This started as an idea to end corruption and greed and create an whole new economy of p2p transfers, and has now so far gone to ruin.
This was started to make money. The whole "new paradigm ideology" was just a cover. If the founders of Bitcoin didn't hold so much, I'd consider believing otherwise. I mean, the very creator is some mythical guy who disappeared.
Thank you all for your responses,
I would like to first address the above comment.
Satoshi Nakamoto created BTC to cut out financial intermediaries, something that everyone can stand to gain from. He and other early miners were taking an incredible risk, and because of the risk they took, they are being rewarded for helping start something from nothing. Imagine it as if you had invested with Steve Jobs when he was still some "crazy" dude working out of a garage. At the time this would have seemed incredibly risky, however, those who did see the potential are now being rewarded for the risk they took. This is fundamentally different than any scheme created for personal gain only.
Bitcons can not exist in a vacuum, without being traded for other currencies. Whether you like it or not, bitcoins without exchange = no bitcoins, no business would ever adopt that idea of selling their stock for non-exchangeable illiquid commodity.
As for this one, I believe you are underestimating the potential of this new economy severely. Think about it this way... Upon the creation of e-mail, there were very few users, and the value of such a service must have been similar to what you believe the value of BTC is now. People looked at it as a useful tool, as BTC is now, but they never anticipated that it would ever be able to compete with the U.S. Postal Service and stand alone. Today, everyone uses e-mail, it has been a tremendous success for both businesses and customers alike. This will be the same for BTC. As of now, there are few users by proportion to the population, but everyday that number grows. At a certain point BTC will be able to stand alone by itself, and current fiat currencies will be worth about the value of the U.S. Postal Service is now.
Before leaving a comment, you could have spent more than 15 minutes thinking about it first.
-KBundy