What is the biggest problem in crypto currencies?

[jrossIV]

It is the difficulty of basic use, the ease at which you can lose all your funds, and the bells and whistles it takes to purchase a crypto-equity.  Especially one of the major ones like BTSX or NXT that isn't BTC.

[DDuckworth]

What do you think is the biggest problem when you use crypto currencies for paying? It doesn't matter if you are developer, client that looks for services, newbie or pro. Is there something what needs to be solved and what slows down crypto currencies expansion? Thanks for you opinions.

The general psychology of humans and their lack of acceptance of anything new.  There are WAY too many things that the only way we can have change is to wait for the last generation to die out so that the problem either lessens or disappears...

Think: Gay marriage, racism (that one might take a while), allowing women to vote, murderous religions, and general xenophobia.  All of these things require generations to die off before us as a species being able to move on in the right direction.  I fear bitcoin may have a similar uptake, where all of our children will use it exclusively and there will still be old people ranting at a store when they no longer accept credit cards.

[QuestionAuthority]

Maybe that can be a future upgrade to the client. Plain language addresses automatically generated for and associated with blockchain addresses. Instead of 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v the client would show TurtleSoupWithCheeseSauce. You would know instantly that you never sent btc to TurtleSoupWithCheeseSauce.

You can use some clients to assign a label to frequent addresses that you send BTC to.

I would be interested to know how you could mathematically get from an address to some kind of custom name. I think this would likely replace a few few number of transactions involving sending BTC to an incorrect address to many more scammers receiving transactions that are meant for someone else. This happened when coinbase first started allowing (I think it was) account tags when you could send money to coinbase.com/QuestionAuthority the funds would go directly into your coinbase account; someone (that was not SeansOutpost) set up the tag SeansOutpost before they could get to it to try to get people to "donate" money to them.

Well, I guess were fucked then. I'll just have to keep spending them like I always have. Without issue.

[itsAj]

Maybe that can be a future upgrade to the client. Plain language addresses automatically generated for and associated with blockchain addresses. Instead of 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v the client would show TurtleSoupWithCheeseSauce. You would know instantly that you never sent btc to TurtleSoupWithCheeseSauce.

You can use some clients to assign a label to frequent addresses that you send BTC to.

I would be interested to know how you could mathematically get from an address to some kind of custom name. I think this would likely replace a few few number of transactions involving sending BTC to an incorrect address to many more scammers receiving transactions that are meant for someone else. This happened when coinbase first started allowing (I think it was) account tags when you could send money to coinbase.com/QuestionAuthority the funds would go directly into your coinbase account; someone (that was not SeansOutpost) set up the tag SeansOutpost before they could get to it to try to get people to "donate" money to them.

Well, I guess were fucked then. I'll just have to keep spending them like I always have. Without issue.

LOL. I agree that our current setup is likely the best, but it is not perfect.

[bitcoin_purist]

Biggest problem is that its not backed up by any govt organisation, so it can become dirt in anytime[theory]

That's not a problem but a feature which makes it magnitudes better than the current fiat system.
If you don't get that, you should read bitcoin from start again.

You could better ask yourself the question why all government backed currencies have failed in the history of mankind. *all of them 100%*

[bitcoin_purist]

Biggest problem is that its not backed up by any govt organisation, so it can become dirt in anytime[theory]

That's not a problem but a feature which makes it magnitudes better than the current fiat system.
If you don't get that, you should read bitcoin from start again.

You could better ask yourself the question why all government backed currencies have failed in the history of mankind. *all of them 100%*

Oh damn it, you wrote "backed up"
Yes, that's a shame.
Also governments need to back up their wallets

[CozyLife]

The Bitcoin transaction confirmations are slow and that's the obvious choice. However, the one that isn't so obvious is the fact that no one has sent me all of the Bitcoins yet.

[Denis_Diderot]

The trade-off between confirmation time and blockchain size is a serious problem in my opinion.

[kleeii]

I think the biggest problem is the pump and dump alt coins. There are literally hundreds of them, made by the authors to make a quick dime, but end up having no value.

[Gargulan]

Three things:

1) Government regulation.
2) Long transaction confirmation time.
3) Price volatility.

[shawshankinmate37927]

Three things:

1) Government regulation.
2) Long transaction confirmation time.
3) Price volatility.

1) A decentralized P2P electronic ledger can't be regulated.  Bitcoin is the solution to government regulation.
2) It takes longer for credit card transactions and checks to clear than it does for a BTC transaction to be confirmed.
3) It's still early in the transition to sound, honest, stateless money.  Give it time.

[Omikifuse]

Scalability.

If Bitcoin really goes moon and gets as many transactions rate as the big credit cards or paypal, then I think we will see peoblems.

Of course that won't happens overnight and we'll have some time to think about how to solve it

[moriartybitcoin]

biggest problem is impending governmen regulation

second biggest problem is SCAMS

[master-P]

I would like transaction times of below one second. That would be very powerful. And I would like to have the coins stored safely on the block chain without me having to do cold storage myself or having to trust a third party storing the coins for me. And I would like to have zero transaction fees for all transactions. The price/performance of information technology is improving exponentially and having to pay for transactions feels like the old fiat systems.

I agree with all the points mentioned above.
In any case, time is the key to measure success. The problem: people today are generally impatient.

The transaction times are already only a few seconds if a TX has an appropriate fee attached. It will not confirm in seconds, but it will be safe to assume that it will confirm within a few blocks.

Coins that you have in cold storage are stored in the blockchain. Cold storage is a form of additional security, if you want to keep your bitcoin safe then you need to use it. There is zero way around this.

The TX fees are very low as of now. At most it will cost ~$0.05 to send a TX, but often you can send a TX for free. With that being said the TX fees are what gives the miners incentives to mine over time, as eventually the block subsidy will go to zero.

[David1978]

- Security
- Goverment trying to invade crypto currencies
- Scammers