But seriously its a lack of goods or services.
Yes, this is spot on. Bitcoin could come a long way just catering to just people concerned with personal integrity (especially on the Internet). There's a rapidly growing amount of those these days, especially over here in Sweden. But there has to be real goods and services for them to buy.
It's growing though, it takes time. Since it started there's been quite an increase in real goods sold for btc.
Bitcoin is growing at a phenomenal rate. The drop from parity over the past 2 months is a healthy correction. We need more goods and services in direct exchange for BTC. That is coming that a healthy organic pace and Android apps for person-to-person transfer are under development). But it will be quite some time before Amazon.com takes bitcoin directly
For more explosive growth what we need is more convertability. it is too hard to get fiat money in and out of bitcoin. That is the bottle neck that is preventing the rise to $5/BTC and higher. More exchanges much like Mt. Gox will help. Mt. Gox helped get us to where we are today but something that is easier to use needs to come out. Just saw an announcement today that britcoin was released to the public for sterling conversion. That will help.
the key to explosvie growth is more fluid exhcange between fiat and BTC. Fiat will continue to co-exist with bitcoin for a long time to come. What we need is someone to develop a financial service or mechanism to convert BTC and fiat "on the fly" so that a merchant like Amazon.com doesn't even know what you are really paying with.
Ideally you would have a BTC account that fueles a virtual (or physical) VISA/MASTER card that you could use anywhere. Think of it has adding backward compability (fiat convenience) to BITCOIN the future of currency.
I agree 100% and think it could be a profitable and successful business. I'm just concerned there might be legal issues with the anonymity of btc. I suppose no one stops you from depositing cash in to an account or western union though.