This seems to be the crux of all of these discussions and why they inevitably go nowhere.
For a small but passionate core of libertarian-minded crypto/Bitcoin boosters, decentralization is a good unto itself. All other issues caused by it are irrelevant.
Hard for normal people to use? But it's decentralized! Not useful for anything normal people want to do? But it's decentralized! Massive price fluctuations render it largely unusable? But it's decentralized! Rife with scams and fraud? But it's decentralized!
This makes it impossible to discuss because this small group's focus is so different from everyone else's. Unfortunately, this small group also has outsize influence in the crypto scene so the concerns of users will probably never get addressed, since they don't matter from that POV.
Well, if people don't value decentralization, there's not much need for them to use Bitcoin. There's a lot of problems that come with decentralization.
I feel this is like comparing car seating to couches. Car seat fans only seem to care about going places! Car seats are small and don't let you lie down? But it gets places! They need a seat buckle and don't let you sit freely? But it gets places! They shake a bit and are usually surrounded by noise? But it gets places!
Some of the complaints can have some incremental improvements, but they're unlikely to be solvable and the fact that someone might rate the complaints highly relative to the goal implies that they're not in the target market for the thing and its large trade-offs.
/overly general point. Some specific responses:
Some of the goals you mention (not useful, massive price fluctuations) are generally only solvable with more people using it. If there were easier more direct solutions, people would've done them.
>Hard for normal people to use?
Most wallet software I've used was super easy. If you want to receive money, you give someone one of your addresses. If you want to send some money, you put in their address. (A billion times easier than figuring out what banking numbers you have to put in to your bank's website to send someone money, and then them worrying about whether that lets you withdraw from their account too.) The main problem is that some wallet clients are full clients that need to download the whole blockchain first, but being patient or switching to a lightweight client solves that.
It was a bit hard to first get bitcoin, but that's because of the hoops companies have to jump through to deal with the banking system. I'm not sure how an open decentralized system can make this part easier. That's up to the exchanges and banks. It doesn't make much sense to blame crypto-enthusiasts for being close-minded and ignoring issues they could work on.
To use your analogy, it would be like someone believing that car seats should replace couches everywhere but ignoring all of the complaints you listed.
>Most wallet software I've used was super easy.
Do you have a technical background such that you are familiar and comfortable with using even complicated technology? I often find that since crypto boosters are developers or engineers, their ideas of simplicity and ease are wildly different from your average Joe.
Correct. That is the reason why most people don't need and will never need bitcoin.
If email didn't exist and people mainly used Facebook messages, I'd want to help agitate for something open and decentralized like email to become popular. It wouldn't be because I thought email was easier than Facebook messages. It's because there's benefits to the competition that comes from an open ecosystem.
People don't use Bitcoin because it's complicated and unstable. It's complicated and unstable because the types of people that use it want to speculate with it or use it for illegal purposes. Just making it more approachable won't fix the stability issues, so it likely won't increase the number of users in a meaningful enough way to get it to take off.
The same is true for desktop Linux. And installing Linux is often easier than installing another OS (Windows or macOS). Take Ubuntu or Mint, for example. They're the most popular among users new to Linux, and installation is as easy or easier than Windows since drivers come preinstalled and the user is prompted if proprietary drivers are available. The problems arise when trying to use software not deigned for Linux (e.g. MS Office), and this is getting better all the time with investment into the Windows compatibility layer by Valve.
However, the chicken and egg problem will always be there. A decentralized system like Bitcoin can't really be saved by investment from a third party since it can't solve the volatility problem without centralization.
For this reason, I think looking at centralized, but not government run, systems is interesting. For example, GNU Taler is a centralized cryptocurrency that can be used for anything (one example was currency used at conferences) with incredibly low transaction costs. I think it's interesting because it gets people used to using something digital (and not government provided/managed) to make transactions, but without having to deal with volatility inherent in cryptocurrencies, and once cryptocurrencies stabilize, perhaps they can be a drop-in replacement.
I really want decentralized currencies to work out (largely to make traveling less of a pain), but nothing I've seen is worth making more user-friendly.
Having one single, well-branded app is easier to use than 87 random no-name apps.
But there's no need for this to be a cryptocurrency app, that's the point.
These amazing things that cryptocurrency enthusiasts tell us could be made possible using their magic beans - millions of people are already doing them just fine.
Acquiring bitcoin will become incredibly simple with services like azte.co, which work in pretty much the same way that most people used to top up their pay-to-go phone less than 20 years ago. People forget how rapidly things move.
If you think at the level of "this is how it works now", you will never comprehend the potential of Bitcoin. The exchanges which operate in the bitcoin space now will be about as relevant as phone booths were as a means of making phone calls remotely. People will forget they ever existed.
The way most people will acquire Bitcoin in future is the way they currently acquire fiat money - in exchange for their time and labor. There won't be any other "exchange" process.
The comparison to Linux Desktop is correct but for the wrong reasons. Like with bitcoin, nobody has any reason to switch to a Linux Desktop since the existing solutions already do everything people want. If you're non-technical and are already comfortable with Windows or Mac, you gain nothing by switching to a linux desktop.