Bitcoin Forum

Like the title says, I'm conducting an informal survey of Bitcoin's biggest challenges. Specifically, I'd like to hear what you all think are the biggest challenges in three categories:

• Technically - As in the Bitcoin client, the operation of the system, mining, security, etc.
• Culturally - As in mainstream acceptance, user and merchant adoption, Bitcoin's image (or image problem), etc.
• Practicality - As in the practical uses and difficulties in Bitcoin (a good example would be people who worry over wait times for confirmations).

There's no need to limit your answers to one per category; feel free to pose as many as you like for each category or post answers to just one or two of them. Your answers can be as detailed or straightforward as you please.

Thanks, and I look forward to reading your responses!

you might need to clarify the question a bit more, because there are two different goals with bitcoin. one is to make the price go higher, and the other is to get as many people to adopt it.

Either goal is fine if that goal is what you think has the biggest challenge.

For instance, if you think the primary goal of Bitcoin is a high coin value, perhaps you think its biggest challenge lies with security breaches at the exchanges that cause the price to crash. If you think the primary goal is user adoption, perhaps you think its biggest challenge is getting more big name companies to accept it as a currency.

Whatever you think its goals and challenges are is fine for an answer. ;)

It has no problems, it's ermerging as the first legitimate global currency unit.

It's value is tied only to the trust factor of it's growing user base.

US Congress report states, bitcoin similar to a currency based on a gold standard.

Big tech players understand it's value growth.

Heavy new laws may limit it's acceptance in some regions, however only 10% acceptance level means a $50k usd value.

Exchanges will be regulated in some regions, others it will be unregulated.

Soon you will have a large network of legal btc changers and they will simply follow money transmitter laws already in place in most areas.

My opinion.

Biggest challenge is people do not understand why they need it, and many do not understand technology enough to use it securely.

As long as viruses remain a common problem on end user PCs, local clients are dangerous for them.
As long as web wallets operate without enforcement of basic security protocols, web wallets are dangerous too.

Both issues need to be solved.

I think that people do not understand how much bitcoin can save both merchants and consumers over the long run verses other payment methods.

This is why domains like bitcoin.org are so important because the website really try's to educate people about bitcoin and  to get them started using bitcoin instead of profiting off of selling the domain.

Regulation is the biggest road block.

Can you sign it? Big time Homie telling it how it is. I just differ on your hypothesis on it being similar to a gold backed standard cause it'll wipe it out as that. PMs will be a laugh. Yeah I holdem.

Some challenges:

-decentralization
-The risk of bitcoin collapsing after each halving
-Bitcoin need internet
-Conversion fiat-bitcoin

Technically - the ever increasing size of the blockchain; risk of opportunistic behavior by someone like Ghash.io - not saying Ghash is bad just that they could engage (or were close to being able to engage) in exploitive behavior; possibly not enough coins

Culturally - regulation and how new users are such easy scam targets; confusion over too many alt coins

I think we are past bitcoin's image problem.

I think the biggest challenge is technically, because all other things depend on it.

The protocol and reference implementation must be secure and usable. If that is the case, all other cultural and practical problems will be solved by third parties - companies and everyday users alike. The bitcoin ecosystem will evolve organically without the need for intervention or lobbying, because it's simply useful. The Internet is a perfect blueprint for that kind of evolution.

ya.ya.yo!

Keeping Bitcoins safe is too challenging as of now. The regular person who might want to use Bitcoin may encounter too many Scams. There needs to be something that makes sure that stealing peoples private keys or tricking them into transferring their funds to the thief doesn't happen anymore. Things like Trezor are a great first step. But they're still not easy or attractive enough.

For me this is an easy one:

Biggest challenge is the wild price fluctuations. As long as this is happening it means that only people with a very strong idealistic belief in Bitcoin and people wanting to speculate on the price of Bitcoin will be interested in it - the regular public will never buy as long as they don't have a clue how much their coins will be worth tommorrow let alone next month.

The second biggest challenge is the long transactions times.

Transactions are almost instant. If the transaction has propagated through the network it is practically safe to be confirmed. Only being definitely confirmed takes ~10 minutes. Credit Cards actually do the same thing, the money isn't being paid until days, weeks, or even months after the sale has been made! They're much slower!

Interesting point, but from the end-user perspective rather than technicalities I know that I do often have to wait quite a while for Bitcoin payments to go through, whereas I don't have to wait for credit card or paypal purchases.

Do you? If I use Wallets like MultiBit or Electrum, the actual transaction goes through within 0.5-2 seconds or so. PayPal takes at least that long. I sometimes watch the spinning 'P' for 5-10 seconds. Same with credit card payments!

Yes. But I'm not talking about how long until my own wallet tells me that a transaction has been broadcast, I'm talking about how long it takes until the person receiving the coins accepts that I've sent them and processes the purchase.

For most transactions it would likely be just as long as it takes for the transaction to be propagated throughout the network. Since it would be expensive to attempt a double spend attack, it would likely be unprofitable to do so on smaller transactions, therefore merchants could accept a 0/unconfirmed transaction for smaller purchases.

For something that will be shipped but was purchased online: a merchant could start work on the order (gathering and packaging the merchandise) when the TX is 0/unconfirmed and just not ship the order unless the TX has "x" confirmations (the time from placing an order to actually shipping is usually several hours at the very minimum anyway so it should have several confirmations by then anyway).

None of that changes the fact that I do actually, in real life use, have to wait for transactions to be confirmed. Perhaps it means that a significant part of the reason for this is due to merchants and so on rather than the Bitcoin code or network, but the end-user only cares about what they experience, not who is at fault, so I would still put this as the number two challenge facing Bitcoin.


Yes of course it doesn't relate to all types of transaction, but I still see it as a signifiant issue.

I would perhaps change my assessment to put transactions into third place, however, as I've just thought of another challenge which is perhaps bigger - the fact that most people actually really like the consumer protection they get from banks and credit cards and so on, such as chargebacks and being re-imbursed if they are a victim of theft or fraud. Convincing regular people that having control over their own money and taking their wealth out of the hands of the banksters is more important than these consumer protections is quite a big challenge.

Technically:
- ease of use still a problem. Progress continues, slowly. Browser integrated wallets are key. One click purchase on any bitcoin accepting site is a killer feature.
- average joe, even average-geek-joe, simply cannot safely store a large amount of BTC. People are going to continue to lose large sums of bitcoin.

Culturally:
- I think a lot of people simply do not see a need for Bitcoin. I think to be honest, we need to ignore that sector. Too much effort is being put into marketing BTC to people who are happy with their credit cards. The largely ignored area is: kids. Technologically literate and malleable young people, who perhaps do not have bank cards, or for whom having a wallet on their smartphone will seem "cool" and futuristic. Simply installing a wallet on their smartphone without having to register or identify themselves to any bank? That monetary/spending independence should appeal to a teenager.

What I think will herald mainstream adoption is some service or app that appeals to young people and also serves a useful function. A killer app. Tipping and such on reddit is a small example; but that's primarily for the geek crowd. What's bitcoin's killer role in the snapchat demographic?

(but of course the killer "app" may simply be bitcoin as money, to buy anything anywhere, and so the hard part is still getting hold of bitcoin)

Practicality:
- buying it. Still tricky. I want to see vouchers you buy in a store (like mobile top-ups). I'd like to see buying BTC as easy for a kid as a mobile top-up. Go into a store, hand over cash, swipe their smartphone, and acquire their BTC. The very pessimistic view (which I think might be correct) is we'll have to wait for a parallel economy to appear so there is no cashing in or out. It may be all the AML regs kill any quick and easy bitcoin purchasing.
- tax complications. A company having to work out how they pay tax on Bitcoin income. Sure, if they use some service to convert automatically to $ or whatever it's easy, but in an ideal world they'd hold a balance in Bitcoin. I know I could run Bitcoin earning ads on a site of mine, but I avoid it because tax is annoyingly complicated enough as it is.

Great points about focussing on the younger generation, with Bitcoin perhaps being the first and easiest (as well as coolest) step for them to take towards their own financial independence from parents - and vouchers from stores is a great idea.

I really like this perspective too. I hadn't thought much about it before now, but I think targeting the next generation should be something the community pursues more.

The biggest challenge for Bitcoin is the insanely inconvenient decimal place and how this prevents people from trying bitcoin.

1 Bitcoin = 600USD

Regular Joe thinks: "Wow bitcoin is too expensive I won't buy it"

Now shift the decimal place and we have

1 Bitcoin = 0.60 USD

Regular Joe thinks: "Ok I'm gonna buy 10 dollars worth of bitoins."

I know that this is stupid but that's what's happening. The price of bitcoin is preventing more people to at least try bitcoin. See this example:

TIL A&W introduced a burger that was bigger and less expensive than McDonald's Quarter Pounder, but it failed because customers assumed 1/3 was less than 1/4.
link: http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com.br/2014/07/why-third-pounder-hamburger-failed.html

Bitcoin could become the next 1/3 burger.

And defaulting to units such as micro, milli, etc, won't help much. People want to own whole numbers of bitcoins.

A good summary of challenges. Any suggestions how to overcome these?

Very interesting questions.
As Bitcoin client I think that security is fine but I'm not expert in this field.
Culturally, I think this is the biggest challenge for our Bitcoin community, how to make Bitcoin more popular, specially in young generation, so that step by step Bitcoin can become mainstream. If we don't succeed in this Bitcoin eventually can be just another good idea never realized fully. We should try to adverise Bitcoin more, and explain more to the public, specially to merchants, so that Bitcoin can be spend in many more ways, and this will eventually help that more people start using Bitcoin.
Practically I think very serious issue soon for all of us, who keep Bitcoin in hope that price will rise and we earn additional income from this, will be how to report this income to the tax offices.

The biggest problem of bitcoin right now is trust. Actually the lack of it... Lack of trust in the bitcoin system itself, the software and the companies around bitcoin.

The thing is that only time can fix this particular problem...

I would agree regarding the trust as the currency. BTC has to become a currency, not a speculative asset for gambling. This means price stability/growth stability. Then the problem of a lack of adoption will be resolved. Yes, trust is the most important issue.

That's what I've felt for a while is Bitcoin's biggest challenge. It needs to get over the image of an investment and move on to being a unit of trade.

A unit of trade can still be viewed as an investment. Look at gold, it is the oldest unit of trade that exists today, but many people also treat gold as an investment.

But gold is worth something due to its properties, especialy in technical sence, unlike bitcoin, that has no other purpuse other than for trading/speculating.
If i was to invest large amounts of capital into something like that, i would like some guarantee that:

-it cant be stolen from me without option to file a claim (dispute)
-it wont be banned from existence
-cant be copyed by anyone, ever again.

And due to bitcoin nature as open source software, and ireversibility of payments, it simply makes me reconsider my investment.
I do have some portion invested in bitcoin, just in case something insane happens, but i realise how that is high risk investment, and so should others before they invest.