Quote from: astrowilliam on March 21, 2014, 06:20:03 PM

In your opinion, how can we all bring BTC to the public? I've spoken with a lot of people about the future of the currency and they all pretty much laugh at me and tell me to keep dreaming. I believe that knowledge is power and we need to educate the public about what BTC actually is and why it's better than normal currency. I remember when PayPal was just a baby and no one would trust them with their fiat. The same goes with BTC at this moment. Not a lot of people want to invest compared to normal fiat currency exchanges. What do you think will bring a wider acceptance?

For one, wallets need to be more secure and less subject to hacking. Once people can keep their bitcoin safe and secure without having to worry that some malware has installed a keylogger and transmitted a copy of their wallet file to a thief from a general purpose computing device, then the masses may adopt in masses.

I think bitcoin as a currency will take off with the under-banked first. Banks don't like to open accounts for people with bad credit. Since they don't want these customers, and using a debit card with greendot involves a 1% load fee at the very minimum (more typically 5% or more if you can't load $500 at a time), plus monthly charges; there's going to be a lot of room for a cheaper system. Think ubiquitous cash-BTC ATM machines and bills/rent that can be paid with bitcoin, just by scanning the QR code on your bill with your low-cost hardware wallet. Eventually employers might have an option to have wages paid in bitcoin, but the price needs to be much more stable for that.

Merchants will start to love bitcoin transactions, since the time it takes to clear a bitcoin transaction (an hour) is much less than the time it takes to clear a credit card transaction or a check (weeks).