Funny, but a tangible item is much easier to market.

It's only been in recent human history that we have decided to accept currency sources that are technically not backed by a physical equivalent and. Even then, until bitcoin and other recent crypto-currencies started appearing, we required the force of a large body behind it like a government.

At least with items like gold and silver, people knew that it was an unknown new item that had limitless potential. Imagine a person coming up to you ages ago and saying, "I've filled an empty mine with rocks, but every 1000th rock is blue. I am the only one that can allow access to the mine, so I can manage the rarity of the blue rocks. What I want you, and the other people to do, is treat these blue rocks as valid trade items." I can almost guarantee that you, or anyone for that matter, would say that you would do that only if that person speaking to you guaranteed to make the blue rocks redeemable for valid currency from him at your discretion.

That is one of the problems many have with crypto-currency, the guarantee factor of being able to convert to a more recognized form of monetary unit. It's changing now, but it is still going to be a rough road since the only true guarantee at the moment is that multiple places are starting to recognize it as currency. It could be amazing, but it also has massive potential to financially cripple a lot of people if they trade goods/services for it and it flops.

World of Warcraft primed people to accept a lack of physical existence as inconsequential.

Video is pretty much a spot on summary of Bitcoin / crypto

The problem with bitcoin is it being treated like a commodity instead of a currency.

Some very rich people pulled a pump and dump---over the course of several months mind you---and a lot of the 'liitle folks' got burned in the hype.

Disagree. Gold (or more specifically currency) has a huge number of advantages over barter, as shown with the second guy.

Barter has problems of divisibility, relative worth, storage, transport, etc... all of which are solved by a common currency.

Crypto has some advantages over traditional currency, but right now they're outweighed by the disadvantages such as instability (as mentioned by @notarobot), lack of trust, slow transaction speeds and frankly appalling levels of energy usage.

Blockchain might eventually become the future, but Bitcoin is basically dead because of these problems.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/Why-Bitcoin-Is-Not-Working

Why Bitcoin Is Not Working has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.