Topic: Bitcoin’s future depends on public acceptance - page 3. (Read 4170 times)

Of course, who else will accept bitcoin? If public doesnt accept bitcoin who would?

Yes but payment and merchant are just our tools to get on mainstream. The real uses of cryptocurrency have yet to be discovered

Not necessarily. Bitcoin could simply be a tool of the banks and large institutions, and it would still be massively valuable and successful.

Nothing new here. For me it's obvious that Bitcoin’s future depends on public acceptance. Can't understand why you people need an extra article for that.

And that's what we are gonna make.Make more and more people know bitcoin and adopt it in their daily life

If the public doesn't participate in black markets, then who does?

Either that or "only the black market matters", one of those two possibilities...

The problem with a fork is that it is a defacto way of voting, but instead of each person having one vote, each dollar (or other unit of wealth) has one vote. The success of a potential fork is essentially determined by the miners, if the miners accept the fork then they will adopt it and secure the new, forked network, while the old one will be left much less secure and likely unusable.

The rate of Bitcoin adoption could also be increased if the wallets were made more interactive.  Streaming transactions inspired by http://blockchain.info/ and charts that show the amount of Bitcoin transactions over the previous day or week.  And of course some links to a few purchase options.

Get the wallets on their computers.  Encourage people to think and dream.

Forks are bad idea, because they fragment the system. If you have 50% of Bitcoin users accept the fork and 50% using the pre-fork version, then the number of users are reduced in half.

We need to reach a consensus somehow. If the most popular branch wins, then that's comparable to voting (which I don't think it's wrong at all).

The problem is you've got people like Peter Todd taking that exact quote and calling it an abhorration to the Bitcoin mentality.   He doesn't want mainstream.

Thats the problem.  Core developers don't want mainstream.   He said he was perfectly happy if only 10% of the world ever used Bitcoin.   And that the other 90% can keep using PayPal.  ]

This is why they are pushing off important enhancements like transaction times and micropayments and other things which would transform consumer adoption and innovation.

They dont want it.

And I will say it again:   This is why developers should not be making product development decisions.  

I get that they want to stay true to Bitcoins principles.  I do as well.  But its a little scary when one of the main developers for Bitcoin says he doesn't give a shit if mainstream ever uses it.

Simply put:  Bitcoin development priorities should be decentralized.  Everyone should have a voice.  There should be a voting mechanism whereby the *community* decides what is top priority, and what goes into the protocol next.  Obviously developers will have a say in whether its technologically feasible.  But developers should not be making decisions on enhancements and the direction of the product.  They have zero involvement "out in the field".  They have no idea what the company in Africa doing SMS bitcoin needs.  It could be something tiny, and harmless, and it will never get done because Peter Todd doesn't know about it, or doesn't agree with it.  

In my opinion this is the biggest hindrance to public acceptance.

-B-

Yes it does, thats why we need to teach people to use it and so on, and an official lightweight wallet.

"People purchase bitcoins and manage their accounts in privately-run online exchanges."

MSM coverage slowly improving, but still can't quite get it right.

Yes, because the public is so accepting of linux.

Tautology headline is tautological.

Yeah, but it does not depend on 100% acceptance. It had as much acceptance as it needed to survive back in the silkroad v1 days.
Everything past that is gravy

"Bitcoin’s future depends on public acceptance," well, to some extent it does. If we want it to  really thrive as a currency we need merchants and the public behind it, but it will also do ok without them and may forever be a semi-niche system, but I'd prefer for it to be a fully fledged world-wide currency.

mine too?

ikr, pretty fluffy stuff but not negative and coming from USA Today which means there is at least some editorial support there.

I know the tautological headline is pretty funny, but at the very bottom of the page, the article quotes a finance professor from Duke saying:
"Bitcoin is probably the most secure form of transaction in the history of the world."