These are really good points and I don't necessarily disagree. I'm not writing Bitcoin's obituary yet, but times are changing faster than Bitcoin developers can keep up, it would seem. I mean, the diehards who have been mining since the beginning should be sitting on 100's of millions of dollars at todays prices. It's really hard to make the legitimate argument that it's still "not big enough", to make the changes and updates the mainstream demands, when you're sitting on that kind of cash. How much "bigger" does it need to get?
But consider how long "Todays prices" would last if someone tried to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins. Many of the issues would be issue for the alt-coins too and since some of the issues are due to solid design, where they are not issues for other coins, that is likely because unfortunate compromises have been made in the design. If you just want something simple to use, Paypal and credit cards are there (for their faults, which are many, they are very easy to use).
A little patience is in order. I am sure there is much in the works that we will not be aware of until it launches. I suspect much was started in 2012 but it takes time to go from idea to design to implementation to testing to release.
Ironically, the thing probably most holding Bitcoin back now is the weaknesses of the methods it was designed to supplant. Payments are reversible, governments control banks. Surely, one day it will break free from that constraint but in the meantime, solving this issue would be a real killer app.
Again, these are really good and fair points. I was speaking more to the incentive side, for getting things done and that doesn't require cashing out. Seeing an investment that initially was worth pennies, and seeing it now should be incentive enough. But this is why I'm hopeful of Ripple. They make up for many of Bitcoins issues, in one fail swoop. It does not make Bitcoin development irrelevant, actually its the opposite. But with decentralization comes the downside of things being unorganized. It's hard to get things done when everyone is disorganized. I'm sure you can agree with that.
Simple is what the masses want. That's why Paypal is successful. Couple that with rediculously low transaction fees and the ability to come in and out of the financial sectors of the world through gateways, and you've got the future of world currency. Bitcoin is just one piece of that. It must learn to coexist with the rest of world currencies.
