Hi,

I'm an engineer, also somewhat involved in politics and therefore money comes to the question. I have some bitcoins but I won't waste much time in developing anything for bitcoin because I just don't have time for this shit. But, if I were one of you who actually care about bitcoin, I would do the following if you really want bitcoin to take off:

I would create a secured and fast bitcoin bank.

This is the idea: The bank must have all kind of security measures so that its money doesn't get stolen and the bank complies with the law. The bank holds your bitcoins, and the bank guarantees that all transfers that you want to do will take place.

For example, lets say that you want to pay 10btc to your local shop. You use your bitcoin bank credit card to allow the payment. Instantly, the transaction "10btc from this btc account to this other account with this id" gets published in the public board of the bitcoin bank. As the owner of the shop trusts the bank, he won't need to make you wait 10-30mins because the bank guarantees that the transfer will take place.

Also, you need to be able to do instant transfers between banks. Therefore you need to define some kind of process or protocol by which new banks will get to trust each other so that transfers between them can be done instantly.

In other words, what you need is BITCOIN LIQUIDITY. Then, and only then bitcoins can be useful to the layman. And for that you actually need to be able to TRUSTS some BANKS, with a serious plan for security, banks that follow the law and people who are willing to pay for that TRUST. Of course this bank will need some kind of software to interface all this (and/or some kind of credit card). And of course I would like this type of bank NOT to be a fractional reserve bank.

Once you have bitcoin liquidity, bitcoin-usd liquidity is not much of a problem because bitcoins will be actually useful for the lay man.

As I don't have TIME on my side I would be willing to put some MONEY where my mouth is. Not much, but some (perhaps $1000). And others may also like the idea.

Also, you need to understand that this bitcoin liquidity is the means to be able to make CASH out of bitcoins, meaning some kind of money that can be instantly transferred from person to person. You really nee that if you want bitcoins to succeed.