Bitcoin won't ever become Mainstream. It's just a Prototype.

[S4VV4S]

Is it either because many of you are too naive, or too stupid to understand the nature of Bitcoin. It's an anonymous virtual currency that's quite impractical and instable. As shown just this month with Mt.Gox, it's price ]fell what, 30% in one day? I love how many of you are so against regulation, but without regulation is when there's a real problem. Illegal drug trafficking sites such as Silk Road made millions off people buying drugs through Bitcoin. There needs/will be regulation of a cryptocurrency in the future. The reason why the feds haven't bothered to regulate Bitcoin much in the USA, or completely ban it in other countries is because of it's price fluctuations, high transaction times, and high energy output to mine, which they know that after a while people will Move on to another more effiencet, more practical for daily use cryptocurrency . They know that in the future, a new cryptocurrency without all the flaws of Bitcoin will emerge, and WILL become mainstream which Bitcoin hasn't, still 5 years after it's release and never will become. Once that happens you can expect regulation no matter how "anonymous" you think it is. Bitcoin reminds me of a Prototype, when it's just being tested by people but not the real deal. Also, maybe like Myspace, as it will get dethrowned(even as it claims to be king with its burger king crown) by a cryptocurrency that'll break through to the general population.

Just giving you all naive suckers a heads up.

Pce.

Wait, you bash Bitcoin, but you have a bitcoin tip address in your signature.

So what does having a Bitcoin tip address in my signature have to with anything? I can have " I love Putin" Sign on my car, does that mean I love Putin? No, it could be sarcasm, someone else could of put it there and I haven't bothered to take it off, or better yet I realized Putin's flaws and decided to turn against him. There could be multitude of reasons as to why I have a bitcoin tip address in my signature.

Putin has no flaws you idiot.
He is the best thing that ever happened for Russia.
Which is exactly the opposite that I can say for all the rest of the presidents including the one in my own home country.

[harkonnen]

I don't think he's a troll, he's just a newbie, possibly young. Maybe a goon or someone who learned about Bitcoin from 4chan, but he's using his legit name and quite possibly doesn't really understand Bitcoin yet. Maybe we should be linking to one of Andreas's videos.

After all he's selling domains for BTC. More info here as well.

One of the domains even confirms the Registrant Name as being what his username suggests.

I think it's possible we just need to set up a better Bitcoin FAQ to answer some of these common questions so we can link to it.

Remember that newbies can sometimes be indistinguishable from trolls.

I loled so hard at goon who learned about Bitcoin from 4chan. Yes I'm 18 but I still don't see how transaction times of 10minutes, along with high energy output from GPU's, would appeal to the general public to start adopting bitcoin

Kid, take advice from an old man. I've been studying computer longer than your life.
I remember days of pre-Google/Facebook, pre-WWW, pre-email, pre-internet, pre-GUI, pre-mouse, pre-color monitor, pre-harddisk, and pre-computer. Each technology was revolutionary and disruptive. When I see the bitcoin, I see 1993 all over again, that's pre-WWW.

Don't jump to conclusion too quickly. This is life lesson you should remember always.

[howardb]

There are too many trust issues with Bitcoin. Especially since we need to trust exchanges and the people who accept and use bitcoin.

OMG Why on earth are you even here if you truly believe that?? Just a professional troll...

[harkonnen]

Not to mention you can't compare the Internet to Bitcoin..If you do research, you'd know Bitcoin wasn't the first virtual currency ever created, but the most successful thus far, at least in the tech and illegal community but not general public, especially because it's decentralized and anonymous(Perfect for Drug Dealers).

LOL, kid.
If you do research, Internet, too, wasn't first network ever created, but the most successful thus far! Do you know why? I will leave it for your homework. And do you even know what 'Internet' stands for?
When internet became more popular there were resistance worrying about illegal activities. Today, it's hardly an argument. When mp3 became popular, many companies hated it because media streaming is evil. Today only fools think it still is.
 
Please be informed that bitcoin is NOT anonymous, but pseudonymous. Please read some bitcoin wikis at

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Introduction

You argue bitcoin attracts criminals due to anonymity, but it's complete false. Bitcoin is actually easier to track and trace than cash and/or gold. Bitcoin is open ledger that anyone can track any transaction any time. Of course, you just can't make connection between bitcoin address and the owner. But that's not a problem. Just follow the blockchain, and at the end, the transaction is connected to some physical properties and/or services. Then you can connect last dots to an entity. And there are hundreds years worth of tools, laws, regulations, methods, skills, experience, and know-how to trace back to the owner.
It's like saying WWW is not safe for children because it attracts porn industry. Did you know that porn industry was the first one to embrace WWW, flash, online payment, and other new inventions?

One of other arguments was about being mainstream. But guess what? Less than 20% of world population has a bank account. I guess banking system as we know it is not really mainstream then.

[profitofthegods]

TCP/IP will never go mainstream.  It is just a prototype.  The idea that a protocol that was state of the art in the 1970s will be used by billions of people in the 2010s is just stupid.  By 1979 the internet hadn't become mainstream so obviously it was never going to happen.  Something more efficient than the internet will come along and we will use that instead.  

So you want to go that road huh? Compare Bitcoin to any other successfull sites since the year 200. I could name Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Spotify, the list goes on etc etc and want to know what all those sites have in common? They became successfull within a very short time and Mainstream. Bitcoin is supposed to be this new, next generation, of money handling, but has is a very long way off being adopted by the general public, who aren't programmers and tech guys. It's simply never going to get any higher in terms of popularity, too many flaws.

Bitcoin isn't a website, it is a protocol.   Facebook, myspace, and twitter are still running on the flawed and ancient protocol that was around at the start of the internet.  

The internet circa 1969


The internet circa 1977


That is right it took almost a decade to build it out to just a couple dozen nodes.

The internet circa 2000
http://mountpeaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/1069646562-lgl-2d-4096x40962.png

Its true that there is a difference between sites and protocols, and that a protocol is usually much harder to change, but I don't think Bitcoin is any more like TCP/IP than like a website. Its easy for people to change the websites they use because any individual can change any time they want without any problem, whereas an individual website can't change the protocol they use - either everyone agrees to change or nobody does with something like that. Something like a digital currency is halfway between the two really, because there is an ecosystem of services which re-enforces the status-quo, but at the same time any individual merchant can switch to a different payment protocol or currency (of which there are already tonnes to choose between) any time they want and its not really a big deal for people to still be able to use the service. In a way Bitcoin is probably closer to the website example than the TCP/IP example in actual practice.

[spazzdla]

Just like the internet will only be used by geeks.

[Nxtblg]

Let's be honest, TCP/IP shouldn't be what we use. Since the government held a monopoly on the early Internet for the first half of the Internet's existence they got to embed whatever they thought worked best instead of what actually worked best.

Believe it or not, that probably helped development. If people discover a tech that's logically flawless and a stroke of pure genius, they'll get awestruck and fall into an echo-chamber where the development is confined to hermeneutics. Kinda like the clonecoin scene...

Having a starting tech that's kinda clunky means crowdsourcing kicks in. People see the clunk, think of improvements, get their hand dirty and ignite a chain of innovations that grow the tech into something that none of the pioneers even thought possible.

Fact is, disruptive technologies that make an impact on the world are usually nursed by bleedin' amateurs or pros from a different county (so to speak.) The old "enginer" of the early railways days was somewhere between a skilled mechaninc and a sure-hand do-it-yourselfer. Real engineering came in later. Kinda like the PC...

Now, I'm not trying to deny Satoshi Nakamoto's genius: we all know that the blockchain is historic. But the fact that his original code was kind-of obscure meant that the early devs had something they could really get their hands into wrt improving it. Its very obscurities proved to be the kernel that got Bitcoin on the innovation train.