No doubt that sellers need infrastructure to accept a cryptocurrency for payment.

Part of making a cryptocurrency "regulator friendly" is providing a way for tax authorities to ensure the seller collected the appropriate sales tax for a purchase. 

This means there needs to infrastructure to help sellers determine what is the correct sales tax to collect.  Fortunately, most point of sale or "POS" systems have the ability to calculate sales tax.  Still, there are a lot of sellers that don't have such POS systems.  So, there is infrastructure to be created here.

For it to be widely used first merchants, retailers, vendors, suppliers, and other sellers must have the infrastructure to accept cryptocurrency as a type of payment.  Fortunately, there are a lot of advantages for sellers in accepting cryptocurrency.  Most importantly, the fees are much less than fees they pay to use credit/debit cards. 

It's these advantages that will drive sellers to accept cryptocurrency. 

There is no doubt in my mind that governments won't enthusiastically support cryptocurrency as a medium of payment until there is a cryptocurrency that is "regulator friendly".

ICOs are an innovative fund raising approach for people with a great idea or invention that want to start a company.  I don't see it going away because it's a superior approach to fund raising than convertible notes or equity financing traditionally used to fund start up companies.  Instead, I see it evolving to make it safer for investors.

Right now, the challenge is how to make an ICO safe for investors prior to the "Token Generation Event", where the public including investors can buy and sell tokens on an exchange for fiat currency.  This is the riskiest period for investors because if there is never a Token Generation Event there isn't a way for investors to trade their yet to be issued tokens.

This is why in the United States at least there is the emergence of the Simple Agreement for Future Tokens or "SAFT".  A SAFT (see saftproject.org) helps protect the interests of both investors and the company.

The downside of a SAFT is only accredited investors may invest in a SAFT.

I agree that cryptocurrency payments have a lot of advantages for merchants, retailers, suppliers, vendors, and other types of sellers.  For certain, the transaction fees are nearly zero, especially when sellers compare the fees they pay to use card interchanges such as Visa or MasterCard.  And, they receive value instantly at the time of purchase, instead of having to wait three banking days which is the case with card payments.

I agree that it seems like further innovation is necessary. 

Among the improvements is in the user experience for consumers.  There needs to be an application where consumers can quickly and easily load their fiat currency from their bank account or credit/debit card into this application that in turn can instantly convert this into a cryptocurrency ready to spend with a merchant.

I agree that an obstacle is the process of converting to and from fiat currency. 

For example, when I buy bitcoin from CoinBase it takes over a week to receive.  And, I must pay transaction fees of several US dollars.  Similar process when selling bitcoin.

For consumers that have access to credit/debit cards where they have instant access to their bank accounts and pay no fee for using them, there aren't many advantages of using cryptocurrency over credit/debit cards.

I agree that extreme price volatility such as what we saw between November 2017 and February 2018 is an obstacle.

However, the past several months cryptocurrency prices have been stabilizing because speculation has been driven out of the market.  Further, the last couple weeks bitcoin's price has been more stable than the US dollar.

So, cryptocurrency is approaching similar price stability as fiat currency.  That's why I don't believe it price volatility is that significant of an obstacle.  Instead, I see government support of cryptocurrency as a medium of payment and awareness being the two most significant obstacles.

Governments won't enthusiastically support cryptocurrency as a medium of payment until there is a cryptocurrency that is "regulator friendly".

They see cryptocurrency as a tool to evade regulations.  This is because all existing cryptocurrencies, a) hide the identity of the Buyer and Seller, and more importantly, b) hide the detail of the nature of the purchase.  Without this information regulators such as tax authorities or customs agencies can't do their jobs.

Their support for a cryptocurrency will come only when this cryptocurrency allows their regulators to their jobs.  "Regulator friendly" means there must be a way to learn the detail about the nature of the purchase.

I agree that most people have heard of bitcoin.  I asked virtually everyone I know whether they have heard of bitcoin.  100% said yes.

However, when I ask people who have heard of bitcoin whether they know what cryptocurrency is, all but one person said no.

So, while people of heard of bitcoin, too fee understand what cryptocurrency is, how it works, why they should trust it, and, most importantly, what about it makes it superior to traditional payments so they will want to use it as a medium of payment.

It's going to take a significant campaign to get enough people aware of it and wanting to use it.

Yes, extreme price volatility where the value of routinely drops or rises significantly in less than 24 hours can be an obstacle to wide spread use.  

While in the past year, especially between November and February, there has been instances of extremely price volatility, in the past 90 days price of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been stabilizing.  In the past several weeks the price has changed less than 5%, which is similar to the change in value of fiat currencies such as the USD.  

For example, on 13th of June bitcoin was 6299.52 USD.  At the time of this post it is 6337.85 USD.  That's less than 1% change in price over a 2 week period.

During the same period the US Dollar Price Index went from 93.82 to 94.58.  This also was less than a 1% change.

So, during the past couple weeks the price volatility of bitcoin was actually less than the US dollar.

Speculation was the driver for extreme price volatility of cryptocurrencies in November through January.  As speculation was driven out of the market, prices stabilized.  Over the next year I expect price volatility of cryptocurrency to be similar to price volatility of fiat currency.

This is why I don't believe price volatility will be a significant obstacle to wide spread use over the next few years.  Instead, I see other obstacles posters on this thread have highlighted being more significant.

Yes, all technology goes through the Diffusion of Innovations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations).  Cryptocurrency is no exception.

We are in the "Early Adopter" phase, which are cryptocurrency visionaries and enthusiast such as we at bitcointalk.org.

Geoffrey Moore in his book, Crossing the Chasm,  suggests that transitioning from the Early Adopter phase to the Early Majority requires special messaging.  His point is success has less to do with the technology (even though this does need to be truly disruptive) and more to with communication and education to reach the Early Majority.

This is why I believe there needs to be a significant marketing and education campaign making people aware of cryptocurrency, what are its advantages over traditional mediums of payment, how it works, and why they should trust it. 

I agree.

What items #1, #2, and #3 have in common is the need for compelling applications that make it fast, easy, and safe for buyers to use and sellers to accept cryptocurrency payments.  The applications I have seen are just too cumbersome of a user experience for most people to use.

It's legal in the United States of America to name just one country.

Very few countries have banned all cryptocurrencies for payment.  

I believe so few countries have banned crypto payments mostly because it's not used widely (thus my creating this thread!).  It's not enough of a threat to worry about.

Now, I agree with you that, when crypto payments experience greater adoption, governments may ban certain cryptocurrencies for the reason you highlight... tax evasion.  This is one of a series of regulations governments are concerned crypt payments evade.

That is why I think before a cryptocurrency will see widespread use is it needs to be "regulator friendly".  I'm not aware any cryptocurrency that is "regulator friendly" because all cryptocurrencies hide the identity of the buyer & seller along with detail about what was purchased, where it was purchased, what, if any, taxes were paid, and so forth.

No doubt that price volatility is an obstacle.

Cryptocurrency exchange rates presently are driven primarily by speculation.  The result is the sometime large change in price that we often call "high volatility".

Currency exchange rates are volatile.  Cryptocurrency is no exception. 

As speculation is driven out of the cryptocurrency market, cryptocurrency exchange rates will mimic fiat currency exchange rates.

For certain there is a lot of work necessary to inform people about cryptocurrency as a medium of payment.  While virtually everyone I ask, "have you heard of bitcoin?" answers yes, virtually none of these people when I ask my follow up question, "Do you know what cryptocurrency is?" answer yes (so far, only 1 person knows and he is a computer scientist!).

I believe it will take a campaign similar in scope as what American Express and Bank of America did in the 1960s to educate the public about credit card payments.  This took over a decade before the public used cards for a significant percentage of their payments.  In fact, not until the invention of the debit card did cards surpass cheques (checks) as a medium of payment.

No question that price volatility creates problems for sellers (retailers, merchants, and suppliers) because it takes several days to convert cryptocurrencies into fiat and during that time the value of their payment might go down significantly.  Similar problem for buyers (consumers) because it takes several days to convert fiat currency into cryptocurrency.  Once again, during that time the value of their cryptocurrency might go down significantly.  Of course, both buyers and sellers benefit it value of the cryptocurrency going up.

A tactic that would address this, and is part of what will make the user experience a welcome one for buyers and sellers, is nearly instant conversion to and from fiat currency.  If moments before I go to the store I can purchase cryptocurrency with fiat currency by pushing a button on my iPhone app, then shop and make purchases in cryptocurrency using my iPhone app and its QR code, and then the retailer converts the cryptocurrency into fiat currency moments after the purchase, the duration is short enough that price volatility will have virtually no impact on either the buyer or seller.

Yes, I'm quite familiar with SWIFT.

It's slow, complicated, and expensive. 

For cross-border payments, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) often takes days to settle, requires coordination between up to four banks (Payer's Bank, Payer's Bank's Correspondent Bank, Payee's Bank's Correspondent Bank, and Payee's Bank), and has fees in the tens of USD per payment.

In contrast, crypto payments can move any value of money from anywhere to anywhere in moments for essentially no cost.  Further, anyone can use crypto payments because it doesn't require a bank account.

While SWIFT is trying to address its shortcomings, it's a 50 year-old architecture that is ill-suited to compete with crypto payments.

Here is a short read about comparing ripple with recent improvements from SWIFT: https://www.gtreview.com/news/fintech/ripple-dismisses-marginal-improvement-of-swift-gpi/

There is plenty of opportunity for innovation with crypto payments.  Not so much for SWIFT.

Nice FUD posting though.  Hat's off to you!

There is no doubt that cryptocurrency threatens huge organizations such as American Express, Visa International, and others in the global payment industry.  I would expect such organizations to engage in a FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) campaigns.

To counterbalance this, there needs to campaigns to alert consumers to cryptocurrency payments including their advantages.  Crypto payments do have a huge advantage in messaging over traditional payments companies because of modern communications such as social media, blogs, and message boards such as bitcointalk.org allow messages to quickly and easily spread to consumers.