What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters

There's some interesting discussion about Bitcoin on this Quora question: <a href="http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id...</a>

Does everybody in the world who uses Bitcoins also keep a copy of the global transaction record? Isn't that going to become colossal very quickly?

Good explanation. It'll be interesting to see what happens if someone ever attempts to run a major exchange within the US. My money says they'll be labeled a terrorist.

The question is, which will be the more stable currency 5 or 10 years from now, BitCoin or the US Dollar?<p>See The Future of Money: <a href="http://pragmaticpoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-of-money.html" rel="nofollow">http://pragmaticpoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2010/03/future...</a>

Bitcoin could be to quantum computing what Sputnik was to NASA.

To me, Bitcoin just seems like a form of electronic gold. Limited supply; no significant intrinsic value; no backing government or other body. Conversion to real currency is commonplace but not exactly convenient.<p>Is this way of looking at it a poor predictor for the way it will behave in the market?

question: Is the Bitcoin approach to distributed, secure transactions useful (and is it novel?) without the currency generation component? Are they potentially separable?

Where do ya all buy bitcoins?

Bored with bitcoin, please stop posting regarding this topic.