Wow, that's really interesting.  Thanks for the info.

Cash requires a face to face exchange that you don't have online.  Cash has existed for thousands of years, but how many transactions are conducted by sending cash through the mail?  Not many, and almost none where you don't have prior face to face experience. 

To achieve widespread adoption, we have to explain to people how they're not just mailing cash to anonymous craigslist sellers and hoping the computer / couch / buttplug shows up a few days later.

Sounds interesting, can you give more details about how this would work?

This is the tricky part, though.  If you go with a centralized site, like Amazon's Marketplace, you kill off one of the best features of online commerce:  the ability for small sites to put competitive pressure on the big sites by offering lower prices due to their low overhead.  

Otherwise, just relying on reputation and ratings requires much savvier consumers (and can still be manipulated by shills) and seems like it will heavily favor the bigger players.  New sites will have a hard time getting off the ground since they'll be competing head to head with the scammers for customers who are willing to take a chance to get a good deal.  Meanwhile, the bigger sites can jack up their prices and charge people for the "privilege" of not getting ripped off.

I've been following Bitcoin for a while now, and one hurdle to its use as a currency I'm not seeing how to overcome is the lack of accountability in online commerce. 

Online shopping works in large part because you know that if BudgetComputer.com doesn't send you the memory they promised, you can always sic Visa on them.  With Bitcoin, one party has to hand over their goods or money without any way of knowing that the other party will hold up their end of the bargain.  And if they don't, there's nothing you can do about it.

What is to stop people from putting up websites, collecting money, and then simply disappearing with it?  Wouldn't adoption of Bitcoin essentially drive out small businesses as people flock to the larger sites like Newegg and Amazon, in the hopes that a big company is less likely to rob you than a small one?

This.  The sooner we lose the skeevy pump and dump crowd, the better.  People like Atlas who just want to attract buyers of Bitcoin as a get rich quick commodity make it impossible for Bitcoin to succeed as a currency.  I hope they all go broke.

A lot of speculators have been using bit coin like a pump and dump penny stock, but are now on the wrong side of the hill.  Once they all go broke maybe the price will stabilize (or at least stop changing by25% in any given week) and we can have another try at using it as a currency like it was originally intended.

It's very simple.  When you make a bet and the Bitcoin transfer clears (2-3 days), logansryche will drive to the nearest Indian casino and put the money where you said.  If you win, he collects the winnings, converts them into Bitcoins, and sends them to you.  If he's smart, he'll take a small percentage (maybe 10%) to cover his expenses.

I don't see what's so hard about this.

I think the 21 million coin limit is a fatal flaw in Bitcoin, but luckily we won't reach it for a while.  So we still have a normal inflationary currency for now.

Hi!  I mined several Bitcoins back when the difficulty was much lower. 

I'm trying to hit my five post limit.  And how is my "please whitelist me" post in the White List Request thread a spam post?

I'm trying to make my five posts so I can get out of Newbie land and someone keeps deleting all my posts, even my very innocuous white list request.  What's going on??

This is why I try to only patronize established businesses with good reputations.