@elbanditoroso I believe that completely depends on how they have their coins stored, whether with Mt. Gox directly or not.
Mt. Gox got robbed and they weren’t insured. So people may be out of luck, or there may be some amount that they retrieve in whatever becomes of Mt. Gox and the people involved.
You can buy refrigerators and cars with bitcoin. Not sure how many “real” currencies don’t meet that threshold but a friend in the Congo said he needs bags of government issued money to get a week’s groceries. Two extremes, but bitcoin falls somewhere between that and US dollars (or Euros). Is it less concrete than a “share” of a company?
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There’s a lot of misunderstanding in how the whole thing works, and I think that’s probably good for now. Eventually there will be an easy to use layer over the whole thing that will make it like any other currency. For now, bitcoins or whatever comes after have a barrier of entry that keeps people from casually deciding to throw their savings into it. It’s speculative, but so are many things, and most of the people involved know that.
I think people should try to separate the specific issues of bitcoin and the fact that some sort of distributed currency is found to be widely useful. Bitcoin may go away, but non-government currencies of this nature are probably here to stay.
When do you want to take a serious look instead of dismissing the whole idea?
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@gorillapaws even tulip bulbs weren’t the bubble that people think they were, so if we have to go back to the 1600’s for an example, maybe bubbles aren’t as horrible as reported? I worked in dotcoms when they fell apart, it’s not like people were on the streets overnight.