Speculation on the value of bitcoin is over for someone with little capital. It is just so volitile right now. I'm betting the smart money will move on to the next cryptocurrency like litecoin.I've mined 1 whole Litecoin (~$25 at todays rate). I have a Nvidia 560 Ti, so GPU mining is slow. It took me around 10 days. At the current Litecoin exchange rate, that isn't worth the trouble. If you could get Radeon 280x's, each one generates hashes at 4x the rate of my Nvidia card. If you could get 3 - 6 of them and a cheap motherboard, it might still be worth it. However, they are always out of stock, or someone wants double the price for them.
The Bitcoin mining ship has sailed, unless you can sink a lot of dollars into an ASIC rig. Even then, I doubt it's that profitable. You could attempt to buy some coins on the inevitable downturns, and then try to resell them on an exchange. They are swinging all over the place. When China announced that their Central Banks couldn't trade in Bitcoins, the price dropped from $1200/coin to ~$550/coin. But then, a few days later, it was back up to ~$900. It would take a strong stomach for wild fluctuations and a good chance of losing all your money though.
They can be divided, so you do not have to say use that bitcoin who is worth 800$ to buy a chocolat bar.
But you point toward their flaw, they value go up and down so much, who would they are very risky for everyday commerce.
Anonimity. Perfect for criminals, terrorists and those who want to avoid paying taxes to guverment.What problem does bitcoin really solve?
It seems like bitcoin and its ilk is over-engineered money.
I get the idea, that like a Monopoly game with 2-6 players, they wanted something with a fixed quantity, prevent injection of fake money, and somehow flexes as population/inflation naturally grows.
But we already have digital money in the form of debit cards and online banking. If we can keep Target from being hacked and debately restrain the Federal Reserve from over-printing new money (based on varying political opinions on the merit of the Fed's strategies that we won't go into here), then you've got e-money already.
What problem does bitcoin really solve?