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Love the headline:
“I BELIEVE IN HONEST MONEY: GOLD SILVER, AND BITCOIN”
As if they had anything whatsoever in common.
I see markets. I see metals through the roof and metals MINING artificially low.
Why would I buy, for ten grand, some geek’s notion of a global “you say I have ten grand” currency, when I can buy ten grand worth of metals or mining stock - or even a promising currency? With the former I am trading cash for “gift certificates.” No thanks, geeks. I’m not paying for your house in Seattle.
Quote me.

Your logic is ok because you are thinking like a speculator. It is always dicey to speculate on anything. There is underlying logic to most valid speculation, for example using weather forecasts to speculate in farm commodities or world events to speculate in precious metals. A "promising currency" as you put it has some sort of comprehendible reality behind the country you are speculating in. But as with all speculation there is a bubble involved and you have to be disciplined enough to have a target price (i.e not be greedy or stupid).

It is basically impossible to speculate in bitcoin and not be greedy and stupid. There is no underlying logic to result in any particular price or any way to use some sort of technical charting. My point about greed is important. The best way to get burned is to put money into an exchange like Mt Gox to have them hold your private keys. First, you will own nothing since there is no regulation like at a brokerage. Second, their centralized server is a central point of failure and attack. It *will* ultimately fail since protection it has to be public facing and protection is alway more difficult than attack.

The "proper" and very safe way to hold bitcoins is with your own private key, thus they can't be traded in and out of currency (speculation) but must be held or transacted on digital services. They can also be spent on physical products but that generally involves a physical product company using an exchange like Mt Gox which doesn't make sense. In that case (my case with 0.1% of my portfolio so far) it is simply digital gold in a mattress. Buy, hold, diversify and wait for the dollar to crumble.

All that said, the best way to exchange value in the information age is something like bitcoin. There is no doubt whatsoever that the distributed transaction chain has long lasting value contained within it. It was designed that way. If I had to speculate in something like value in a chain, I would pick some scrypt coins and diversify. The newest coins are 99% doomed since they have no new qualities making them any better than the old ones. But there will be new coins that will jump in value because they add new value. As an engineer I would like to create one of those. But for now I will learn about what new value can be added to a coin to make it appeal to a wide variety of people.

Why would I buy, for ten grand, some geek’s notion of a global “you say I have ten grand” currency, when I can buy ten grand worth of metals or mining stock - or even a promising currency? With the former I am trading cash for “gift certificates.” No thanks, geeks. I’m not paying for your house in Seattle. Quote me.

In both cases you are trading one medium of exchange for another, hoping in both cases that they maintain, or if you're fortunate increase, in purchasing power. When you ask the question, why would I have bitcoin instead of gold, you raise the utility argument. Bitcoin is gaining traction as a medium of exchange because it can be transferred peer to peer, like cash, but without having to physically meet. Thusly it facilitates cash exchanges over great distances (e.g. migrant laborers transmitting purchasing power back home without giving Wells Fargo their multi-billion dollar cut, or someone making a purchase from Overstock.com on the web).

Other utilitarian feature of bitcoin is the ease of making change. $10,000 in gold no doubt is nice to hold, but if you need to make a $20 purchase, how readily can you do so from your bullion?

Bitcoin also completely avoids some of the transportation draw backs that large values of even high unit value commodities like gold pose. If you are flying out of Argentina with $10,000 in gold you're at much greater risk of personal loss than if you have the codes you need to access a bitcoin wallet from anywhere in the world.

Bitcoin, like gold, cannot be counterfeited, and that is why it is gaining traction among tech crowd. That is to say, by its nature, a cohort with higher than average intellect, and an ability to spot the Federal Reserve con for what it is, and furthermore, to act in their own interest accordingly.

I encourage anyone to diversify their savings because so much of the real economy remains susceptible to the whims of politicians, bankers, and technocrats like Yellen. With the gap in Federal outlays and receipts being reported at a trillion dollar last year, I see no 'tapering' to Federal inflation on the horizon.