Quote from: evoorhees on July 07, 2011, 05:10:55 PM

Skepticism is a healthy attribute. And to be brutally honest, of course Bitcoin is likely to fail - all new things are likely to fail. We're all engaged in a wildly speculative and risky venture, here. Even conservative ventures usually fail, and this is anything but conservative.

I wish people would stop comparing Bitcoin to a venture/business. It's not an organization, it's a set of protocols that other ventures are built on top of. I think it would be more correct to compare ventures MtGox and BitEscrow to things like Juno e-mail service or Geocities. Sure, those may fail, but the underlying protocol, like e-mail's POP3/SMTP, or web's HTTP, remain intact. The underlying protocol of Bitcoin will likely remain in tact as well, with just upgrades and bug fixes along the way.