Topic: What is wrong with bitcoin and why it may never reach widespread adoption. (Read 1735 times)

Same interesting points, i'll try to answer some of them.

As for the gold standard getting dropped:

I think people did not really have a choice, what were they going to do, riot? Even if they would riot, would it have mattered? I don't think so. Also, politicians most likely used a lot of propaganda to pull it of (it's what politicians do).

As for the laptops, you only need a cellphone to use bitcoin, and more people have cell phones than people have bank accounts. Many people who want to buy stuff on the internet simply can't, not because they don't have money (well they don't have a lot of money, but still, they have a few dollars), but because they have no bank account, and can't afford one (note bank accounts are more expensive the less money you have!). Bitcoin might allow them to order things online, if even very small payments like food from a local store or whatever they want to buy.

Many poor people live in countries with huge inflation, if they have to choose between losing 10~30% of their purchasing power guaranteed each month versus owning a volitile (but often increasing) bitcoin, it would be a no-brainer.

Security may be a problem for poor people and technologically challenged people, but for those people there's webwallets (coinkite, coinbase, blockchain), i agree you'd have to trust a 3rd party and they are not as secure as a cold wallet, but hey, it's still better than a bank!

Is there a way we could keep Bitcoin from becoming like the old financial system? I am thinking we should just do peer-to-peer lending if we have to get into the Bitcoin version of the money market at all. Fewer fees and we give the banks something to think about.

Ditch the LTC (slowly dying), ditch the palladium (illiquid), ditch the diamonds (you are right about DeBeers).

Most people will be using ebanks, there will be fees on everything, and ultimately, we won't end up fixing anything about the finance system, if anything, we'd complicate it further.

Bitcoin needs a killer app, something exclusive to it that takes advantage of it and makes people buy it to benefit from it. Personally, I do not think that advantage comes from spending it at merchants. We need to specialize it to where it's useful: underground markets, anonymous probably fair gambling, remittance, and anything else you can't do with fiat easily. Then accept the fact that that's where cryptos are useful, that's their value, and move on.

 I honestly like LTC, BTC, gold, silver, platinum, palladium diamonds... Anything the government cannot inflate away and screw with (even at that I think we all have to acknowledge that the government could screw with BTC if they wanted to trow a few million at computers.  I think the majority of us would also have to admit that they have screwed with gold and silver VIA the exchanges and banks already and that DeBeers has screwed with the diamond market since.. well, forever.)  

I have been thinking quite a lot lately about the chances that bitcoin (or crypto currencies in general) will ever find widespread adoption and I lean more and more towards the answer of “no.”  Now, don't get me wrong, I have litecoins and am probably going to buy a few antminers knowing full well they will never ROI... I do it for my own reasons including the fact that I love minting coins that piss my central bank off and the fact that I can see some use for them though I imagine them to remain a “niche” market for a long period of time.  There are just so many hurdles to widespread adoption.  Also, if only a small % of people see a point to something tangible and with a thousand years of history as being a store of value I cannot imagine the entire population running to Cryptos.  Countries moved away from gold and silver and their citizens never question it... Now we want them to question fiat in favour of bitcoin?

-First, you need money to make money.  It is hard to imagine a world where the majority of the citizens will adopt this currency.  In the first world we can mine it if we invest a few thousand in hardware and some electricity... most of the world's citizens cannot say the same.  What reason would a person in N. Korea have to drop $600 on one bitcoin that requires a computer rather than 30 ounces of silver?

-Imagining that the answer to the previous statement is the expectation of appreciation we run across another problem.  While I can buy one today for $600 lets suppose that in 5 years the price is $10 000.  How difficult will it be for the citizen of a third world country to purchase a coin in order to "opt into" the system?

-I can imagine the answer to that is that they will purchase litecoin of some other crypto... But now we have a disconnect between what types of currencies various parts of the world will use and that will begin to have the same general issues that we already have with fiat in terms of having to exchange currencies.

I would be very interested to find out how many people have been scammed using bitcoin vs. a service like paypal.  I say this as somebody who has bought several vehicles sight unseen over the last decade and sent cash in advance without issue.  Somebody who has bought and sold on Paypal and sent instant transfers, wire transfers, money orders, international money orders, cheques...  All without issue (knock on wood.)  When I look on this forum I find story after story of people who have lost thousands to scammers and thieves.  And this in a community who is hyper-aware of scamming.  What are the chances that the average Joe will keep his coin?

This brings us to security.  You know to keep BTC in cold storage, copy your .dat files, use a clean boot of Linux or some other operating system, transfer your files on USB sticks... Do your honestly believe that the average person using a tablet is going to understand even a fraction of this?  In a first world country where Windows is the standard and the majority of users could not scan for a virus if their life depended on it (well, they might download some malware to scan for a virus should they do a search...)  I know the upcoming generation is more computer literate- but we are talking widespread acceptance in all countries, economic classes and levels of intelligence.  I think after the third time somebody buys a $600 coin and has it “drained” by hacking they may give up.  Again, why would the average person purchase something with these risks?

Now we get to the great argument for bitcoin... no fees, no regulation, free of the ability to charge back ect.  Anybody with an ounce of sense uses escrow.  Escrow fees are a percentage (why not just pay my bank for clearing funds?)  On top of this, I have to trust the person I use for escrow.  Suddenly, there are fees and additional risk.  Regulation is coming (many countries have declared BTC to be an asset and subject to taxation.)  Yes, I can get around it- you can probably get around it (I think most of us on this forum are savvy enough to know how if we try.)  However, if you think the number of people who have heard of bitcoin is small, imagine how many fewer can use these services and browsers (properly- without leaving major traces.)

The ability to prevent charge backs is great... but if I pay you in cold, hard cash it has the same advantage (including anonymity.)  The problem again arrives when we look at the number of people scammed or hacked with no recourse holding BTC.

Well, there it is.  I hope I am wrong.  I honestly like LTC, BTC, gold, silver, platinum, palladium diamonds... Anything the government cannot inflate away and screw with (even at that I think we all have to acknowledge that the government could screw with BTC if they wanted to trow a few million at computers.  I think the majority of us would also have to admit that they have screwed with gold and silver VIA the exchanges and banks already and that DeBeers has screwed with the diamond market since.. well, forever.)  They have the advantage that they can just print whatever it would take to mess things up if they really wanted to (though I honestly do not consider that a threat at this point in time- it would legitimize things and draw too many questions that they do not want to answer even though most of this community already know the answers...)  I will continue mining coins and messing around for fun (and maybe even a little profit if I am lucky.)  I expect that there will always be a market and that there will be more adoption over the next decade... But I cannot imagine the day I could pay my taxes in BTC (A topic for another day when I think I may ask “if BTC is an asset according to the government because it has value- can I pay the tax to them as a percentage of BTC I earned using BTC???")

It is divisible... as is litecoin and any of the others.  The problem is not the question of divisibility but rather utility.  I am saying that buying .0000001 bitcoin in Zimbabwean fiat a few years ago would have been difficult.  I would have to pay 30 billion Zimbabwean dollars for that amount.  

Well that sucks for you, but image getting paid in BTC and converting it to Zim dollars! You would be a ZimGazillionaire.  

It works both way....

If the Zimbabweans can count to a billion, to give change, adopting BTC should be easy, because they only need to count to a million.  

The smallest unit of BTC is 0.00000001. At this writing, one dollar on the exchanges is selling for about 0.00171 BTC.

If you're suggesting that BTC isn't divisible, I don't believe you're qualified to tell us "what is wrong with Bitcoin."

While I can buy one today for $600 lets suppose that in 5 years the price is $10 000.  How difficult will it be for the citizen of a third world country to purchase a coin in order to "opt into" the system?

Well, N.Korea is a rather strange example - they do not have 600$ laying around unless perhaps they are a government official.  People buy stocks of higher prices than 600$ in the first world, I would not be surprised.

We have got tons of kids using things like dogecoin.  I think it is without a question that we will have an internet currency. People want fast and easy - have you ever tried to buy an App on a mobile phone? The number of forms to complete is simply not a model that will sustain.

The protocal is working 100% The other things e.g. Security / User friendlyness etc. etc.. Can be made seemless by 3rd party developers. Eg. Treazor.

Welcome to bitcointalk!

No, I don't believe that, and to be honest, I don't even believe you yourself understand cold storage, given your brief description. But I don't think this will stop bitcoin adoption, most people will use online wallets, or something like a "bitcoin bank", where their bitcoins will be safe or legally insured. Maintaining money in local file is just an experimental software, mostly.