Cyprus thing is a joke. That was just speculative mania. I will ask you something: have you invested significant money in Bitcoin? If the answer is yes, how long did it take from the first moment you heard about it?
Again: entering into Bitcoin is a lengthy process - first you have to understand, not only what is Bitcoin but also how to keep your bitcoins safe. Then you have to find out how to buy them, and then you slowly start pouring money, just a little a the beginning.
That's everybody's process. When it will come the day that the average citizen will have the understanding and the means to quickly throw a lot of fiat into Bitcoin after the kind of news we had in March, then.... Well, you cannot imagine the kind of huge motherfucking bubbles we are going to see.
I have to agree with this 100%.
It took me 1 week to put $17 cash into an envelope and mail it to canada to buy my first coins. 2 more weeks to have a miner setup and initiated a bank transfer to gox. I consider that pretty fast and that was only possible because I had all kinds of prerequisites already in place (understanding of crypto, understanding of double spend problem, understanding of p2p network). I had to talk to noone to confirm this thing was legit and most likely functional. There was no misleading press or ponzi accusations all over the net either, which should slow the process even more in this day and age.
Average nowadays is probably more like
6 weeks from first exposure to first substantial buy.
We're thinking too short-term. There's all kinds of buffers (delays) and feedback loops in this system that need time to play out.
Seconded. If you're a goldbug libertarian with technical background and high risk tolerance, it's possible you might "get it" and buy relatively quickly, within a few weeks. But that would be very unusual. My experience with anyone lacking that magical quatrifecta, is that it takes months of investigating and being prodded before any action. There are people I've been talking to about Bitcoin for almost two years, are positive about it, but still haven't pulled the trigger.