[lucky american]

I see Bitcoin as a “virtual” nothing. I’ll keep my physical gold and silver. At some point there will be a war and Bitcoin, only accessable to you by computer, will be no help if you can’t use it. When the lines go down, you’re on your own.

[gattaca]

bmp

[BlueStateRightist]

The “Golden” Rule investing: Diversify.

[Nateman]

I wonder if this fellow is trying to bump up the price before he sells his bitcoins.

[wny]

no electricity - no Bitcoin. ask the Puerto Ricans

[a fool in paradise]

Bitcoin chains are for naked emperors.

[bankwalker]

What is blockchain and how does it relate to bitcoin?

[dynoman]

I watched a bitcoin documentary. Two people in it confirmed what I thought, they said the vast majority of people involved with bitcoin are involved for speculative reasons. In comparison few actually use it as money. It looks like the ultimate scheme to me. Sure it’s going up, because there is a limited number of them (22 million), and the coins available through mining halve every four years. A money supply needs to fluctuate with an economy. Bitcoin doesn’t. I don’t think it will ever be a viable alternative.

[Vaquero]

A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒn.zi/; also a Ponzi game)[1] is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator generates returns for older investors through revenue paid by new investors, rather than from legitimate business activities or profit of financial trading. Operators of Ponzi schemes can be either individuals or corporations, and grab the attention of new investors by offering short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent.

[Dixie Yooper]

If that’s the case, maybe Peter can talk to his friends over at Ebay about converting our E-Bucks Rewards over to BitCoins...that can be used on PayPal, or a converter on PayPal that can pull the E-Bucks over and convert them to BitCoins or any currency.

[Billthedrill]

It's a currency, it isn't any great and deep mystery. Bitcoin was the first really viable cryptocurrency; there are 30-odd others out there at the moment. Its value goes up and down with respect to other currencies, so caveat emptor. Some people make a lot of money in arbitrage, some lose their shirts.

Handy medium of exchange if you happen to spend a lot of time or business online. The notion that it's supposed to be some sort of hedge against SHTF scenarios is a little silly. That's right, if there's no Internet you can't use it. If you're dumb enough to leave your wallet on a single hard drive without backing it up you're at risk as much as if you do that with any vital data. So don't do that.

A lot of the confusion stems from the concept of Bitcoin "mining" being free money - it isn't. You're donating your computer resources to the upkeep of a distributed database and being compensated for it, that's all it is. Most of the time the juice isn't worth the squeeze.