Quote from: vladimir on April 01, 2011, 02:23:27 PM

Quote from: chodpaba on April 01, 2011, 02:17:37 PM

Quote from: markm on April 01, 2011, 11:48:16 AM

I have been watching several alternate bitcoin-based currencies start up...

More power to them.

Indeed. Fiat money come and go, gold stays. "We want to be only ones to mint controlfreakcoins" will come and go, bitcoin will stay.

I find myself wanting to agree with the people who say it could, or is even likely to fail. I don't have that much in bitcoin right now, but I am young and have a normal income so, putting a small investment into a long shot risky bet is not something I am adverse to... so even saying its a risk and even a likely one, I am still comfortable using it and keeping some amount of quantity of it.... maybe even getting more...

That said, the idea that anything COULD fail is true. However, bitcoin only fails if we all stop using it. Even if there is a massive run, everyone runs on it, and the market crashes to .01 usd/btc... the majority of miners stop running it...total crash.

Even if/when that day comes, as long as one person, like yourself, keeps his miners running, the difficulty adjusts and, you keep getting these now worth less coins.... but... the whole thing can bootstrap from that all over again.

Of course, with decreasing generation, if nobody is passing transactions, it eventually means not even a worthless btc income, making trying to carry the system through a major crash a rather thankless job (unless you ended up with such a large hoard that it was worth reviving the system)

I guess all this is true of any currency but, the open and independent nature of bitcoin makes it seem like, it really does stand the best chance of still "being around", no matter what ends up happening to the value and current markets.