Finally someone speaking some sense and not drinking the bitcoin Kool-Aid. I'm a bitcoin dealer. The vast majority of my personal income comes from buying bitcoins cheaply and selling them at mark-up. I make my living off the success and adoption of this volatile digital asset that can be easily hacked and never recovered (Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, etc). And even I have to admit to myself that bitcoin is never going to hit the big time without password recovery and fraud protection mechanisms.

The reason why my customers come to me to buy bitcoins is usually because they want to do something illegal or something they don't want the bank or the government to know about (online gambling is legal here but are you naive enough to believe that people report their bitcoin gambling winnings on their tax return? Unless it's such a large amount that it's impossible to hide from the government's scrutiny.)

Unless you're a successful professional bitcoin trader like myself, bitcoin is just not practical for everyday transactions. I'm looking into getting a bitcoin debit card or a bitcoin visa debit card for myself here in Canada because I get people selling bitcoins to me below-spot every day practically.

But for the average consumer out there, it makes no sense to buy bitcoins from a dealer such as myself (where you have to pay me a commission and then I pay 1% of my sales revenue to the website I advertise on) or even at a bitcoin exchange (where you have to pay fees) in order to buy goods and services that you can buy cheaper with fiat. But if you are doing something illegal or something you don't want the government/banks to know about, then that's a different story.