What do you think are the biggest disadvantages of Bitcoin?

[Fappanu]

It needs time and improvement, for bitcoin to become a mainstream payment system and most of us believed that it is only a matter of time before this happens .

These are the reasons I can think of why most especially large companies still won't accept bitcoin as a payment method:

1). Pseudonymous, It will be hard to trace the person behind a transaction .
2). Its past involvement with illegal activities (ex. Silk road )
3). Has a potential to be use and still being used for illegal activities .
4). Confirmation time getting slow and slow
5). No one controls it

Here's my two cents,
I  agree with no. 1, 2 and 4 because all of these three is true and needs to be develop.
But no. 3 and 5 is not.
No. 3 No one can prevent it as bitcoin is an online. You will not know what hackers can do.
No. 5 of course no one can control it because it is built to be decentralized for nobody can manipulate the system.

[bc-eman]

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved

Some real and/or imagined roadblocks to adoption:

• bitcoin (and the notion of crypto currencies in general) is unfamiliar to many (see Technology Adoption Life Cycle)
• the bitcoin price is volatile
• government requirements are not clear
• user is responsible for knowing how to secure their wallet
• reports of scams
• commercial services and products using bitcoin are still in early stages

[snowcrashed]

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved

I think the biggest disadvantage of Bitcoin for now is that the very big fees of every single transaction that people need to pay at least 1$ for any amount of Bitcoin, even if 0.001 BTC or 0.0001 BTC

[thecomodo]

The biggest issue would be the incompatibility with the financial system which are overly watched and observed, the fact that not every bitcoin address is linked to someone's name and identity make it hard for regulated financial institutions to use bitcoin as a currency

[Fatanut]

The biggest issue would be the incompatibility with the financial system which are overly watched and observed, the fact that not every bitcoin address is linked to someone's name and identity make it hard for regulated financial institutions to use bitcoin as a currency

But that's just the point of bitcoin, not getting taken over by a financial institution. Bitcoin should not be regulated and we should all remain anonymous here. The essence of bitcoin will quickly die when the banks take over it. It's a good thing that they can't do it by making up new laws. They would have to buy the majority of the coins in order to have control which might not even be enough to have power over other bitcoin users.

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved

I think the biggest disadvantage of Bitcoin for now is that the very big fees of every single transaction that people need to pay at least 1$ for any amount of Bitcoin, even if 0.001 BTC or 0.0001 BTC

But on a much happier thought people that are transacting a high amount of money only has to pay the same transaction fee. Bitcoin is just outpriced for poor people, honestly. Even the transaction fees.

[cloud69]

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved

Currently? High transaction fees. Also, usability for older people. What if they lost their mobile wallet? forgot where they kept their recovery phrases?

[thisappointed]

The biggest disadvantage of bitcoin for me is the way it transacts payments because now it is very slow and that is the biggest disadvantage because one of the most well known feature of bitcoin is being fast in transaction but now it is getting hours to get confirmation from a transaction so I think it needed to be fix by the developer.

[Mia Wallace]

The fees, the speed and some online wallets and exchanges bad practices.

Never use online wallets when you could save your coins with a hardware wallet or a light weight client which can be installed in your laptop,you must take full control of your assets and that is the primary reason for using bitcoin rather than trusting a third party.Transaction fees and delays are the biggest disadvantages of bitcoin for now.

[virtualdn]

Right now the biggest disadvantages are: high fees, low transaction speed and the fact that changing fiat into BTC and vice-versa is still pretty complicated and requires lots of approvals/verifications.

[UCHCHILD]

I guess the biggest is the long waiting for transaction because of the volume of users and blocks that makes transactions slower and the fee that requires to make it fast. The fee is so unreasonable in my part, actually it is okay to pay fee but not too much sometime it is hard to send small amount coin to a friend because of the high fee requirements.
I hope you can solve it when you make it on your own.

[stompix]

There so many benefits of using bitcoin. It is very convenient for online transactions, it can be earn online, it can be used to invest or to trade in exchange of a good profit, it can be stored in an online wallet more secured than having it in cash and etc. Bitcoin is really useful and is going to more useful in the future.

For me, the biggest disadvantage of bitcoin is that it can used anonymously.  I know how convenient it is to perform transactions over the internet but I believe that because of that many illegal transactions can be done. Tracing the people behind those illegal transactions would be harder since it had took place anonymously. No personal information have been exchanged in the messages because what they only need is the wallet address to perform such acts.

There's this new coin called Potcoin and it's being promoted by Dennis Rodman. It seems like a solid project since a lot of people are supporting marijuana. The whole point of the coin is to serve as a bank for the cannabis industry. The anonymity privilege will surely be heavily used in there.

Even when that becomes a success, I really doubt that the amount of illegal transactions going on in bitcoins and in potcoin will ever surpass the amount of illegal transactions going on in the real world with payments in terms of cash. AFAIK, cash even gives you better anonymity since it doesn't have any public ledger unlike bitcoins.

And there is a special place in hell for people that promote shitcoins in the bitcoin only part of the forum.
Take your pot and your coin and go straight to the alt forum.

And before you go, the idea of a coin serving as a bank for anything in this world is stupid.
Just think twice about the logic of it?
Do you go to your bank to exchange usd for toiletcoin when you buy toilet paper?

Right now the biggest disadvantages are: high fees, low transaction speed and the fact that changing fiat into BTC and vice-versa is still pretty complicated and requires lots of approvals/verifications.

The last part is not the fault of bitcoin.
It's mostly the exchange/banks/laws that are in place.

BTC<>BTC transactions don't require verification.

[lionheart78]

I believe one of the biggest disadvantage of Bitcoin is being decentralize and the need of consensus to implement fix, updates and more.  This delay bitcoin development since it needs consensus and approval of major population of bitcoin community.  Aside from that I cannot see any more disadvantage of Bitcoin.

[Prodigan786]

At present the biggest disadvantage is transaction charge eve for small transaction it's really not acceptable . There is no chances of micro transaction now a days

[dothebeats]

The biggest right now would be the transaction fees since it's quite a lot compared to what Visa and Paypal has for every transaction that we make on their platforms. 76k satoshis or almost $2 is already a large sum if you are going to just send a few dollars that should be confirmed within the next block. That's quite awful and too much, literally killing the concept of bitcoin as the king of micro-transactions.

[skorupi17]

What's preventing Bitcoins from being accepted as mainstream payment forms? I'm working on a new blockchain and would like to learn what drawbacks of Bitcoin urgently need to be improved

The major problem here is the time it takes to confirm a transaction. Transaction confirmation has been a pain for some people. Some waits for days just to see their transaction confirmed. Some even uses a third party just to boost the confirmation process but with a price of additional fees. And since the transaction with higher fee are prioritized by miners, another problem arises which is the very high transaction fees. This should be resolved immediately.

[Zicadis]

IMHO the biggest disadvantages of Bitcoin is the tx waiting times and high transaction fees am sure other problems other than these will be easier
to fix after the planned fork

[wahb]

I believe one of the biggest disadvantage of Bitcoin is being decentralize and the need of consensus to implement fix, updates and more.  This delay bitcoin development since it needs consensus and approval of major population of bitcoin community.  Aside from that I cannot see any more disadvantage of Bitcoin.

everyone has their own choice but to me it is one of the most big advantage that bitcoin is decentralize, it is the best  property of bitcoin that bitcoin is not restricted to some area but one can use it anywhere in the world without changing it in to any other currency, because bitcoin is a decentralize currency and its value is the same throughout the world, we can use it in any corner of the world and we do not need to convert it in to the local currency of the country where we are doing shopping etc.

[btc_angela]

IMHO the biggest disadvantages of Bitcoin is the tx waiting times and high transaction fees am sure other problems other than these will be easier
to fix after the planned fork

I totally agree. The high transaction fees really put a pressure on bitcoin users to find alternatives specially in doing small payments. I think the design was flawed from the very beginning on bitcoin. Although I assume that Satosh didn't though about that his invention will surge like this in the future that is why he pegged the block size to 1 MB only.

[Hutalar]

The fees, the speed and some online wallets and exchanges bad practices.

You are right that for some people the fees is a problem nowadays especially for hose people who have to transact smaller amount of bitcoins but I hope hat it will be solved sooner. And for he online wallets and exchanges I will say that we have to join only those web wallets and exchanges which will be more trusted in the community and which will have positive reviews by the community .

[stompix]

IMHO the biggest disadvantages of Bitcoin is the tx waiting times and high transaction fees am sure other problems other than these will be easier
to fix after the planned fork

I totally agree. The high transaction fees really put a pressure on bitcoin users to find alternatives specially in doing small payments. I think the design was flawed from the very beginning on bitcoin. Although I assume that Satosh didn't though about that his invention will surge like this in the future that is why he pegged the block size to 1 MB only.

How many times have the people said that the block and the confirmation time were not set in stone by Satoshi ?
Bitcoin was designed to be not only scalable but also improved.
There are a numbers of ways that the tx problems was supposed to be solved and this was discussed from a long time ago but it seems that the ego of a few morons is more important that thousand of users.