The problem with these middlemen is that they do absolutely nothing to increase the legitimacy of bitcoin, and in fact undermine it a bit by shining a light on

The problem with these middlemen is that they do absolutely nothing to increase the legitimacy of bitcoin, and in fact undermine it a bit by shining a light on the fact that you can't really buy much with bitcoins. When you pay $10 USD for a good but convert it to bitcoins at the last second, you aren't buying things with bitcoins, you're buying things with dollars and using the instantaneous price of bitcoins for a marker.