In reply to Tony.

Ignoring for a moment the use of the Bitcoin system for nefarious purposes, the choice of payment method, from those offered by a retail merchant, is driven by the payer who usually bears, directly, none of the cost of such choice. Why then would any online buyer choose to complicate any retail transaction, particularly a “local” transaction, by paying with Bitcoin, which is effectively a “foreign” currency, and a volatile one at that, that you have to buy/sell at a negotiated price and requires a 1% buy/sell fee at either end of every transaction (ie, 2% total) for a prompt processing (otherwise you are effectively speculating in foreign currency), and has no transaction dispute moderation process?

Bitcoin is not even cheaper. The average cost to a merchant of a MasterCard/Visa credit card transaction is one per cent. One per cent! That is, between ~0.5% and ~1.9% depending on the amount of business that the merchant is putting through their merchant account. For those merchants that have sufficient markup that they are prepared to accept Amex cards, the average fee is ~2%.

Then, some of the Bitcoin fanboys keep telling me that there is no cost involved until you do $1,000,000 in transactions, and then it’s only a few cents per transaction. Yet, in the meantime, someone is storing these Bitcoins—taking the risk of the rise and fall of the value of this “foreign” currency; someone is brokering the buy/sell of these Bitcoins; someone is doing the foreign currency conversions for these transactions—and, apparently, it's all being done at virtually no charge to the user! If that is indeed the case, I see no commercial future in this business plan ...

“Bitcoin’s financial network is doomed”—Henry Farrell, in The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/12/16/bitcoins-financial-network-is-doomed/

Bitcoin—a fake currency that techno-utopians insist is the future we don't know we want.—Matt O’Brien, Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/15/russias-economy-is-doomed-its-that-simple/

Retail Payments—The Reality ... http://bit.ly/1nSA1Zl