Well, one hurdle for newbies like me who are just getting into the cryptocurrency game; the quickest way to send money (otc on irc) and get BTC is to use paypal.
The exchanges usually takes at least 1-2 business days to get your cash in the accounts.
And if you're in a country that's not the US or in Europe, it's even more difficult, the fees are even higher, and it can take over a week. To buy BTC I could either submit a bunch of private information to the exchange (yeah, that sounds like a good idea) that will take over a week to authenticate AND pay exorbitent international transfer fees ($30 per transfer) that can take up to seven days to transfer, or I could be charged a 25 - 40% premium to buy "locally" in my local currency, or I could build reputation on
http://bitcoin-otc.com and use PayPal to buy instantly.
PayPal is a fucking maggot pile, but it's so convenient.
I just said 100% because anything more than that would be objected to by the mathematicians here !! :-)
agree ...agree....agree....
and the sad part is that people here haven't understood what a beautiful market that is waiting to BUY from them ....IF they cross this payment hurdle / trust