Quote from: tvbcof on October 15, 2012, 06:02:03 PM

To me it's an expensive hassle to obtain BTC and through most paths I have to deal with entities who I don't trust (potentially including the likes of Dwolla, the various Bitcoin exchanges, my banks, and my government who is almost certainly logging all of my financial activity.) To top it off, I am concerned that it will become even more difficult to obtain BTC going forward so the supply I hold currently exceeds the 'face value' in my mind. That is why I have little or no interest in spending BTC when there are options.

Am I a bad person for failing to support the nascent economy? Probably. OTOH, I've not yet been ripped off either. I consider the USD<->BTC hassles which currently exist to be something of a blessing insofar as it gives the solution an excuse to fail at the exchange level. Perhaps the solution would not be so rife with bad apples absent the roadblocks to use which are currently in place. I actually don't really believe that in a major way because the roadblocks are not that significant and the failures have been mostly associated with user error (aka, ignorance, greed, false mapping, etc) in my opinion. But it makes a good story at least.

I think as you see even easier ways for everyone to buy btc - there will be an increase in fraud and scams until the percentages are close to normal. Right now we've got very little fraud because the market is small.