If the grid goes down and stays down, doesn’t that make bitcoins useless? Kinda like the “trophies” you win when playing online games that you already paid for. Poof!
Probably. But if the grid goes down it is still POOF for anything you had banked, retirement funds, etc. Anything other than hard currency or precious metals or, say, PORK INFUSED AMMO!!
Bitcoin is a currency for a stable, well connected society. It will not work if the Internet is not working right (and you can bet that that's exactly what will happen at the first sign of Troubles.)
Regardless of that, if you plan to buy BTC then consider the following. Some good quantity - reportedly, from 30% to 50% of all existing bitcoins - is in hands of the BTC inventor and his close friends. They generated millions of these coins in first days of Bitcoin, for free. If BTC becomes an accepted currency, those anonymous people will own the world. Literally. Now it is in their interest to legitimize BTC. Do you want to buy 1 BTC for $800 from people who produced a thousand of them per minute?
If the grid goes down and stays down, doesn’t that make bitcoins useless? Kinda like the “trophies” you win when playing online games that you already paid for. Poof!
"Dead as the dollar".