Quote from: X68N on June 23, 2011, 01:42:24 AM

Quote from: ploum on June 22, 2011, 10:20:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman2050 on June 22, 2011, 09:42:17 PM

Quote from: Archatos on June 22, 2011, 09:18:31 PM

I don't see anyone actually tackling the problems that bitcoin is having.

What exactly are some of those problems?

1. User friendliness. (which is a *very* large topic, ranging from the banking system to the security built-in in the client). Just one random example: when you are on a website, how do you guarantee that the bitcoin address is valid and redirecting well to your seller? Answer, you don't know.

Nobody seems to work on it.

2. Real market.

Nobody seems to work on it. Every single bitcoin webshop looks like it was designed in 1997 and tested on Netscape 3. Not to mention the fact that there's very few things to buy and that the process is really complicated, you have to understand a lot of things (including escrow) but this goes back to point 1. Well, let be honnes

3. Professionnal look

Between a "Bitcoin show" where you can see people trying to launch skype for 48 minutes or interviewer saying ah hum ah with a non-fonctionnal microphone to anarchists who advertize well that they use drugs and are proud of it, it is difficult to make something look less serious than that. ( http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/2011/05/28/Welcome-To-The-Bitcoin-Community ;-) )

The weusecoins.com was a very good try to tackle that problem.

So, basically, people are very enthusiast because bitcoin *might* be the foundation of something very big. A lot of early bitcoiners are euphoric because of the quick money they did.

But most of us are just uneducated, unexperienced new rich. The MtGox story is just one more example.

We forgot that foundations are not enough. If you don't have the wall, the roof, the window and a shiny layer of paint, nobody want your house.

We are now at one of the many turning point. Either nobody really invest in Bitcoin and it will die, either someone decide that it worths investing 1 million of $ in this and hire professionnals. He build a complete banking protocol on top of bitcoin, built a network of market maker to stabilize the price and build trust with the traditionnal online merchant, offering for example an API which allow them to accept bitcoin but converting them instantly, at a known rate, to dollars or euros.

If I had 1 million of dollars, I would do that. This is much needed. Just to give you an idea: I'm a professionnal web hosting maintainer. And I decided to not host any bitcoin related service long ago because, as a professionnal, I knew I was not good enough in security for such critical services. It looks like I was right but that nobody else was. I'm also an usability engineer and I can say that bitcoin is doing *everything* as wrong as it can be in that aspect.

If you have 1 million of dollars to invest in a bitcoin startup that would foster definitely bitcoin, contact me. If not, like me, wait for someone to tackle the problem.

We need walls, we need roof, we need shiny paint.

Very good explanation.
I also think that there are big Problems to solve.
Bitcoin was Designed as anonymous "money", but is now more like an Prepaid Creditcard,
easy to steal with the security number inculsive ;-)

I think it could be changed if the community
spends some Tenthousand Dollars (like an Kickstarter project)
To improve, Security,and usability and maybe to Start Selling things and so on.
every Bitcoin user would spend because this would make BC more worth....

The user friendliness example doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me. If you are using Bitcoins at a restaurant by the time you grab a drink the cashier checks his wallet and sees that you have successful paid the restaurant. I guess for web based stuff, to automate the process, email confirmations can be sent out when a bitcoin is successfully added to their wallet.

There isn't a real large competing market, and I guess it's not as professional as some say, but then again I'd say that's more of a cosmetic issue.

I think people need to have a general grasp at the security of things. Take for example a debit card, the bank mails you this card, anyone can easily steal the card from your mailbox. Similarly anyone can steal a debit card, the same way anyone can steal bitcoins. If people just treated bitcoins like debit cards and put their wallet on a USB drive they would be fine.

Or if they encrypted their data and made backups to make sure everything was secure, I think the bitcoin client should have an auto encrypt feature for protection. I guess bitcoins are not as easy as getting a debit card mailed to your house, but similarly enough there is something called bitbills which serves as the same function.