I am sure? I'm not sure if there are any guarantees in this fucked up world. By taken over, are you saying something like the blockchain forks? This is pretty technical stuff and it is best explained by one of the developers, which can be found on bitcointalk.org I shouldn't be the one trying to explain these things, honestly. Anyway, this is all speculation, so anything goes, I guess. Good luck whether you get in or not.
Interesting, long (900+ posts) bitcoin discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ba9e5/bitcoin_an_opensource_currency_surpasses_20/ Couple of things I learnt: There is such a thing as a physical bitcoin: https://www.casascius.com/ Technically speaking using a 3rd party, you can spend it on anything: https://bitspend.net/ Bitcoin mining rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEGIZOO-HYY
There are security problems associated with Bitcoin. A hacker may be able to install a keylogger and steal your bitcoin wallet and password. Also if your hard drive crashes, you lose all your money. If the power goes out, you can't buy anything anymore. There are solutions to these things, but it requires education and care. Most people aren't going to adopt something that requires this level of education. Also Bitcoin prices can divided up to 8 decimal places. Most people can't comprehend prices with many decimals, e.g. 0.0000546 vs 0.000546 (just off by one zero). What if you accidentally mistype and forget to enter in a zero? You lose 10 times as much money. Transactions are not reversible. Someone could runaway with your money. There's no justice in this case because you can't prove that you've sent them money, since all transactions are anonymous and can't be traced to the actual parties involved. It's not simple and is confusing to many. Also, each transaction takes 10 minutes. Bitcoin is deflationary. If someone loses their wallet, those Bitcoins are forever lost. It'll be best if someone invented a digital currency that is stable- neither inflationary nor deflationary.
Again I am not sure but i think you can simply write down a pass code and if you have that you are protected from pc problems. keyloggers will have the same effect if you use online banking. the fact that there are no charge backs makes it like cash Only your receipt can help you. the decibel can be taken out, even mentally .0000567 can be thought of as 567 bitcoins. for a new currency to take hold man needs to be able to make sense of it, here it is like gold 1 bit coin is worth alot so we need decibels. If the amount of bit coins did not grow we could not make sence of it.think of the value of each bit coin. day 1 one person has all the bit coins and total value is 1 cent. day x there are more users the there are bit coins. here each bitcoin could equal the average savings or next pay check one can have. without debt one bit coin couuld even equale the value of a house. man will constantly see a bubble cause everything he knows grows in quantity. but again if all people in cyprus or rather Europe switched to bit coins and the government did not want it, they seem to be able to take it down. this makes it LESS RELIABLE then the euro. government is MORE LIKELY (in general) to take it down then their own currency.
Depending on when you actually submit your payment to the network, it may take 1 minute for it to recognize or a few more. The number of confirmations that you receive will vary across time. But once it is sent and recognized by the network, there is no way of going back. Which, IMO, is a good thing. If you are a merchant, like on Ebay, you get all of these chargebacks and your money is froze from nefarious customers. Probably happens 1000x a day on Ebay.
Now here is a real trader. Guy puts 30K CC debt into bitcoin a month ago, at $14-25. You do the math how much he is up... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/18f3pd/i_have_my_entire_retirement_and_savings_invested/ "I am not a wealthy man. I am actually quite poor and have a lot of student loan debt. But I have good credit. I have applied for, and received over $30,000 USD in credit card 0% balance transfer cash, which I have slowly been investing in bitcoin for the past two months. I started when it was $14/BTC. At this second, it is $25.10/BTC. I have invested some of it in satoshidice, and the rest will be stored in an offline wallet. I may someday regret this decision. It represents the exact amount of my entire retirement and savings accounts. If bitcoin ever becomes worthless, well, I will just have to deal with it and find another way to retire. If bitcoin takes off the way I think it will, I will someday be a wealthy man and my family will be set. I am not doing this out of greed, but to support my family and hopefully never have to worry about money again... something I've stressed about for decades. I realize it's controversial and some may take a dim view of it (my family included). But what's done is done. I am not going to post again until a year from now. And then I will post each year following. Wish me luck."
yeah it went up we know. but can it be broken down? To rephrase, is it as worthless as euro ? if so is it better then the predecessors' of the euro? (we used to call that money remember) I think when a transaction it done it is confirmed some how through many nodes. only when it is confirmed is the transaction done. This is where 51% come in I think. if 51% of nodes confirm, it is accepted. I think this means that the weaknesses are alot. 1) internet failures outages and blocking or what ever some said happened to their internet on some posts. 2) software updates (like a mandatory windows update) blocking the "problem" 3)Disinterest in being a node. (im sure p2p's began with alot of uploading untill people realised that by clicking "do not upload" fixed their pc somehow) government need to abolish. 4)virus software simultaneously shutting down the "virus" 5) EMT's 6) a new currency accepted world wide and the need to diversify in bitcoin is not as important as it is now. How can it be strong? Bit coin actually ends up to be the this new world wide trusted currency, which does not quite work when the power goes off or a natural disaster ect. 2. The governments love the idea of not being in control of the money and therefore do not stop it. 3.Governments know the collapse is coming, and nothing will be spared but 1 system. They sit and decide that they want in cheap and no one else to enter until they are in. They decide to use the least logical future currency (bitcoin) and get in while it is low. and then announce that: HAHA the euro/amero was just a joke, we now use bitcoins. go get them at your banks. both have strong points. but banks have computers. 51% is not hard. Just to clarify, Im not anti bitcoin, Im just wondering, long run is there any low probability scenario you can think of that it will survive?