Topic: What is holding Bitcoin back? (Read 2636 times)

When they say holding bitcoin back, that doesn't mean it is not making progress. What it means is..... the progress that is made is much slower than the technology deserves and slower than many of us (who get it) thought. I think it is being held back by many things, but when the world catches on it's gonna be crazy.

There is a huge difference between stopping and holding back. Bitcoin could go to 10.000 and it still in itself would not prove that nothing is holding bitcoin back.

It is obvious to most people that a range of issues are holding bitcoin back from achieving its full potential.

Bitcoin price at the moment is getting higher and higher.
Does it anymore is holding bitcoin back?

Bad news and fears hold bitcoin back. Scams, the insecurities of being your own bank account and the very difference of bitcoin. Newbies have to wrap their head around what bitcoin is and how it works. Even with an easy way to handle it.

I dont see that can be changed very much so we might have to live with it.

One thing that might consern the masses is the fact that a few people controls most of the coins. One individual can have as much as 10% of all BTC.

If BTC was adapted in all contries those few people would be rich enough to buy whole continents. I dont think any nation would adapt bitcoin as long as a few anonyme individuals controls the whole economy.

Difficult to acquire and use for the average Joe. (It is truly a pain in the ass to buy bitcoins, I had to jump through way to many hoops to buy BTC and I'm an advocate of them. Imaging how the average guy gives up after a few failed attempts.)

Fear of hacking and losing everything is a huge concern. (no idiot proof password recovery etc.....)

Difficult to set up/use for the less tech savvy among us. Takes too much thought, bad for the sheeple out there.

Bad press.

I think you will be surprised. Wallet.dat..and half the population already have a blank stare left... People are used to apps etc and not dealing with filenames even. I know this is a forum with a different reality, but 'out there' it's a bit different.

you can solve this in two way, make it more easy, or teach to those people how to store your bitcoin safely, the latter has proven to be not a good solution, the former is not really a problem, because come on.... putting your wallet.dat in a usb and don't use it in your infected computer isn't something so sophisticated to understand

i think people simply do not trust bitcoin itself, its unstable nature, more than losing their money for thieves

Nothing is actually putting Bitcoins back as it has been stable a lot since past few months, and stability is necessary currently in order for various people and industries from various genres to come and adopt Bitcoins, start using it and give a better value to it by getting their names added to it...

exactly, i am living in a developing country and i have a lot of problems for selling/buying bitcoin. there are no decent places that you can do this easily with fiat.
but there is still buy/sell person to person with cash which is the best way but it has its own problems.

If storing completely safely was much easier than now many many more people would put wealth into bitcoin, and that demand would lead to many more places to buy and sell bitcoin. So when the security is there, the rest follows.

For me the single biggest problem, and it's even worst in the 3rd world countries ---> Buying Bitcoin

In the 1st world countries like the USA, people have to jump through just as many hoops, as they do with opening a bank account. {AML / KYC regulations} and in the

3rd world countries accessibility to ATM's and Bitcoin Vending machines are nearly non-existent. How can you buy a currency, if it harder to get it, than going to a fiat ATM?

Why would you go through all that trouble, if the fiat system is easier?

I fully agree. We are still in a pretty early stage and many things have to be solved before real mass adoption can happen.
What I wanted to point out is that people always can learn about new technology and how to use it.
Just look back in history. From horses to cars, from telegram to telephone. From written letter to email and internet. From feature phone to smart phone etc. etc. etc.
People are not lazy or dumb in exploring and using new tech. That is my statement!

The difference is they f%&¤ up regularly, and just reinstall or get the virus off again... and usually they have nothing of value so noone really hears about it. Here we are talking about people's wealth... there tolererance for messing up is obviously much lower. It is a different world, and the bitcoin solutions need to improve a lot from the current state.

We should be happy that adoption is not higher than it is. Because the state of security solutions is far from up to it.. if it was adopted outside of cryptology and tech interested etc circles the losses would be far greater than they have been - and the reputation of blockchain technology might suffer tremendously.

Yeah right. This is the reason why almost everyone who owns a computer today is able to write an email, because he was too lazy to learn it.
Even my dad, age 71, not tech savvy, learned that pretty easy years ago. As people learned to send emails and to browse the web they will learn how to use bitcoin. Especially the younger generations get into it pretty fast. The more and better the GUI of future wallets the easier it will be.
And by the way: As dumb as a kid might be, one thing you can not deny.They all know how to use a fucking smartphone.So I'm not afraid they won't be able to use cryptos properly.

It's a mixture of this as in there's not many places to spend it and not many people willing to spend it. For the average citizen bitcoin won't really interest them at the moment which is sad. Maybe it will take some sort of financial crisis for people to realize.

In my experience only people looking at it from the outside notice that volatility could be an issue.

Imagine the shop owner can easily see that volatility could be an issue for his business.

But people who have tried to actually buy and own bitcoin realize that the currency is so different from $ etc that just having and storing them is a huge issue - and a much more immediate problem than volatility.

the only reason that I can think of is the fact that it is not yet reached the mass acceptance level. and sometimes the bad news spreads a bad face for bitcoin.

It's a bullshit question. Bitcoin is not being held back. To the contrary, it's moving along and advancing with constant increases in the number of users, wallets, and transactions. Investment in the space has never been higher both in number of investors and the amount of money invested. Lastly and largely, governments have legitimized Bitcoin.

That said, there could be arguments that Bitcoin adoption is being slowed by legacy financial interests, their bought legislators and talking heads, but Bitcoin is growing.

Yes, but this 'law of the jungle' will not at all fly if Bitcoin has ambitions of being a real currency and challenging FIAT.

Many people will not be able to keep their bitcoins safe themselves no matter how many newbie guides we make.

Also, while seemingly good advice, "don't put more in bitcoin than you can afford to loose" - tells quite clearly where bitcoin is in its evolution. No real and useful currency would we say this about. Imagine "only have in dollars what you can afford to loose!"... nah...

Not being able to store bitcoin in a netbank/wallet (like we can with dollars, euros etc.) is a huge step backwards in the evolution of money - so this also needs to be fixed. People will not be satisfied with "well, now you have to store your money under you pillow written on paper slips just like you would store coins hundreds of years ago. Maybe in the attic!.. Nah... those solutions belong to ancient times and again tell us how behind bitcoin is in many aspects still.

But - once the security issues are solved.. and even normal people (with an IQ of 80 or 90, or people with zero interest in computers etc etc.) can easily keep their bitcoins safe that will be the day when bitcoin is ready for mass adoption. Right now we are still far far from that (in technology... I hope not in time )