[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Karl Maga

The appropriate breadth and depth of points to consider are prodigious if trying to discuss this thoroughly. However, more generally, I see evidence that Bitcoin will be around long enough to be considered a legitimate currency. Consider what Tama Churchouse (a crypto currency “expert“) has to say about Bitcoin: “...characteristics of money. Money is portable, durable, divisible, scarce, uniform, and accepted. And I'll just run through those briefly.
... Portability means: can you carry it around, and can you transfer it? With bitcoin, absolutely. You can transfer it at the push of a button. You can transfer it from a mobile phone to the other side of the world in moments. So yes, it's portable.

The bitcoin blockchain ledger is absolutely durable. Hackers have tried everything to bring it down, all without success so far. And bitcoin's divisible. One bitcoin is divisible all the way down to eight decimal places.

It's also scarce. Central banks continue to print money out of thin air. That's why currencies around the world collapse time and time again. But only 21 million bitcoins will ever be mined. And only 16.5 million are in circulation today. Nobody can simply "print" more bitcoins. With a finite and known supply, it's certainly scarce. And of course, it's uniform. One bitcoin is the same as another.

The only place where bitcoins don't hold up as real money compared with the U.S. dollar is acceptability. Bitcoin's acceptability in day-to-day merchant activity is not high yet. But in Japan, for example, merchants have already begun to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. So that's changing.“.

He goes on to explain that Bitcoin can be deposited into a digital wallet, which in turn may issue a plastic cash card which can be used at a Point Of Sale, thereby addressing some of the portability limitation.

It appears to have real legs.

I agree with that assessment. There are at least 25 legitimate Bitcoin dealers in the US. The list of companies that accept Bitcoin in the US is growing but is probably only in the hundreds so far. The only downside seems to be the volatility.