Again, I don't see how it solves the main problem (that Bitcoin is a solution begging for a problem*). I copy your post to comment inline each point:


1) If Joe plays poker, it's likely. It's happened to many players twice. NetTeller and FTP (complicated by Ponziness, but related to government for sure)

Well, so you are implying that Bitcoin is like a poker chip? Do we have to market poker players? And maybe casino players too? It is not something I can write in my ATM project: "Play poker with unregulated money", or "Visit X sites without embarrasing charges in your VISA" (though it might be a good marketing)

2. Six billion people live too far from me for me to hand them cash. Mail is not so good. Plus I don't likely have the brand of cash they want.

I don't think average Joe needs to send cash to people in the antipodes. Maybe once in his life, and he won't mind paying some fees. And people who do these transactions often are (again) not the people who would casually buy BTC in an ATM.

3. Millions if not billions of people break laws because laws are terrible around the world.

I completely agree. So I modify my question adding that "people in developed, democratic countries".

4. Obviously 3% doesn't stop much trade, but 3% is worth 3%.

My point is that when Bitcoin has good (developed) escrow services, transactions will also have a cost.

5. Merchants and their consumers are on the same team. If merchants get hit with fraud they either pass it on to the legit consumers or they go out of business.

Surely merchants prefer to pay a fee and "forget" fraud rather than deploying their own anti-fraud measures. And if a third party deploys this anti-fraud measures, merchant will need the pay them, thus charging more to their consumers.

6. Of course they can be stolen.

I agree.


P.S.: Concernign the answer from Foxpup, Bitcoin has some advantages in particular (rare) events. I cannot write in the ATM machine "Use Bitcoin and your bank account will not be frozen for completely arbitrary reasons". I don't know anyone (well, now _you_, but I cannot say I really know you ;-) ) whose bank account has been frozen and, while it's very inconvenient, detractors would argue that with Bitcoin people would say "All  my wealth has been stolen by a malware/antivirus_bug/moths/whathever and I can do *nothing* to recover it".
And why do you think that you can get the same (or better) service that the existing ones for less than a 3% fee?
You talk about __trust__ merchants... Isn't the whole point of Bitcoin not to trust anybody?


* Really, I'm not trolling at all. I am enthusiastic about the Bitcoin project, and I believe that it would be as revolutionary to the economy as the Internet has been to the information (I have carried out some projects involving Bitcoin). My point is that it won't solve everyday, common people in developed countries actual problems (or at least, _prioritary_ problems).
It sure has its market, but it's narrower that we'd like to think (myself included, since all this thoughts came when I was looking for reasons to convince people that Bitcoin would be useful for them, and thus deploying a network of low cost of Bitcoin ATMs).