What's your biggest problem with Bitcoin

[AtomicStrike]

As for me, I not see any big problems.

[gogxmagog]

The biggest problem with Bitcoin is its users

None of them has anything I want

Second biggest problem with Bitcoin is too difficult to mine

Needs crashing

[ThEmporium]

Though I agree with the safety part, I am still worried about the delay time in confirmation, if you explain me technically what is happening during the confirmation process it would be really benefit me and also to explain the naysayer critics regards to bitcoin digital currency values and merits.

[DumbFruit]

Though I agree with the safety part, I am still worried about the delay time in confirmation, if you explain me technically what is happening during the confirmation process it would be really benefit me and also to explain the naysayer critics regards to bitcoin digital currency values and merits.

The reason confirmation takes as long as it does is because the time between blocks is designed to average at about ten minutes each. Because finding a block is stochastic, this can vary widely, and can increase if hashpower on the network go down. It is good for confirmation times to be longer than absolutely necessary because it allows found blocks to propagate throughout the world before another block is found.
If another block is found before the previous block has fully saturated the network, then a fork occurs that is resolved as more blocks are found.
In the most extreme scenarios, when confirmation rates are too fast, forks never converge and disintegrate the network.
Even if this doesn't happen, blocks that are left on the dead forks represent wasted work, and so weakens the blockchain by requiring less work for reorganizations of the chain.

In other words, confirmation times are long in order to avoid waste and simultaneously improve the strength of the blockchain.

Confirmation times can be further lengthened if blocks are fully saturated and/or if a significant number of miners are configured to reject  your transaction for whatever reason. Usually the reason is the transaction fee is below the default minimum.

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[bitkokos2]

Suppose bitcoin is accepted everywhere,
what would happen if there is a blackout for hours or even days? You won't be able to pay/get paid etc.
What would happen if there is an internet connection problem in huge areas?
Bitcoin will paralyze.

Also, think what will happen if those people choose to pay with bitcoin.
They will have to wait for confirmations before they leave.

[deon]

I would like to see more ways to buy bitcoin.  I have used coinbase, I don't see anybody selling locally on localbitcoin.   

I don't know how this could be fixed though. 

[d4n13]

Conversion to Fiat and the regulation that comes with it.

At the end of the day, if a merchant is willing to swap product for BTC great... no problem.

Whenever a merchant wants to swap product for $ minted from BTC, then you eventually run into regulation.  Even if your are small enough not to be regulated yet (like BTC to gift cards), you will be regulated eventually, whereever $ are involved.

So either stay in BTC barter land, or go to law school.

[bitbaby]

The biggest problem or I should say annoyance is with the confirmations time some times (not always) but most of the exchanges or gambling sites require you to wait for atleast 1-3 confirmations before the funds are made available in your account and sometimes it takes more than 10 minutes for the first confirmation and might take upwards of 30-40 minutes for 3 and that wait can be really frustrating when you want to do a quick trade or make a quick bet.

[Xialla]

major problem is this:



Even I paid fee recommended by Electrum with default setup (so setup of average Joe), I'm now waiting over 80 minutes to get first confirmation. please start doing something with block size..this is simply madness.

edit: 90 minutes 8.4k unconfirmed TX

[d4n13]

Even I paid fee recommended by Electrum with default setup (so setup of average Joe), I'm now waiting over 80 minutes to get first confirmation. please start doing something with block size..this is simply madness.
edit: 90 minutes 8.4k unconfirmed TX

I'm toying with a proposal that I think might fix this type of issue.

https://github.com/d4n13/bips/blob/master/bip-00nn.mediawiki

Basically, you sweep your unconfirmed transactions to another address with a intentionally high TX fee.  This will incentivise your stale transactions.

[Kprawn]

Well, the majority of the replies are about confirmation times. I guess none of them use 3rd party services with instant off chain payment systems. {Xapo / AsMoney etc.}

I have a problem with NEW users being scammed and hacked, due to a lack of security on the 3rd party services they are using. I would want to see someone developing a cheap hardware Bitcoin wallet for entry level Bitcoin users. Something like the Trezor, but just a lot cheaper. {They should be able to buy it, at the price of a 16GB USB Flash Disk}

People should not adopt Bitcoin, just to be hacked within the first few days.   

[jaberwock]

major problem is this:



Even I paid fee recommended by Electrum with default setup (so setup of average Joe), I'm now waiting over 80 minutes to get first confirmation. please start doing something with block size..this is simply madness.

edit: 90 minutes 8.4k unconfirmed TX

Blame the people that are doing stress tests in BTC network almost on daily basis.

By the way, transaction spam and abuse of stress tests are inconvenient too, but I think that things improved because I don't see many people complaining about receiving dust spam transactions adverting some ponzi

[zecexe]

I think the biggest problem with bitcoin is :The bitcoin community has a communication problem.

[Amph]

the biggest problem for me is that after 6 years bitcoin has still a ridiculous market cap, and it is still to far away from being fully accepted, not to mention that many epople around the world don't even know what bitcoin easy

basically my main problem is the global awareness of bitcoin

[pooya87]

• lack of mass adoption, which comes with the fact that there is not enough places to spend your bitcoin.
• transaction confirmation time, which can take 5-15 minutes most of the time.
• price instability, this makes bitcoin and investment for profit (which is good) but it can not be considered as a currency.
• large number of unconfirmed transactions

We are a team of entrepreneurs and software developers that are going to spend the next following months-year on developing a new product.

care to explain more and introduce yourselves.

[Netnox]

I doesn't get advertised as much as it should be, put some posters, billboards in major cities, airports etc.

[el kaka22]

My biggest problem with bitcoin is also the confirmation time, the same as many others. Besides, when I first known bitcoin, it is known that bitcoin have no transaction fees which is am advantage over credit cards etc. However, for today's situation, transactions paying no or 1 satoshi as fee won't confirm or confirm after weeks (I've seen one of those tx confirmed after 3 weeks of waiting!). So transaction fee is also a problem.

[MUFC]

I think my main two issues are currently A) the price is volatile but usually goes in the opposite way we want it to (and being deflationary the value should rise over time) and B) I can't spend it at all the places I want to (but hopefully this will change over time).

[WhatTheGox]

Software development team here.
We would like to hear from the community what are the most annoying\frustrating stuff you have with Bitcoin and would love to get a solution for ?
Feel free to talk about any problem, even if it seems unsolvable or too abstract (e.g. Bitcoin is not safe enough for the average user)
Edit:
After reading all the replies, I feel confident summarizing that the #1 problem of Bitcoin is probably lack of adoption.
And the main reasons of lack of adoption are probably ease of use and insufficient security.
We are a team of entrepreneurs and software developers that are going to spend the next following months-year on developing a new product.
One of the most appealing markets for us is the Bitcoin market.
We will try to learn us much as possible from your replies and try to tackle the problems head on.

The single biggest problem with bitcoin is making it accessible and useable for any idiot.  Maybe the 2 problems overlap a little.

[SmartIphone]

Biggest problem with bitcoin is the long time the tx. need to be confirmed.