I and several others predicted that this was going to happen:
The fact is very few people are buying AND using Bitcoins beyond illicit drugs. If I want to buy a used video card there's no way I'm going to send money to MtGox, buy bitcoins, then go pay for my video card. Almost everyone who accepts Bitcoins also accepts standard forums of payment. If they don't they're living in god knows where (i.e. not usa) and I'm not buying from them anyway.
Um, thanks for the nice provocation to non-us merchants.
I'm not sure whether you might have looked at these google maps with the distribution of bitcoin clients worldwide. I mean that one, it was computed ba MagicalTux:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://c1958612.r12.cf0.rackcdn.com/bitcoin.kmlThere are three main areas: The US, Western and Northern Europe and the Pacific rim: Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, China.
If you look closer, you see something quite interesting: The mayority of bitcoin clients is close to the shores. In the US, east coast and west coast, not as much in between. In Europe, you see concentrations in Scandinavia and places like Hamburg. In the far east, you see a few at the coasts of the Pacific ocean.
My explanation is that: These are places which have very strong cultural links to trade, especially international trade. Harbor places are still today culturally very different from places like South Dakota.
I can be wrong but it seems to me that Bitcoin at the time has most interest in places where first, access to internet and knowledge about relavant technologies is high and second where maritime trade has a long tradition.