Why Bitcoin Is Not Universally Adopted and How to Change It

For a bunch of reasons -- I've seen a lot of shenanigans, and have no way to sort out who in the industry is trustworthy and who isn't. So I have to consider the entire industry untrustworthy.

Also, if something does go wrong, there's no technical or legal recourse (that I'm aware of). I'm just out of luck.

Also also, there isn't any regulation that I'm aware of. In the absence of regulation, there isn't legal recourse and anybody in the industry can do anything they like.

Because it has repeatedly demonstrated that it's untrustworthy!

Sure, some of that might be just hype around the bad things. But the sheer number of thefts, scams, hacks, etc, means that for many (most?) people, using a cryptocurrency is just not worth the risk.

The fact that massive profits can be made by the lucky few only serves to reinforce the impression that it's not a safe environment.

Fractional reserve banking is one of the most dangerous things homo sap does, it is right up there with Tide Pods and the Space Shuttle and is worse than nuclear power by a large margin.

(e.g. the basis for the instability is that banks borrow with a short term and lend with a long term; when there is a recession naturally some of those long term promises are broken, short term depositors walk, and banks can fail in a cascading chain failure.)

The 2008 crisis showed many reasons why you shouldn't trust ordinary banks. The folks involved with Bitcoin have the same problems, except unlike bankers they aren't regulated and we don't have any control over their bad behavior.

I know it's usually a terrible counter argument, but really, why do you trust the industry?

They've offered nothing trustworthy except the argument that it's great for 100 different illicit uses