Agreed. Couple more points that may not be obvious: 7. Even if Bitcoin is not a useful currency today, not only is it a novel tech invention but it is also a u

Agreed. Couple more points that may not be obvious: 7. Even if Bitcoin is not a useful currency today, not only is it a novel tech invention but it is also a useful medium of exchange (akin to credit cards). You can buy coins temporarily just so you can buy something from Amazon.com and have it shipped to Africa (as one Bitcoin startup does international shipping for many US-only retailers). 8. Bitcoin could be a useful currency someday, but it might take 200 years. What most people don't realize is that all the properties of Bitcoin (such as the maximum supply or its present growth) can be adjusted with a new genesis block at any point (effectively forking the currency). If the majority of the network clients agrees with this fork, Bitcoin continues under the same name. Side note: I remember hearing that Gavin was going to start a non-profit to help guide (read: sort-of regulate) the official Bitcoin fork. Not sure if this happened, I've been out of the loop. 9. There is no way Bitcoin as it is today could reach any kind of significant scale, purely from the perspective of the protocol. Bitcoin was built with the intention of evolving further down the line. This is part of what makes the technology really interesting.