"Waiting 24 hours or more for the blockchain to sync..."

Wrong client. Try blockchain.info. Instant sync.

"You can purchase some bitcoins, which involves..."

Wrong method. Try BitInstant. Instant.

"Wait 50 minutes to get enough verified transactions..."

Could be a few seconds. As a seller, you can choose the number of verifications you wait for. My web shop waits for the first only (fine for sub $100 purchases), so verification takes about 5 seconds. If you wait for 10 verifications, well, yeah it's going to take a while, but you don't need that level of security unless you're buying a house.

"All of this would be completely impossible on a mobile device."

Er... Google "site:play.google.com bitcoin"

Loads of mobile wallets.

Yes, again, I totally agree that there many ideas for making bitcoin more usable, but they all unfortunately tend to undermine bitcoin.

Bitcoin's fundamental core strength is being distributed. That's also the thing that makes it mostly unusable.

Sure, if I just trust someone else to manage my wallet and verify the block chain for me, it becomes usable. This is the exact reason why people keep getting taken by bad "online wallet" services -- they can't bear to do it themselves.

Mobile wallets are a great example. There are two types of mobile wallets: the kind that wingnuts struggle through using because they're bitcoin fanatics, and the kind that are actually interesting for people drawn to convenience. The former actually verify the block chain, the latter are a thin client over an API to someone else that's managing that off the device.

Bitcoin is distributed, and some people choosing to yield their micromanaged control to enjoy the dividends of convenience does not make the system any less distributed.

With Bitcoin you CAN run your own node, you CAN mine your own blocks, you CAN verify the integrity of every transaction that every person has ever made in the blockchain, but that does not mean that you HAVE to do these things. Because this is an open-source currency, WHEN you choose to yield to a third party, you get to choose one based on their merits because the barrier to entry to become a service provider is so low, thus competition is fierce. Compare with the banking oligopoly.

This is on par with Linux. You CAN build every binary on your machine from source, but you do not HAVE to and most people choose to yield their compiling duties to distributions and just install pre-cooked binaries. The benefits of open source continue to shine upon these people, because they get to choose their distribution, and they benefit from the fruits of the bazaar development model even when they are not actively engaging in it.

If you use blockchain.info you're depending on a central server. Might as well use paypal— at least they are regulated.

The multibit client is a much better, though still reduced-security, option.

The sync comments there are outdated— I installed a new Bitcoin node two days ago and the sync only took about 2 hours from nothing.

Was that running bitcoind on a server somewhere, or on a consumer laptop with a home internet connection?

Even if it "only took about 2 hours," we're living in a world where companies are living and dying by shaving 30ms off page load times and a/b testing the color of their signup buttons.

Blockchain.info gets you a free wallet. Signed client-side so they can't mess with it. You don't need to run the "client" (which is really a "node") at all. The fact that this is not communicated well is a communication problem more than a technical one.

localbitcoins.com if you want to buy some from anyone in the neighborhood.

The thing that makes bitcoin different than other online payment systems or virtual currencies is that it's distributed. That property, however, is also what makes it difficult to use.

It's true that if you re-centralize things by trusting someone else with your wallet, or outsourcing block chain verification to a central party, then it can be quite usable.

From what I can tell, nobody is entirely comfortable with the direction that's headed, which is why there's a lot of handwaving about things like javascript-based cryptography, which just doesn't work.

localbitcoins is cool, but a friend bought some BTC off me the other day, and it took over an hour (for the above reasons).

Don't get me wrong, I think all of this is really interesting and amazing in a lot of ways, but not "easy peasy" as the parent commenter was saying.

> The thing that makes bitcoin different than other online payment systems or virtual currencies is that it's distributed. That property, however, is also what makes it difficult to use.

This to me highlights just about everything there is to know about Bitcoin. People are too easily turned off by the amount of effort it takes to properly command a Bitcoin wallet. At least with the traditional banking system, a big bank is there to lend you a hand should you need anything or should something go wrong with one of your transactions.

But there's a big tradeoff: when you utilize the traditional banking system, you must entrust at least some of your wealth to an entity you have absolutely zero control over.

Right now that's fine, but personally I like the idea of keeping external dependencies to a minimum, especially when it comes to money.

The price of Bitcoin remains affordable for now, and will continue to do so as long as people don't have a compelling reason to get off their behinds. For some perspective, the Bitcoin market cap is $332M. At a $1000M ($1B) market cap and ~12.8M BTC in circulation, the price per Bitcoin would be roughly $78. At a $10B market cap it would be $780. The market cap of Facebook is $68.7B. When you compare a global financial system with censorship resistant properties (Bitcoin), and give it a valuation six times less than a global social network (Facebook), 1 BTC is still worth $780. If Bitcoin is 60X less valuable to the world than Facebook, it's $78/coin. 120X less valuable and it's $39/coin. Meaning if Bitcoin truly provides the world less than 1% of the value of Facebook then it's still undervalued at $30.

IMO the world is practically crying out for an alternative financial system free from high risk banking, but I digress. Average people will not actively seek any competing financial system Bitcoin included until they have a compelling motivation eating away at them 24/7. There are scenarios which could create those circumstances, but they're long shots that hinge upon various social, economic and political factors at some vague point in the distant future. I can at least see Bitcoin having a $1B market cap for now, but for BTC to really come into its own, average people will need to get off their behinds. In other words, don't count on it.

Still the market cap of Apple is $450+ billion, and I'd like to think a global Internet currency/financial system is worth at least 10% of that to our society.

There is so much misunderstanding around cryptography.

Steps To Hack Blockchain.info

1) Discover a zero-day exploit in the operating system that Blockchain.info runs on

2) Hack it

3) Compromise the javascript that it delivers to the client

4) For the next 10 minutes or so (or up to the point the hack is discovered), anyone who logs into Blockchain.info via the web app and types in their password is compromised. Period.

Now, granted, this won't affect EVERYONE who has a Blockchain.info account, only the ones who log in while it's hacked.

Please see any of the very many recent in-depth discussions about the security of webapp-based cryptography. Sure, it "works" in the sense that it's very easy to use, but it is by no means secure.

I'm sure all of those other "online wallet" services that lost or disappeared with everyone's BTC also had plenty of users.

Moxie, given your background in cryptography, do you have any ideas on how the Bitcoin community could improve the user experience without compromising security?

So use the Blockchain.info browser extension, instead.

you realize that they dont have your private key right? and that you can verify the javascript wasnt poisoned by having a hash of the legit javascript and comparing it? with a handy toolbar?

You make some valid points regarding the inverse relationship between convenience and security with bitcoin. However, the latest version (0.8.0) of the bitcoin reference client is a significant improvement in terms of initial syncing speed and overall optimization. Being experimental software, there is still room for improvement.

easy is achieveable.

wallet - use blockchain, no need to sync, or on your desktop the electrum client, alternatively in the official client it will be much faster from version 0.8.

buying BTC from mtgox sucks, buy them from bitcoin-otc, localbitcoins.com or other private selelrs for a much easier and quicker transaction.

You can do this on a mobile device, I buy of bitmit.net and only use my smartphone to do so.

Regarding your claim of waiting 50 minutes for some music, I dont nknow what site you are using but i bet most music download sites would only require 1 or 2 confirmatons so 10 - 20 mins