Bit coin is a Ponzi scheme. Don't listen to the bit coin shills on here. The newcomers buying into bit coin and driving up the price are just making the early adopters richer.
Some early users have large amounts of bitcoin because they take risks and invest time and resources on unproven technology, which is very similar to investing in the early stages that may provide value as usefulness and popularity or even never become anything. Bitcoin is still at an early stage, and has been designed for long-term goals. It's hard to imagine how Bitcoin benefits the early users, because today's Bitcoin users could be early users in the future, or not.