Its value as a medium of international transfer is however very real. When people sell their hard-earned dollars for Bitcoin to send overseas, it's to save time and transfer fees. Even the tx fees people bitch about are minuscule compared to bank or Western Union fees.
Likewise, even if it takes longer than expected for the transaction to be verified a sufficient number of times by the network, it's still just hours and not a week of banking days.
depends where you live. in europe bank transfers are free and instant.
and let's be honest here, if you're doing transfers beyond your local banking system with western union by the time you throw in the expense of buying and converting back btc, western union is often still gonna be cheaper and faster for the smaller stuff.
if i had to pay for something big in america then i'd definitely try to turn them on to bitpay or coinbase. if my friend in kathmandu is starving to death then it'll have to be western union still.
the only real unique actual use case right now is dark markets but with the advent of better and better analysis it's possible that door will close.
and public adoption doesn't matter. what really matters is more use by the foundations of the finance industry. the public will follow them.
