Look at everyone beating each other off on syntax and minor wordings here.

There's nothing to say Bitcoin has or will succeed. We, the users of it, are the predictors of that. Before the concept of fiat, if no one used money, it would always be worth that value because it has intrinsic value. Bitcoin's value is driven off collective speculation of the market, in a concept distinct from, but not unlike, fiat.

Let's not look at Beenz as an earlier analog to Bitcoin, but more of a step in the way. Even though Bitcoin isn't centralized, if the majority of BTC users don't smart up (cough cough, all the n00bs complaining on the anti-BFL threads), you could watch many of the things that happened to Beenz. Just because it's defunct doesn't mean that you can't learn from what happened.