The main friction IMO is exchanging fiat currency for btc. It's ridiculous. Sign up for gox, send a bunch of private identifying documents (to a site that's been hacked), send a wire transfer, wait a week... craziness.

I wanted to buy $10k of btc last week @ ~$100, I didn't have any open accounts anywhere, so I used coinbase... which limited the amount I could buy. I ended up with 0.2 BTC, which didn't post in my account until late last night.

Looking at today's quotes, it probably for the best.