+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.
You ignore the number of entrepreneurs that discovered Bitcoin in the last 3 months and are now investing in the Bitcoin infrastructure and products/services that makes sense at this time. It takes time to develop and market that.
I saw a story about a guy developing a bitcoin "ATM" and another working on a bitcoin POS system. And then of course all your run of the mill "early adopters" running amateur websites for primarily virtual services and oddball goods and basically accepting bitcoin as a novelty (bitsnacks or whatever the hell it's called, anyone? Yeah, let's pay a huge markup on snacks that could be had for 50% at COSTCO...why? Pure novelty, period.).
There's plenty of examples of failed investors/inventors, and this sadly will be one of them. I feel bad for them because in the case of the POS and ATM guys, they're obviously really clever and using their minds. However it's unfortunate that they're gambling on ideals and circumstances which simply do not fit the mainstream appeal and never will. Otherwise their ingenuity would serve them extremely well.