Playing devils advocate here.
It's been bothering me lately, thinking about this. Consumers have absolutely no motivation to use Bitcoin. And because of that, I don't understand how it will ever go global.
All the motivation is for merchants. They avoid merchant fees. They get no chargebacks. But they're also going to get no sales (aside from enthusiasts), because consumers have no incentive to use it, whatsoever.
...
Tell me why this is wrong. Please.
theoretically the overhead in using Bitcoin is lower, thus you can carry lower prices in real terms.
building all this business structure on top of bitcoin somewhat cancels out this effect however. Certainly having all this expensive mining structure certainly brings Bitcoins general value proposition into question.