Quote from: gavinandresen on May 19, 2011, 03:08:27 PM

I think the real question is whether or not bitcoin will appeal to the majority of people who are happy with our current financial system. If it doesn't, bitcoin may fade away or end up as a niche currency used for a tiny percentage of global financial transactions.

I think one of the problems with acceptance will be that people won't realize why Bitcoin is better. It's not that they are happy with the current system, but that they don't understand why they shouldn't be happy with it to begin with. An ignorance is bliss type of thing.

And then there are the people who defend the current system for whatever reason. I've seen a bunch of intelligent people put a whole lot of effort in pointing out Bitcoin's faults all while defending the system they are used to.

So it usually does tend to come down to politics. If you are a big fan of other people controlling things for you, and a surprisingly large number of people are, you won't see any benefit to using Bitcoin.

I agree with davout, the more damage the current financial system causes, the more people will value something like Bitcoin.