It's an interesting irony that some people will require a great deal of trust to exist before they'll spend their no-trust currency.
The additional time and difficulty involved with realizing BTC revenue compared to that of USD through a single payment processor will have many merchants such as myself taking a pass on it for now.
Uhmm you didn't really think that through did you?
Merchants have LESS up-front risk with bitcoin payments - with Paypal and credit cards you have to worry about
charges getting reversed, and it takes a LONG TIME to get your money. The buyer accepts all of the risk when
he prepays with bitcoin.
I don't see any irony in people being careful with their money.
BTC is great for merchants - not so good for consumers - people are willing to buy things with credit cards because if the company doesn't follow through, they can get their money back. This doesn't currently exist with BTC. There's no reason BTC denominated credit products (credit cards, etc) couldn't exist.
In fact, there's a real need for such products: not only for consumer protection, but also for subscription style transactions. What consumer wants to prepay a year or more in advance or remember to send bitcoin to keep a subscription current every month?
This is true, a free banking BTC institution is necessary for bitcoin to actually saturate he market in this world.