Silly hyped up bitcoiners. Let's totally short this virtual imaginary currency thing. I mean, just look at the graph! What goes up always comes down!
until it doesn't
Value is entirely subjective, all money is imaginary and built on a trust. For bitcoin, this means trust that the network is healthy, the protocol works, the transaction system is effective and has advantages to competing systems, and that others understand and share these thoughts. However, bitcoin also reduces the trust required in several areas (this is one of its advantages): chargebacks, control of your account (it is immensely difficult for third parties to seize bitcoins), and stability of the monetary policy (systemic incentives were designed to strongly resist manipulation of the algorithm, and seem to be working well so far).
Edit: This isn't to say bitcoin will go to the moon. It could very well fail for a number of reasons. However, it is also something that deserves careful consideration. It has shown surprising resilience. People are working hard at building augmenting systems. It is programmable money. The potential applications are hard to fully fathom.
until it doesn't
Value is entirely subjective, all money is imaginary and built on a trust. For bitcoin, this means trust that the network is healthy, the protocol works, the transaction system is effective and has advantages to competing systems, and that others understand and share these thoughts. However, bitcoin also reduces the trust required in several areas (this is one of its advantages): chargebacks, control of your account (it is immensely difficult for third parties to seize bitcoins), and stability of the monetary policy (systemic incentives were designed to strongly resist manipulation of the algorithm, and seem to be working well so far).
Edit: This isn't to say bitcoin will go to the moon. It could very well fail for a number of reasons. However, it is also something that deserves careful consideration. It has shown surprising resilience. People are working hard at building augmenting systems. It is programmable money. The potential applications are hard to fully fathom.