investment but payment platforms that come from the big exchanges like Binance Pay, Coinbase Pay and other exchanges and platforms that focus on servicing crypto payments are already there. But talking about in general about those people that don't really like the idea of bitcoin as a payment, it all starts with they have lack knowledge of it so they don't understand the whole thing.

The main problem is the regulation, many people are worried if Bitcoin will get banned since India and China are really easy to ban and unban Bitcoin. As a businessman, do you want to update your payment method for every 6 months while you can have a choice to just accept fiat which is never get banned? as a citizens, do you want to feel not safe for holding Bitcoin since when your country declare Bitcoin is illegal, you can't use your coins anymore except you're move to other country.

The other reasons are a religion forbid to hold Bitcoin, privacy concern etc.

It's not literally half, but according to data for 2023, even around 35% of the world's population does not have access to the internet at all, while it is questionable how many people have a permanent and high-quality connection to the internet. Many members of this forum from some African countries have exactly this problem, their internet actually depends on whether they have electricity, and this makes their activities much more difficult - although this is not something specific only to Africa.

But even if we take the 2/3 who have access to the internet, looking at it as a whole, all researchers say that less than 5% of the world's population is in some way involved in cryptocurrencies, and of that number there are certainly many who have invested only in altcoins.

When you draw a line under all that information, then your question cannot get any kind of positive answer, regardless of which aspect of the problem you are talking about (if the problem exists at all).

You mean half of the world doesn't have proper access to internet? It's true that there're people who chose to rely on the traditional system we already have and it is also their choice to believe or use what they want as long as it benefits them. I do get your point coz personally the main reason for me  why it's never unachievable is because of its volatility. That reason alone is enough for people to be hesitant/against on using or implementing it as a mainstream payment system.

We could start with all online stores accepting bitcoin payments at first then we can talk about the mainstream because right now that's what matters if we don't see all online stores accepting it, then seeing it accepted by mainstream would be harder really. Maybe when they see those big online stores starting to accept bitcoins as payment, then not so long that they will also gonna follow them. As of now the only stores and services that are accepting bitcoin payments are mostly in Africa because that's what most users posted here.

Do you think that's true? Well, half of the people in the world don't even have access to the Internet, and even if they heard about Bitcoin, how should they use it if they don't have the basics for it? The barriers you are talking about are primarily infrastructural, although of course there are also those mental barriers for most people who understand economics and finance only to the extent that they know what a bank card and a 4-digit PIN are for.


Forget any mainstream payment method in the sense that you will be able to pay with Bitcoin in every store and for every service, because that will probably never be achievable, especially in countries that strictly control their financial system, and besides, they are among the most populous countries in the world. Bitcoin will always be an alternative, and by no means some kind of coercion that should be imposed by any state or individual.

Emergence of Bitcoin had unleashed the authenticity of banking system. And these banks are running way back like from start. It would not be an easy task to shift people from traditional banks to modern finance. All We and you can do is to spread awareness and before spreading awareness among your friends and relatives you should also know the basics. So that, you do not feel bad when they hit a question you do not know. I would like to suggest you some basic concepts that you might choose to start a conversation about btc or crypto among relatives and friends who are not familiar with the truth of digital finance.

• Start from, Blockchain and how does it work along with the uses of blockchain
• If your audience is not a techy one, then teach them the working of Web 1 and Web 2 at least because they must have used these technologies.
• Web1 and Web2 must gave them the idea then move to the centralization and decentralization mechanism and ask them what could be the possible pros and cons of these system might be
• Then try to explain blockchain again, but now teach them the basic functioning too like how crypto uses blockchain for decentralization. How it provides you the full custody of your assets and how no other person could tamper with the information of yours in smart contract ( teach them about smart contract too)
• Once you tell them the basic. Move to use cases of block. i must say tell them the basic 5 use cases of blockchain
• These applications of blockchain will open there eye and they could be able to predict the potential of btc and blockchain that it could have.

Because once i am also run away from blockchain and BTC. WHY? Because i did not know these basic questions and one more thing i must include. I was not sure that this work is halal or haram, (These are terms related to my Religion Islam) I can interpret them for your understanding. Halal means Good and Haram means not good. That simple. So as a newbie i do not have the resources and do know where to look and what to look.

So in 2018 i started cloud mining but left it. How i started that's a dumb question. because i only fall prey to scams. So i left it. after 2 years in 2020. One of my friend explains me the basics of blockchain and crypto he invested his time in me. he open zoom app and started to teach me free of cost. for that i am thankful. But ITs just a hint story for you. To get started and instead of ignoring there comments about thnigs that they do not know and you know that. Then i must say its your work to tell them the rights and wrongs so that they could meet up with the pace of technology.

I think some persons are having second  thought about using bitcoin because they don't have a concrete knowledge of it.

I think to make bitcoin a mainstream payment method, we need to employ owner of malls, Restaurant's, shop's, eateries, online payment platforms etc, to widing their Bitcoin payment method, to make it one of the mainstream (Bitcoin) payment options more available to customers that patronise them. That way, people will start seeing it as verifiable payment method, which will in turn make lot's of them wanting to know more about Bitcoin, this way it help to mediate whatever doubt they might have.

The biggest obstacle I see (beside those that you already mentioned) is volatility, especially for people that are or on the minimum income. But even if bitcoin was more stable, there is another ((much bigger)) problem and that is people, as dealing with bitcoin means that you take responsibility in your own hands, and that's something majority of  people don't like/want. They prefer sense of false security by giving someone else their money so in case they forget pin of their debit card, they can just go to their bank and get another one, while we know that you can't do that with bitcoin.

After all, bitcoin doesn't even have to become mainstream payment option to be useful.

Adoption and which is the sustainability for the currency being acceptable, the world has known bitcoin and some have adopted it, but yet we need to get to the rate of global acceptability serving as the most common and acceptable legal tender, we don't need to get worries about the security or scalability because all that has been dealt with while making the protocols on the bitcoin whitepaper and blockchain technology, all we need now is bitcoin massive adoption, awareness and orientation.

Bitcoin needs regulatory support.
Most residents in certain countries would still respect the law if their financial situation was relatively stable. Worse, such a country would not have a plan that they would allow foreign currency as a means of payment unless it had some truly revolutionary state officials.

If fiat was an option and not a stipulated legal tender, then a lot of people currently depending on it would not and rather find alternate means to transact.
For Bitcoin to go mainstream, 100% of the people do not have to use it, it just needs to be easily accessible anywhere and available as a means of payment by merchants globally. There would still be preferences by people who prefer fiat, altcoins or some other means of transacting.

Security and to an extent, user experience is not a problem with Bitcoin. As one of the most secure networks it only relies on the holder to use it the proper way and the user experience depends on the wallet you use to store you coins.
Scalability is a work in progress and is one major barrier to adoption, along with volatility.

To break barriers and make Bitcoin goes mainstream, you need to see it goes to big names in traditional markets and industries like big banks accept Bitcoin for their deposit, withdrawal, exchange with fiat currencies or CBDCs.

Big names can be big techs too but it is what we are gradually witnessing.

Sum up, wait for big banks to accept Bitcoin and mainstream Bitcoin will open that gate.

Another thing I'd like to note, like other things in life, thereare two sides, support and protest. There are people who never accept new thing from a day they know it till a day they die. Let them be.

If we're referring to people in countries with decent currencies — adoption aside, people simply don't like holding/using money that's volatile; they want it to be as stable as possible. People simply want to pay for their daily coffee without worrying much about how much their "money" has moved.

Government acceptance, the biggest barrier to bitcoin right now is the government, as long as they accept and decide bitcoin as the mainstream payment method, everyone will have to accept and obey. People who don't like bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because they obey the government, if the government doubts and bans bitcoin, those people will never learn about bitcoin. And I think the possibility of bitcoin becoming a mainstream payment method won't happen, governments won't let that happen.

As the title implies, we all know that, almost the whole world knows about the existence of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, the problem is although more and more people are becoming aware of it, there're still barriers preventing them on using crypto. I have been into this social app called MEEFF(recommended by a friend of mine), and some of the people there dislike the idea of bitcoin and crypto. So, I was wondering why, but didn't bother to ask them since it's their own preference, and so it cross into my mind that "What does BTCitcoin needed in order to become a mainstream payment system? "


I know some of you would say improvements of Security, Scalability, and User Experience, but aside from that, What is the most needed for BTCitcoin right now?