What do businesses and customers actually need from digital currency?

[repentance]

Tradehill and MtGox should both take cash directly via local banks like exchangebitcoins.com does.  Dwolla should be discouraged for any transactions- it only exacerbates the problems with value fluctuations because it is so incredibly time-consuming and inefficient.

What kills a business is lack of CASH FLOW.  If you can't define this term, don't make any smart-ass comments on my post because you don't "get it".

TradeHill and MtGox have both run into problems with trying to accept cash deposits through local banks - TradeHill in Australia and MtGox in France.  Australia has a banking system which transfers funds rapidly but it has very tight AML and counter-terrorism financing laws.  They have to identify their customers to their bank or risk their account being frozen without notice.

I'm sure that the exchanges realise that the amount of time and effort it takes people to get funds into and out of their exchange accounts is hurting their business, but so far no-one seems to have found a simple way for them to make the process faster without running into problems with local laws somewhere.

[mp420]

The one business I'm involved in might have some use for bitcoin.

What would be moderately useful would be an EU-based trusted third party that would process payments in BTC and then wire the payments (in EUR) over SEPA.

What would be EXTREMELY useful would be a US-based trusted third party that would take payments in BTC and issue (USD-denominated) cheques drawn on US banks (so that the cheque numbers could be used to make "electronic cheque" payments to US vendors who only accept them). Doing business with US companies is major PITA without a US bank account.

[David M]

Can you, as a business owner list at least one BTC feature, that helps you to start using it daily?

Price stability or a decently priced futures market (I'll just cope with an options market).*

Can you, as a consumer (customer) write down a feature you must have, so you can actually use bitcoins in every day life?

Nothing**


* I would like the protocol to be able to carry miscellaneous "meta data" for a transaction.  To allow more "transparency" and source verification for specific transactions if warranted. e..g Payment for goods. (Order Number, Name, etc..).
** I lied.  More buying choice and a thousand more competitors to the Silk Road.

[Vitalik Buterin]

The ability to include a short message with a transaction. The sheer amount of unnecessary back-and-forth that people have had to do because of the lack of this simple feature is mind-boggling.

[nhodges]

With services such as Bit-Pay now in existence, Bitcoin can simply be used as a monetary medium/vehicle than an actual currency; this means there's no excuse for any business owner not to accept Bitcoin! It's free money! (Well, you still have to provide your product/service.)