I seem hard pressed to see where there's a solid exchange of this currency between consumers and retail/service businesses.
See, back in 1991, an engineer at CERN was sharing with his peers and anyone else who would listen this invention of his from a couple years earlier. You might not recognize it, ... but here's what it looked like:
It wasn't an instant success -- for content producers it was more difficult to set up and use than alternatives, and the experience was less than ideal for the content consumers.
Of course, that is the WWW before the graphical browser arrived -- the exact same thing you are using to view these words right now.
That's where Bitcoin is yet. It is known the potential of a decentralized digital currency. It works as a cheaper, faster and better international wire transfer (for transferring the currency BTC), it works as an alternative to Western Union, it works for retail payments ... like for this cupcake shop:
- http://cupsandcakesbakery.com/2012/10/buy-cupcakes-with-bitcoins/
or for a cab driver:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scGM3nRsrlY
What Bitcoin doesn't come with is a guarantee or a big corporate backer. Neither did Tim Berners-Lee's world wide web. It took a while before the right combination of things came together (several years later, incidentally) before the technology changed our world ... in a huge way.
So, does Bitcoin today have any large "legit" merchants? No, there's no national Starbucks chain yet where bitcoins are accepted. Does that mean there won't be in the future? I wouldn't bet on it.
Wow Stephen, I'm so going to steal this explanation one day.
