What they aren't saying is that Bitcoin is completely different than any centrally-controlled money or anything else called "virtual currency". Fake points in games, Apple store or xbox points, gift cards, Google wallet and payment processors, and such, are centrally controlled by a company who can go out of business or print their own.
That is a "meta concept" that is going to take a while to sink it. It is so far out of the box. Tunstall by the wording of your statements, "Bitcoin will need to this" or "Bitcoin going gain traction unless they change it to do that" likely doesn't fully get the idea that there is no Bitcoin, Inc. There is no central authority which runs the whole network. Even if they have seen the word "decentralized" or "p2p" they dont' really understand it yet.
This is really a paradigm change thing and it will take some people years if not decades to fully grasp what it means. I think many on the panel (both senators and witnesses) think of Bitcoin as PayPal 2.0 or Linden Dollars you can use in the real world.
