Like a craigslist for people who want buy/sell their stuff or their services in bitcoin.

There are some people who just aren't right for early adoption of Bitcoin. Even if they weren't put off by the "get rich quick" idea, I worry it would attract the impulsive types who contribute to those bubbles and then get skittish and can't hold their gold. Better to appeal to their curiosity rather than to their greed. Target people who will become intrigued and will genuinely want to learn more from you. Use taglines like "Bitcoin is coming" or "Trying to stop Bitcoin is like trying to stop filesharing." And I strongly suggest you turn away people whom you think can't handle the concept and just want you to do all their thinking for them. It's better business ethics for a consultant not to throw their clients to the wolves. And know your audience. Some people might be intrigued about how Bitcoin has been used to donate to Wikileaks. Others might be more interested in it in terms of its economics or in its cryptography. Appealing to their wallets is just cheap. But appealing to their values... that's marketing.

Except I'm not talking about speculators. Just about the incentives any typical holder of a currency would have and I'm sure the OP was as well. I mean it's certainly a fair point about how a lot of revenue goes into restocking, but merchants are human too and want to put some money aside as savings just as much as their customers do. So do their employees. Or their suppliers, for that matter.

I've recently answered a similar concern in someone else's topic, but it's worth repeating. The thing you're missing is that you're only thinking from the perspective of the spender, but there are two sides to every transaction. As a prospective buyer, yes, you want to hold onto your deflationary currency. By that same token, vendors want to get ahold of that deflationary currency. If a vendor agrees with you about how the value of a bitcoin will go up over time, they have every reason to give you a discounted bitcoin price below the dollar price because they believe they'll be able to make up the difference as the bitcoins they receive go up in value down the line. At that point it's just a matter of whether the discount is big enough to attract your bitcoin spending and that takes us back to the conventional decision-making issue of whether a purchase is worth it to you. Do you want to pay $4 per gallon for gas in US dollars or, let's say, $3 per gallon in bitcoins?

Assuming there are vendors who are just as interested as you are in having bitcoins and believe they'll go up in value over time, that's all the more incentive they'll have for selling at a discount. They'd forego the current dollar price in the expectation that the bitcoins they receive will rise in value later on.

That may be. But until someone invents a new way of borrowing and lending large sums of money, we'll still need banks in some form or another regardless of what currencies they happen to use.

Except there will always be a need for a system that makes it possible to borrow money. Especially for the big things in life like mortgages and business loans. Of course, if traditional banks want to stay in business they'll have to find new ways to attract clients whose savings options have been expanded by cryptocurrencies.

Yeah, sounds like a pyramid scheme. But where is the "profit" supposed to come from? Can't be from the guy who grabs your potato assuming he pays the same as you to get into the game. Or maybe that's why it doesn't work.

Yup, there's that. That's probably the main thing that keeps bitcoins "useful" for the non-enthusiasts out there.

At the top of my wishlist is some kind of decentralized bitcoins-for-cash services in case the Feds start cracking down on the bitcoin exchanges. I'm no expert, but I imagine there'd be a way to make a smartphone app that sends money to a paypal account in exchange for small sums of bitcoin. For all I know it might already exist, though I imagine that liquidity could be an issue.

I think the real question is how many places accept bitcoin compared to a year ago. It might be interesting to see a month by month graph of some kind.