I'd still say its more about convenience than anything.

Most people earn money in FIAT, so its more convenient to pay for goods in it than having to convert to a different format first.

And even for those who already hold Bitcoin, it simply cannot compete with the speed of transaction of a debit card, especially a contactless debit card which takes literally 1 second at the till to pay for your goods.

If at some point Bitcoin can do that, if I can have a plastic card that I just wave over a reader (or wave phone over reader doing it contactless that way) then boom, finally FIAT has some real competition in buying goods.

I have mixed feelings about Bitcoin these days. Was soo into it when I first heard about it.  But now for me its more about blockchain technology in general. 
Bitcoin is the godfather, but its also like a first draft, that needs constant revisions and addons to sustain in long term.  It's more sensible then to create a better blockchain system from the ground up, one that is more decentralised, uses less electricity as it scales up and has much faster transaction confirmation times.

An elegant system from the ground up to maximise blockchains potential rather than one with all its parts being constantly changed over time just sounds like a better system to me. But as Bitcoin has so much support and backing no-ones gonna want to see it die yet.

These are interesting times indeed.

I voted $1000 but I reckon it'll probably be closer to 2-3K.  I can't see it being $10,000 yet, and if it was then that would be down to some hyperinflation in FIAT, which would be a scary time.

Faucets really are an utter waste of time.  The time spent collection individual satoshi from faucets, you could have done an online survey-for-bitcoins. Even if you get rejected from 9/10 surveys and the survey takes half an hour to complete, you'd still of earned 1000x more than from faucets.
Also faucets generate a lot of dust which when built up becomes a nightmare if you ever wanna spend some of it as it'll all have to be consolidated first (one of the drawbacks of crypto currency sadly), and consolidating all those minuscule transactions will most likely require a significant fee to entice the miners to process it.

My advice, if you're looking to slowly generate fractions of bitcoins without actually spending FIAT to buy some, check out the websites where you either have to perform work tasks or fill in surveys, way better than faucet sites.

I don't think that the Criminal aspect has anything to do with Bitcoin not being widely used.

It really boils down to 3 things

1) Most people still aren't really aware of it because...
2) It's still not widely adopted by retailers and...
3) It still can't compete with the speed and ease of use of a contactless debit card.

Simple example. I go do my weekly grocery shopping, at the checkout, go to pay, I insert my debit card in slot, 2 seconds later asks for pin, punch that in, another 2 seconds at the very most, pin confirmed transaction sent, pull card out, thats it, boom, done, so easy.  The only thing the consumer has to remember is a 4 digit number, and its the same number each time, no faffing around with Bitcoin addresses having to type in the amount of money to send etc.

Or if its a small purchase, or using public transport like London Underground, contactless, wave the card, boom, done, practically instant.

I was a really strong supporter of Bitcoin to begin with, and still think Crypto currency has a lot of benefits, but it just can't compete with ease of use with the present day Debit Card for normal every day transactions, at least not yet.

I'd be curious to hear from those earning an income with Bitcoin for a profession other than trading etc. Like creative types that charge Bitcoin instead of the usual FIAT for their work, and how they've been getting on doing it that way.

I started out using faucets, but when I worked out how much time was being invested relative to the return I got I quickly realised its a complete and utter waste of time.

If you want to generate bitcoins without buying any, you're far better off using sites where you have to complete specific tasks, like CoinWorker or BitCoinGet. That's a better way to fill those moments of spare time between doing other things. This is orders of magnitude greater return than simple faucets, though relative to a normal job is still very low wage.

So really the best way of generating maximum bitcoin is investing your time towards something productive that generates FIAT, which you then use to buy Bitcoin with. Either that or accept Bitcoin as payment for specific work that you offer the public.

This argument that faucets are worth it even today because 1BTC will be worth a million dollars, might as well tell yourself you're going to win the lottery. If you always think with such odds you'll be broke for life.  IT's the time that is PRECIOUS, use it wisely.

Bits gets my vote, simple catchy, leaves 2 decimal points in the existing system and enough scope for growth. Even if a rise in the value of Bitcoin is slow, its still fine, plenty of currencies around the world deal in higher figures. Just think back to Italy before they had the euro with 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 Lira notes.

As a side note, the Blockchain app in Chrome browser has stopped working for me just today, gave up an error notice, i felt uncomfortable entering my password to try to login as it was giving an error just by clicking on the app.

Some official word from Blockchain would be nice.

Sounds like I dont need to change the passwords then, great!

Yup, just like the guy that bought a pizza for 1000 BTC prob thought he was lucky to get that deal at the time.  Every sudden peak in the charts of Bitcoins life so far has been followed by a fall, then a long lull, slow buildup to then another 10x higher peak.  That's not to say this behaviour is guaranteed forever and we're going to see $1million Bitcoin valuation (something I don't believe in), but I really wouldn't worry about the current price, at all.

Can anyone confirm whether Blockchain.info website was affected and whether passwords for that site need changing?

When I buy goods in the uk that cost less than a pound, I don't think to myself how irritating, that's like 0.18 pounds, I think to myself oh, that's 18 pence, because there's one hundred pence in a pound.

And this is someone that everyone in every country has become accustomed too. The OP is arguing that most people can't distinguish something that they already do distinguish with existing fiat currencies!

People never heard of Cyprus!?!?, where are these masses you speak of, the 'MURICA bible belt?

I sincerely hope its never worth 1 million, because that will mean that hyper-inflation is in full effect and the worlds facing a massive financial meltdown.

lol, you're the deluded one by diminishing the impact of piracy,which costs the music books tv and film industry a combined loss of well over a quarter of a billion in lost revenue each year. If it was possible to put a end to torrents , they would have done it by now. No different for cryptos, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

I urge everyone not to read just the short version copy and paste in the second post in this thread but the full length article on the wired website, really fascinating read.

Good video, but sadly a lot of the gold bugs that enjoy watching such videos are fiercely against Bitcoin, which I personally have never understood as I love both gold AND bitcoin, they both have their strengths in this modern internet wireless age.

I don't get it, someone made a password recovery request pretending to be you, anyone can do this, with any website, anywhere. So Coinbase shouldn't offer password recovery? As long as they don't also control your email account whats the problem?

Meanwhile back in the real world, people have been drumming up ideas and inventions since the dawn of time and a lot of them probably felt what they had created would change the world. Very very few of them actually do, and you only know they do... when it actually happens. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we just don't have time machines yet.