The easier crypto becomes to buy the more people will invest for sure. I think the uncertainty of the price on a day to day basis makes people afraid to invest because even if crypto rises overall in the end new people will be terrified on the way up from the constant fluctuation and feel like it's a risk.

More vendors accepting it is a big one but it needs to be easier for people to trade fiat for Bitcoin. It doesn't make sense for people to pay to exchange their fiat for Bitcoin and then buy something when they could have paid less overall not using Bitcoin. If I have no Bitcoin I have to go to an exchange, make an account with a possible lengthy identity verification, pay a fee for the conversion and then wait however long it's going to take to receive the Bitcoin. We need a method to instantaneously trade between fiat and crypto for free to get more people using it.

It's no different than people using other currencies for illegal things. The main reason people might think this is they don't know what Bitcoin is and they're first being introduced to it in a story about someone doing something illegal.

Maybe in the future rebranding would be beneficial but as of right now I think it would only hurt Bitcoin. People only very recently started taking a much bigger interest in Bitcoin and there's plenty of people who know nothing about cryptocurrency but they've heard of Bitcoin. If we take this name and image away it would slow down the process of Bitcoin being accepted, at least for now.