What is the single biggest problem facing Bitcoins at this moment?

[lysol]

Adoption rates suffer because the stigma over the currency are that its users are a large a bunch of government-hating paranoiacs, view it as a ponzi scheme, etc. At least when I talk to other people. If the price volatility settles and other ebay/craigslist/etc clones start becoming widely used, then adoption will increase.  Especially if good deals can be had.

This could be done via promotion from bitcoin.org, for starters. This is always going to be the central starting point for people searching for just exactly what it is.

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[AndGui]

My biggest pet peeve is the never ending dramatic price fluctuation. The moment it can stabilize with a +/- $3 USD value per BTC, I'd be incredibly happy.

[Shad3dOne]

The biggest problem facing BTC right now is... 
1. That it's relatively new and...
2. It has very limited market acceptance.

As with all things new, most people mistrust, don't understand, and may be down right scared of it. This leads directly into the limited marketplace problem.

-Shad3d

[duckfeet]

Difficulty in obtaining them. 

Lack of use by any one large sub-culture.  If even the 'black market' were to use them consistently, like Silk Road, this would ensure their continuing value.  If SR survives, so will BTC.  It's just too tempting, for buyer and seller, and this makes for good commerce.

[Electrongolf]

The single biggest problem facing Bitcoin is widespread acceptance as an exchange for goods and services.

[helo]

Since currently the wallet is not encrypted, if someone steals a computer or if a hacker gets access to a machine; they can copy the wallet, then spend the wallet immediately.  Encrypting the wallet is a step in the right direction, and it gives you protection against theft of the computer and a hacker who has only has intermittent access to the computer.  However, even that is not enough because if a hacker gets continuous read access to your computer they can wait until you decrypt your wallet to run bitcoin and copy the wallet at that moment.

In my opinion, having bitcoin read and write to an encrypted wallet is the single biggest improvement that could be made at this time.  Even reading and writing to an encrypted wallet would not stop a hacker who has continuous read access and a keylogger, however it would protect from theft and from a hacker who only has file read access.

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Security is always about building several perimeters of defense. Of course the encryption of wallet.dat does not solve all problems, but it does add one level of difficulty for the attacker. People do not usually create passwordless GPG keys, why would one do differently when currency is involved? Also having separate encryption keys for different accounts in your wallet would be another way to even further complicate an attacker's job. The bitcoin client definitely needs some of these features badly.

As for the main post, I vote #1 and #2 to start with..

[qwk]

The single biggest problem for bitcoins:

It looks and feels like a ponzi scheme. It is not, but it appears to many to be one.

So why is that a problem after all?
Just imagine a situation where (after another media hype, for example) a lot of people with limited to zero understanding of what they are doing try to make some easy money because "in the media they said, if you invest in bitcoins, you're gonna be rich!". Sure enough, those people will lose a lot of their hard earned money in no time at all. So, what are they gonna do? Just accept it? I doubt that. They will run for their mommies (i.e. lawyers) and try to fight that money back.

And those mommies will be after _YOU_, they guy who actually just was lucky / smart enough to be into it early.

Imagine the first headlines saying "bitcoin gazillionaire arrested and sentenced to 150 year in prison for an 'extraordinarily evil, multibillion-dollar scam that victimized charities, celebrities, pension funds and average investors worldwide'" (citation from some newspaper about the Madoff-sentence).

Do you think trust in bitcoin will ever return after that? Traders won't trade it, shops won't accept it, regular guys won't even want to have it on their computers.

So... the single biggest problem for bitcoins in a nutshell: losers with lawyers.