My first reaction was disapointment that it's main advocates are Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists. I feel that their loudness and dominance in the community is actually a small factor in why it wasn't adopted further. Ideologues certainly make me distrustful of concepts. I now don't see bitcoin itself as particuarly useful as a currency largely due to a long list of limitations that prevent widespread currency use in the daily lives of millions, but I have drafted some fixes for it based on equating coins per block to difficulty and throwing in a bit of moore's law.
The mathematics of it would be something I would be discussing were it not for this newbie time.
Limitations for those who haven't learned of them yet:
- Excessive rewards to early adopters looks like a pump and dump (and some will accuse it of actually being a pump and dump)
- Deflation rate is so large that spending effectively halts
- Above two factors mean people are treating it as an investment, not a currency
- The huge network currently existing can barely handle more than 10 transactions per second
There is of course more, but really these are the main issues between Bitcoin and becoming a widespread currency.
