Quote from: michellj on March 28, 2013, 08:52:43 AM

It can hardly be said that its mainstream at the moment.

Wherever I go and talk about it - no-one has ever heard about it.

I had a meeting with a financial adviser who owns an investment company in south Germany last week - and neither he nor his colleagues had ever heard of it. However they were on the look-out for a new opportunity and will look into BTC.

It is still too complex for non-techies to use safely - I mean downloading the blockchain takes for ever on a normal computer - and that kind of barrier puts people off.

However there is rapid development now to overcome all of these barriers to adoption.

There are a number of forces acting in the world to propel BTC into the mainstream however - and in the process to propel a unit BTC to a high value - perhaps $1000's.

The idea of a global currency which meets no barriers in international transfers between individuals is an idea whose time is about to come - its that clear - its that simple. At the same time it is clear to all those observant enough about world affairs that national fiat currencies are rapidly losing their function as a store of value and as a measure of value - inflating base currency amounts is simply too easy when all fiat currencies are no less virtual than BTC.

There are holders of huge wealth just looking at the next opportunity to move into something with real potential to the upside - and now many of them are eyeing up the BTC world and trying to get their heads around its seeming complexity - soon they will move in with a sure-footedness and a determination that will surprise many - there are simply no other games of this kind in town at present.

These combinations coupled with increasing media interest will converge - I guess in 2013 sometime - to give BTC a massive boost and launch it into the mainstream in quite an unexpected way.

Then we will see something which makes the last tech boom seem like a mere blip on a past horizon.

There are alternatives to downloading the entire blockchain already, like Electrum.

But the concept of an anonymous, ethereal, near-instantly-transferable gold analog will be attractive to a lot of people... It seems the potential of the Internet has not yet fully unfolded.