This merchant offered Bitcoin. The vast majority of payors chose to use PayPal with its built-in buyer protection instead.

The fact that the vast majority of payors used PayPal rather than Bitcoin certainly has nothing to do with PayPal's buyer protection and everything to do with Bitcoin being obscure and more complex to use.

I rarely use cash when I buy anything in person mainly because of the buyer protection a credit card offers me.

Online it's the same thing. I'd pick credit card or Paypal over bitcoin just like I pick credit cards IRL over cash. It has nothing to do with obscurity.

I can mail money directly to someone if I don't want to deal with a bank or payment processor. FedEx/UPS/USPS are the Internet in this analogy.

Just send a money order or cash through the mail. After all, you trust the recipient, so you don't need all that customer protection stuff that Paypal offers.

I do that all the time. I live in Poland and bought hundreds of things from the Internet. Buyer always pays first, and there are no such things as chargebacks. And yet most people are okay with that. Only US people take chargebacks for granted.

I live in the Czech Republic and by far the most used payment method here is 'cash on delivery' - you send something and the postal service collects the money for you and than just sends you the cheque. It can hardly get simpler and it's safe. I wonder why this solution is apparently so rarely used in western countries.

I can still send someone cash in the post.