Bitcoin Forum

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved.

In short - volatility, insfrastructure and user experience.
These long addresses should be replaced with something user friendly. I can't believe I haven't made a mistake for half an year when transacting.
Volatility - merchants can't price goods in something that changes 10% in a day. Most businesses have 10-20% margins of profit.
For alts with smaller volumes volatility is ever bigger.

It is still too complicated to use cryptocurrencies.
Wallets apps or PC wallets are not user-friendly especially for the not tech-savvy.
A future solution would be a credit card (or a similar card) combined with cryptos.
There have been some cards in the future and some exist still today, but there have been many problems, not yet solved.

I believe that the biggest drawback of altcoins is that you never know if the project will be successful. A large range of systems, the vast majority of which do not receive recognition and dissemination, can lead to unsuccessful investments. In this segment there is a large number of frankly fraudulent projects posing as promising crypto-currencies.

- Volatility
- Involvement in scams ( Ponzi scheme)
- People aren't educated about crypto
- Banks may be preventing cryptos to boom???

The main disadvantange of all cryptocurrencies is their volatility. Of course, it's an advantage for traders but not for paymets. So the market lacks good stablecoins, much better and reliable than USDT. I expect to see the birth of new stablecoins during this year.

Your title asks one question and then you describe something else (asking about bitcoin). Just in case you didn't know, bitcoin and altcoins are different things. Coins which are not bitcoin, are the altcoins. To answer  to your title that is what are the disadvantages of altcoin, you will need to know how the market works. There are shit tons of altcoins. Most of them are just some exact duplicate of other coins with just a name change. They are mostly the scam coins. These coins just create a bad impression on crypto currencies. People who are new to crypto currencies end up investing on those coins and as a result suffer huge loss. Thus the market it self starts to collaspe.  All they are doing is just crearing oversaturation which can negatively impact the market.
And bitcoin is not being used as a mainstream payment form due to its price fluctuation which makes it quite unreliable to store.

I think if the transactions can be instant and extremely cheap or free we can see rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies by atleast the remittance industry, secondly, the long wallet addresses are a big hurdle, there should be a way to transfer crypto currencies directly to email or usernames, this will make crypto transfers error free and easy for masses.

The biggest drawback of all crypto-currencies is their volatility. I hope in near future there will be a stable coin.

Using a credit or debit card defeats the purpose of using cryptocurrencies you are just converting your cryptocurrencies to fiat and what we want is to use our coins independently from the banking system, so we need a way for people to adopt cryptocurrencies and I do not think that is going to happen until there are serious economic problems around all the world.

Instability is a huge drawback. You never know what will happen tomorrow. Unfortunately.

i think the biggest disadvantages of altcoin is that it is not decantralized. they depend on team and open speculatio so it is centralized.

To my mind, the single biggest problem is the level of technical knowledge required to use crypto-currencies without help from others.
Look how many people are really struggling when it comes to even the smallest problem regarding their PC.
They have no problem keeping their fiat money safe, though. But ask of them to keep their private key safe, that's a completely different story.
The single biggest problem to wide spread adoption is this lack of technical knowledge. And I don't see how we can solve it easily.

The price of crypto is very unstable today, you can pay for the product $ 1,000, and tomorrow, this same product may cost $ 500. This is definitely the main reason why crypto does not want to count on large online stores. But I think over time the price will become more stable and we will pay for purchases cryptocurrencies.

You are absolutely right, my friend.
Probably what we need is a new kind of credit card (or credit card like), based on cryptocurrencies and not on fiat money.
So we could keep our anonymity while using our cryptos in an easier way.

If you want to know about the bitcoin then why are you mentioning altcoins in your title! I dont get it !

Anyway, on the discussion front its main issue is legality of using all the crypto's. Its not just about the bitcoin or altcoins and its neither about their characteristic but a simple fact that is "non-acceptance" by the government. See, if they accept it one day and if devs see bitcoin/altcoin are being used as mainstream application then obviously rest of the developments will follow and things will be recovered in zero time. So thats the bothering thing or major disadvantage of it, we need ruling body!

As for me the biggest disadvantage is unpredictable price and existence. We are sure that Bitcoin will be there tomorrow and probably always, but we can not think the same about altcoins.
Of course, the main need of crypto is being a part of on cryptobank with cards and other possibilities

The trust is the biggest disadvantage of Altcoin since people stay worried that a company might run away with all of their money. The same happened recently with Freelancer coin. The company raised enough money and then eventually ran away with it.

With an increase in such number of incidents, people refrain from investing money in ICOs and Alts. Such investments are riskier than the investments made in Bitcoin or Ethereum.

There is no doubt that it is a slow transfer.
If bitcoin wants to be a real currency, the first problem to be solved is the speed of transfer.

I have to agree with the points you've raised that the title is not in line with the discussion.
And as you've mentioned, acceptance of cryptocurrencies is the major challenge and the solution is to have a worldwide council on cryptocurrency that will set out guidelines and issue licence to developers.

The biggest drawback of Altcoin is that their prices are unstable and volatile, which is the case in the entire cryptocurrency field, but as more and more people accept the cryptocurrency, its price will tend to stabilize.

Depends really on how you look at it. Because some people even entered the market because it's votilaty to try to turn their money around and is the driving force behind the prices we have today as many people hop on this train to earn money at the end of the day. Because of votilaty mainly what people use is they see AR the current point in time the price and trade upon that. Another obstacle is ease of use as well as people are not educated well enough about their private keys and all that which may lead to them being scared to enter cuz if they screw something up they know there's no turning back their money.

I think the biggest disadvantage is that the price of any alt is linked to the BTC price.

At present, most tokens still have a problem, so the distribution of tokens is too centralized.
And people just want to profit by speculating in tokens.

Then Bitcoin is also the same, hence you just made Bitcoin and Altcoin the same thing. Unsuitability and volatility are features of any cryptocurrency even Bitcoin also, so you cannot see them as disadvantage. It is just because these two factors that people make fortune in this market. But what Biggest disadvantage of altcoin is seen over the past few years is that these systems are decentralized but centralized in some sort of way. Their coin is dependent on the team and if unfavorable things happens like hacks or anything else, coin falls to ground in no time, wasting money of many investors and becoming one of the biggest disadvantage of altcoin.

Because these ICOs are monitored by anyone and just based on their good white paper these teams can raise funds. Investors also invest money as if there is no tomorrow because they want to become rich faster. That's many people exploiting this weakness in the system to cheat investors. I know it is very hard to find out which one is good and which is not. So I have stopped investing in ICOs and only invest if funds are escrowed by some reputed members.

Its my thought of explanation. As for me the main problem is probably in the goverment section. They see a threat to their economy. With altcoins they cant get any some sort of tax per transaction. And in that case alone its a big loss to the goverment. And also many other altcoins that is not traceable the user use it to buy illegal stuff like in the black market. Thats only my opinion .

Bitcoin still need a long time to be accepted as mainstream payment. The two main problems in my opinion is People Trust, and the market volatility. When you ask people around you and yourself, what makes them confident to pay using fiat is because they know that their fiat money is backed up by government regulation and gold. While Bitcoin, even though it has so many feature that made very trustee, but most of people don't understand (at least until now). Second the market volatility make it impossible for business entity to accept it as a payment. They can do business with a currency that has 10%+ price change every day.

Its all about the unwanted protocols and algorithms that has raised out of the blockchain. I mean why they should add it in the main stream if they are not useful in the same manner as the fiat currency. I mean what else they have to offer,? An anonymous coin, and coin with secure transaction? Oh dam we already go that covered in the fiat currency so I dont really understand what crypto makes the difference?

It has to be improved one and must contain far better stability and must provide the characters which it really having in its core. Unless and until we dont explore them there is no meaning to that.

for me, the main disadvantage is all the new project is basically a fork of diff coin or just a cloned. Nothing new or original.

everyone want to be ford, honda and toyota.

nobody really want to be like a tesla. thats the problem. They do invent, they just copying

it is not easy to determine that a project is true and false because the promise is very well expressed, so the possibility of frequent origin is only the origin of making altcoin difficult to grow, but it is certain there will someday be the best can resemble existing and good.

Well step 1 for that is just don't be stupid in investing in altcoins and you'll be fine. The drawbacks that altcoin can give are the various opportunities. Setting aside those scammy ICOs. You don't know what is the best coin to get into apart from its utilization in the blockchain technology and the price.

Some of the biggest disadvantages of altcoin is dubious activities that happen in crypto world and the how it damages the reputation of other alts which are actually good and have potential. 46% of the ICOs turn out to be scams. Crypto world badly needs regulation so that people can trust alts. If this trust is solid this can help attract funds of other investors and further funds as well.

Well, most of the time the altcoin is evaluated on the basis of company's performance, so its much more vulnerable to rapid price fluctuations and in the most severe cases, a complete downfall of the coin.

If that was such a huge drawback then no one will invest in the stock market, real estate or gold and yet most of the money around the world is invested in those three things, besides if it was such a drawback as you said then it will be impossible for us to make as much money as we are making, remember we cannot have a stable currency and a great investment in a single asset.

In the title, you were asking about Altcoins, then in the thread, you spoke about Bitcoin.
Well, Bitcoin isn't an Altcoin buddy, it's the mother and the holy father of CRYPTO, it's the king and the new generation of money, it's the new money over internet service, it will be adopted sooner or later, just hangout and wait for the moment!

Whoa I really love this perspective thank you for sharing!

I think generally fear of the unknown is also making a lot of people apprehensive - though they are seeing the benefits more and more.

The restrain of investors especially big investors to buy bitcoin is also the huge disadvantage due to its volatility. Along with lack of knowledge of others regarding cryptocurrency and government control. And the misbelief of other people that bitcoin is scam due to wrong news.

Drawbacks? I would rather tell the main thing why its being prevented to be accepted because its a decentralized thing which cant really be controlled.Would you suffice that feature just for you to make a coin which will patch up that flaw and community would took consideration into your coin? It wont really be an easy thing. Have you seen how many coins in the market trying out to follow bitcoin.?If yes then you know what are the things on your mind should gonna do.

The other media here in Philippines are controlled by corrupt politicians to spread wrong news about btc .. They should correct their presentation about it because many people think that bitcoin is scam which is totally not.

Like others have said, volatility one of the main reasons why btc and other altcoins aren't being accepted in many markets. Look at Steam, one of the largest digital distribution platforms out there. They stop accepting btc due to the high fees and volatility. Once volatility goes down and a large company like Amazon accepts cryptocurrency, expect other companies to join in and the market cap will be in the trillions.

As for me, the thing that sometimes depresses me is the highest volatility of all altcoins. It is never possible to foresee what will happen on the market and therefore you can make a mistake and sell or buy alts at a wrong time.

Bitcoin as a payment might not be feasible until it reach 1000tx/sec or more than visa
At the moment crypto can use fiat-crypto gateway, many working project about this at the moment

My opinion, the biggest drawback of crypto currency, which prevents mass introduction, is the lack of a simple and natural interface for interacting with existing software products. It is impossible to simplify the cryptographic features of blockchain technology, it is impossible to single-mindedly teach all people the subtleties of transactions and the generation of blocks in the blockchain system. Therefore, the main problem, in my opinion, is in the programs providing interaction between users and the blockchain system. The problem is in the interfaces between the blockchain and the end user. For a better understanding of the problem, I can give an analogy to the example of the browser: if browsers would represent only terminals with a command line, Internet users would be only technically trained geeks

I think one of major disadvantage is how thier prices are unstable and it might causes major loses in the economy, maybe if there would be one and only one type of coin it would change but i don't think this will ever happen, as well i don't belive that they will ever be stable.

The only disadvantage I see in Altcoin is that it affected with the movement of bitcoin when bitcoin goes down Altcoin also get affected with that and when it goes up they also get affected with that.

As far as i know the biggest disadvantage of altcoins are alts are being traded to bitcoin most commonly giving those altcoins no chance but to depend their price movements based on bitcoin's which is why these altcoins are never going to be independent to the market.Another thing is the market's volatility which is why most of the altcoins are going to bleed whenever the market wants to.

Biggest disadvantages would be these altcoins are going to react to bitcoin's movements because these altcoins are commonly traded with bitcoin which is why these altcoins are somehow related to bitcoin's movements,for example bitcoin has gone wildly,regardless if its going up or down these altcoins are going to bleed and the only time these altcoins will grow is when bitcoin's value has gone sideways.

The biggest disadvantage of all altcoins it's their capitalization. It is really small and thanks to it a couple of billionaires can do with that market whatever they want. That's a big issue i think

While the high volatility is something inherent to the market, the truth is that even if the market was not so volatile it would be impossible to predict what will happen, just look at the stock market which is not as volatile as the market of cryptocurrencies and yet no one can predict it, why? Because it's a very complex system made of very complex creatures called humans that are unpredictable.

bitcoin is not going to be used as the primary means of payment wherever it is. the cause of this is of course due to the fluctuation of the bitcoin and this will really give you problems if used to means of payment.

Many facts are preventing Bitcoin to be accepted as a payment system is that firstly it needs an internet connection for your transaction to get process, it needs time, the transaction may be delayed due to overload, the price of bitcoin is not stable, maintaining & securing a wallet is a techie at least for a layman. I think there must be a very easy process if need cryptocurrencies to get accepted as a form of payment globally. I would suggest you go through the white paper of a kora network they are developing a financial infrastructure project that enables users to send KNT tokens to anyone in the world just by using a simple phone without any internet connection via SMS/USSD and is based on the blockchain.

Despite being the world's largest crypto currency, you still need to improve a few things like: Confirmation time, low market acceptance, there are still a few establishments where you can use bitcoins as a form of payment.
Lack of maturity, software upgrades that implement the Bitcoin protocol can bring difficult-to-fix failures, high price volatility which makes it difficult to use bitcoins as a unit of account, and carries a risk to those who use the currency as a value reserve , even for a short period of time.
With possibilities of Hackers and viruses, acquisition difficulty, buying bitcoins is still not trivial and involves certain risks, such as the possibility of a default on the part of the seller. Risk of obsolescence and legal uncertainty is still unclear what will be the position of the Brazilian State in the face of decentralized currencies.

you know, this year there are more than a dozen projects that simplify the use of cryptocurrency in everyday life. so you can improve the situation that will be looking at these projects and tell us which one we choose to use. what's my idea?  ::) ;D

in my opinion the most annoying omission that a quantum computer can unravel any cryptode ... and no one  private key.

they are most times not stable and also most times they are scams .. this make peopl lose interest in them 

I believe that in order for cryptocurrency to become a full-fledged means of payment, it must obey some legal regulation. Alas, this is reality. In addition, I would like it to be anonymous, secure, scalable and that the transaction rate per second is not inferior to the current payment systems.

Biggest advantage would be all of these altcoins are dependent to bitcoin's movements,which is why bitcoin can easily kill these altcoins if these big players wanted too,dumping bitcoin means bloody altcoins in the market which is why i am not sticking most of my portfolio with these altcoins because it is too risky as of the moment.

For me the main disadvantage is ,decentralization which makes the system unregulated which is why these criminals and some cheaters are joining our community and using bitcoins to create crimes,altcoins in the otherhand has been dependent to bitcoin which is why these altcoins are worthless as these coins are still depending on bitcoin's movements.

Same with other cryptos,the biggest disadvantage of altcoins or alternative coins is the market volatility. The market volatility of altcoins are somewhat different with bitcoin's. The market value of altcoins are more volatile which made it best at short term investment unlike in Bitcoin which is for long term. But still, despite of this,altcoins are good investments to earn huge profit.

For me the greatest disadvantage for altcoins is that almost no one is using them, when it comes to bitcoin at least you know that not everything is speculation some people are actually using bitcoin for some businesses, but almost all the rest of the coins have no real functionality, they are just a tool that speculators use to try to earn money.

The biggest disadvantage of altcoins is that they do not have much volume. But this may be a problem if you have too much funding.

There is no problem from my perspective.

Biggest disadvantage? would be that all of these altcoins are depending to bitcoin's movements,it means if bitcoin's failed most of these altcoins are going to bleed,causing most of the investors to lose their money which is why it is risky to invest most of your money into altcoin,i personally have 70% bitcoin and 30% altcoins in my portfolio to be safe from these market manipulations.

I know that you are correct when you say that altcoins are very dependent on the price of bitcoin, however to strategy that you have devised in order to avoid the manipulation of the market does not work, if you have your money in bitcoin and altcoins and then bitcoin goes down then what do you think it is going to happen to altcoins? Altcoins are going to go down as well and with it all your portfolio.

Altcoins are still under heavy development and has probably not reached their final form yet.

The biggest issue with Bitcoin is the popularity. It is not popular yet. or not the right way anyway. Most of the news about Bitcoin in the mainstream media are either about some dude become millionaire or pure speculations and warnings that if you enter, you may lose your money.
The world is not ready yet for a change like that. We need more time.

scams

The government had a hard time getting big tax for bitcoin transactions. They also have a hard time liquidating their dirty propaganda to other countries because they can easily be trace unlike fiat currency. Bitcoin itself have no problem, It is the government and other institutions that have a problem with bitcoin.

Security is a big issue with altcoins, especially those build on blockchains other than bitcoin and ethereum. Computational power is what safeguards blockchains and its a limited resource, so some blockchains could be easily compromised using a 51% attack.


The security of smart contracts is also an issue. Recent research shows that 30K deployed smart contracts have bugs and can be exploited by hackers. That's why we a launching Aegis Platform, an all-in-one smart contract auditing tool offering triple audits (expert audits, automated audits and bug bounty audits) as well as certification to help investors know that a particular contract has been scanned for all known vulnerabilities and bugs.

Altcoins have a very small ecosystem as compared to bitcoin so if you are using altcoin, chances are you're just waiting for the price to increase instead of really trying to use one.

Biggest? would be altcoinsa re dependent to bitcoin which is why alts can easily be dumped if bitcoin has started to move wildly,normall if bitcoin is going to have bull runs,or even bears these altcoins are going to bleed and the only way these coins are going to grow is when bitcoin's value has gone sideways or stabilize.

The altcoin value is uncertain and the price volatility is greater. Bitcoin and Ethereum can be seen as the base currency of the blockchain world, and even as two block chain superpowers, other Altcoins can be regarded as the blockchain world stocks, which stocks are more Valuable. Needs enough knowledge to judge and understand.

I believe that the most important problems of altcoyins at this stage are volatility and security. Once these two problems are solved, the crypto-currencies will become an integral part of our life.

The problem of throughput is the biggest problem facing bitcoin at the moment.
Due to the lack of throughput, the transfer fee is very high.

Inorder to accept as a payment method the stability of the price is important. That mean lower the volatility higher the stability and good to used as a currency. At present non of the crypto currencies can be used think as a day today currency because they are highly volatile. In order to create such a stable currency you need to include a logic into your code will adjust the inflation. I'd suggest if you could create a currency with dynamic block reward depending on a economic forecast model they it would be much better. Tether is a some what stable crypto as it is based on USD. 

large fluctuations owned bitcoin and altcoin. at least that is what must be addressed from the bitcoin because it always just makes investors inevitably have to deal with that risk. It is also a lot of attention from various countries and refused to accept bitcoin due to fluctuations which have very high.