I think if businesses started selling things mainstream for Bitcoins, at a cheaper price (because if you pay with credit cards the store gets charged more), people might look into it more.

I also think people just haven't heard of it, or they have heard of it, but they don't know what it is. If they think they know, they think scam a lot. That's probably the main thing. lol

From Feb, 2015 - http://coincenter.org/2015/02/steady-sentiment-problem-scams/
"...The survey, now six-months-running, measures American attitudes toward Bitcoin using a statistically sound sampling technique, the first of its kind.

As in previous months, about 65% of Americans responded that they are “Not familiar at all” with Bitcoin. Taken at face value this is a promising sign for the digital currency. It means that 35% of Americans have heard of Bitcoin, and nearly 5% have used it. That’s surprising momentum for a technology that is still in the early days of development..."

"...We asked respondents to describe the first thought or image that comes to mind when they think of Bitcoin. Every month the same response has been at the top of the results: “fraud rip off scam.” Roughly 9-10% of those who have heard of Bitcoin associate it primarily with scams. We also asked respondents what makes them distrust Bitcoin. Around 30% are wary because they feel that Bitcoin is ‘used by unscrupulous people..."

Also, many many many many, (throwing a guesstimate, 85%) of sites: gambling sites, online wallets and even faucets (ponzis are acting like they're faucets) about Bitcoin ARE scams.

Universal trust in national fiat scrip. However this problem is fading by the day, along with the legitimacy of the state.

Time.

No.

Yes, but it's a patience issue above all else.

Perception, lack of understanding, no incentive to use it.

The services we have now are light years ahead of a couple of years ago, but to buy something with it still involves jumping through hoops to obtain it, learning how to guard it and it would probably cost more unless there were serious discounts.

If and when the whole process is made mindless, that's when it might start going places. Look at Abra. That's a new remittance service with no mention of bitcoin on its site. All people using it will know is that it's quick, cheap and works.

IMO, public perception.  Totally agree with gentleman.  Two parts for me: (1) bad rep (nefarious uses and scams/exchange hacks); and (2) no real use case for Joe Public in most developed countries.

(1) will take time to defeat, and will likely depend on how (2) is addressed.

(2) maybe Bitcoin discounts, remittance and gaming/p0rn will help but, frankly, it's a tough sell.  Joe public doesn't know how the existing financial system works (i.e. what the problems are).  What he does know is that fraud protection and reversible transactions are generally a good thing, so he doesn't see the point of Bitcoin.

The unique problem for me is the "knowledge" of the bitcoin itself, if the people start to learn what is , and how to use bitcoin I'm sure they will use if for (example) transfer the money to their relatives/family in other country due the lowest fee. Or for example another use it is the buy/selling for item face to face because the buyer will not be able to make the chargeback (but with a credit card he will be able to "recover" the payment).

Agreed. I remember one time, a friend of mine asked why do I use bitcoin as a form of payment. I explained everything to him and replied that data doesn't have value in anyway and thus cannot be used as a currency. He also told me that why should I use bitcoins if there were already credit and debit cards available? I explained to him the low fees and anonymous transactions. Still he hadn't got the point of using bitcoins because he thought it was just a not-so-valuable form of data valued by many.

IMHO, what we need to do is to "hide" what Bitcoin is to the greater public.  We need to have Bitcoin so far in the background and behind the scenes, hidden behind a front end, that will allow the general user that doesn't care what a millibit, satoshi, blockchain, or wallet address is.

Think Venmo, ApplePay, and Paypal of the now.  We're nowhere need that stage yet, where you can transmit that easily and knowingly trust that transaction will go where it needs to be headed.  Bitcoin for non dust amounts, you'll probably continually check and check Blockchain.info until 6 confirmations went through to make sure there's no double spends.

Right now Bitcoin is in that Internet in the 1990's phase.  We're at that AOL 5.0 Trial 1000 hours free CD phase.  That Compuserve, Prodigy, Netzero phase.



Where at the phase where you need that super fast 56K modem, need a separate phone line so your MeeMa can call you without interrupting your current jack off session, need to be able to distinguish baud rate, need to have a cheat sheet of your favorite URLs, so you can remember to Bookmark them on Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Navigator.  Google wasn't born yet, so you have to crawl through a trillion search browsers to get the perfect porn page like Yahoo, Excite, Altavista, Lycos, etc..

This is where Bitcoin is at.  We need Bitcoin to get to that Google search, IE 11, Chrome, Firefox, HTML5 optimized, NFC mobile paying level that any Grandma or kindergarten kid can use it.

I am telling you that it is hard to explain to a close-minded person. I did explain to him the benefits of using bitcoin but in the end, he seemed to be dumbfounded and never understood even a single-bit of my every explanation. 

The next that I'm planning to do is to give him some coins and ask him to buy a gift card from gyft and at the same time ask him to buy the same gift card in the same site but this time using his credit card. I'll ask him how much does each transaction costed him and how fast and easy it is with each other. Maybe on that time I'll convince him.