Bitcoin has a number of practical advantages for ordinary e-commerce, such as no chargebacks and low transaction fees. I think that if (say) Bitcoin and Paypal were equally normal-seeming in the public consciousness, then most online vendors would prefer for their customers to pay with bitcoins. This suggests that one of the most important limiting factors for adoption is visibility, which is to say, adoption. The spread of Bitcoin is self-reinforcing.
Bitcoin has a number of practical advantages for ordinary e-commerce
That may be true, but it also has disadvantages such as scalability. AFAICT, every Bitcoin node must maintain an up-to-date ledger containing all transactions made to date: obviously, this is unsustainable in the long run.
The "fixed number of bitcoins" policy is also an issue. According to Bitcoin developers, having more miners makes the network more resilient to attack, in addition to speeding up transactions. Eventually, the subsidy to mining activity will become too low...
We've started a habit of creating periodic Bitcoin threads to confine discussion thereof to those threads and prevent excessive proliferation of Bitcoin topics in the discussion section. Here is a link to the last one, which links the other discussions. Lot's to talk about, and another bounce in Bitcoin's value (up to 33 then down to 24), so share your links and thoughts!