Topic: Can Bitcoin still reach mass adoption? (Read 272 times)

Psychology:
Apart from the users of Bitcoins, most people don't have any glimpse of idea on home Bitcoin works or what it was meant for. Those outside the Bitcoin circle sees it as a way to make money, that belief is prevalent in my country. Others sees it as Ponzi and believe that one day it will crash.

Bitcoin will still have so many hurdles to cross and may questions to answer before it reaches that level of mass adoption.

If you see with a rational mind and considering today's scenario. Among the given options there is only technology which favors the side of bitcoin. It has no utility if wee see other payment options. I know that you are real owner of the money thing. But who cares until people trust governments?? Why the whole psychology thing is against it as people calling it nothing more than a bubble.

Bitcoin really had its moment to shine when it had gone out and cracked $20k, it had everyone looking into it and people were excited about it because it looked like the next big and amazing thing, and then it petered out and collapsed, taking the interest of a lot of people with it. If it is supposed to go high again and get people excited it, along with basically every other crypto, really need to shine since that was the first time Bitcoin actually mattered to people and it let everyone down.

Doable, but it will definitely take some time and effort.

When the transactions are cheap it's useful compared to other payment options if you seek for decentralization and something nearest anonymity.
As commodity it's very unstable, but in my opinion it still worth a lot on long term (just if you aren't fully depending on Bitcoin for your needs/emergencies).


In comparison with AltCoins I think the main advantage is the originality, without Bitcoin these AltCoins wouldn't exist now.
And that is what makes Bitcoin stays on the top, its reputation and originality.


It's hard to answer because each person has a different view about Bitcoin. Some people will say it's a Ponzi scheme, others will say it's a young's thing, a hype, an investment, a payment method, a tool to fight against the system, a way to deal with money without bureaucracy... But I believe the biggest part of population doesn't have a solid opinion about Bitcoin yet.


All we can do is to answer the questions with truth in our words, even if the answers don't satisfy some people.
We can't force anyone to use Bitcoin, and mass adoption should just be a consequence of people's real desires, and not something built over lies and brain-washing. The strategy is to be most natural as possible...

The answer to that one is No. Steam, Microsoft, Dell, Stripe have all disabled bitcoin. And they are not going to re-enable it.

But Steam has announced that it still believes in crypto and will announce the ability for alts to be used as payment.

Lots of alts are being enabled across the board - there is a huge competition to become the main crypto used for payments. We don't know which alt will win. But we know bitcoin won't be one of them.

Examing your 3 principles we can see Bitcoin has utility because currently you can send money anywhere within 20 minutes for a matter of cents which is amazing. The tech has already surpassed Visa and once Lightning Network gets online fully it will scale much larger than currently. Lastly, I think people have wisened up to what is going on with Bitcoin now and can see it isn't only drug dealers. They can also see a lot of smart people investing their money into it, and they can also see it most probably isn't a fad. Pretty sure we have broke all the barriers needed to get mainstream adoption, now we just have to sit back and watch it unfold.

I personally think that we are on a good way to reach mass adoption in the future. Bitcoin was a hot topic in news some time ago due to its huge price increases. What a shame that most news reporters didn't say much about technology which lies behind Bitcoin. Scaling is the biggest issue right now. Some prefer to increase the blocksize even though it's a temporary solution and some want second layer solutions such as Lightning Network which are usually faster than the first option.

If we talk about the psychological introduction of the Internet currency, so people search for the best exchanges, they were the best traders of their country, and even the world, they earned more capital for their families, then this is possible if this information will be more often seen before our eyes on TV and so on

Yes definitely bitcoin will be mass adapted for sure.

In general I think that your "Granny test" is a useful metric for evaluating a new technology.
However, you have to be aware that the average Granny in 50-70 years will have grown up with
laptops, smartphones and all other kinds of technological gadgets. The people, who have not been
raised with this technologies available will die and the new generation of Grannies will be much
more tech-savvy.

This isn´t even taking into account that Bitcoin wallet software can improve until then.
Wallets like Electrum are already pretty user friendly and I´d argue that nearly anyone, who
is able to operate a smartphone will also be able to handle making a transaction using Electrum.

True! Though my grandmother actually knows how to use Facebook.  

But yea, if bitcoin isn't as easy to use as lets say, Facebook(even though they're not really similar, but I'm talking about ease of use), then forget global adoption; it's always only going to be the tech-savvy to be using bitcoin. Sure coinbase is sort of easy enough for some millennials, but using a web wallet whereas you don't have access to your private keys isn't really the best way to use bitcoin, as it's sort of against one of bitcoin's advantages(being your own bank).

It might be easy to use it, but it is not user-friendly enough for mass adoption. I always evaluate technology by applying the Granny test. If your Grandmother are capable to use the technology with ease, then I would say it is Granny proof. ^smile^

The younger generation do not have these limitations and resistance to change, but the much older generation will have a problem with Crypto currencies. It is already a nightmare to teach them the basics of using a mobile phone.

I think you're right, this is what I never thought about
but how to start it, and from where? i have no idea about this kind of thing. I think you are more experienced and have skills about this field. then you share it for everyone personally for me.

Bitcoin is actually the leader of all cryptocurrencies, and today there some institutions slowly studying and adapt bitcoin as their business option opportunity. As what I heard the news earlier about union bank adapt bitcoin cryptocurrency as their business firm.

Oh definitely. Bitcoin is only easy to use currently if you're using noob-friendly web wallets like Coinbase, because username and password logins has been a standard on the internet since forever. Accessing your wallet using your wallets seed on the other hand.. that's going to be something new for people. We're quite a long way there, but we're progressing.

Here. Have 2 sMerits.

It will happen soon, as soon as the technical difficulties are securely hidden behind an easily usable wallet. Lightning is a game changer, try it on the testnet, half hour hacking and it's working amazingly fast. That half hour hacking needs to go and it's mainstream ready.

Well Bitcoin is useful for transferring money again. Fees have dropped to a few cents, and you don't have to go through a bunch of red tape unlike banks. It's certainly not the best option, but it beats traditional banking which is the goal anyway.


Against altcoins? I'd say community support, mainly. Its technology could be considered antiquated given the number of the emerging altcoins, but none has really introduced a breakthrough that could threaten to render Bitcoin obsolete. The massive community support also means development is ongoing -- which means it's always going to be competitive, and a secure network comprised of a lot of full nodes and decentralized hashpower (compared to competitors, at least).


Easy money lol. It sucks, but something drastic has to happen in terms of Bitcoin's utility for the general public to be able to look at it for something beyond that. I hope that something drastic is the Lightning Network.


Crypto is still in its infancy so I don't think any, except the pump and dump scams, have really failed. Everyone still seems to be searching for a breakthrough similar to how Bitcoin gave birth to the crypto race; only this time it's to break through the mainstream. Bitcoin still seems to have a massive headstart, at least.

Bitcoins has got the capability and promotion it needed. Now, we need to work on the shortcomings like slow transactions and high fees involved. Talking about mass adoption in my county, it will be great if there is some way to buy these offline as well like making a deposit and filling forms. A lot of people in my country do not have much knowledge of using exchanges.

To be honest, after doing my own research on actually using Bitcoin... No, it's not very easy to use. We're a long way from mass adoption.

Utility:
It took me some hours last night browsing through bitcointalk and reddit, and there are so many pitfalls.

If I made a private key and sent BTC to the public address... then imported that private key in the QT wallet, the QT wallet would actually send all my BTC to an internal private key that it won't ever reveal with me. I would never know this, and if I simply kept my paper private key and destroyed the QT wallet.dat file I'd lose all my coins.

Other alts, their wallets don't do this. I import a private key into a typical alt's core wallet, do my transactions, then delete the .dat file and the core wallet system... and my coins are still tied to the paper private key.

Newer wallets don't even let you export private keys anymore... or import private keys from paper wallets........... So yeah. The landscape is getting a lot more "automatic" such that you end up relying on apps and data files to store your coins rather than the actual keys themselves.

The problem with that is that any kind of software hack that can reach any of the wallets tied to that app.... can steal your coins.

I've been reading some confusing things too about how if you send BTC from an address and it looks like if you send less than 0.01 btc, it's considered "bitcoin dust" and that the network discourages it. As bitcoin's price increases, 0.01 btc becomes worth an incredibly high amount.

That means it becomes harder to use BTC at a grocery store to buy something worth $10. Lightning network would be a nice solution to this though.

Technology:

The aforementioned wallets make bitcoin a lot more user-friendly (albeit making your coins less secure).

Psychology:

unfortunately, your typical mom, dad, and teen store clerk would probably look at bitcoin as a risky investment, rather than a form of currency. I think we're a little past the "criminal currency" mindset though . It's definitely more positive in everyone's minds. We just need to raise awareness about why decentralized currency is so very good.

Where are we now and given the current circumstances, where can we still go?

Utility - Is Bitcoin still useful compared to other payment options or commodities? What use case, gives Bitcoin the edge over other options?

Technology - What technological breakthrough in Bitcoin has pushed it above other competitors? Scaling? / Decentralization? / User-friendly?

Psychology - What is Bitcoin in other people's minds? Store of value? / Tech used by criminals? / Tech for Geeks? / Just another fad?

We should work on a strategy to answer these questions and to solve the problems, where others have failed. Where do we start?