Indeed. And the Bitcoin evangelists actually expect the Average Joe to go through all that hassle.
Ain't gonna happen.
This is the reason BTC will never go mainstream. (I.e.: It will never be used by, say, as many as 20 million people.) It's just way too user-unfriendly.
I completely agree. Someone who is good at simplifying things, like an Apple, needs to step forwards and make the process easier. There should be 100% security in what you own, and 100% accuracy when you move bitcoins around. Right now, it's the wild west where nothing is secure, and the geeks pick on average folks telling them, 'well you should have done xxxxx' when an average person loses their bitcoins. An average person doesn't understand security risks - they need a company to help them, where they are charged a fee, like .05% a month to guarantee security. THIS is where the money should be made, not on speculation.
There must be secure apps written, like on a cell phone, where you can simply type in a dollar amount, touch phones, and the person on the other end gets your bitcoins, instantaneously with no problems at all. No possibilities of using bitcoins twice, no problems with them being stolen. We're not even CLOSE to being there. Nobody cares about making the system WORK, they just care about increasing their profits making bitcoins worth 10k each, 100k each, etc. Completely ridiculous.
Exactly. But try telling this to the BTC evangelists. They'll just close their ears and continue ranting about the importance of supercold storage and other extremely complicated, user-unfriendly ways to "safely" store this "fast, reliable money of the internet".
As you correctly pointed out, what's needed is a company like Apple. But apparently they're already busy inventing their own type of currency ... I suspect
one might achieve mainstream adoption, since Apple are good at marketing and building hype. And creating user-friendly, simple products.