Guess it's a great example of creating a limited commodity. It has even less intrinsic worth than gold, but give people a limited resource and talk it up and it all goes nuts. But do we really want to use Bitcoin as a store of wealth/for speculation, rather than a living, breathing currency?!
Personally, I welcome digital currencies and especially those that cannot be controlled (i.e. manipulated by politicians trying to win votes / dig themselves out of a mess). However, some say Bitcoin, by nature is deflationary (people won't spend if it's going to be worth more in future), so perhaps we need Bitcoin v2.0: a system which is not limited to some some arbitrary number (in Bitcoin's case 21 million) - we need a system that will continue to mine coins at a set rate ad infinitum thus creating something more akin to the inflation we're used to.
Anyway I'm off to dig out the high school economics books, it was this forum article that got us thinking about it all.
