The biggest problem that I have with Bitcoin is that there's a bit of an impedance of trading dollars for BTC and vice versa. When you could use Dwolla, that helped, but now that Dwolla pulled out (at least that's my understanding), it's even more difficult to get BTC.<p>What would be ideal, is to be able to use your credit card to buy BTC. But that won't happen because credit cards need the ability to support charge backs and that makes it difficult with BTC's anonymous nature.<p>Once this problem is solved, I think you'll find a lot more people becoming involved with BTC again.
You can create a currency with the backing of something of value - even the promissory notes of solid citizens - but you cant create a currency from nothing - it has no value.<p>While not intending (I am sure) to be a pyramid scheme (artificial value from short term demand) this is how it will/has inevitably turned out. The concepts underpinning Bitcoin however have a future - as long as the mining is done where wealth is accumulated and not on a GPU.
In the UK Bitcoins are classified as a commodity.<p>It falls under the same rules as buy and selling gold which basically has no formal regulation.<p>I heard somebody define "money" as the most liquid commodity.<p>The commodity that can be exchanged for goods and services the most easily and efficiently is money.