Quote from: P239 on July 01, 2013, 02:32:47 AM

Don't get me wrong Mr Froggy.. I hate paypal.. Paypal tried to screw me out of $5k a few years back and only gave it back after threats of legal action.. I now refuse to use paypal.
My reference was "fast and easy as something like Paypal" - as in, fast and easy for grandma to setup and start using.. Read it again and you may notice that nobody said anything about a standard of exellence or how to run a payment system.. Not sure where you dreamt that up from.. But.. Yah..

Well... not sure when you guys setup your paypal account... but I have mine now for about 10 years... the only reason I started with it initially... because my Gaming Clan was kinda requiring it to pay for our clan server.... I remember it taking a freaking week... to setup... I am not US based... and back then I was very lucky my country was one of the 10 first, to have debit cards being able to be linked to your paypal account... else I would've even needed to get a credit card... just to get paypal and pay for the clan server. Even though being lucky, it took 3 days for the paypal txn (where they take some cents from your account) to show up... and even then my bank wouldn't tell me the amount (which I had to tell paypal) over the phone... I actually had to schedule a bank appointment... to get those figures, before my end of month bill would come in...

Back then... PayPal was more of a hassle than bitcoin is now...

The biggest hurdle imo Bitcoin is seeing now, is there is no one company behind it, depending on its existence, being backed by banks / other big companies. (aka the trust factor that pulls people in easily) Because this is mainly what had paypal take off, they needed it to work, (so they could survive) so they put every effort in getting as many people as possible to accept it. The fact that there was no alternative, and that it basically worked like a credit card... helped a lot too.

Beyond that, the biggest problem is getting bitcoins for the regular person... for me as an IT guy... the easiest way... is just to mine myself / trade other crypto currencies for bitcoin... and even that is sloooooooooow....

The other thing that I'm hearing in my circle a lot is... why do I need bitcoins... which results into a discussion... that they don't even know how money works... most people use it on a day to day basis... but don't understand the concept of money... and / or fully realize that their FIAT is getting worth less every single day...

Last but not least... and this might be me... but people don't trust a system run by computers. The fact that bitcoin isn't controlled / run by a person... scares them... while bankers over and over again proved that they are not worthy of your trust...

The main thing we should want now, is a "first world" government, to outspokenly be for bitcoin, and start converting their local currency into bitcoin. This would give the trust in Bitcoin the boost it needs, for loads of major merchants to add it to their possible payment methods.

Last but not least, the ease of use... and the chances of being hacked... or not helping...

While I could learn my grandma easily how to use bitcoin online... I know that her PC is so infected with all kinds of junk...(yes I clean it up from time to time... still impressed with how much junk she manages to gather) that it barely keeps running... and her coins would just get hacked / stolen away... (while I currently don't see a real way to fix this... we need this fixed somehow...)

Then you get the physical aspect... while I love what Mike Caldwell is doing... We need a mint that mass-produces physical (milli)bitcoins, to get physical bitcoins out there for the masses. (trading a 10 USD bill, for a 10 mbtc bill, would give the physical part a major boost)

As mentioned before in this thread, the last part that would majorly help bitcoin, is loads of small game companies, starting to use bitcoin(satoshi's) as their ingame currency. (imo this would be beneficial for all parties involved as bitcoin by nature has been build secure / near impossible to duplicate coins) I think it would even convince some game companies to use in game currencies, as it would be so easy to implement. (I don't see any big company implementing this... they would see it as a big risk factor, redesigning their economy etc etc)