As many people have said the adoption of Bitcoin will increase if the average person in the street can get their head around it. I have read various analogies/comparisons where people have attempted to do this but they all seem still a bit techie etc to me. So I have had a go myself. It is below. If you like it please use it. It fails in some areas like the other efforts but it might have more appeal. Everyone loves trains.
Bitcoin is like a Railway.
Back a few years ago someone designed a new and rather special railway for carrying freight between 2 major cities. It is going to be a fast and highly secure railway so it will appeal to some people shipping goods from day one. But as people see all its advantages it is expected to grow and end up taking many times more freight than than it does in the first few years. In fact the savings to people shipping are significant enough that even before the line is finished people will still use it to its current end point and ship the goods by truck the rest of the way.
The whole line is divided up into a huge number of sections. And each section has large number of sleepers in it. Now the way the track is to be built is not funded in the conventional way ie forming a company and offering shares and the railway owner pays the the railway builders.
Rather any person or company that wants to be involved can build at their own risk one or more sections. They get to own each section they build.
To get paid for their building efforts they put the section up for sale in an open auction system either as a whole section or sleeper by sleeper.
The other unusual thing about this railway is that companies that own trains that will carry the freight have to buy enough sleepers to carry the weight of the train every time they run a train. After they have passed each sleeper they sell it back in the auction system. Since they buy 1 sec before it arrives at the sleeper and sell 1 sec after that price they pay is practically irrelevant to them as the buy and sell prices will be the effectively the same .
As of Jan 2015 about half the track is complete and the price for you to buy your own a sleeper is $1.
There is only 1 train per week and its carrying containers just one level high. One train only needs 1 sleeper in 10 to support its weight so the train company can buy the sleepers they need for about $1.
Now jump to 2020. The track is at capacity ie 50 trains on the track at any one time and each train is carrying containers stacked 3 high. Freight companies are competing to be one of those 50 trains. The weight on the track is huge and ever sleeper is in use taking its full load. So a train company may pay $1,000 per sleeper to ensure they can run their trains.
So if you buy your sleeper today for a $1 in a few years time you could do very well. There many challenges still ahead but if you look at the new and clever way the railway is being set setup and the new freight companies entering the market it might be worth you investing or at least having your goods shipped on the track.
