Bitcoin Forum

NOTE: There is a tl;dr at the end. But if you plan to participate I beg you to read the full post, since maybe your concerns were already addressed.


I would like to share with you some questions/rants/introspection about this community and Bitcoin in general. Often is hard to look inside and try to challenge what I believe is in some extent echo chambering, collective madness and a little bit of paranoia.

The problem I see with Bitcoin is that, despite the fact Satoshi envisioned a trust-less system, this community strives for mainstream adoption. These two scenarios are simply not compatible. We need to trust someone at some point, or the alternative is to spend great amounts of time and energy to get the expertise of a bank-grade security consultant (in addition to your day job). Maybe some people in this community can reach this level of expertise (although scandals like MtGox or Bitcoinica among others show it is not easy), but what is sure is that the most part of the world are nowhere near. And it is not because they are stupid, but because their role in society is different. They are doctors, chemists, lawyers, mechanical engineers, etc. who may excel at what they do, but they don't know (nor they care) how to set an air-gapped network with two computers communicating through the sound card.

Before you jump to the conclusion "Well, if they actually don't care, they don't deserve this currency" think about your knowledge of how antibiotics and cell division work, the distribution of mechanical/thermal stresses in an aircraft or the differences between the Otto and Diesel cycles in a four-stroke engine. It doesn't mean that you don't care about diseases, cancer, transport or energy, but that your role in society is probably different and you expect the experts on each field to 'dumb down' their findings such that newcomers can more or less understand it.

The problem with Bitcoin is that either you become an expert in the field and you make it all by yourself (and even then you will end up trusting the OS developers) or you will trust someone. And, at that point, why don't simply stick with Visa, who provides chargebacks if I am scammed?


Some proposed solutions involve hardware wallets, but this solves no problem. How can we be sure that the RNG is not backdoored? Should we trust everyone in the distribution chain from development to delivery not to backdoor it, considering the huge rewards that there are in doing so? Or should we expect that everyone becomes a hardware/firmware developer with Master in embedded systems, and do it from scratch?


My point is that a big percentage of people here are invested in Bitcoin (either by buying early or mining) and have a veil in front of their eyes. This phenomenon is normal, it is one of the well understood human cognitive bias called 'Rationalization'. And it can be dangerous since it prevent us to see the big picture. Or, in other words, these people only want Bitcoin to succeeded because it will give them enormous riches. And I find it a wonderful, respectable reason. But we should not let it blind our rational thinking.


The fact that more and more merchants are accepting Bitcoin can be explained by the fact that many people (early miners and adopters) are sitting in huge stashes of Bitcoin with no way to cash them out (at least without sending an identity theft pack to a shady exchange and risking problems with your local bank). That explains why these merchants received huge amounts of transactions when they started accepting Bitcoin. It's just people cashing out. And they will probably stop accepting it once the volume of sales is not enough to balance the risks (with BitPay/Coinbase/etc and the local bank) and the costs of accepting Bitcoin.


I'll try to debunk some commonly accepted points in this community. Feel free to counter my counterarguments:


M) Payment with Bitcoin is easy, just sweep a QR-Code and make the payment.
A) If you do so, you trust that Google(Android) or Apple(iOS) are not evil (modifying the RNG, keylogging you...) or incompetent (allowing a rogue third-party app to do the former). If you lose your phone (or it is stolen) your money is gone. If you are scammed by the seller, it is lost.

M) You can minimize the losses of losing your phone if you keeping a small amount. It would be, in this case, like losing your traditional wallet.
A) I agree, that might work. But at this point I don't see the difference with traditional metal coins and paper bills. And the risks of the previous point.

M) Bitcoin protects you from inflation, currency manipulation, global economic disaster, etc.
A) I agree, too. But this is exactly the 'non sequitur' fallacy. I agree that the governments (or the classes that control them) have way too much control over the currency. But this problem comes from really long ago. And the traditional way to deal with it are offshore investments. Actually, Bitcoin might be just one more investment choice (a particularly, specially risky one), but I don't see how can be anything more.

M) But I cannot make offshore investments with my small wealth!
A) National (or global) instabilities are a problem of the rich. If you have less wealth than a threshold ($100,000 I think?) your deposits are guaranteed. And if the crisis is so big that even that cannot be guaranteed, you'd better learn how to raise your own vegetables and how to clean water. Bitcoin could not help you in this scenario.

M) Bitcoin is so handy to use. Just send instantly money worldwide.
A) So are Paypal/Visa/MasterCard, etc.

M) But they take a fee!
A) So do the Bitcoin miners and Coinbase. Don't expect people to work for free. If you say that Visa's fee is higher... well, that doesn't seem to be a problem for most people, considering the advantages (chargebacks and insurances).

M) My bank does not let me to send money worldwide!
A) Western Union can send money to many places. Of course with a fee.

M) A Bitcoin wallet cannot be frozen
A) Bank accounts are NOT frozen for the most part of people. If you bank freezes your account often, I guess that you are still a niche market.


And now the drawbacks of Bitcoin, which seems to be invisible:

- Your wealth can be gone in a matter of seconds for reasons you might don't event understand (for non-technical but intelligent people). To put an overly complex example. Imagine that with ssltrip someone stole your Gmail credentials and modified an attachment that you then executed in another computer and it slightly changed the RNG of your Linux distribution so the successive keys where not 100% random, giving the attacker a small edge to guess your private key.

- Centralization problem. This issue has been largely discussed and so far the solution is again, trust that the miners won't accumulate 51% of the hashing power, and if they do, they won't be evil.

- Future transaction fees. It is not clear how it will work once the block reward is negligible.

- Conversion to other currencies (in anonymous but somehow not shady exchanges)

- Security. This one is for me a fatal flaw. I am yet to see a satisfactory solution, but unfortunately the current system (not only financial, but the whole society) is based in people's good-faith and reversibility when not.

- Blackmailing, Cryptolocker: here is where my first point point of "[...] and a little bit of paranoia" comes. One might believe by reading this forum that the current financial establishment (from the IMF to your local bank branch) have just one thing in mind: "Screw you". Although economic incentives might turn evil the greatest saint, the most part of the times there are reasons for their decisions. Anonymous transfers incentive thefts and blackmail. Transfers to conflictive countries are likely to be used for illicit purposes (when was the last time you sold something to a Nigerian customer?). Not always, of course, and that is how Bayesian reasoning works. If all you know about a person is that is it interested in making an anonymous payment to Iran (for example), the bank thinks the worst and freezes his account. Then, ideally, they will contact the person and update their 'beliefs' about this client, and with this new information they can choose to unfreeze the account. The system may be perverted at some points, but I don't think it is 'evil' from the roots.



tl;dr
Bitcoin has many drawbacks: Centralization (Damocle's sword), security (even with hardware wallets), shady exchanges, blackmailing. And the advantages are not more than investing in offshore assets and selling them when you need money (so, one could keep wealth in a varied portfolio of offshore assets/shares/commodities/whatever and sell them to fiat in order to make transfers using the traditional banking system (or Western Union, or whatnot).

I didn't mention the two most common red herrings (in my view): price instability and deflation.

I would like to be proven wrong in a peaceful, rational debate. I am sure that newcomers often wonder about these issues, and they cannot find satisfactory answers anywhere.


I have a flashback of Orwell's Animal Farm, where the humans are the bankers. Boxer the horse is the hard-working, idealist people in the "Project Development" subforum. And the pigs are the... guess which Foundation?

1) My bank don't allow to withdrawn my money in 1 hour.

2) My bank block at a certain amount pay per card ... per day and per week and per month.

3) In 2014, My gov. allow to bank to freeze or stealth money from my account without my approbation (Bail out to Bank run)


... that why, since december 2013 ... i convert all my life economy in Bitcoin.
... because, money IS MY MONEY.



Global crisis is in party because PEOPLE are dumb and trust the bank to allow withdrawn money.
At this moment, only bitcoin allow this.

not the silver (bank deposit)
not the gold (bank deposit)
not other fucking toilet paper money (eXXXXtra fee to convert)

Look into gen 2.0 cryptos, they are designed to solve many of those issues.

we need a tl;dr for the tl;dr...

also, if the OP has given up on bitcoin then why not go to another forum entirely, maybe PayPalTalk or VisaTalk where so much must be happening that he approves of?

You seem to ask a question really is not the right forum, because everyone in this forum will tell you yes, then I do not understand what you're trying to get the message

Welcome to Bitcoin, I suggest you read the White Paper

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Do we really need Bitcoin?

Yes, I really need Bitcoin.

maybe you don't need it, but i think most of users here need it ;D

3 of these payment are credit card. (paypal needs credit card). i know in advance country it's very easy to apply credit card, but in third world country it will be harder, too many requirements and it's annoying. don't forget monthly fee :(
and i don't like credit card, they urge me to spend more for consumer product with their discount

I used this service once and never want to use again
their fee is horrible. with bitcoin i can send money to my family with smaller fee, and quick confirmation

The answer to Bitcoin's security problem is very simple: do not place all your trust in one place. A very simple example: suppose a traditional wallet on your average person's computer. One set of keys in one place. Very easy to steal. Vulnerable to drive-by exploits, trojans, social engineering attacks - etc. But we can add as many keys and factors as we need to protect a wallet. If the standard Bitcoin client included SMS security codes, it would make stealing coins extremely difficult. Now you need control over the victim's phone to move money and they can issue the final approval by inputting a code. Ultra-paranoid mode would use additional isolated devices.

Though I agree that realistically, anyone can be hacked given enough time and effort... but there does come a point where the probability vs reward isn't worth it for the attacker. Creating these conditions is trivial.



A better idea would be to use multiple redundant keys. Once again, there is no reason to put all your eggs in one basket. With the above security proposal - backup keys could be written to a USB drive or encrypted and saved to a remote server at wallet creation for use in the event that access to the phone was lost. Most of these security proposals are already in wide use.

http://gaia.adage.com/images/bin/image/medium/11-discover-peggy-032811.jpg?1300916240

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wREbzEvM-g&list=PLLzXbE1YfUJhoN2pHlL6lZjI18W2C4h2v

OP's website is "Buy Bitcoin with Paypal".

I would hate Bitcoin too after trying to sell a non-refundable currency via a haphazardly refundable payment processor.

No we don't. Bitcoin will be replaced with bitcoin 2.0 of some form soon enough.

Bitcoin will eventually be bitcoin 2.0.

It is bitcoin .9.2.1 right now.

Interesting read, I would say that we don't NEED Bitcoin in the traditional sense of what need means, it's just an alternative preferred by some.

May we ask why your site is down - http://www.donotcompare.com? Did you get scammed by accepting an insecure currency <paypal> in exchange for a more secure currency <Bitcoin>?



Nirvana fallacy. Just because Bitcoin isn't 100% secure doesn't mean that it cannot be used much more securely than cash or credit cards.



If someone steals my wallet full of fiat usd there is little hope of getting my cash back. If someone steals by cellphone with my bitcoin wallet that is secured than I can retrieve and use my bitcoins with my backup and the thief has almost no chance of using or stealing my bitcoins.



Offshore investments are much more expensive and complicated to setup than bitcoin. They are also far less secure as governments have been successfully going after "terrorist" and money laundering individuals no matter which country they hide their wealth in.


Inflation actually hurts the middle class and poor most. Your deposits are not guaranteed to do anything but decrease in value. You can guarantee that you will lose 5-8% a year in the US and 25-55% in countries like Argentina. You are also making the false assumption that Fiat currencies never fail completely as history has shown otherwise.



Making the assumption that the unbanked and underbanked don't exist in the world. How provincial.


Xapo and other merchants offer insurance as well. Clients can use escrow to protect themselves and businesses prefer not to deal with chargebacks.


Bitcoin 6 pennies or free and I get the money instantly. W/U costs 22usd for 1-2 business day transfer.
Day and night difference.


Bank accounts are temporarily frozen or permanently all the time for many people even if they are conducting 100% legal business. Ever hear of Operation Choke point or the Cypress Bail ins?


This does happen all the time with traditional payment methods. You don't think hackers attack traditional fiat too?


So because there is a risk of less decentralization with Bitcoin we should go straight back to using a centralized solution instead. What is your point?


In a free market without government regulations you can expect fees to remain low if not get cheaper. Keep in mind that even when the block reward drops the value of Bitcoin will also be higher as well.


What?


Bitcoin is as secure or insecure as you choose to make it. Example - selling Bitcoin for paypal fiat is just plain stupid.


You are ignoring all the thefts and corruption that exist within Fiat that dwarfs the corruption scam artists using bitcoin. You don't have to be anonymous to steal money from people. People can easily be manipulated into thinking that they aren't being robbed blind. one example out of many - Economists now have over 5 different ways of calculating the CPI. When they normally cite inflation they use the formula that doesn't include food or fuel. Real inflation is actually closer to 5-8 % in the US. This is theft and hurts the middle class and poor more-so.  


Volatility is a valid criticism but Bitcoin is provably becoming more stable so in the longterm should not be an issue. The deflationary spiral argument is unfounded and research from payment processors like Bitpay have proven that spending actually increases during rapid deflationary bubbles.

Simple don't use an PRNG.

Here is a very powerful, unhackable and easy to use RNG
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7BRHFz6jiWM/UsaxOMVDmbI/AAAAAAAAAcM/j0hJlMVqHpo/s1600/Deck+Of+Cards+Workout.jpg

We don't need anything really...I mean do we need Cash?  Nope...it is nice to have though.

Bitcoin is something of a game for me anyway...I used to play a lot of video games trying to collect items...now I try to collect bitcoins and at least they have some value....none the less it is just a game/fun for me

If there wasn't such a need and a demand for bitcoin. Bitcoin wouldn't be as big as it is. The free market has decided. Yes we need bitcoin.

Well,I suppose yes,due to many reasons.

Thank you for your answers, most of which pose interesting points of view. Before answering the points I consider the most relevant, I noticed some hostility in some of the answers, stating things like I hate Bitcoin and even the reason, apparently because I was scammed to bankrupcy. Since I want to keep the discussion focused on Bitcoin, I will answer briefly your concerns.
I absolutely do not hate Bitcoin. What is more, I already made my part to the community selling some at the time. With Paypal indeed. And no, I was not scammed one single time. I stopped because it was more a proof of concept, I enjoyed building the system but not so much running it and, above all, because I discovered that in the US one can buy a prepaid SIM card withoud providing ID.   


The tone of some of the answers really shocked me. I did not expect to make people angry and that raises some concerns about how do we interpret this. I had seen this reaction with extremely religious and political people, but never in a technical field (maybe in some Windows/Linux and XBox/PS2 discussions among teenagers). In other threads I saw how some users are pushing their friends to join in, others who invest all their life savings and some who blame the victim when someone loses their wallet. Being myself passionate about Bitcoin, I am doing this exercice of scientific skepticism to try to validate my beliefs about this matter. I am educated about the technicalities of Bitcoin and I follow the current news. I would like to invite you to make this exercise of introspection with a neutral and passion-less mentality.


Now I would answer some of your most interesting points. Thank you again for your time.


You are right, and this is an important fact. Nevertheless, I fail to see the practical implications in the everyday life. Could you please provide an example were these controls pose a regular problem to people? It is true that it would be hard to move large capitals to another country, but people do not have regulations to pay for groceries, electronics or a house, for example.

Good point. After all one cannot have both security and convenience. But careful when intutively using systems as throwing two dices. Often times the distributions are not as constant at it may seem.

inBitweTrust, thanks for your long answer. I already explained what happened to my site and why I don't think that it is relevant. Anyway, even if I were scammed, what does it have to do with the security of the currency?


Good point. You solved the problem of losing/stealing the phone. But there is still the problem with malware. Sure, fiat has it too, and it happens often. But with fiat these problems are reversible, with Bitcoin unfortunately they are not.

I am talking about about offshore investments, not capital/tax evasion.



That is a good point, fiat currencies can lose all their value.


I appreciate your passion and I understand that it is a sensitive subject. I'd rather keep the tone neutral and a rational discussion.


The problem I see with escrow is that it must be trusted by both parties. These entities (trusted by many people) will be scarce and thus they can impose high fees. In addition, these trusted entities can always side with the buyer (for example) if they chose to. Is it the same as Paypal? Isn't it centralization? Theoretically you can use whatever payment gateway you can find, but the trusted ones are few (Paypal and few others).


I agree. The current banking system has big flaws.


Crackers attack the fiat system all the time. And they succeed. And you call the bank and have your money back. With Bitcoin you call the Waaaahmbulance (I liked that picture!).



My point is that I'd rather trust an established system with accountability and traceability than an anonymous mining pool without accountability to make them self-control. I think it is immensely more likely that a mining pool starts a 51% attack to take as many Bitcoin as possible and then disappear than my government to start printing money non-stop and the responsibles disappear. Of course it could happend (and happened, unfortunately, as well as in Bitcoin with MtGox, Bitcoinica et al and their hacks). I am just talking about posibilities. Nirvana fallacy if you want. Just because the current banking system is not perfect it doesn't mean that we need to go all-in in an experimental, anonymous currency.


Yes, I see your point. But again, the fact that you can extort with fiat doesn't mean we should use a currency with which extorsion can be easier.


I meant that I don't find these two criticisms valid. Price volatility and deflation have nothing to do with Bitcoin itself. They are just market eventualities and, as you say, it will stabilize over time.

every couple of week we have some post like this!
do we really need bitcoin! YESSSSFFS

Of course you can.  I wouldn't say taking two minutes to generate a single high entropy seed using a deck of cards gives up either security or convenience.

Actually the seed is the beginning of a long algorithm you are trusting. And if you trust the algorithm, you can also trust the seed generator. If not, you need to generate for each private key 256 bits of entropy throwing a dice (for example).

No that isn't correct.   A hardware device can act as a black box however if the outputs are deterministic then the outputs can be validated.   If a block box provides you a random key how do you know it is actually random?  The reality is you don't and thus you need to TRUST the results are truly random.  However if you provide a black box which implements BIP32 (HD Wallets) a seed you can VERIFY the keys match the expected outputs.  Single random seed -> a lifetime of verifiable results.

Of course! Verification of the results after applying a deterministic algorithm! You just recovered my interest in hardware wallets!

I remember a couple of projects in the Project Development subforum. One of then is/was Trezor. What is its current status? And, why is it so difficult (honest question)? I would naively think that with a Raspberry Pi, a LED screen and a cheap webcam (to send the transaction to sign) it could be done. What am I missing?

Bitcoin makes internet transaction more convenient and cheaper. But we can live without it.

"do we really need bitcoin?" = "do we really need toilet paper?"


in some cultures no, but i know what i want and need :D
end of

You'd have to be a REALLY good hacker.  :P

I like posts like these. Not every post should be pro bitcoin, good arguments need to made. In my opinion, my biggest reason for using bitcoin is that I want to hold my OWN money. Yes, I "own" the money in the bank. But they are holding it and I am at the mercy of them. When I hold my own bitcoins, I can do what I want, when I want, with no restrictions.

Non sequitur comes from Latin, meaning "does not follow".

An assertion that Bitcoin protects from inflation follows
clearly from the fact that the Bitcoin supply is limited.

An assertion that Bitcoin protects from currency manipulation
follows clearly from the fact that there is a protocol in
place that every needs to follow.

YOU are the one committing a non-sequitor when you say
the problem of government manipulation comes from
long ago.  THAT does not follow or have anything
to do directly with the initial statement.

I don't really use bitcoin that often until now.
I'm noticing some people can't take paypal so i switched over to the BTC side.
Also, sometimes when the price fluctuates, I get happy or sad.

To me, BTC is like stocks except, usable everywhere. (Nearly)

The non reversibility of Bitcoin also prevents theft as well.

What about con artists stealing from small businesses by requesting charge backs?
What about banks freezing your assets while they investigate?
What about governments seizing your assets for legal reasons or under asset seizures ?
Isn't one of the reasons why traditional bank fees much higher than bitcoin because theft is merely socialized and recouped across all participants and all theft indirectly affects all users?




I apologize for coming off rash but my reaction was prompted after reviewing some of your post history and seeing multiple negative posts criticizing bitcoin. I take it that you are just cynical and extremely skeptical which is fine but some of us get tired of hearing the same myths propagate repeatedly. It is sometimes difficult to identify the detractors with an agenda from those offering healthy criticism.


Escrow in Bitcoin is actually very inexpensive.. Multisig allows escrow to be free in most cases and only if there is a dispute there is a fee which is less expensive. Because Multisig removes counter party trust there is 0 risk that the arbitrator can independently steal the funds and thus allows for many arbitrators to compete driving down prices further. In fact anyone can become an arbitrator.

Here is one example of a marketplace of arbitrators for multisig escrow:  https://www.bitrated.com    


When someone steals my credit card, I am responsible for a 50 dollar deductible and all of the loss eventually comes back to hurt me and the rest of society. Merchant fees of 3-8% raise the prices of all goods and services. You don't get your money back, the loss is just abstracted and amortized.

In the future with hardware wallets bitcoin will become much more secure as well.



My point is the banks and governments have already betrayed the public's trust repeatedly and are not accountable.
They are corrupt and incompetent and should not be trusted.  Decentralized mining pools have a much better track record.
I would personally rather deal with a hypothetical risk than a definite bad actor.


Extortion isn't just easier with Fiat but a central part of its design. Extortion and theft is an intrinsic property of Fiat and happens continuously.

In order to make a steady state economy possible, we need debt-free money.  FRB money, which includes all fiat and even some gold, bears interest and thus it requires the economy to grow exponentially, forever.  If you belive exponential growth forever in a finite world then I wish you a great carrier in economics...

Bitcoin is essentially the only game in town when it comes to equity money (since physical gold is  hopelessly impractical). Everything else is debt money.  Bitcoin therefore MUST succeed. If you see problems - fix them!

Your concern about security and insurance for the average non-crypto-geek is valid, but market demand for a solution will solve it. Circle comes to mind.

For me I need bitcoin. It kills me to put money in a bank that is going to charge me a monthly fee for them to take my money and lend it out to people, collect interest on it and only give me a fraction of what they collect. Not to mention all the other upfrint and hidden fees they pile on. So do I need bitcoin?.... My answer is YES... YES I DO

I see what you say, and I agree with your points. Nevertheless, when I make a payment (as a customer) I feel much more comfortable paying with Paypal than with any other payment method (unless of course the seller is well known and respected as Amazon or Dell). "Accepted by Paypal" tells me two things about a site: (a) that they wouldn't be doing business with Paypal for long if they were scammers and (b) that I can get my money back if things go bad.
Of course, with Bitcoin and escrow one could do the same thing. Maybe one day the "Using escrow with inBitweTrust" (for example) will transmit the same level of customer protection as today Paypal. Now I understand better the real practical applications of multisig transactions.   

I completely understand that posts like that of "LET'S CRASH BITCOIN" are tiresome and sometimes outright trolling. I am glad that you don't see me now as one of them.


Thanks for the URL, I didn't know it. On the other hand I don't completely agree with you about the economics of arbitrators, but well, time will say if they are cheap or expensive. Anyway, what I find a clear advantage is that the escrow is not needed in a normal scenario and, above all, it cannot steal the funds (as could theoretically Paypal do today).

I agree that today the loss is amortized, but I don't see it necessarily a bad thing. What is true is that chargebacks and insurance come at a price (which one may or may not be willing to pay, the market will decide).

I find hardware wallets a really promising technology and I hope the best for Trezor. I read in their thread that they are delivering.


I think I understand your general view (please correct me if I am wrong). Your vision is that Bitcoin, while having at this moment some drawbacks like yes, extortion by individual scammers is possible or funds can be lost (but coming technology is making this more unlikely than losing fiat) it solves the biggest of problems: institutionalized stealing by state agents and the economic elite. Or in other words, Bitcoin may, at this moment, make us a little bit more vulnerable to small-scale thefts (and even that is being solved) while protecting us from the biggest scammers who steal money in front of our face and modify the laws as needed to make it 'legal'.
If so, of course it would open another whole can of worms about in which situations the market should or should not be free, like in asymmetric information scenarios (car dealer-client, health insurance-client, etc), or in which scenarios could be useful to devaluate the currency and, of course, if the people who make these decisions are honest or not. But well, I am sure it would be a really interesting debate but that is not the scope of this thread.

Maybe we are in opposite sides of the world but thanks to Internet we are having this interesting discussion. If Bitcoin makes to the economy what the Internet made to the information I am sure that interesting times are coming. 

I like and need bitcoin because i can hide my cash. i just need to hide maybe from banks as well. these cash doesn't come from any illegal activities but really i work hard for it.  ;D

You have done a great job of summarizing my argument. The beauty of the Bitcoin protocol is that it is designed in such a way that it encapsulates voluntarism and agorism at a protocol layer. Certainly, any government or person with any political ideology can use Bitcoin and benefit from its feature sets but at a design level no one can be forced into using bitcoin or upgrading to another version with features that they don't agree with(I.E... blacklisting). Bitcoin just IS, and like pandora's box cannot be removed or completely controlled by regulators. Society is going to have to adapt to this reality despite their misgivings. Mathematics is the great equalizer which allows individual people to have certain protections equal to even the most powerful organizations.

Bitcoin has its flaws and will never be perfect but right now has many qualities which make it more honest and safer if you understand it than traditional banking. There are some radical transparency and accountability features that can be used:

If you have a charity or are running a crowd-funding campaign you can accept donations where all donors or investors can clearly see the funds accountable in real time that are 99.999% verifiable. You can than use a M of N multi-sig to ensure that it is impossible for the treasurer or any individual to embezzle the funds or spend them without the agreed upon consensus within the bylaws. In the past a long drawn out legal battle would ensue with any dispute with parasitic lawyers milking both sides and with Bitcoin the protocol protects everyone.

Blockchain technology and crypto-currency is a black swan event. Many of us are unapologetically embracing the cleansing effect of its disruption. Whether its Bitcoin(most likely) or another crypto-currency doesn't matter, the effects of this technology is going to change everything just like the internet has.

The person who really interested about bitcoin he or she needs bitcoin. It's simple.

We do need a virtual currency, people don't like hassles which paypal offers in money..

We do need bitcoins. Not everyone likes formalities encountered during bank transactions..