Bitcoin falls below $300, lowest in 11 months

Oh, man...

Short answer: By not storing wallets in computers at all.

Long, technical-focused answer: Paper wallets. Hardware wallets. USB drives that boot into a read-only operating system with your keys and a BTC client. Old cell phones that can be repurposed to run btc client software... you don't need to have a computer of your own to keep a wallet. And I haven't even mentioned hosted services! There is nothing (besides government regulation) stopping shop owners who work with M-Pesa to also offer "BTC vault services": using multi-sig, any BTC deposited in an account needs to be authorized by the vault.

Longer, human-focused answer: stop thinking that the problem in underdeveloped countries is lack of access to material things. The problem with underdeveloped countries is the lack of consolidated, stable, sound institutions. The technicalities of how to use BTC (or any cryptocurrency) is not the problem, they can adapt by themselves to a new gadget. What they can't do - by themselves - is to create these institutions that the people in the developed world take for granted.

A farmer will have access to Internet (just not so fast/ubiquitous/cheap), the thing they don't have is a bank to give them decent insurance in case their crops go bad, or any one to give them credit so that s/he can finance the purchase of supplies. They will have access to smartphones (not your "premium" iPhone, but that is only 2-3 years away by Moore's Law) and they will have cell phone access. What they don't have is a government that is stable enough to guarantee the money sent directly to him is as good as the money sent through some corrupt bureaucrat, or taxed away, or inflated away.

The cool thing about BTC is how it completely disrupts the finance/banking industry. It turns a socio-economic-political problem into a technological one. It allows people who live in poor institutions to completely bypass them.

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So, to summarize: if you are an American whose only concern is to keep your money and the convenience that it is only possible due to the stable institutions that your country provides, by all means stay out of any crypto-currency. But if you'd like to live in a world where the barriers are down, with free flow of people and services and goods, then by all means take a look at BTC - not as way to get rich quickly, but as a way to make the world freer.

It's all about the roll-out, not the price. The price should naturally follow, and then to imagine scenarios you may not be familiar with, but are still real. Here are a few:

* More efficient inter and intra-organizational business systems. I am unsure of how involved academia and consulting have been with bitcoin and cryptos, but JIT payments seem like a very attractive proposition, especially with trusted partners, and especially in corporate contexts. Does your local bank have an API that allows easy funds transfers? Perhaps bitcoin can simplify the accounting function. There has to be benefits and cost-savings. CEOs may ask the question.. "we can get bitcoins, but then what?"

* As mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Adoption in Africa or some other nation: the Orkut phenomenon. It's not about doubt in the USD (also mentioned in the thread) but rather doubt in one's own currency from inflation (or some other unreliability.) This is Draper's view. I think the key is to combine bitcoin with a fiat note (or some newer crypto down the line) and reduce reliance on banks. That's the sweet spot.

* To avoid bank confiscations, eg Cyprus. Having some money is better than having money that's been largely confiscated. Bitcoin makes any nasties in government and corporations think twice. It's wealth insurance. And if/when confiscations occur, the price could rise higher than what you paid for them (but until then, it might seem like a loss.)

* I suppose bitcoin could become a type of digital backbone currency, due to it being the first (but not the last) Cc. It really depends on the roll out, which has a number of imperatives driving it. It's worth looking at various business and use cases of bitcoins, and once these start reaching larger audiences, the usage should expand.

* Online activities needing anonymity: use your imagination.

* The currency could be faster to use, but it's usable enough for above things.

Yeah they can buy them but that won't make their price fall.

The regular stock market deals with this by separation of functions. The NYSE doesn't own stocks; it's just a matching service. Mt. Gox performed the functions of an exchange, a broker, a custodian, a transfer agent, and a depository institution. In the real world, those are usually separated.

The mining self-balances; if enough miners shut off their rigs, the difficulty goes down, and it becomes profitable (or break-even) to mine again. (Mining was heavily over-invested, and it's in the ugly process of rebalancing now.) It's possible that Bitcoin will be relegated to a fringe of techno-libertarians, but it is unlikely that the network will ever disappear.

Also, the network is "single-purpose" in the sense that an ethernet cable is single-purpose: while it only accomplishes one thing, it is a building block that can be leveraged in lots of interesting ways (smart contracts, proof-of-extistence, sidechains, colored coins, etc.)