[skyjacker]

Personally, I've tried five times to make small purchases with Bitcoin (this was several years ago). In all cases I was ripped off and never received product.

It's not going to be government regulations that kill Bitcoin, its the associations with illicit drugs, child pornography, and dishonesty of vendors like Robocoin.

[eric_bullington]

On the other hand, I've been into Bitcoin since early 2011, have made hundreds of purchases with Bitcoin, gotten made for major contract jobs in Bitcoin, paid other contractors in Bitcoin, and never been ripped off. You just have to exercise some caution and do your due diligence.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin has attracted more than its fair share of scammers -- in part because the core community was at one time pretty naive -- but it's also full of honest people who are attracted to Bitcoin for ideological reasons, and fellow technophiles who are happy to engage in honest commerce with other people.

[knowaveragejoe]

While that's all well and good, I don't think that will translate so well into the mass market. At least not for some time.

[eric_bullington]

That's OK. As long as there is a large enough population using Bitcoin to create a small economy, that's fine with me. Right now, I get paid in Bitcoin, and pay for about 40%-50% of my household expenses in Bitcoin (and increasing monthly).

For people who are attracted to Bitcoin for ideological or technological reasons, mass adoption would be nice, but it's not as important to us as it is to the massive wave of "to the moon!" speculators who came in last fall.

[Havvy]

On IRC, somebody once put a bug bounty of 2BTC for a geometric problem. I fixed the bug in two hours (including the time it took to look up the geometry formulas...) and did receive the bitcoin. This was at the time that Bitcoin was trending $850 each.

It seems to me though, that due to bitcoin's relative newness and grey market status, you're going to see a lot of scammers and bad businessmen related to it. It's high risk in that sense, and you need to do your research. Give it time, and the bad business practices will be weeded out, and stability will come. This is the pain of early adoption.

[qnr]

I made multiple purchases with Bitcoin both small and large (in particular I've been buying air tickets exclusively with Bitcoin for the past year) and have never been scammed.

[zo1]

People have gotten very used to some of the niceties and existing organizations that have evolved around normal currency (Over a lot of years. Probably a few orders magnitude more years than how long Bitcoin has even existed). Such a safety net does not exist for Bitcoin, yet.

It's just a matter of people realizing that fact, and re-acting accordingly. Be more cautious, perhaps come up with some sort of novel organization to fill this need, even.