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I actually came to this thread looking for somewhere to comment on Bitcoin. To my eye, it's a clever kind of Ponzi scheme. They have invented an opaque system for creating a fake currency. They can quite easily manipulate the price of the fake currency. By making sure that the price goes up over time, they can keep drawing people in. Unlike other Ponzi schemes which eventually collapse because the perpetrators run out of new clients' cash to pay old clients, this scheme can run indefinitely because the perpetrators don't have to fork out any cash for anything. They can just keep issuing new Bitcoins. They do have to ensure that the number of new Bitcoins issued is no more than the number that new investors will take up at the given price. With a price that only goes up, there will always be takers. OK, there was a brief period when the price went down (maybe they got a bit too greedy too quickly), but just look at the Bitcoin "All" period in http://www.coindesk.com/price/ - that's not a currency, that's a bad joke. If I had any money in Bitcoins I would be very nervous about the day that an authority somewhere challenged them - the collapse could be total.
Or have I missed something???
