Bitcoin Forum

It has been 8 years since Bitcoin was introduced to the public by an individual who called himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is described as a peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency that can be transferred to someone without any involvement of banks and other financial entities.

Bitcoin became a very interesting option for giving mobile banking services to the people who doesn't have any banking information in underdeveloped countries in the world.

Read more: http://bitforum.info/t/why-bitcoin-mass-adoption-is-still-not-happening/830

In your own opinion what are the reasons why mass bitcoin adoption is still not happening right now?

https://i.imgur.com/ximYS93.jpg

Early adopters and such.

FTFY


Bitcoin is a whole new financial system to be built from scratch. How long do you think it should take?

despite bitcoin being so old, remember that is still in beta, until the full release is done i could not see mass adoption, people like to spread something like that(the software is still in beta ecc...), which will result in less faith from the majority, because they are afraid of losing money

if you adds to that the usual security problem you are done, mass adoption can't be reached until other 5 years at least

Bitcoin era is begin , its still new, 6 years old bitcoin age. Compare with fiat is like compared chicken with dinosaurs.

The problems must be solved is human error(usually in security sector). The adopter afraid lost their money.

you need to remember life happened without bitcoin eg money transferred by the likes of western union.
sure the fees are less with bitcoin but have you ever tried to do all the set up ( wallets and the like)?. the average person will not go through that - they want any system to be as easy as current ones -  when my credit card expires a new one arrives in the mail - no effort required on my part.

some of the benefits of bitcoin eg anonymity do not matter to most people so its not a selling point for them also when you have exchanges falling over (mtgox) etc the risk is too high of participating. that is why there is so much interest in "normalization" that is to come with the the twins exchange etc.

so i think the best way to think about this is that bitcoin (or rather what else is needed to use it easily/safely) is not quite ready to be "mass adopted" by the average person.
it will be soon and then it will be widely used as the idea itself is wonderful. :)

^^^exactly this.

The whole thing is a pain in the ass. Wallets etc and my issue of putting my dat file onto new wallet (which still isn't working!!)

I am semi tech savvy but until there is a breakthrough and there is a simple idiot proof wallet it won't happen. Also it needs to be accepted more. At the moment my friend and family can't work out why use it? They use their card and that's simple for them.

In part it is also because of the collapsed exchangers and ponzi schemes which has been dragging down bitcoin's reputation. When some of these things happened it has far more outreached implications more than we can ever imagine.

perfect 'masses convenience' app needs to be adopted by the masses

also, volatility is a major problem for people wanting to use bitcoin as an alternative to legacy banking, rather than simply as low fees electronic money transfer. Volatility may take many more years to stabilise enough

Mass adoption is happening but just in a slow pace, Easy and steady people will eventually gradually accept it.

We're not doing it right. Or at least, 99% aren't doing it right. (purse.io may be the only company that understands the idea)

BTC has the ability to lower transaction costs, but instead almost all business that accept it, simply use it as an optional form of payment... Keeping the price the exact same...
dumb.

I cant wait for the day newegg and other merchants realize this and actually give me a discount for paying with BTC instead of credit cards.

$1000 laptop, paid with a credit card (1.9% fee) means the merchant keeps ~$981.
$1000 laptop paid with BTC = between  0%-1% fee; merchant keeps ~>$990.

Where's my .09% to 1.9% discount for paying in BTC???

Once merchants realize correct this imbalance, there will be real adoption, instead of just bitfinex speculative shorts.

TL;DR
Mass adoption will happen once you can actually save money using BTC to pay for things.

Don't know about why it hasn't been adopted massively in other countries but in my country the central bank has declared it "illegal"! So it was never adopted  :'( :'(

Look how long it took for computers to be mass adopted.. It was a niche market at first, but now we wouldn't know what to do without them. The same could happen with Bitcoin and blockchain, it just takes time for a lot of people to wrap their head around it and utilize it, and see how it improves their life.

There are very few things that people will be more emotive and conservative about than money. It's no skin off your nose to start sending emails for the first time or using a new app. This is a different matter.

I think it'll be adopted by those in the know who'll feed it back to the public. There are already services that aren't making it known that they're using BTC as their backbone.

Most people aren't good enough with computer and smartphones.

But as decades pass people will get more used to computers and phones and have more internet access, and enough knowledge to use BTC, and slowly BTC will go mainstream

Because guys are HOLDING rather then SPENDING

it ain't going nowhere until this mentality changes  ;D

It think mass adoption is slowly happening. Its just not reflected in the exchange price as many people wish it was. There's more liquidity in the market now as compared to 2013 so its going to take a lot more investment in the exchanges to move the price like it used to. I think the halving next year will reduce the liquidity in the market and we will see a price increase. The current exchange price is accurate. Im more interested in the OTC value. More and more people will see value in cash to btc rather than bank ACH to an exchange with a paper trail. OTC market is hard to gauge but I think there is more demand there than we think.  

Flatness has inspired me to start making more use of it for transactions. At least when you buy back shortly after you can be sure that it'll either cost the same or be slightly less.

I would've felt like a right dick buying something during November 2013 and finding I could've paid far less a few hours later.

Because good ideas usually take time on catch on. PCs, mobile phones are the internet weren't overnight successes and took years to break into the mainstream. Bitcoin will be no different but I think most people will need to see a reason to use it as opposed to just using fiat but hopefully the gov and banks will keep shooting themselves in the foot and more and more people will be pushed towards bitcoin instead.

Mass adoption is not happening yet because no one has to use bitcoin. Life evolves around fiat. It takes a long time to learn how to use bitcoin safely and people prefer things they are familar with.

Well.. I think mass Bitcoin adoption is happening right now. In fact.. many years back. More and more people is using Bitcoin everyday. Rome was not built in a day. Thus, mass Bitcoin adoption wont happen overnight.

http://www.coindesk.com/5-facts-coindesks-state-bitcoin-report-q1-2015/

i agree. as we speak bitcoin adoption is taking place but it is not as fast as most people were hoping for. everything takes time. i prefer a stable growth rather than short term peak.

mass adoption only happen if ppl are using it in few niche area, like cannabis if cannabis is legalized, and/or  gambling. payment sector in other "normal" business is very slim to have impact on bitcoin adoption imho. at least atm.

Who is going to adopt something that shows this volatility. I wouldn't. But the recent history suggests that Bitcoin can hold steady and trying to find it's place in the world market. Maybe now, people will be encouraged to adopt more bitcoin.

Since when has Bitcoin been introduced to the public? go around and ask random people, only like 1 to 10 person knows what the fuck Bitcoin is and chances are the % of people that actually understand it therefore see a real use of it are even lower.

We are still in early 1990's if we do the internet analogy.

funny part is that the volatility is called by no adoption, not the contrary, before people are willing to adopt bitcoin on a larger scale, we must wait for every big merchant to adopt it first

Yes. You are right. Bitcoin is growing.. however not as fast as most people were hoping for.

Well no, first of all we'd have to go and define what we consider 'mass adoption' or what needs to be achieved at least to qualify for that term. I think, being at the point where ETFs are being released on the Wall Street, we've accomplished quite some mass adoption, actually.

The reason why its not adopted as much as people would like to see, one of the reasoins is that most are technical people using it.
People like my friends and family do not come near bitcoin, they think its scary has huge risks and is way to complicated to use.
And lets be honest the adoption is also not something to be proud of only a few shops really accepted bitcoin
That microsoft has put a pay in bitcoin in the shop is a good thing, but that still does not solve the problem with gettting bitcoins.
See if i get out my bankcard i can pay instant with (ideal/mastercard) in shops, on the internet and even on markets  with this method. ( really in seconds )
Just pull the card and the merchants have a small device on the counter which handles the pays or they have a portable device.
The second thing about it is that there is minor security available if some of your funds gets stolen, then you can claim a payback at the bank or governement.

With bitcoin you have to have a receive address, then find an exchange to get bitcoin.
Then when you bought the bitcoin have to wait an enormous long time till it actually gets onto that address
After that you need to find out if you can securely pay the bitcoins from your deposit to the address which is for the merchant.
This merchant has to wait another long period of time that the bitcoins arrive and worse he can loose money because the value can change so fast that he might loose money, ofcourse if its going up they never would complain.
By the time this very nasty way of paying works you have spend a few hours getting funds at the place you want it.

So yes its a fast way of paying (international) if no hurry is involved compared to money orders done by banks (usually several days/weeks) depending where you send it  
For instance if i send money to england it will take about 1 to 3 days, if i send money to india it can take up to a 2 months.

Long story short for normal people to use btc its way too complex and poses too many risks for them and the merchants.
Thats why i pay much more for my btc payements than when i use my bankcard. If i order for example a laptop i pay at ideal 750 the same laptop with btc costs me 1000 euro thats including the exchange costs and the money transfers

There's really no reason for this surcharge, actually. I agree that Bitcoin still appears to be too technical to the regular person on the streets, but that's going to end as soon as Bitcoin is being used more as a backbone technology!

Well if you look at what has been announced you should know that some people was investigating a blockchain as a backbone.
However they never mentioned they would use the bitcoin chain, and if i understood the news well they are totally not related to bitcoin.
So bitcoin would never gain any benefit from that backbone

The most important thing to consider: A blockchain can only be safe if there's enough incentive for people to mine it (therefore make it safe, to begin with). To have that incentive, there needs to be some reward. The tokens the blockchain uses need to have value - Bitcoin makes perfect sense.

Forget surcharge, paying with discounts could result in discounts.
It is only a matter of time before merchants start transferring savings to consumers.
From their point of view, receiving bitcoins makes more sense than receiving money through Visa.

Whenever a person here asks for why things are happening as fast as they expected, the very first bit of advice I give them is look up, and read on that nice light blue bar, where it says "News: Latest stable version of Bitcoin Core: 0.10.0 [Torrent]"

I agree. I was going to buy a vape and I saw the btc option to pay. It was the same price. So I was like here take this intrinically worthless free to print for govts paper money. Ill keep my btc thank you very much.

this is an other reason why the price is important, and it's not just a side effect, the more high is the price the more miners will mine, and the more secure the network will be

well in my opinion and the jbrnt user its that we use comodities fiat also and we do trade them around i might use bitcoin for only 10% of my usual purchases or trades and the only advantage its the small and quick amounts traded but even paypal can do that soo its just like a alternative coin that can be putted into site of salles too.

Mass adoption probably won't happen in a way we're expecting it to happen in. I don't think that it will a regular thing to pay for your coffee or dinner using BTC. It may become a way of paying for something online, but I do see it more as a backbone technology and asset of some sort (yet to be determined).

It's probably going to take a lot of marketing work to get it out there for the common pleb. Probably some celebrity using it and tweeting about it would make it really known amongst the non geek herd.

When I describe bitcoin to my friends, their usual argument against bitcoin is:
"Why would we spend time to exchange cash or credit card or money from the bank account for bitcoin and then to exchange bitcoin for a gift card in order to buy something, when we can use credit card and buy something in a second."

This is also the case with my friends. They see is as stupid converting their money to buy the same stuff they can buy directly with cash/fiat/credit card. What they don't see is the huge advantages it gives you as an entrepreneur: creating an address vs having to create a bank account etc etc.

I usually try by responding that you can send as small an amount as $2 to somebody in Iran using Bitcoin. They usually don't have any use for that. So I show them how to gamble using bitcoins.  ;D

I don't think that people can be influenced that easily. There needs to be an incentive to use it. Marketing doesn't work how many people think it works. If it was enough to have some rich celebrities advertising your product, the Tidal music service wouldn't fail like it apparently does.

That's spot on. For most people there's no real incentive to use BTC (yet). It will never become a currency or payment system used for paying your day-to-day grocery shopping or buy a coffee somewhere. We have to concentrate on the things it can do really well: It's an open protocol for transferring wealth(!!!) this is actually incredible! I think it may still take some time for people to realize the true power of this idea and technology!

The Tidal comparative is a good one. However, some good ol marketing never hurts.
The great thing on Bitcoin is accepting payments as an entepreneur.. just look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dolA7NBbI

This girl for example, is selling her own clothes overcoming the banking hell, just with a simple BTC wallet.

1.- We are now 7,310,400,000 of people in the world there is not enough bitcoin for all.
2.- People will start using bitcoin when it change to a necessity rather than an extra.
3.- Bitcoin users are not spreading the word by the right way. Bitcoin is a complex topic and not for all, bitcoin is for smart people and for technological people. We need to make it look easy for all the users.

I think that bitcoin price is low because people don't realize or value the fact that bitcoin is an unencumbered asset, similar to a piece of gold or cash in hand.
Mind you, this is not true if you hold GLD ETF instead of actual gold or GBTC stock instead of actual bitcoin.
Apart from mobility (you can send bitcoin, but probably not gold), people do not value bitcoin's properties.
The result is a low BTC price.

Whatever happened to that marketing campaign that the btc foundation in collusion w/ a bunch of others that they were embarking on. Seems like I read about this in the general or press subforum like w/i the last few months.

It's very interesting to see which people opt to use Bitcoin. Many if them even had a bad encounter with banks at some point, while others simply admire the idea and technological possibilities behind Bitcoin. The example you're talking about is an interesting one! But I'd also like to see more instances with "regular" businesses so people see that you don't need to be someone "crazy" in irder to accept Bitcoin!

why not? having  a kind of  a credit card with bitcoins in there ,paying with or without any transactions

between all those 7B people many are children and  they don't need it other are woman they use it less, and old people too, let's say that in reality there is only 3B at max that could need bitcoin, now bitcoin is divisible up to 1/100M, therefore there are plenty of bitcoin for everyone, as long as the price will raise

the problem is only the price right now, i'm sure that with a better price there will be a better adoption, the latter follow the first

Because if you're using a credit card, you're not using Bitcoin per se. You can use a credit card that is backed by Bitcoin (like the Bit-X credit card), but you're not using the Bitcoin protocol that way, since with Bitcoin you can only 'push' money, but never 'pull' money. Credit cards work the other way around!

When I heard about the Foundation doing a marketing campaign I was kind of perplexed. They're usually known for doing all kinds of things without actually pushing Bitcoin's adoption. That campaign really seemed like a good idea. What are you implying, what happened to it? :/

Mass adoption is not happening because the bitcoin price/market capitalization is too low. If and when the price gets well into the thousands of dollars, then mass adoption has a chance. The price is having a hard time going up because it's still quite difficult for the average person to buy or take a long position in.

Sorry but that's not how it works. There's more adoption now at $220 USD than there was when it was +$1000 USD.

Yeah, people will use bitcoin when it becomes stable or shows a healthy gradual (slow) increase (1-3% per year). This will convince people to buy in and hold bitcoin so they have it available for when they want to use it, but they don't fear the price completely crashing

well from my uniformed viewpoint...they just busted ONE GUY using COMPUTER TOOLS available in 2008 for making 40 million bucks from his home no less on the computer for the flash crash of 2008 (and wall street had controls at that time ...better ones now...but still)


so what do you think a WHALE on the bitcoin exchanges can do on a completely UNREGULATED wild wild west format to make fake sell walls etc (see tricks of the guy above) to show price always declining and play this again unregulated bitcoin market/exchanges down down and down on a whim..because as a huge ass whale in BTC they can?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-man-arrested-on-charges-tied-to-may-2010-flash-crash-1429636758


assuming things are going in the manner of what I say above and the link... has any merit of what I say ...seems to me it makes a lot more sense what is going on with BTC price

but then again I know zip (I at one time drank the BFL and KNC Kool Aid) so take anything I say with a 'block of salt"

I think the same. Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) has its market niche - eCommerce and remittances, but this niche is much larger than the amount of bitcoins used in it.

The great question affection "bitcoin" itself is what will happen to PoW: if the mining sector can be sustained by growth. If not, there surely will be an advantage for PoS, PoB or PoI coins (PPC, NXT, NEM, SLM etc.).

Because it is not 'user friendly' some people have never used a credit card, or they don't have any knowledge about internet or how to use a smartphone or pc. For the moment I think bitcoin needs a real killer app... and it should be more user friendly (most important it should keep the decentralization).

Exactly, user-friendlyness is an important problem to solve. PC-based and also web wallets are still very hard to use for non-techies. Smartphone wallets are on a good way, but can still be improved. And security is another issue - I would still not recommend BTC to people with standard Windows PCs.

PAYWALL

All you gotta do is google the byline - u-k-man-arrested-on-charges-tied-to-may-2010-flash-crash-1429636758

and you usually end up on the article minus paywall.

I think in the future we'll not even see addresses as we see them now. It's just not intuitive having to copy paste all those long ass alphanumerical strings. I think Andreas mentioned this in some speech. Bitcoin may change a lot in the following years from now, before it goes mainstream.

you know that copy-pasted is not needed right? there is the adress book...you can simply choose the address by clicking on "choose previously used address", so this is a non-issue for adoption...

it strange that it doesn't work if you put only the label, this should be fixed

I agree there is more adoption now at $220 (now $215-ish) than there was when it was >$1000 USD. At $1000+, price was way ahead of itself (i.e. the amount of adoption at the time). Hence, price fell. Adoption is catching up (if not already caught up) to the current $220-ish price. Increased adoption and more adoption over time will stall out at some point  (and arguably is slowing down, at least at the moment) if the price doesn't go up much from here.
 
The build out of the ecosystem and price go hand-in-hand, although you may not see that in the short term or even intermediate term. Price isn't the only thing, but it is a long term critical component to mass adoption. Don't kid yourself into thinking price doesn't matter.

Maybe not in America and other first world countries. But in many third world countries, it may indeed be the standard someday.

Exactly! Bitcoin will stay only a valid alternative for send a large quantity of money (but also a little quantity) without spend a lot of fees.




Maybe it could be implemented a sort of alias system (like the nxt one).





But you should copy at least one time the address before save it in the personal address-book. However the problem, like I said previously it is only based on a 'non user-friendlyness' nothing else.

This goes against the practice of avoiding address re-use.

Using a different address each time is advised for privacy reasons. I also think in the future, the layout of how things are done will change. What's stopping mainstream adoption is basically the fact there aren't jobs paid in BTC. For the average ignorant Joe, it's not going to be on their plans to exchange their hard earned wage for some foreign internet currency.
If you get the money directly in Bitcoin, you are more prone to get interested on it. For Bitcoin to become a legitimate currency, we need jobs that pay on it.

Basically, if bitcoin 'wants' to be a real currency I think the governments should start to accept it as currency for pay (or better receive) the taxes; but unfortunately bitcoin is decentralised so it will never go mainstream because the various govern. will not accept it as 'currency' .... instead they will ban it.

You realize that if they're not going to exchange their hard earned wage for some foreign internet currency, they're not going to exchange their hard work for some foreign internet currency either, right? They'll simply not consider jobs paying bitcoin just as you won't consider working for someone who will pay you monopoly money.

A couple of US states have tentative plans for that very type of use right now. It's only really a vehicle for transmitting USD to them but it's still a large stamp of legitimacy.

I don't know why you wouldn't want to work for Bitcoin, I would definitely work for a fair amount of BTC. Monopoly money on the other hand can be reproduced arbitrarily and has no accepted value, thus I wouldn't work for it. But I guess I won't be able to convince you tonight :)

Because Average Joe is ignorant prick. Anyways, mass adoption is not what will drive Bitcoin up, it's store of value and remmitances.

remittances aren't gonna work if average joes, i.e the people who are USING the remittance don't use it.

Also, remittances aren't going to work until bitcoin price is stable. i.e it will have already gone mainstream.

Average Joe ends up using whatever the serious players and powers that be want him to use. If there's a collective will to have him ending up using BTC then he will eventually.

I still think its going at a rapid or good pace.

If you compare a system to have traction in a time period with the dollar.

Its doing more work then our current financial system, and beating golds standard as well with short period time. Not beat, but being comparable at a short span of time which most dont credit.

Well I guess it comes down how you define 'mass adoption', but in my book 'mass adoption' also includes the (at least somewhat) widespread use of Bitcoin as a store of value and use of it in remittance services.

My main concern would be if BTC in it's current form will be mainstream or if there will be developed protocols that get the traction.
We already see some serious developments in 2.0 so by virtue of being frozen it could fall behind
That said as it is Bitcoin is the original source and will always have some level of support since it is key to building up the infrastrucutre and representative of all crypto also the main way to get altcoins.
Just hope that its not too slow to fall behind newcomers.

The reason its not happening is because there's nothing to buy with cryptocurrencies that leverages their unique properties.

baleted.

If we believe that bitcoin has a big future across the world then we need to have patience, bitcoin is still in its infancy, everything could change with literally 5 or 6 things happening.
We need the COIN ETF & Gemini Exchange to be granted approval, we need 3 or 4 huge merchants to accept bitcoin as a payment method.
Say for example if Amazon, Walmart & Cosco accepted bitcoin the price would probably shoot to 1000 USD over night, its a chain reaction, a firework display.
We just need something to ignite bitcoin...........

I agree with everything you said except the Gemini exchange, I'm not aganist it. But, what will make Gemini unique to attract normal users to be bitcoin users and exchange their fiat to bitcoins ?

I suppose its a safe & trusted method for people to purchase bitcoins.
For the average man/woman on the street it can be quite a complicated process, I guess Gemini will buy bitcoins for their clients & help them keep their coins secure.
Security is a problem for average joe, even a very successful older investor may have trouble learning about bitcoin so presumably Gemini will act as a broker on behalf of people to make acquiring bitcoins easy, there will be no chance of being scammed too e.g. Localbitcoins or on here, dodgy european/chinese exchanges running away with funds etc.

Good catch and maybe it will facilitate buying bitcoins for the average joe.

Plus, the security thing and it will be licensed, so I think yes, it will have a good impact on the adoption.

Whatever, we are on the right track.

I do not agree. Why would it matter if these companies accepted bitcoin? "Oh walmart accepts bitcoin. I'm going to go buy some bitcoin so i can go to walmart and spend my bitcoin"

Merchant adoption is not the key that will unlock mass adoption. There needs to be a fundamental reason for why, in the future, I'll pull out my "Bank of Bitcoin" card to purchase my groceries as opposed to my visa check card. One fundamental reason is that I might be paid in bitcoin - this is a biggie, IMO. Once we see the first company distribute bitcoin for salaries, that might be a trigger point. Then the employees could hodl or convert to fiat for all of their fiat needs.

I wonder when the first company will experiment with this. The costs associated have to be less than current payroll systems...


from my googling effort: http://smallbusiness.costhelper.com/payroll-serivce.html

I bet a nationwide business with disregard for its employees (*cough* walmart *cough*) could see some huge cost savings with a bitcoin payroll system. Essentially offloading the fiat conversion effort / costs / hassel to the employees.

Though that would be interesting if a big company had the option to receive bonus income in bitcoin. Like, every month they just deposit 0.005 bitcoin in your address...... successive approximations.

probably it really is the reason

Mass adoption happens now, but apparently the new users start with only small amounts and hold them only for a short time before they spend them (to some vendor who is not interested in keeping them). New user hoarding is not enough to match new miner coins and old hoarders benefiting from the convenience of the new bitcoin accepting vendors.

We have new users, but they don't save enough in bitcoin.

Mass Adoption is Impossible, since only 7 transactions per seconds.

bitcoin need to enhance their wallet capability to make it idiotproof.

1. easy backup to all address (maybe 1 button to backup all and spit out the result on notepad/preview window that user can save/print anywhere)
2. auto encrypt (1 button encrypt all wallet)
3. simplify change address or not use at all, ppl think they lost money because of change address


the easiest wallet i use dont use change address, but to do backup and encrypt feel  seem difficult for average ppl.

they(some shops) should force to buy in bitcoin, by removing other payments, or should provide a high bonus to cover the possibility of a dump while someone buy with bitcoin(this is an nother reason why many are not buying with it) they still have that fear aboout bitcoin volatility despite the current stable situation


the block isn't saturated yet, it will be increase slowly, so we can accomodate a slowly adoption

Absolutely agree with the part about btc accepting companies also paying forward salaries in btc. The problem is, a "Walmart" might not mind cycling their btc to employees if there is stable exchange. But would shut it right down at any spike. They couldn't handle btc without counting every penny as they did. They're greedy. They probably much prefer the idea of accumulating enough to manipulate the market, if they have considered btc at all and looked at it realistically, which I'm sure there is some research. Walmart, and every chain like it only wants to win, and at any cost.
I don't understand your last paragraph. Who's going to give who 0.005 btc and why?

Hear me answer, I live in UK and its easy to pay for everything with bank card e.g.

1. i go to shop and buy food with contactless payment, whole thing takes less than 10 seconds.
2. for larger purchases, I put in PIN number. this process gives average Joe feeling of warmth and security like he contributing to security process.
3. for buying stuff online, I put my bank card details into Amazon and do 1-click to buy. Every 2 or 3 years I update card information when I get a new card.
4. only drawback is international wire transfers are expensive, but I sometimes use transferwise.com. average joe does international transfers maybe once or twice a year, maybe never?
5. travel on holiday, I use bank card and elect to get charged in local currency. my bank charge me flat 3% on all purchases. ok not great but I accept this.
6. my bank gives me fraud protection. once I had £1500 taken from me. I reported it to bank and said it wasn't me and no questions asked they gave me the money back in a day or two.

all I describe above are benefits I get from using an ordinary UK bank account with card. Peeps on this forum are not average joes. The points I write above will completely satisfy 100% the average joe's financial needs. This why no mainstream adoption of btc.

This .

Some forward thinking company that gives out a weird perk to its employees... so in addition to their salary, they get a little bitcoin.

Mass adoption is happening now, slowly but happening for sure.
There is more than 6,500 physical and internet based shops/services who accept bitcoin as payment option.

And number raise every day

http://coinmap.org/

For comparison, there are over 425,000 ATMs in the USA alone.  There are millions of businesses in the USA.  Put that 6500 in perspective and you can hardly call it "mass adoption".

You are right, we can't lose perspective. Anyone that thinks mass adoption is happening "as we speak" is deluded, but make no mistake, all progress is progress, and every year that passes is a positive one adoption wise, people is not leaving Bitcoin, new people are coming, just slowly, because this is still a very early on technology.

There is far too much work to be done still. But the infrastructure is being built and we are going to slowly, but surely, see adoption grow. What I find exciting is that a lot of people won't know that they are relying on bitcoin and the blockchain to make their transactions.

At least for consumers in the industrialized world, I think there are two things really holding back mainstreaming:

1) price volatility--people don't want to continually reevaluate what their money is worth. People are used to values being relatively constant without their having to spend any mental effort thinking about it. For example, law firms that take BTC use an exchange to get their payment in the local fiat currency every 24 hours. I've read several example of this for German and American law firms with clients wishing to pay in Bitcoin.

2) Consumer protection--people want to know that they have some recourse in terms of recovering lost money, whether that's because their credit card got stolen and they can cancel any charges due to that, or because they forgot the necessary private key or password to access their funds. People want some level of centralization in finance, for peace of mind, if nothing else, but also because they have never lived used a currency that was not issued or managed by centralized authorities.

 I think it really scares most Western consumers to know that the burden of keeping up with their money is on them, and that there's no bank to keep an eye on it for them.

Most people don't want to think about money; they just want to operate in a safe system that allows them to spend the most minimal amount of time possible thinking about personal finance. Thinking about money scares people; it reminds them of how badly they are doing in terms of saving for retirement or meeting their monthly budget(if they have one).

indeed.

Which is why, for point 1, cryptocurrencies (as a currency - a means of payment) really need to have a use case where there is a specific need to pay in cryptocurrency, such that exchange rate drifts are minimized, hence my statement above that adoption is lacking because there is nothing unique in this world (yet) that can only be bought with cryptocurrencies, or at least leverages their advantages.

for point 2, I imagine, at some point, real brick and mortar cryptocurrency banks will pop into existence - this is counter to an ethos present in the current bitcoin community, but this ethos is not one created by bitcoin itself.

Well these 2 points, will correct itself, if there was a mass of new amount of buyers coming into the market at a constant pace.

Events that need to happen are the traditional passes with the ETF or something else thats in a traditional form, without knowing too much about how to go buy btc.

Why is mass adoption of bitcoin not happening?  Well, name some goods or services that are easier and/or cheaper for the end consumer to buy using bitcoin than an RFID enabled credit card or cash.  

Now remove drugs, weapons, gambling and porn from the list.  That list now has zero items.  That's the problem with mass adoption of bitcoin.  We can get excited about Wall Street interest, ETFs, exchanges in China, etc.  But if the common man or woman buying their groceries or ordering a pizza cannot really see the benefit of bitcoin then mass adoption is still quite a long way away.

Bitcoin isn't even taking off as a popular concept in countries experiencing high inflation and regular banking crisis, such as Argentina and Venezuela.  Yes some people use it there, but they're still the tiny minority of the population.

that one in particular is interesting - I'd imagine the hurdle there is usability.

I be thinking about ways to make adoption happen, been racking me brains and only scenario I can think of that can make mass adoption happen is if major high street banks offer "bitcoin accounts" to average joe. Then average joe will feel confident to start using it. Of course, banks is unlikely to do this but anything is possible. Without this happening, the financial offering by the banks will always be seen as greater than what some nerdy goofy technology like bitcoin can offer. One thing is that banks have much more marketing power and high street presence and in today's culture, that means everything to average joe.

Also I be thinking that we there is more likeliness of pushing through banking reform(e.g. u know the spiel, debt-free money issuance by government etc.etc.) than it is pushing than seeing mass adoption of btc.

Today I see in news, UK Chancellor trying to create new law that will legally force future UK governments to have a budget surplus if the economy is growing. I never thought that this type of law is coming to pass. Also, the power of banks in UK rapidly diminish, HSBC in process of getting booted out. So if money is reformed, then really we do not need something like btw, except for peeps on here who just in it to make the quick speculation buck innit?

this is always the same argument, it has to do with average people not being or feeling secure to use bitcoin yet, because they still trust more bank or because of the too much hackers sorround the bitcoin ecosystem
it is just a matter of some authority telling them that bitcoin are secure, average joe are like a group of sheep that they will follow their pastor, with a blindly mentality, those same people are seeing bitcoin only as a quick buck and nothing else, you see it's the mentality behind this that it is wrong, it cannot be chnaged so easily
i do agree with someone that said that bank are the only option to speed up the adoption, they are the only one ironically, that could encourage those people to accept bitcoin, by offering security like they do with various fiat

its more like a sprinkler on a lawn.

eventually the lawn will get flooded, but during that time it took 2 hrs for us it feels the same way.

@OP
Crypto massadoption is happening right in front of your nose. Just not Bitcoin. Altcoins have better wealthdistribution and offer bigger possible reward. Their tech is more advanced. Altcoins show greater network effect than Bitcoin does.

It is the year 2021 and bitcoin is $50k. You've made an extremely incorrect economic calculation. Your statements could not have been more incorrect. I hope you were smart enough to ditch your altcoins and buy bitcoin. Im glad I didnt listen to your nonsense and kept my bitcoin.

I think we never see mass adoption of Bitcoin, Bitcoin just will be no1 Investment assets, The reason like Ethereum now, The gas fee is not suitable to use as mass adoption, The alternative coin which have less gas fee will be the answers. King of coin Fail, king of altcoin Fail, Maybe the king of Defi will

I´m a little more optimistic, I believe that money will be digitized in the near future, and Bitcoin will be one of the most important treasures that people who are going to look for, the traditional economy is totally inflationary, is based on debt, the alternative economy that It presents Bitcoin is another thing, it is deflationary, there is no debt here.

The countries that I think should have more adoption of Bitcoin are those who are very economically wrong, this is the case of Venezuela, has one of the incalculable inflation rates and handles one of the highest volumes of Bitcoin negotiations according to Localbitcoins. com (although there is a lot of ignorance in most citizens about Bitcoin.)

  Only a small percentage of people knows about Bitcoin. Argentina is another country that is Pro Bitcoin. Just by increasing a percentage of knowledge in these countries, the price would increase even more.

the adoption is happening gradually not just in the countries that have a depressed economy but the ones with political instability. with the rise of PayPal that has BTC and ETH integration soon more people are going to be open to accepting cryptocurrency.

the only problem that is going to come is the central banks. what goes on in Nigeria today is likely going to happen in several countries as well that are starting to adopt BTC.

Adoption is of course happening all the time. But it is gradual, and in spurts.

The main barrier to adoption as a payment network has been not onboarding services and third party payment options - yes using payment companies and banks to indirectly pay with bitcoin will be very important because of Bitcoin's limited tx throughput.

Of course Bitcoin's main function of mass adoption is much more likely going to be as a store of value rather than an everyday payment network. The main barrier to mass adoption of this is not enough markets for people who don't want to or can't store their own bitcoin, not enough liquidity for institutions wanting to put billions into it, and of course just the fact that most people have wildly inaccurate and negative view of Bitcoin. The first thing, markets, is close to not being a problem anymore. I'd say, at least in the US, an ETF is the final barrier to get rid of this problem. The second thing, not enough liquidity, is now largely solved with Bitcoin around a trillion dollars and obviously we've seen institutions make 9 and 10 figure buys the past few months.

So the main barrier to mass adoption of Bitcoin at least as a store of value now is simply the general public's still wildly negative view of Bitcoin. Gradually people open their eyes to Bitcoin, but the unnatural hate of Bitcoin/crypto is strong because it is a brand new thing in this world. Even now with the first wave of institutions coming on board most people still think it "always crashes and everyone loses money", "it's too late to get in now", "it's only for criminals", "it's just uses lots of dirty power and should be banned", "it isn't real", "it's a ponzi/fraud/etc". Those types of things. Once people have made up their mind it takes a lot for them to change, and that is the biggest hurdle to Bitcoin's mass adoption now. Basically humans and dumb, fearful animals. We may see mass institutional adoption over the next five years but I think mass adoption by the population will continue to be a slow game of gradually convincing people they were wrong, and this will happen over many many years.