Take away the interesting technical aspects, and BitCoin, to me, looks like a pyramid scheme.
The BitCoin economy is like a small country with a novel monetary system. Now, a big country, say the USA, wants to join because it sees benefits in that system. Normally, such a transition would have the USA print new money. In this case, the answer to "OK, sounds useful, how do we introduce this kind of money into our economy?" is not "together, we pick an exchange rate, then you can 'print' a BitCoin for every X dollars you destroy", but "you buy it from us, who got there earlier".
There also are huge problems integrating this "nobody can check where money flows" scheme into current economies. Income tax? Forget it. Indirect government control over inflation and interet rates?. Forget it.
In the end, I think some of the ideas of BitCoin may live on, but I do not see it live for more than a couple of years. Meanwhile, it will make quite a few people rich.
All human-created phenomena are social phenomena. "It's just tech" is said only by those who fundamentally don't understand this or want you to ignore those social aspects for their own gains.
Contrary to what lots of the Bitcoin aficionados might like people to think, the social aspects of it are the only part that really matters outside of a crypto mailing list. And they're also the reasons it's insane to expect people to actually use it.
Bitcoin is as much social phenomena as neodymium magnets.
Lots of people buy bitcoins but thats just consequence of the fact that bitcoins are excelent at being scarce and seem to be excelent at staying scarce and at some other things.
The BitCoin economy is like a small country with a novel monetary system. Now, a big country, say the USA, wants to join because it sees benefits in that system. Normally, such a transition would have the USA print new money. In this case, the answer to "OK, sounds useful, how do we introduce this kind of money into our economy?" is not "together, we pick an exchange rate, then you can 'print' a BitCoin for every X dollars you destroy", but "you buy it from us, who got there earlier".
There also are huge problems integrating this "nobody can check where money flows" scheme into current economies. Income tax? Forget it. Indirect government control over inflation and interet rates?. Forget it.
In the end, I think some of the ideas of BitCoin may live on, but I do not see it live for more than a couple of years. Meanwhile, it will make quite a few people rich.