But that's a problem regarding legal regulation.

People have never managed software where if you lost your "password", your money was gone forever. They never had to keep a 12-24 word recovery phrase. They've never sent money to addresses that look like hash strings. Their money value was never this volatile (in some countries anyway) and never this complicated to use (understanding and waiting for block confirmations, looking up transactions in the blockchain explorer).

That's why Coinbase exists, to obfuscate these complexities, to sell security as a service. The cryptography behind cryptocurrencies allows you to basically be your own bank vault; this is not intuitive to people.

The fundamentals for Satoshi's vision have been laid out, the rest of the implementation details will come in time.

Going long on high market cap coins with a longer timeline is a relatively safer bet.

Crypto is always in the headlines and will constantly occupy the headspace of trader's colleagues and peers, so it's just human nature that they will not be able to resist having a taste.

One exists that I know of (bitshares). I'm sure others are being developed.

Turning fiat into crypto is a separate problem of its own. The problems there are legal and political, not so much technical.

The problem is when it bursts, we don't know if we'll be in better positions having entered now, or having entered after.

It's for wholesale drug operations. Usually drugs go at one time, money comes back another time. Only now instead of cash you could just use a crypto, but figuring out how to liquidate enough of it would be difficult.

I instantiate the web3 object as such: web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("http://localhost:8545"));

When I try to setup an event listener, console logs this:

Error: The current provider doesn't support subscriptions: HttpProvider

One problem I'm having is with event listening.

It seems that MetaMask doesn't yet support subscriptions, nor does my localhost testRPC instance pass it in the web3 object.

Some have suggested I need to run my own node just to listen for contract events. Has anyone figured out an easier solution?

No one is saying a price crash isn't possible. But it won't be caused by some liquidity issue, it'll just be people selling off.

This doesn't seem like a fundamental problem due to the structure of Bitcoin or exchanges.

I deposit USD to an exchange...then use that USD to place a Bitcoin buy order. Then I sell some Bitcoin another buyer on the exchange, who was only able to make this transaction happen because they too deposited USD or fiat into their account.

I get the money, they get the Bitcoin. Who is getting screwed?

According to the Bitcoin protocol, only a maximum of 21m BTC can exist. And that they are created via mining in a predictable schedule.

Respectfully, I think you need to revisit Bitcoin fundamentals.

There is already a lack of legal systems and order. You have ISIS roaming around cutting people's heads off.

Obviously you have a different set of priorities when you're running for your life.

I place the sell order with my brokerage, and I get fiat USD deposited into my account. This is exactly how Bitcoin is exchanged.

Where exactly lies the fundamental liquidity problem for my brokerage/exchange?

Consumer applications (like Coinbase) will emerge to support the local population who can use it via smartphone and not need to understand public/private key encryption etc.

how would you get a meaningful number of people who have never used the Internet

They use the Internet; they just call it by a different name: Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram...

Why would a person with low wealth invest their life savings into a highly volatile, recently developed instrument, when they can just buy jewelry, gold, etc

Gold, jewelry, etc can be stolen or lost.