As a tech site, overclock.net covered the news of Steam accepting Bitcoin.
A college professor of economics attempted to crash the party by saying he's a teacher and that only things like fiat can have value (and later hinted gold *might* have some type of value):
I teach economics.. fiat currency is backed by the country and/or central bank issuing the currency. I literally said that in my post.
This is me 5 minutes ago, I had a student take it since you guys are such keyboard warriors what are your credentials in economics and finance?
As you can guess, there were a few poor attempts to debate him on the subject until I put up the establishment destroying post that follows:
http://pastebin.com/zepT5XCxThe post was completely ignored by the economics professor, as he instead began replying to softball comments that were the equivalent of "why is gold yellow?". The post, the only one in the thread that puts up any real fight against him is then mysteriously deleted out of the blue with no explanation less than 12 hours later by overclock.net forum moderators. Establishment economics professor wins!
Post in question below:
Your understanding of money is honestly child-like. I talk to PhD economists all the time (that can't forecast their way out of a paper bag), so please, don't even try to intimidate me with claims of being a teacher. First of all, money is an abstract concept. It's an IOU to provide a good or service at a future date. This means all money is inherently debt based with pyramid and Ponzi elements to it, because at any given time, I can just boycott your currency in lieu of another one, or your govt backing it can just go south. Now you're left holding the bag, the trademark "unsustainable" element of any type of scam.
Get it through your head. Repeat after me. Anything used as currency on the planet is inherently an unsustainable scam. The only example which isn't one is completely theoretical. It's the form of currency used by the robots in the transformers cartoon called "energon". Blocks of pure energy that can be redeemed at face value at any time regardless of externalities.
The overwhelming majority of the price of gold is derived from network effect, not intrinsic value. It's so called "instrinsic value" is next to nothing in comparison. Not that intrinsic value really even exists in the first place. But just in this case, we'll pretend it does. The gap between the two values is so large for gold, if you believe the price of gold is only derived from "intrinsic value", you would literally be scamming people in the process of selling it at spot price, ripping them off for 10x or more than they should be paying. But they aren't paying for intrinsic value, they're paying for network effect, which lies somewhere between a mass delusion of conformity, to an economic motive to avoid slippage that creates a captive audience.
As for gold, every gold backed currency has failed because it's no different than fiat when used in that manner. The currency is just devalued as usual until one dollar is worth one atom of gold. The only way gold has any use is being circulated with the native coins in an economy. The only problem there is, gold has awful granularity, high friction in use, and counterparty risk, unless you plan to build your own gold vault and guard it yourself all day.
Gold has continuously failed as a currency due to these reasons. It can't be used natively in anything but a stone age economy, so they had to put it in vaults and issue IOUs, rendering it's existence pointless. It's one saving grace is a reorginzation of the financial structure after the bankers go bad, scam everyone, then the angry villagers kill them and find out just how much gold is really left.
As stated earlier, both gold and Bitcoin offer an economic Nash equilibrium for trade between individuals or nations since they can both be acquired on generally all continents (bitcoin is an open entropy system) and nobody really has a monopoly on them. The difference is, gold just doesn't work in a modern civilization while Bitcoin does. If you believe the economy will crash and send us back to the dark ages, buy gold. If you think there will be some kind of civilization left standing, buy Bitcoin. Or just buy both to hedge.
...and already I want to slap you. You're talking to a professor, an adult, your better. Not with your pimp in some piss-drenched back alley. 
