z

[znort987]

z

[hobogo]

People stop using drugs and heavy artillery 

[Timo Y]

Bitcoin grows too fast. 

[markm]

Of the options provided, becoming a store of value seems the most likely, however i would not consider that a fail, because as a store of value it would also, in my imagination, be a currency just kind of a different 'tier' of currency.

Of course I would not want to clutter up the Bitcoin blockchain with tiny transactions well within what I can afford to pay from my bitNicKeL pocket/purse, heck I would not even bother the Martians with such trivia by using Martian BotCoins instead of pocket change.

But come the day I have enough MBC to stash away that they could buy a whole Bitcoin, heck yeah I'd like to pick up another BiTCoin to enhance the family fortune, maybe even use that as collateral to pick up a nice income property...

-MarkM-

[carlerha]

I think you need to add "a new system emerges", ie. not one that is necessarily better than Bitcoin inherently, but more practical and appealing to law abiding citizens (I'm thinking Google mobile payments and the like)

[BkkCoins]

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

[Sannyasi]

lack of interest is what all the other ones lead to

[Lupus_Yonderboy]

Bitcoin becomes hopelessly tied to extremist ideaologies that are rejected by a majority of people. The only people to adopt it are extremists, scam artists, and those trying to make a quick profit off of the fringe types. Bitcoin officialy becomes the "currency of teh crazy." Widespread adoption fails.

[Trader Steve]

Bitcoin could fail if governments stop interfering with mutually voluntary transactions:

http://economicsandliberty.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/bitcoin-a-new-commodity-created-to-serve-market-demand/

Not likely to happen though...

[Rassah]

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

[phillipsjk]

None of the above.

Two of my expected bitcoin failure modes are listed, but not the one I think is most likely: we will learn how insecure the average computer really is. Until now, they was no direct way to steal money from somebody's equipment.

Aside: I have noticed that over the past few years, the big computer companies don't sell computers anymore: they sell "solutions". "Computer" has become synonymous with "machine running Ms Windows" with all of the extra hardware that implies.

[bitplane]

Someone with loads of coins continually cashes out and keeps the BTC worth pennies until long after everyone has lost interest in the project.

[BkkCoins]

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

That's right - no one runs around buying/selling stuff with those either today.

[cunicula]

People are apparently most worried about bitcoin a) being perceived as useless b) being overtaken by a competitor.

Interesting that exploits are less of a concern. Given the user composition of this forum vis-a-vis
the likely composition of people who may adopt bitcoin soon, I would expect the exploits categories to be over-represented
and the useless/competition categories to be underrepresented.

Perhaps uselessness and competition are the big issues.

[Rassah]

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

That's right - no one runs around buying/selling stuff with those either today.

Though I wouldn't call gold, silver, or stock a "failure"

[Tasty Champa]

Journalists that keep wanting to buy in, using their pull to disrupt the prices by making things up so the price goes down. They see it as wallstreet 2.0 and the only sure way they know how to fuck with it is through disturbing things.

It's like we have to just stop everything for a few days just to let them numbskulls in.

[giszmo]

network take over ...

yeah sorry I know most people here think that is impossible but I'm pretty sure that with 2M$ at hands, I could do that.

[Litt]

Disinformation. Because we let the current media outlets do the talking for us when we have the power of the internet.

[Jaagu]

Wrong paradigm. Instead of assuming the death of bitcoin (in one or another form) one should ask of how fast and furious shall bitcoin’s success be. Look at those charts: total number of nodes, total number of google searches, total network hashing rate.
Now extrapolate them to the future. It is encouraging, isn’t?

[Timo Y]

None of the above.

Two of my expected bitcoin failure modes are listed, but not the one I think is most likely: we will learn how insecure the average computer really is. Until now, they was no direct way to steal money from somebody's equipment.

People are already working on a client that splits the private key between a secure server and your computer.
Other people are working on secure liveCDs.

This won't be an issue long term. Hardly anyone is going to store a wallet.dat file on their windows machine 1 year from now.