Topic: What are the major hurdles you feel BitCoin faces to mainstream acceptance? - page 3. (Read 2772 times)

I think it will always be a niece market to some extent. It's never going to become a mainstream payment method for Joe Public. However, there's still massive opportunity for increased adoption. Right now Bitcoin really is a geeky thing. Nobody outside techie circles has heard of it. It's slowly starting to permeate the mainstream financial news and as press coverage increases, we can expect much more growth as investors with a penchant for high risk / high gain investments put their money into it.

I'm interested in Bitcoin for purchasing with anonymity. Value does not matter to me completely*, keeping my identity hidden behind this computer is.

Edited for mistake*.

The more people who adopt BitCoin, the greater the value.  Therefore it is inherently contradictory to to not hope for mainstream adoption, and want it to appreciate.  As an extension of this logic, everyone knowing about it increases the value the greatest amount, as well as providing incentive for people to create more and better clients for BitCoin use.

So again, why are you interested in BitCoin?

I don't ever see or hope for a mainstream adoption either. I do hope that it adapts better and gets easier to use for its current users and maybe grow a tad more to stimulate the community. But other than that, I wouldn't mind if everyone didn't know about it.

If you don't ever see mainstream adoption as happening, why are you interested in BitCoins?


This is only the case now - not indefinitely.


I laughed, but this would actually be a huge help to it's adoption.  This goal is probably best served by the open source community developing a standard BitCoin library (let's call it bitCoinLib) for other developers to implement with little or no restriction on it's inclusion in a software project, thereby being available easily on as many platforms as possible.  In this way the BitCoin community can easily spread to anyone with a device that can run software including the bitCoinLib and thereby increase the user base drastically.

The only restrictions I could see for use of bitCoinLib would be open source final products to facilitate transparency, and free final products, excepting BTC fees taken which must be added entirely to the mining pools rewards through the protocol's optional fee system (to match the BitCoin protocol's ideals of lowered fees and costs to users of the currency, one of it's main selling points).

edit history
-fixed a typo interest to interested

I have tried explaining what bitcoin is and how it works to my friends a numerous amount of times, and I find it near impossible, even though I am such a well-spoken and smart person. The only way I can explain bitcoins to anyone that I know is by dumbing it down to the point where it doesn't even seem interesting.

That's the defence that was used for p2p file sharing when it first emerged. People said it could be used legitimately and shouldn't be restricted just because of the illegitimate users. I think Bitcoin probably has more legitimate uses than Napster did (for example) which counts in its favour, but I think there'll be difficulty persuading the public at large that Bitcoin is legitimate especially when the media will undoubtably be whipping up a storm about Bitcoin being used for drug pushers and child pornographers.

I don't ever see mainstream wide adoption really.


You have to have an IQ over 60 really to use bitcoins.  That cuts about 50% of the population out right there.


that is unless maybe you could dumb it down enough to an iZombie app or something.

I don't think BitCoin is inherently drastically more prone to illegal use than say cash or commodities as a system of wealth transfer, although it is slightly simpler to use illegally.  That being said, the old guard will undoubtedly take steps through various governmental or financial channels to attempt to stop BitCoin as it represents a threat to their existing economic model - wherein they control the economy.

As a community we can do some things to help stem the blood flow from this, and even heal the wound that causes it.

The first is to educate the people we introduce to BitCoin about the ways in which it is similar to cash in that it can be used illegally, but the majority of it's use is for legitimate purposes.  Earlier is better on this one, sine the mainstream media has yet to really latch on to BitCoin as the next big scare for ratings.  The better educated people are (or can easily become) when that happens, the more foolish the old guard will look for trying to badmouth it.

I think the problem long term is that governments will try and destabilise it. They're scared of its potential for tax evasion and money laundering and will use their vast resources to destabilise to currency.

BitCoin certainly has a ways to go before mainstream adoption and acceptance.  We can cite numerous potential reasons for this, but what we actually need to do is determine what the real issues are blocking it and make steps to facilitate the growth of the BitCoin economy into mainstream sectors.

How can we stabilize it as a currency in terms of purchasing value?  What is a realistic estimate for it to stabilize at as a value?  How long do we have to capitalize on our current momentum to stabilize and cement it before the general market forgets about it and moves on?

What can be done to help both online & brick and mortar merchants accept it more widely?  What tools need to exist to flesh out the BitCoin economic ecosystem without imposing the banking models it was design to escape from?

What are the thresholds of acceptance that will propel it's acceptance at a faster rate?  What milestones will cause the non-Bitcoin economy to stand up and take the BitCoin seriously as a contender in the currency competition?  Are there are any other crypto-currency contenders in that space?

Is scalping doing too much damage to the reputation of BitCoin?  Has market volatility scared away too many investors?  If there is a threshold for failure, where is it?

What place will lending institutions hold in the new economy?  Will the lowered acceptance of fees result in increased interest rates for BitCoin loans or piggyback into lower acceptable interest rates from debtors?

What security options does BitCoin need to be as secure and seamless as possible?  What point is the limit for security vs. convenience?

As a community we need to inspect, understand, and address these issues if we hope to see results.  And realize this is just the surface -   BitCoin is for all intents and purposes a newborn, not yet even in it's infancy.  In order to survive in the harsh world of fiat currencies and precious metals and stocks, it's going to need good parenting and a plan.