The Netscape browser made the Internet happen. ‘Something’ will make Bitcoin happen. It is still very difficult for the average ‘Joe’ to understand, acquire, store and use Bitcoins. Though Coinbase and several others are working on innovative security algorithms and making it easy to store Bitcoins digitally, it is still not enough to make Bitcoin mainstream. Hence, what a ‘browser’ did to the Internet, a product or technology innovation will do it to Bitcoin in 2014. This will make the transition to Bitcoins frictionless. Kryptokit and Eric Voorhees’ Coinapult are promising startups in this direction. Encouragingly, all the building blocks for that to happen – like mobile penetration, cryptography algos etc are already in place.
