I'm sure many others would share your sentiments. The early adopters have been handsomely rewarded for speculating in a technology with very uncertain outcomes, I think it's fair they are rewarded...it's pretty much the basis of any free market economy. I know many Bitcoin critics secretly resent these early adopters and many form opinions before taking the time to understand Bitcoin and the utility it can provide beyond a speculative commodity. Personally I don't care! I can see the unbelievable potential in Bitcoin not as a commodity but as a means of exchanging value. You're right Bitcoin needs to be an economy in itself, but we're seeing this on a daily basis with businesses accepting Bitcoin all over the world! It's happening, and it's happening fast!!

Basically if you want a chargeback system you need a means of arbitrating disputes and this will add a cost to each transaction. It will also require a central authority who has the power to reverse a transaction and it kind of goes against the decentralised model that Bitcoin engenders. There are already Bitcoin escrow services out there you can use to secure transactions at the point of exchange.

I think you raise a good point though and I like the idea of being able to add verifiable meta data to a wallet address (e.g. name, address contact number etc) that bitcoin users can volunteer to give their buyers peace of mind. You could even build in a feedback system so buyers can + 1 the seller and leave reviews that are publicly visible for other future buyers. This may already exist, I have no idea...just thinking out aloud

EDIT ---

I should have read @delaro's comments who I think is alluding to the same sort of thing. Coinbase would be a good candidate to back this meta data with their own verification procedures.

In the interest of balance, I can now confirm that an EToro representative has contacted me and confirmed that they will refund my balance and close my account. I just got very nervous taking this any further for fear that I may end up owing more than I put in...I'm no expert on CFD but I was warned that there are risks you can end up owing more due to margin calls. TBH as soon as I discovered that I will not be holding any BTC I lost interest!

They'll have a lot of hard drives to destroy to wipe out the blockchain

Definition of Legal Tender "coins or banknotes that must be accepted if offered in payment of a debt."

By this definition Bitcoin is not legal tender anywhere in the world and probably won't be for a long time to come. This is just governments posturing and making themselves seen to be warning their citizens about Bitcoin, while they figure out what the hell it is 

It's a good idea! I definitely think that while the Bitcoin ecosystem remains patchy, there's opportunity to use this as a means to drive tourism.

The chances of calling HMRC and speaking to anyone who has even the faintest idea what Bitcoin is (least of all, how it should be taxed) would be pretty close to zero.

The grey area is what happens if you do not cash out the Bitcoin but rather use any gain to directly purchase goods and services (I know that's pretty difficult right now in the UK but it won't be for long). If I bought £100 of BTC back in January 2013, by 2014 I would have approx £10,000 worth of buying power in BTC...according to what HMRC have already published I could spend these directly and incur no personal tax liability.

There's a short discussion here on AccountingWeb as somebody posed a similar question:
http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/tax-bitcoin-gains-hands-individual

The "No intrinsic" value argument has been discussed to death.

I believe the "Carrington event" relates to a solar storm that would knock out most electronic means of communication. How is the current banking system protected from the same event? If anything Bitcoin is more resilient as the blockchain (public ledger) is replicated across 1000s of PCs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

Thinking about this...Maybe we should go back to using an abacus??

Things happen at snail pace in HMRC so I doubt there's much change in 2014

The article itself is fairly banal, but the comments section is brimming with the usual tulip mania, no intrinsic value, deflationary nonsense!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10559175/How-to-get-your-virtual-hands-on-some-bitcoins.html

I'm still trying to understand if this cynicism around Bitcoin is unique to Brits??

Had a very bad experience so far with ETORO.. Although admittedly in some part due to me diving in and not reading anything

I setup an account uploaded $50, attempted to buy some Bitcoin, at which point I realised that ETORO is essentially just a spread-betting CFD platform. I am now trying to withdraw the $50 and close my account but I can't until I've completed the ID verification and Money Laundering checks...This page constantly errors out and I'm stuck now speaking to some drone in their support center who keeps pointing me back to the withdraw funds guide!! Massive waste of time!

It's seriously retarded to propose any sort of boycott on the FBI coins. This is the sort of cronyism and interference that underpins our current financial system!

Let the market function normally, the FBI sell the coins, the price of BTC dips, everybody who is in for the long game can buy cheap and the market eventually corrects itself.

Britain is a nation of shopkeepers! That's where the BTC revolution needs to start, don't expect anything from the fat cats and plutocrats. They're not in the slightest bit interested in Bitcoin.

Can't think of any big UK businesses that would have the ballz to implement BTC. There's very little innovation in UK PLC, that's why we have all these big US companies like Google and Amazon coming in and filling the gap. Seriously I will poke myself in the eye with a sharp object if Asda are the first to implement Bitcoin  

Which wallet were you using? Online/offline?

We're not quite there yet with seamless international transfers. I live in the UK, if somebody sends me £1,000 in BTC I need to change this into fiat money. Right now the only way I can do this is by registering on an exchange, providing all my ID + verification (sound familiar?), then listing the BTC for sale. I suspect the same is true in most countries. So Western Union still has a place until such time that BTC can be converted to and from fiat effortlessly OR there are 1000s of retailers accepting BTC as a valid form of payment. I'm really hoping for the latter!

Right now I don't think it can scale much bigger for several reasons. Namely the lack of "true" decentralization (as others have mentioned), but also the absence of even the most basic protections afforded to consumers in relation to securing wallets and mitigating fraud. There's still a long way to go in achieving wide-scale adoption...but the founding principles are sound and I think we'll see something akin to a Cambrian Explosion of new wrap around services for Bitcoin in the next 2-3 years which will make it a really useful currency.

Western Union ask all these questions in order to comply with Money Laundering Regs. It's crazy to think they'd voluntarily place such onerous demands on their clients, they're interested only in completing transfers with the minimum amount of red-tape + overhead. Bitcoin circumvents all this as no 3rd party is required, how will governments impose their Money Laundering regime on two individuals completing a transfer with no intermediary??

Western Union will be throwing everything they've got right now to put pressure on governments to regulate Bitcoin into obscurity!

This is what I would have assumed but what I don't know (maybe somebody could enlighten me here?) is what percentage of the big pools mining activity are carried out by their own proprietary hardware?

Agree 100%. I don't even think Bitcoin is ready for mainstream adoption, still too many issues around securing wallets for Bitcoin to work on a broader scale. Hell, most people don't even know what 2 factor authentication is! Anyone familiar with the Rogers Curve (I only just discovered it's name ) may agree that new technologies achieve widescale adoption by moving from left to right on the curve, the innovators and early adopter assist the early majority to adopt and they then inturn engage the late majority etc. Trying to aim down the middle will not yield great results.

http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/images/picture_rogers_adoption_innovation_curve.gif

I think 2014 is about building out infrastructure to address some of the big barriers to mainstream adoption, e.g. providing more user-friendly means of securing wallets, escrow services, consumer protection insurance etc.