"Let us be quite clear: if Bitcoin was a cheaper or more efficient transaction method, for-profit organizations such as large payment processors would have forked it long ago and would likely already be using it internally in order to shore up their margins."<p>This is quite a presumptuous lede. Bitcoin itself has only really been around for 5 years, and of that only entered the public consciousness for about 2. Large payments companies are like all large companies; they tend to be slow, bureaucratic and have to deal with internal politics to get anything done. On top of this, Bitcoin solved a long standing problem in computer science that many people believed was not solvable (Satoshi's original post on the cypherpunk list received a lot of skepticism when it was first posted). No large company would have precipitously risked their entire technology stack on something so unproven. Even Gavin Andresen is careful to say Bitcoin is still "in beta". And only now are some large companies starting to accept bitcoin <i>in payment</i>, which is a much weaker step than replacing their internal payment infrastructure. This stuff takes <i>time</i>, and this cycle of optimism and pessimism seems to repeat itself with every revolutionary technology:<p>T1. New technology X is going to change everything and the world will be amazing!<p>T2 (only short while after T1). Nothing has changed, the world is still the same, X is a failure.<p>...<p>TN: Whoa, we use X a lot now.