Bitcoin Forum

No matter what amount of BTC is in your wallet:
(In your opinion) Is/Are there (or could there be) any important undiscovered major bugs, and/or are you worried about that topic?
How about 'endless' frauds/scams? Etc, etc....

Is Bitcoin actually ready to go mainstream?

Honestly?  Nope.

Not yet! There are some underlying issues needed to be addressed before the masses adoption! Such as security issues, easy application, regulation, mining centralization, price volatility etc. PPl basically want the secured ,easy to use , appreciated currency,

Exactly. We also need some prunning or compression for Bitcoin Core. Syncing taking hours isn't really helping.
It will take a few more years till the infrastructure is ready for mainstream adoption. When some people don't know how to do something simple as take a screenshot on their PC, how do you expect them to use something as complicated as Bitcoin?

I don't think so  ;)

i don't think bitcoin need 100% regulation(and it won't happen because bitcoin is implementing a better anonymous tech in the future, we know those two things can't work together) to go mainstream

security isn't bitcoin related but exchange related and mining centralization isn't an issue, it was intended by satoshy itself....

so the only left thing to resolve is price volatility, which is the epitome of the adoption

I don't think people will use Bitcoin like they use dollar today. I think the potential is something like Circle in the middle term. Am I correct to say that Circle is something like PayPal, but Circle uses Bitcoins for transfering dollar and is therefore cheaper than PayPal?

at this point not really. a few thing have to be updated first via a fork. most important is to increase block data to 20mb as suggested. that will be massive.

More people need to start using bitwage.co to convert all or part of their paychecks to bitcoins.

We need a viable replacement for brawker.com. Possibly via OpenBazaar?

Obviously : NO , at the moment bitcoin is not ready to go mainstream. A lot of people still prefere the FIAT values, with all the defects (but it is still good for some people / respect the bitcoin).





Why some people want that bitcoin it becomes mainstream, it is not 'made' to become mainstream.

How do you take a screen shot of your pc? ;-)

Exactly! Some people don't know how to use a computer and we 'are thinking' (or maybe better would like) that btc will go mainstream... really amazing! I still prefer bitcoin for some usage, and FIAT currencies for other things and I am thinking that they can co-exist (with some 'limitation' in the future).

I didn't say of my PC, I said on their PC or in other words of their desktop.
Stop going off topic on discussions.

We do need it because it kinda counters bitpay if we're talking about the market.
We are all waiting for OpenBazaar.

I think it is not a matter if bitcoin is ready for the people, it is a matter if people is ready for bitcoin.
The thing is, that common people are terriable with IT. We need a whole new generation of people, who has been brought up with computers, playing with tables since they could crawl.
Like metioned, most basic task as taking a screen shoot is complicated to the common joe.

when the new generation is grown up, and get in the age where they start to earn money... then is it time... it will be the new age of money. The age of bitcoin. I think it will take about 10-15 years.
My theorem is called "The tablet therom", take the time then the tablet pc became mainstream and add 20 years (for that generation to grew up). Then is it time.

The community is still too small, the market volume is too small, and the price volatility is still at large. So in my opinion it should take more time to establish and then try to break in the world's economy.

If it is not ready then the question is when will it be ready? I think we should be more worried about bitcoin getting accepted and going mainstream than the other way round. Or either way both should be moving parallel where the infrastructure and code improvement can be done along the way and at the same time promoting and bringing bitcoin to the masses.

No , it is not yet ready before the price stabilized which cant be happening in a short time because not everyone like to hold of a currency that its value is not stable. Not all people take the risk of volatility.


It will be ready after the value of bitcoin stabilized or atleast until it gets popular enough, expect some companies to announce that they accept bitcoin

:)

Bitcoin is not ready to go mainstream and I am afraid that in its current state it never will be able. There are some problems with bitcoin that cannot be solved easily (or ever).
The main problem is long confirmation times. Usually confirmation time is not a issue at all and whole transaction is done in a minute. But there are times when it took more that 15 minutes.
And confirmation times cannot be lowered because it is part of bitcoin security system, lowering it would risk whole bitcoin network. So for now bitcoin may be good for online shopping but it won't be possible to buy groceries in supermarket with it probably. That is the problem.

Very well put. The next generation will be well suited for the Bitcoin, as people become more technologically advanced, they would prefer a currency like BTC, which they can keep/spend safely without the needs of banks.


You're right but maybe in future, you don't have to go stand in line at the grocery store. It can be ordered from home with Bitcoins and the Grocer can send it when the Tx has reached a certain number of confirmations.

The transparency of the blockchain is one of Bitcoins greatest features. You can't have transparency and annonymity at the some time. Bitcoin will never be truly anonymous.

bitcoin isn't ready, but it's not so much about the security aspects as about ease of use, ease of understanding and ease of obtaining bitcoins. You need to get people to understand what bitcoin is, and have an easy way to obtain a decent amount of it. Having do to faucets or sign campaigns for dust doesn't help, because people can't get enough to actually use bitcoin to buy anything.


There needs to be a must stronger bitcoin infrastructure and awareness before bitcoin can go mainstream.

So the problem is the value of the bitcoin itself, and the knowledge... am I right? I'm still thinking that bitcoin will never go mainstream because it was not created to 'go mainstream' but to be a good and alternative way (respect all the FIAT currencies and especially the actual economic system).

I don't think so, bitcoin is still complicated for the average Joe to use it. More bitcoin services which focus on the user friendliness will make bitcoin mainstream ready.

it could be truly anonymous, but then it will be probably, banned from many countries, and seen as a terrorism tool only, which means that will never go mainstream

It's clearly far from mainstream use, but you can see the potential. QR codes come so handy when trying to do person to person payments. When BTC came out QR codes were still pretty weird and we had to deal with copy pasting long ass weird addresses, now QR codes save us. So steps are being taken into the right direction. In 10 years things will be so advance our minds would blow up right now if we could see it.

Wow I'm surprised how many of you are so down on the current state of bitcoin technology.
I think it absolutely could go mainstream but not in the priv key wallet.dat form that most of us know. When it goes mainstream there will be many layers built on top of the existing bitcoin protocol similar to how the internet has several layers on top of it to make it usable by the mainstream.

https://i.imgur.com/raWC7fZ.png

What do you imagine this would look like if it were for mainstream bitcoin? I definitely think bitcoin core would be at the bottom, with several layers on top. Circle is a nice layer that makes it usable. Onename.io was a layer but nobody really caught on to using it. Changetip with twitter integration is a layer. This IMO is how bitcoin can be used by the mainstream.

Complicated indeed. I can not imagine buying something major with bitcoins - like a house or a car.

Personally I don't think it's ready yet.
It is not even in version 1.0 yet.
That means that there's is a lot more things that need to be addressed.

Apart from that, it will take some time until the average joe is interested about Bitcoin.
Then for those who decide to use it, it's gonna take some time to learn how to use and protect their coins.

So, we still have a lot of time ahead of us.

I would wait 10 mins rather than a day for international transfer.

cash is still faster though, you need to wait like 10 seconds to take them out of your pockets, and small shops need to wait for confirmations they can't accept pending deposit

Bitcoin will be as fast as cash. What time does it take to get a QR code scanned? because thats basically it to pay with a smartphone.

Bitcoin needs to be easier to use before we achieve widespread/mainstream adoption.
Like some have said taking 2-3 days to download Bitcoin Core is ridiculous & if you don't sync it regularly you can be sitting there for a few hours before you can do anything.

I don't know how it's going to be done but it needs to be a lot easier for the average dumb ass.
Even trying to explain public & private keys to people is difficult.

the problem are the confirmations not how fast is the transaction itself, because we know that this is instantaneous, so yeah you scan the qr, transaction go in less than a sec then you need to wait 1 to 6 confirmations depends on the shop...not practical

unless everyone begin to accept uncofirmed transactions

but this is only a problem with real life shops, i believe bitcoin will have two mainstream phase, one online(where confirmation time does not matter that much) and the second "offline", and with this we may need an hard fork or something else to resolve this issue about slow conf...

That is true, and confirmation times IS an issue, regardless of the fact that the international transfers are faster than banks.
It's not just about money transfers, it's about POS purchases as well.

In my opininon,

its almost mainstream,
because lots of payment are made trough bitcoin...

No. For one, while the core and protocol are likely ready, or will be once the blocksize increases, applications need to be created that simplify the experience for end users.

Which gets to point two: even if/when the protocol and attendant apps are all polished and ready for the nainstream, people will need to be efucTed/re educated about the pitfalls, the differences between btc and fiat, security, etc. otherwise the transition from fiat to btc will end up resulting in large scale thefts and losses.

Im actually hopping that it gets delayed as much as possible. We the people that are already within the crypto ecosystem can only but benefit from it being as delayed as possible, who wants to have a lot of people coming in right now? We can benefit from this low price for at least an entire year or more, which im ok with.

It needs a few more killer apps, IMO.

Such as? Bitcoin has all it needs to go 'mainstream' and continue to grow, all we need is people, industries and merchants to get on board and the rest will come naturally. Give it time and we'll get there.

That's what "not ready" means....

Where are you going to get people if 99% of the world can't *use* bitcoin currently? If I was in a small city in China or Africa, heck, even Japan/US there probably wouldn't be a single store that accepts bitcoin. Even if there was 1, people don't like being limited in choices. What if I don't like the coffee in that store?

Maybe an insured wallet app that allows easy switching between your fiat bank account and bitcoin? It is still not easy for new users but we are getting there.

Unfortunately no.
Items needed:
Better privacy.
Reverse of centralization trend
Better security(hardware wallets)
Higher TPS(Transactions per second)

With this kind of volatility, people may start using it as their personal trading account.  ;D
I guess we would need more stability before insurance companies step in. Otherwise, the premiums would be very high and could be deal breakers.

Not at this stage.
Value of BTC is very unstable so mostly people buying it as investment, with idea to sell later with profit.
There are still not to many places where we can buy some digital staff or services, ''big companies'' or payment services still don't accept bitcoin etc.
This situation can change in the future if we, bitcoin users, help with promotion and improving of BTC.
Nothing will change if we just waiting that something happen.

Absolutely. Better security is definitely the first in line for me. Storing your cash in an unstable and unprotected currency is too risky.

Yes bitcoin has everything but merchants and industries are avoiding bitcoin for now because the value of it is still not stable yet. If you were a merchant you would of course only accept fiat because it has a stable value. Thats the main thing why bitcoin could not go mainstream and it wont be in a short time because they value is still fluctuative

by this point I will like to clear that...the scam and frauds are mostly run by our own faults.we give owr money to those site just to burn owr money

Volatility is to be expected with such a new and uncertain technology. It's still essentially taking its first babysteps out in the world and is unsure on its footing but it'll steady eventually. In the mean time volatility is good for speculators and investors getting involved.


Not true. Payment processors protect against this which the vast majority of merchants will and do use. If you buy something that costs $100 the company gets $100 in their bank account (minus the small fee the payment processor takes.

No, Bitcoin is nowhere near being ready to go mainstream.

There are many things that need to be improved first like security and privacy,
and of course it needs to start gaining positive reputation.

Most people now think that Bitcoin is the ultimate tool for criminals.
At least that's how the media presents it.

I think bitcoin security and privacy already in number one. Its hard to be hacked since it got the google authenticator protected it and there is so many possible wallet to save your bitcoin so I think its well done. What bitcoin need for now is trust from people out there

Bitcoin is protected by Google authenticator? What are you talking about? Bitcoin is "merely" protected by the supposed irreversibleness of one-way mathematical functions and private/public key authentications. Google authenticator has nothing to do with this, actually.

No people is too ignorant and lazy, and the bitcoin is not technically ready for billions of people.

That is not what I meant. Every exchanger site there will have google authenticator to proof that this bitcoin is will be protected from people if they want to hack some of exchanger site. Of course bitcoin is protected by key, code or whatever it is to block every hacker

For vehicle sales between individuals, people might still prefer cash, unless one of the individuals is actually looking at buying bitcoins as well. I think when people are separated by large distances and are looking to trade over the internet, bitcoin will have a natural fit. Online marketplaces - that's my bet.

The problem is, people won't do that with bitcoin until bitcoin is already mainstream. They want to know the money they're getting is "real money".

is not something that bitcoin or we, can decide, mainstream is a thing that will come naturally, there isn't an enttity that drives it

also we should define meanstram, because for someone is just a price increase for other is when bitcoin will be used alone for purchasing stuff, not dumped for fiat everytime

Pretty good summary. I'd add blockchain pruning to the list. Downloading the blockchain takes ages, and the workarounds are insecure (web wallets) or promoting a sort of centralization (lite clients).

The general public might be ignorant and lazy on a whole, but if they can work banklng aps and paypal then they can use bitcoin. Wallets are only going to get easier and safer to use over time too.


Why not? I disagree entirely. I think bitcoin will achieve some mainstream success eventually, but may take a couple of years. Once certain industries realize the potential to save millions they'll likely get on board.


Bitcoin going mainstream has nothing to do with the price, it has to do with being able to actually spend and use it in the 'mainstream', though of course we would expect with that level of adoption that the value of bitcoin will have risen to meet the demand.

i do think the price play a big role non the less, an increase in price will surely bring more people and rise the overall adoption, it also give bitcoin more purchasing power, which is important for who are holding just few bits

And that's what I'm disagreeing with, though maybe you need to define what is 'near future'. I think we'll see quite a substantial growth within 2 years and maybe quite a significant mainstream acceptance within five, though maybe you can state what you think is 'near-future' because to me that seems far in excess of those timeframes I gave.

obviously it is ready to go mainstream.
bitcoin is used by millions of people worldwide. and most of them dream that bitcoin should be used in real life places.
this is the perfect time for bitcoin to go mainstream.

I dont think bitcoin will go for mainstream now because there is many things to do to make sure that bitcoin is ready for going mainstream. The first thing that we must do for now is make some business that using bitcoin, if there is one business that pay people using bitcoin I guess it will more in the next few months and year. So for now I think it will just stay the same

I believe bitcoin will go mainstream, now a days people are becoming sick and tired of the traditional banking system. The banks are nothing more than glorified loan sharks who are only interested in lining their own pockets and the regulatory agency is even more corrupt; bailing out the banks with ta payer money. Bitcoins are a form of freedom as they allow us to perform transactions, buy goods and services without a centralized banking system; a system created by the people, for the people. I personally enjoy using coin.mx; although their rates are a bit high, the transactions/deposit and other services are extremely quick. Kudos to bitcoins and we will see what the future holds.

In order for bitcoin to truly hit the masses, it will need to be integrated into the services that people use everyday.

As it turns out, there are a number of entrepreneurs and startups with the common goal of bringing bitcoin to more places, apps, and services:
Coinbase, Bitrated, BlockTrail, TipperCoin, Blockai.

So it is not ready, maybe it was not made for being mainstream but as Fiat complement, it can be..

I don't think bitcoin will go mainstream in North America anytime soon - it is still a solution without a problem. In the undeveloped world, where people lack access to reliable banking or credit card services, it may catch fire in the near future ...

Bitcoin has started the process to go mainstream as it has more and more adoption by various but important role players institutions everyday.Latest development the price index addition by NYSE is a huge step towards wall street.These positive news shows bitcoin is already on its way to go mainstream soon.

Great reminder Elwar, BTC can be spent at a large list of places, but it is (for many people) still way to hard to earn/obtain.

Is it terrible that I don't care?  :-[

Bitcoin already has what it needs to get it's shot. It is now out of our hands and into the hands of a more general audience. Not "mainstream", but people of all sorts are using it now and I no longer feel I have to do anything to help. My gut feeling is that it can no longer be stopped.

yup i agree with this agreement i used bitcoin for online shoping,but in real time i converted my bitcoin to cash for spend it,i think won't be posible to do it but in my country there are shop and hotel used bitcoin for transaction maybe this is good begining for bitcoin

Yes,it is ready, I don't see why not should be ready

No, it's not ready.
Value of BTC is very unstable and people don't like it much.
In most countries people can't use BTC offline, for buying products or services, can't receive salaries in BTC etc.
Most ''big'' companies like PayPal, McDonald's and other gave up from accepting BTC now.
Still we can't say that Bitcoin is globally accepted. We are very far from it.
A lot work in required by us, BTC users, until this happen.

so you don't care, because you can't do nothing anymore to help it go mainstream, or because its mainstream status is assured already?

Bitcoin works but the technical expertise an average user has does not match with the technical level of an average bitcoin user.

For now the process must be simplified and stupidified in a way that the end user doesn't need to think about coin security and the underlying structure, instead they need a point and click, tap and swipe and be done process with an easy way to reload at least in finance compatible with mobiles, PC's and whatever tech device they want to use.

Then a simple program for merchants to accept it and vendors who are willing to provice cash for BTC the mechanics is what is needed if this can be considered a first gen crytocurrency then subsequent upgrades and revisions will be needed to push it forward to address as many uses as possible.

On the bright side their is still capital and groups trying to do this so we will see how it goes.

I guess the value of bitcoin now is going to be stable since it will be halving soon, it will stay just like that or going higher that is only 2 choices in this year and I think in the end of 2015 it will sure going high enough to get some profit. That is one of the point to make bitcoin price is going higher, you need more company to accept bitcoin as their payment

I agree with everything you said, except that you don't care because I do. I think bitcoin does have all the components to be go mainstream but whether it does or not is down to acceptance by the mainstream and the general public. I think it really needs to get adopted by a huge industry and once it does and if all goes well it should have a snowball effect. I think we just need some patience but we could be in for a long and tedious wait.