[who_would_fardels_bear]

Bitcoins are set up to be harder and harder to "mine". I believe that a huge percentage of the bitcoins that will ever be mined have already been mined.

And now they're only worth $20 billion which is a drop in the bucket of the amount of wealth generated worldwide every year.

How are they supposed to become any sort of replacement for currency, precious metals, etc.?

[aquila48]

“How are they supposed to become any sort of replacement for currency, precious metals, etc.?”

I agree - I think they will be hoarded. Just think that in 2010 (just 7 years ago) when bitcoins first came out you could have bought 1000 of them with one dollar. That one dollar worth of bitcoins would have made you a millionaire today.

With more and more countries eliminating cash, bitcoins become very attractive for people who don’t want the government snooping into all their financial transactions.

[Mr. Douglas]

And what are they backed by? Faith?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[discostu]

There’s not enough gold to replace the money anyway. In the end ALL money (even gold) get their value from people’s willingness to trade it for goods and services. Right now bitcoin isn’t money, it’s an investment commodity, because people are mostly just trading it for money. It might become money, but probably not. Between how little of it there is, the amount of effort it takes to actually trade them, and the trading price (really how the heck am I supposed to buy groceries with a non-fractional currency “worth” $1200 buck) it’s just not usable. But hey, most of our stock, commodity and bond markets now are ruled by the bigger fool philosophy (being sure that somebody out there will pay more for this than you’re paying) and actual value is basically meaningless, so good for bitcoin.