Interestingly, if I had run out and bought $10,000 worth of BTC instead of making that post, I'd be a thousand dollars richer right now less than what, 48 hours later. I didn't have 10k sitting in an exchange ready to buy coins anyway though, so -- no sense lamenting what wasn't possible anyway. Don't feel bad about being poorer or anything, I'm just neglecting to admit I don't have 10k in cash anywhere for anything, heh...Something came to mind while reading the replies though (I did not read all dozen pages of the link, BTW), which sure as Hell made me stop dead and do some thinking when I first read about it: interestingly enough, with Bitcoin, a lot of people subscribe to the belief that "there can be only one." When you think about the concept and implementation, any competing currency will either be based on a totally different proof of work (what makes it take so long to mine for coins is the "proof of work," thing, so you have to "prove" you've done a certain amount of work basically), which makes all the Bitcoin miners unable to transfer their vast Bitcoin-designed rigs to cash in on this new competing currency. That's one option, which means the competing currency could possibly overtake and destroy Bitcoin. Though it's pretty unlikely, since Bitcoin is kind of struggling to gain real traction itself and it isn't even fighting a similar & competing currency -- how would a new currency win. shrug. Could happen though.Or, possibility two: the proof of work for the competing currency is similar enough that bitcoin miners can switch right over and swallow the competing currency whole. A group of mining pools could agree to act as one entity, and basically make the competing currency useless because they could almost at will successfully double-spend (the 51% Bitcoin network attack thingie, long story, but 51% or more is enough to start gaining control over BTC). So it would fail. Nobody would use it. It would be unreliable and pointless. Dead before it begins, hoorah for BTC, the miners all go back to their homes and some poor guy's cryptocurrency dream is squashed like a bug.So in case 2, Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that can survive. And as for case 1, nobody is even sure if it's actually possible to have an effective, alternative proof-of-work mechanism. Nobody's proved that you can't or anything, but nobody's actually proved that it's possible either. It may or may not be. If it is, Bitcoin could possibly fail in favor of a competitor (but it seems like a longshot).So, in a nutshell: in case 2, Bitcoin cannot be conquered and the competing currency dies miserably. In the case 1, *if* it's possible to have an effective alternate proof-of-work mechanism, Bitcoin is unlikely to be conquered. That's the argument as I understand it.If you think cryptocurrency and the whole Bitcoin concept is the thing of the future... BTC seems like a very solid wager.