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[bitart]

Bitcoin is already mainstream. Big media platforms are writing articles about it. Also when you look the unconfirmed transactions, the amount increases every second. It passed PayPal's marketcap a couple of weeks ago. PayPal is quite mainstream, even my mother knows it.

Comparing the market cap in connection with Paypal is not the best method to decide if bitcoin is mainstream already or not. Maybe the market cap is already similar, but the number of processed transaction per second... Bitcoin is far away from Paypal's processing power, and really far away from VISA and MasterCard's processing power. We need some technical solution to increase the processed transactions, but the solution is on it's way years ago. Sooner or later we are going to have a solution, that will enable bitcoin to be mainstream.

[Dudeperfect]

There are some cities in which there is a growing number of merchants accepting Bitcoin as a payment in most of the countries but if we are talking about global scale, the current situation is not even near to the scenario where we can call Bitcoin a mainstream thing.

However, I am impressed with the growing number of merchants and ATMs supporting Bitcoin because down the road, it will spread in the rest areas in most of the countries. Even though we don't have a Bitcoin-friendly market environment as of now, I am sure we will have a good picture in next 5 to 10 years.

5 to 10 years is a good range of time for bitcoin to have a good environment and friendly government because as you can see that the bitcoin is not acceptable until now but if the bitcoin will have good records and progress in the next 5 to 10 years then i think that it will be enough for the government to become positive about bitcoin and fully accept it.

Not only the government decisions but media attention and positive coverage, mouth publicity, existing exchanges & merchants are collectively putting the efforts to build a positive perception about Bitcoin but still, it will take some time to inculcate the awareness of the various aspects of the cryptocurrencies. That's why I think that the time span of 5 to 10 years is an ideal period to see the results of current efforts on a global scale.

[G2z_Riya]

Bitcoin to be similar to mainstream currency is not possible in the short or within few years time. The growth that has been happening with bitcoin is much bigger, but the capital volume is not that similar to the conventional currency. So being mainstream is not gonna happen.

[iv4n]

Last night on one national television in my country Serbia had reportage "Life in bitcoin mine". First I was surprised, I didn't expect to see anything about bitcoins while I was searching something to watch, and surely I didn't expect to see something about bitcoins on national channel.
I believe this is a good step forward, one television already started advertising bitcoin, in my country many older people are watching national televisions and now awareness of crypto currencies are slowly coming in my country too. Bitcoin is already mainstream in some countries, in mine that is in beginning. Soon bitcoin will be mainstream in all world.

[jc89]

How much closer is Bitcoin to being mainstream, and how do you gauge that?  I noticed more ATMs in recent years, but other that haven't seen too many other signs.

We can't really gauge how closer btc is to being mainstream. Though we think that more people are now aware of it, we're still not yet reaching the 5% of the population. And with that then it's safe to assume that it is very far from being mainstream. I think this is due to the fact that even people heard of btc they have no idea how it works. Mostly (if not all), tech inclined people are the ones who have the more understanding and have the initiatives to study cryptocurrency. There are more people who tends to steer away from things they don't understand simply because they don't want complications especially if they are busy working on their day jobs.

[audaciousbeing]

How much closer is Bitcoin to being mainstream, and how do you gauge that?  I noticed more ATMs in recent years, but other that haven't seen too many other signs.

With all sincerity, bitcoin is still far from getting to the mainstream but the attention is gradually. Hopefully in the next ten years, we might get there and if things are being fast tracked with the level of work being done, we might get there faster but the challenges are equally there and one thing is see posing a threat is the several forks and that is an issue of consideration.

The confusion is not about the people already involved who knows when the fork happened but the people that will be coming in the next 5 year. A lot of this forks are claiming to be the real vision of the founder and the question is, what is that vision. This will go a long way in creating a confusion in the minds of authorities and multi nationals on which one exactly to adopt.

[dificanovi]

I think it's also like that, it takes a long time for bitcoin to be mainstream, not so easy to do such thing. if the bitcoin is already mainstream it will support the rising bitcoin price.

[Chyton]

Well Bitcoin is far far from being mainstream, I think we will have to wait at least 10 to 20 years before Bitcoin go mainstream.
But I do think that other cryptocurrency is going to be mainstream faster than Bitcoin, since Bitcoin technology is clearly outdated by other coins today.

[MaryCris]

Bitcoin is already mainstream. Information about it is already out on big media platforms. The volume of people who knows about it is increasing as much as how the value of cryptocurrency is rising. It is already an acknowledge form of online payment globally.

[defianttaxi]

How much closer is Bitcoin to being mainstream, and how do you gauge that?  I noticed more ATMs in recent years, but other that haven't seen too many other signs.

I would say that bitcoin is already very mainstream,  as there are atm's,  and it's accepted some places.  It's discussed on social media like the platform we're using right now and all.