Bitcoin has no inherent worth; neither does "real" currency. The value comes from the promise that others will accept it in exchange for the things you want to get. For traditional money, this guarantee is practically given, but because money can be minted or multiplied in questionable ways, the system is prone to, ahem, "incidents".
For Bitcoins, speculative devaluation is not a significant risk thanks to the design of the system; but all the parties getting bored of running an informal, distributed economy is. We have some examples of such p2p systems working OK, but also many examples where some form of institutional oversight and coordination is necessary. So, it's complicated...
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Bitcoin has no inherent worth; neither does "real" currency. The value comes from the promise that others will accept it in exchange for the things you want to get. For traditional money, this guarantee is practically given, but because money can be minted or multiplied in questionable ways, the system is prone to, ahem, "incidents".
For Bitcoins, speculative devaluation is not a significant risk thanks to the design of the system; but all the parties getting bored of running an informal, distributed economy is. We have some examples of such p2p systems working OK, but also many examples where some form of institutional oversight and coordination is necessary. So, it's complicated...