[Mahn]

I still don't understand how does Bitcoin present opportunity and potential when average consumers do not want it. It excels for things like buying drugs, so for that use case alone it will stay, but other than that, even with companies like Coinbase or Circle providing infrastructure to ease the process there's just no obvious advantage to consumers. It really seems like a solution in search of a problem.

[CyberDildonics]

Is massive credit card fraud not a problem? It is a problem for most people, and if not for you, then certainly for the businesses losing 3% to credit transactions on top of all the fraudulent orders.

What about remittances that cost already poor people enormous amounts of money?

What about the more core issue of being in charge of your own money? People in Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, China and Cyprus might have something to say for being able to choose what money they use.

What about accepting payments without relying on credit card companies and middle men like Square and Paypal?

But really when you say 'consumers don't want it', what is that based on and have you ever used bitcoin yourself? It is so simple and easy I buy everything online with it that I can and it's a breath of fresh air.

[mpyne]

> Is massive credit card fraud not a problem? It is a problem for most people, and if not for you, then certainly for the businesses losing 3% to credit transactions on top of all the fraudulent orders.

Fraud happens with Bitcoin too. If anything the Bitcoin economy suffers more from it, the only difference is that chargebacks are not as easily possible with Bitcoin.

Moreover removing chargebacks shifts the burden of fraud from businesses to consumers, who are even less equipped to handle the requirements of detecting fradulent transactions and preventing misuse of their Bitcoin wallets.

How many 47-step "Simple guides to using Bitcoin safely" guides are there on /r/bitcoin now? When Bitcoin experts have to non-ironically suggest sealing off network ports with epoxy to safely use the "Currency of the Internet" that should cause alarms to sound for everyone.

Far from being pro-consumer, Bitcoin is practically the logical conclusion of 'caveat emptor', trying to take Internet-based businesses back to the days before Upton Sinclar's "The Jungle" was published.

Luckily for us, the 2.5-or so transaction per second limit seems to guarantee we won't have to worry about any significant shift to Bitcoin even if people wanted to pay $10/tx fees...

[CyberDildonics]

You have quite a combination of anti-bitcoin posts in your history and half truth straw mans in your post.

I'll give you a guide: download a wallet, choose a password, backup your wallet file. Then don't epoxy any ethernet ports since that is ridiculous.

And work on transaction scaling is far ahead of its need as the current block size is not a hindrance at the current transaction rate, although maybe you actually know that already.

[mpyne]

Is it that simple? The "Basic Bitcoin Security Guide" posted by a /r/bitcoin moderator seems to make it out to be much more complex: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pxy4w/basic_bitcoi...

Note that this isn't a guide on how to use Bitcoin securely. The guide itself admits right up-front that this is the "20% effort for 80% security" guide, or in other words they have to leave some more advanced stuff out that is still required for security, even if it doesn't represent a large amount of marginal risk.

(P.S. epoxying your ports was mentioned, un-ironically, in an upvoted post in that same thread).

Among the things that a mere mortal has to contend with to use Bitcoin securely (assuming they get the other 20% of what they need to know elsewhere, of course):

* "Unplugging their Internet" to generate a safe wallet password.

* Ensuring their computer is completely secure as well (as pointed out in the section on choosing a software wallet, "They are among the best place to store your money safely (provided your computer is secure as well)").

* Deterministic wallets and other wallets.

* The need to take extra steps to backup wallets if using BitcoinQT

* How to spend money if you're not actually keeping your computer seat warm with mobile/online wallets, with the caveat that you can't actually store any more money in such wallets than "you're prepared to lose".

-- They also point out blockchain.info here for use as online wallets, even though blockchain.info is notoriously insecure compared to other alternatives.

* "Don’t use your online wallets from unsafe computers", which is practically as useless as advice goes as saying "Always carefully read and understand all prompts that a webpage or software program displays before clicking on any buttons, even if closing the prompt is required to proceed to your actual task".

* Advice for cold storage: 'set one up easily by buying an old laptop, reformatting it, installing Linux and a Bitcoin client'. Anyone else remember that time you couldn't safely save USD without buying an old laptop and installing an OS for experts?

> And work on transaction scaling is far ahead of its need as the current block size is not a hindrance at the current transaction rate, although maybe you actually know that already.

Indeed, Bitcoin is in no danger of approaching its practical transaction limits anytime soon given current Bitcoin use growth....

[sanswork]

>Is massive credit card fraud not a problem?

Not for me as a consumer. If I lose my card I'm covered if someone steals my details and makes a charge I'm covered. As a consumer I don't care about the business. As a business I can price in fraud easily.

>What about remittances that cost already poor people enormous amounts of money?

The expensive part of remittances isn't moving money between countries and that is the only part that bitcoin makes cheaper. The expensive part is 1) Complying with regulations(ignoring this is how most bitcoin remittance services are currently so cheap) and 2) Having people everywhere that the receiver can go and get local currency from(Bitcoin companies are currently using 3rd party services to avoid paying for this but those services aren't going to fund them forever). The other side to 2 is people saying that they can use things like local bitcoins. The issue there is with success becomes an oversupply locally of people looking to sell their bitcoins which leads to a reduced price for it which adds cost to the sender to get the receiver the same amount.

>What about accepting payments without relying on credit card companies and middle men like Square and Paypal?

This is general a pain in the ass which is why companies like Bitpay and Coinbase are so popular with almost every merchant using one or the other.

>But really when you say 'consumers don't want it', what is that based on and have you ever used bitcoin yourself? It is so simple and easy I buy everything online with it that I can and it's a breath of fresh air.

Based on the fact that it hasn't been secret now for years, has been easy for people in a few countries to buy for years and the public is still very meh about it if not aggressively opposed to it. I've used bitcoin myself quite a bit. It is easy to use to make a payment but I wouldn't say my credit cards are any more difficult. However it isn't easy in general. I have to first figure out how to securely store it, then I have to worry about having it stolen since I am at a complete loss if that happens, and I have to find a way to buy it which for me not being American is still a pretty huge pain in the ass. Once that's done and I'm made my purchase I now need to hope that the company doesn't make a mistake and lose my order or screw up in processing since I have no way easy way to make them resolve a problem.

[maxerickson]

The business isn't necessarily losing 3%, they are setting their prices in a way that accounts for the relative costs and benefits of accepting CC payments.

It's unlikely that the real cost of other methods will ever be 0 (cash incurs lots of risk management, bitcoin too, other systems involve fees, etc.).

[pjzedalis]

Credit card fraud has never been a problem for me as a consumer. I just call the bank and its dealt with. If Bitcoin can solve all of those problems then I'd imagine banks would want in on it. The fact they they don't tells me that despite all the scary credit card fraud somebody is making out somewhere.

[simplyluke]

> Is massive credit card fraud not a problem?

Still not sure how Bitcoin even remotely solves this. If someone steals my wallet and racks up a bill on my credit card there are legal recourses and ways to get my money back. If someone compromises my bitcoin wallet and empties it there is _absolutely no recourse_. Saying I should have protected it better is no better than saying I shouldn't have been mugged and had my wallet taken. In one case I have a chance at recovering funds, in the other I don't.

> What about remittances that cost already poor people enormous amounts of money?

I'm not sure a highly volatile currency that currently requires an expert knowledge of the internet and computing and is only a valid form of payment in a handful of incredibly affluent tech focussed markets solves this in any way.

> What about the more core issue of being in charge of your own money? People in Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, China and Cyprus might have something to say for being able to choose what money they use.

This has been discussed in what's currently the top comment, but Bitcoin is notably less democratic than a large number of government backed currencies. I can vote for a president who will put people in charge of the Fed who share my economic interests, and I think there's reason to trust that process more than an anonymous group of developers and middlemen who are attempting to make the entire process less painful.

> What about accepting payments without relying on credit card companies and middle men like Square and Paypal?

Excluding investing huge capital in hiring a group of developers (whom you are relying on) to develop a solution for you, you're trading that for relying on less proven companies like coinbase, bitpay, coin, etc. Philosophically it may be superior, but I'd trust my money more with Visa than any of the fraudulent bitcoin startups that have disappeared with millions in funds.

> But really when you say 'consumers don't want it', what is that based on and have you ever used bitcoin yourself?

I have used it, and it's pretty awful. I've tried explaining it to non-technical friends and family and they see no value proposition over traditional payments.

> It is so simple and easy I buy everything online with it that I can and it's a breath of fresh air.

When my options to get my paycheck to bitcoin are a) wait a week for a website I'm forced to trust to process my money or b) meet a guy in a coffee shop with a large amount of cash on me and have him transfer the bitcoin to me. I'd hardly call that a "simple" nor "easy" process, especially when the merchant then has to go through an equally difficult process to get the funds in a usable currency for things like taxes and payroll.

Bitcoin may be an interesting development in digital currency and blockchain is undoubtably a promising technology, but claiming that for most users bitcoin is more reliable, safe, and easier than traditional payments is, to be frank, laughable.

[ArekDymalski]

There are several reasons for (s)low adoption among regular consumers: 1. It's still new and niche, many people haven't heard about it. 2. Those who heard about bitcoin in mainstream media had a chance to read both praise and scary coverage (black market, hacking, Mt Gox loses etc) 3. Bitcoin companies aren't that good in presenting themselves in terms of benefits for the layman. We should accept the fact that bitcoin is still on the beginning of it's journey through Gartner's hype cycle.Somewhere around the peak of inflated expectations I guess.

[sanswork]

How long would you say the bitcoin community can continue to shout out early days before its not actually true? 2014 was going to be the year of Bitcoin. It was on the news regularly, new companies sprouted up that made it pretty easy for a lot of people to get bitcoin if they want it, plenty of merchants started accepting it and instead of taking off it's done the opposite. We're a quarter of the way through 2015 and despite a few major announcements there is no apparent sign of any change in the public perception.

The community seems content to talk about how long email or the internet took to become common while at the same time ignoring the fact that the internet has vastly decreased the amount of time it takes for new technologies and ideas to spread.

At what point going forward of no growth would you admit it has peaked?

[CyberDildonics]

How fast does it have to be for you? It was only in the last year that there were even multiple viable places to buy btc in the US.

Sentiments like this are akin to people looking at the internet in the days of prodigy and saying 'I can send a letter and get sports scores from the newspaper, the internet is overhyped'

20 years later it is still a transformative force in people's lives that continues to change and evolve.

[sanswork]

>How fast does it have to be for you?

Fast enough to show progress.

>It was only in the last year that there were even multiple viable places to buy btc in the US.

Coinbase has been around since 2012, and now we've had a few choices even beyond them for over a year and they still haven't made a difference. Don't you ever wonder why Coinbase and Bitpay are so adamant about not releasing real figures for anything? Coinbase releases number of wallets which is a worthless vanity metric since you can have multiple wallets and it tells us nothing of use. Bitpay released tons of details on last Bitcoin Black Friday and this year their only statement was that its not all about the numbers. More recently they've cancelled their sponsorship of the Bitcoin Bowl early.

You're replying to a comment where I point out the problem with comparing bitcoin to the early internet by comparing it to the early internet. The difference between then and now is the level of improvement and the inability for the existing system to match the improvements of the new one. The internet is a huge improvement over sending a letter and getting sports scores. Massive, unquestionable. Bitcoin isn't a huge improvement over the traditional banking system(even for the unbanked).

[borgia]

>At what point going forward of no growth would you admit it has peaked?

I don't think you're going to get such an admission from the average, invested, Bitcoin enthusiast any time soon.

You're entirely correct in your post here. 2014 was meant to be "the" year for Bitcoin and it was an absolute flop. Nothing came from it.

There seems to be this overall naive belief of "if you build it, they will come" while "it" has no clear value to anyone beyond those who want to carry out illegal transactions.

The "why" "they" will come to it seems to be ever expanding as enthusiasts grasp in hope that someday the currency they're using as an investment instrument will see wider adoption and make them money for their patience and continued public praise of it.

Bitcoin seems to have become a matter of faith more than anything else. If you truly believe you'll go to Bitcoin heaven. Ignore those who question it as they hath no clue.

[Mahn]

The most important question, though, is not "why haven't regular consumers realized the benefits of bitcoin yet", but rather, "what are the benefits of bitcoin that will make regular consumers adopt it". And I just never see an obvious answer or argument to that latter question.

[waterlesscloud]

Why do regular consumers need to adopt it for it to be a successful technology?

[sanswork]

Because institutional users are far more likely to want to build on something they can have some control over.

[waterlesscloud]

Institutional users aren't regular consumers, but institutional users are more likely to benefit (in the short term at least) from the programmable money aspects.

[sanswork]

That is my point though. Institutional users may be more likely to benefit from that but they aren't going to want to give up control. So that leaves only regular users as a driving force behind it.

There is a reason IBM, UBS, etc are building blockchain research centres and not just throwing their weight behind bitcoin itself.

[zanny]

Lower prices (but that requires complete adoption or significant enough adoption vendors want to stop supporting credit card companies and thus increasing their prices) and the ability to transact with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

[sanswork]

One of the problems with the price angle here is thinking that credit card companies can't compete on price or are at the minimum amount they can charge profitably. Visa has a net profit margin of like 50%. They could even restructure to require banks pay them a chunk of interest payments and offer merchants 0% fees if they wanted.

[aboutus]

Only someone who completely trusts their government and centralized financial institutions would say that.

[sanswork]

I don't have to trust everything they do to know that what they are doing works pretty well for me in almost all of my daily uses.