What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction, and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option?
Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they can be.
Given a choice between trusting a person/corporation and trusting a mathematical equation, I would rather place my trust in the mathematics.
The internet is a mass market system, and it was designed with biological growth in mind. Bitcoin is built on top of the internet. So I don't see why you would think it couldn't see widespread adoption. It's just another program.
All you've done is shift your trust to the authoring process of the Bitcoin clients and to the majority of the miners. Authoring and distributing the clients, and determining the majority of clients and the majority of mining power, is still a social and political problem driven by human greed.
Thanks for pointing that out. I suppose I'm guilty of "idealizing" my argument. Still, if the Bitcoin client could somehow be "written in stone", and everyone knew the protocols and source code could not be modified, I think it would be a safer bet to place my trust in a globally distributed network of selfish individuals, than to place it in a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires.
This comes across as incredibly naive. Just consider the whole Segwit2x controversy and think about exactly who controls the future of Bitcoin. You've just shifted your trust to a different group of people.