The whole thread reminds me of a pack of Neanderthals mocking the "new humans" whose camp recently appeared over the river. So tiny, so weak and unprotected, not a rival at all, not even equal. True, they've got some funny ideas and curious tools, but the coming winter will kill them off anyway, so why worry. The established order of things will carry on forever.
Totally, apart from it's nothing new at all and just a financial product which is being heavily speculated on. I won't go into why crypto is unfeasible for money (a few people have mentioned some of the issues such as transaction costs already) but just explaining why people are in a bubble at the moment:
Firstly, lay yourself down some facts. What's the actual value of bitcoin? Well, it has no uses (outside of speculation), so you can't add value there, so you have to look at the generation; the cost of actually mining the coin. In genesis, this would be effectively zero, coming to the modern day where it's what, $1500? There'll be some complex sum to average out the cost but lets say it's overall $1000 per bitcoin mined. So at the current rate (>$10000) you've got a speculation greater than 10 times the intrinsic value.
Now, you look at whether this is actually value at all (this is up to the individual - I personally see no value (intrinsic) in BTC but it's totally up to you).
Currently the bitcoin price is being pumped; let me give you an easy and simple example of how this works:
There are 10 apples, which each cost $1. Adam doesn't have any money to buy apples, but his friend Bethany does. Adam says to Bethany, if you give me $10 I will pay you back $12[SUP]1[/SUP]. Adam then buys 10 apples. Adam then contacts his friend Catherine who has a lot of money and says, shall we make some money together? Catherine likes this idea. So Adam tells Catherine to buy an apple from him, not for $1 but for $2. Then another apple, but this time for $3, and so on.
Catherine eventually ends up with 10 apples, but has spent 2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11= $65. Adam can now pay back Bethany the $12, and he has made a profit of $53.
David, Dale, Danielle, Darren and Diana have all been watching the price of apples and have all realised they have increased from $1 to $11 (10x...!), and want to get in on this action. They all part with $22 each and buy Catherine's apples.
Catherine is now sat on $220, from her initial risk of $65, a profit of $155. Adam and Catherine are happy with their efforts, and walk away. The pump is over. If there are no further investors willing to come in and speculate on apples, then the price will naturally tend towards the original, $1 - an individual loss each of $20. Now, there may be speculation on the price as it falls, however breaking from the story here I don't believe there will be with BTC - I see the crash happening simultaneously with a void in buy orders, which is the dreaded "even if you try to sell out, you can't" issue which happens in stock crashes.
[SUP]1- This is real-life actual investment, such as a bank account[/SUP]
Anyway, as I've stated throughout there is not anything inherently "wrong" with BTC, but anyone who tries to tell me it's something new (regarding the investment side) and that it's worth "$100k, $1m" or whatever, is a little slow or very inexperienced with real world financials.