Why Bitcoin will never reach mainstream

[drwho88888]

Bitcoin will never reach the mainstream because there are far too many crooks, scammers, hackers and the like preying on everyone else aswell as each other. And because of the anonymity they are much less likely to be traced.

Unless the whole business has more accountability it will always remain underground and be treated with suspicion by mainstream consumers and businesses alike.

With difficulty reaching such high levels in a few months putting mining outside the realm of 99% of current miners I forsee the interest in BTC dieing out quite rapidly and the whole charade collapsing.

Dramatic, yes. Probable, yes.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Who died and made you president to speak such things?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

"Why Internet will never reach mainstream".

[desired_username]

People sometimes forget that life with "normal" currencies is full of crooks and scammers too.

It's human nature in action and it doesn't matter what field you're inspecting there will always be criminals who are after your wealth.

Anyone who get's scammed deserves it on some level because it means they were not careful enough.

[trashymonkey]

People say that about everything when its new. Television, internet, videogames, etc.


I myself have no idea where bitcoin is headed, Im not a fortune teller like OP

[tinus42]

"Why Internet will never reach mainstream".

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, Feb 26, 1995

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

[cr1776]

And why paper will never replace gold and silver in the 1800/1900s  :-)

"Why Internet will never reach mainstream".

[franky1]

im not even american yet i know the history of the wild west, all those bank robberies, train robberies etc that happened back in the days when gold mining was big.

what happened next was that people secured their possessions better and found different ways to make some income.

i agree that mining will drop from a thing 99% of people (in the community)will do, to something that under 10% of people will do, where the other 90% will move onto opening shops, offering services in exchange for bitcoins.

after all in most countries 1BTC right now is worth about 1.5 days at minimum wage. so those not earning a minimum wage, will find other methods of gathering atleast 1btc per day or two.

as long as we all work together to spot the scams, to keep them to a minimal then honest trading and business can flourish

[RapidCoinz]

Well said Frankie.  Bitcoin (or another digital currency) will imo go mainstream at some stage.  The way humans have traded/bartered/exchanged for goods and services over hundreds of years has snowballed and progressed. Digital currency is the next logical step in the evolution of mankind, we are half way there already.... it will take time, as these things do, but along with other influential factors such as distrust in those who control and manipulate the current financial environment, the 'mainstream' will adopt a new frontier in how they exchange value for goods and services.

[hayek]

Bitcoin will never reach the mainstream because there are far too many crooks, scammers, hackers and the like preying on everyone else aswell as each other. And because of the anonymity they are much less likely to be traced.

Whew, good thing cash doesn't have that problem 

Unless the whole business has more accountability it will always remain underground and be treated with suspicion by mainstream consumers and businesses alike.

Do you think Bitcoin is a business or are you talking about businesses that accept Bitcoin?

With regards to the latter - Oh No! The market will work and people will have to deal with the repercussions of their actions!?!?!?!?! THE HORROR

With difficulty reaching such high levels in a few months putting mining outside the realm of 99% of current miners I forsee the interest in BTC dieing out quite rapidly and the whole charade collapsing.

Dramatic, yes. Probable, yes.

Probable that you're just a douchey dumb guy, yes.

[Flashman]

1895 Heavier than air flight is scientifically impossible.
1948 There's a worldwide market for maybe 3 computers.
2013 "bitcoin will never reach mainstream"

[threeip]

And why paper will never replace gold and silver in the 1800/1900s  :-)

"Why Internet will never reach mainstream".

"Why USD will never"... aah, beat me to it!

[Rampion]

Bitcoin will never reach the mainstream because there are far too many crooks, scammers, hackers and the like preying on everyone else aswell as each other. And because of the anonymity they are much less likely to be traced.

You are mixing up bitcointalk.org with Bitcoin.

Dramatic, yes. Probable, yes.

Poorly executed piece of FUD, yes.

[petrjanda]

People aren't going to like what I'm going to say but it needs to be said regardless.

The only way bitcoin or any other alternative currencies will become mainstream is if enough infrastructure is built around it.

Person A sending bitcoins to person B (irreversibly) is simply not going to cut it. There is no inherent trust between both parties. We need 3rd party business (banks, insurers,lenders, exchanges etc) to build trust.

A lot of people around here hate banks, but they are important in the world of finance. They facilitate trust between parties.

ie. if i send $500 to a person and he doesn't deliver the product I bought. Thanks to irreversability of transactions, I'm fuckt.

But if the transaction is handled by a 3rd party, they should be able to get my money back.

Of course this system has faults, but economy is consumer driven. The producer is there to satisfy the consumer, not vice versa.

[elements]

Sound like a proposal for ripple. Lol!

[BittBurger]

I sometimes wonder if people realize they *are* the "grumpy old man" who said "it'll never work" that is routinely made fun of in nearly every history book, on every successful new trend in society?

How does it feel to be that miserable, weird, old grumpy man who still thinks the earth is flat as Columbus sails off into the distance?

That is you.  Right now.

I want to ask this question to every db ex high school football jock turned stock broker, mocking bitcoin on the stock trading websites right now.  And to the OP of this thread.

Be a forward thinker.  Not a stick in the mud.  

We need 3rd party business (banks, insurers,lenders, exchanges etc) to build trust.

This is already happening en masse.

So its not a problem.   Will be commonplace soon.

-Burger-

[DeathAndTaxes]

People aren't going to like what I'm going to say but it needs to be said regardless.
The only way bitcoin or any other alternative currencies will become mainstream is if enough infrastructure is built around it.

Person A sending bitcoins to person B (irreversibly) is simply not going to cut it. There is no inherent trust between both parties. We need 3rd party business (banks, insurers,lenders, exchanges etc) to build trust.

I doubt it.  I bought a $1,600 domain using namecheap and sent them irreversible funds by Bitcoin.  OH NOES was I worried, did I use a trusted bank as a third party?  Nope.  namecheap has a solid reputable business and they stand to lose a lot ripping me off.  I had not a second of doubt/fear sending them the BTC.

Imagine your local power company, amazon.com, newegg, namecheap, (insert company you already trust here) asked you to pay with Bitcoins would you have a problem?  I don't think most people would.

Now for fly by the night never heard of the "company" (which isn't even a real company) until they got out of noob jail and starting asking for tens of thousands of bitcoins in "pre-orders" well yeah you probably want to escrow that, then again if they asked for cash you probably would want to escrow it just the same.

[DrGregMulhauser]

I doubt it.  I bought a $1,600 domain using namecheap and sent them irreversible funds by Bitcoin.  OH NOES was I worried, did I use a trusted bank as a third party?  Nope.  namecheap has a solid reputable business and they stand to lose a lot ripping me off.  I had not a second of doubt/fear sending them the BTC.

Imagine your local power company, amazon.com, newegg, namecheap, (insert company you already trust here) asked you to pay with Bitcoins would you have a problem?  I don't think most people would.

Now for fly by the night never heard of the "company" (which isn't even a real company) until they got out of noob jail and starting asking for tens of thousands of bitcoins in "pre-orders" well yeah you probably want to escrow that, then again if they asked for cash you probably would want to escrow it just the same.

I couldn't agree more!

There's a significant chunk of the wider population out there who would be perfectly willing to try Bitcoin transactions with real, identifiable businesses and individuals -- i.e., non-anonymous entities. In my view, the Bitcoin community does itself a disservice with regard to promoting wider acceptance when it focuses on anonymity and its partial solutions created by the problems of anonymity. For example, when a new person with money to spend first encounters Bitcoin and gets told all about the WOT and how absolutely essential it is for conducting business safely with Bitcoin, what do you suppose that does to their confidence in Bitcoin as a currency? "You want me to trust a bunch of pseudonymous ratings of other pseudonymous user accounts? Are you kidding?" By contrast, when someone walks into a pub in London and pays for a round of pints with Bitcoins, nobody cares about the WOT, and your experience paying for a domain name is exactly analogous: far more confidence comes from dealing with a real, identifiable, non-anonymous entity that is subject to real laws and real liabilities than will ever come from any of the solutions so far proposed (WOT, etc.) to the problems created by anonymous transactions.

Don't get me wrong: I fully appreciate the option to conduct business anonymously, and I have no problem with that. But if we really want to encourage wider adoption, fixating on anonymity and how to remedy the problems that anonymity creates just won't cut it.

There's a separate thread called Is Focusing on Anonymity Over Privacy Holding Back Bitcoin? based on an article that tries to expand on this line of thought a bit.

[herzmeister]

"Anonymity" in Bitcoin is because it's just a software protocol; it's not a company that can verify identities.

Identity-verifying companies would have to live on top of Bitcoin.

That said, still, Bitcoin and crypto-currencies in general cannot and should not be overly regulated. There certainly is an ideology behind, and it is free speech.

Before, the dystopian scenario of a cashless society had always been that everything can be tracked, and that if you were an "unperson", the central computer would be able prevent you from buying and selling, thus locking you out of society.

However, now, as there exist crypto-currencies that function in a way that's abstracted from real-life identities and accounts, there are ways around this dystopic outlook.

[DrGregMulhauser]

"Anonymity" in Bitcoin is because it's just a software protocol; it's not a company that can verify identities.

Identity-verifying companies would have to live on top of Bitcoin.

Yes, to be sure the very limited degree of anonymity is there due to the way the software works, but my point is much less complex than suggesting that identity-verifying companies would have to live on top of Bitcoin: I'm suggesting only that many people are much more willing to spend money buying things from other people when they know who those people are, and when they're aware that those people are accountable to the law of the land. It seems to me that this is true whether we're talking about money in the form of Bitcoins, dollars, or herds of yaks.

And to the extent that we as a community make it seem like there's some inherent necessity to be anonymous in the Bitcoin world, we may be turning off that much broader set of potential users who just want to get some business done -- potential users who appreciate the many advantages Bitcoin has to offer but who either don't grok or simply don't want anonymous transactions for themselves.