I read about bitcoins, sounds like an odd scam or something. The currency and value are not really based on anything. I guess it could be like gold farming in a game. It appears to be unsustainable.
How is this different then any other fiat currency in the world today?
Bitcoin is meant as an alternative currency for those who don't trust their governments due to long term mismanagement of currency (reasonable) but want something more portable and internet friendly then precious metals.
It will most likely end when government confiscate it all and shut it down as they have done to every other alternative currency in the past... INCLUDING privately minted gold coins (US government says its printing fake currency if you mint gold coins that vague look like dollars despite being worth about 100 times more). That's the problem with all those alternative currencies, they forget that the government has a monopoly on violence and if it is as bad as they believe then it will gladly use it.
Another thing the US implemented halfway into the Obama Depression was make it so that every transaction you make with a precious metals, no matter how small requires you to file an entire form (one per transaction!) or its tax evasion (formerly it was only transactions over $600 that needed reported and required a single line for all transactions rather then a whole form per transaction). And historically when things get REALLY bad governments outright ban all trade / payment in precious metals with confiscation and imprisonment as penalties to ensure the populace is forced to use its useless hyper inflation fiat currency. This is because the inflation is largely caused by the government printing more money, aka a secret backdoor tax which they don't want you to bypass.
Until its inevitable shutdown, bitcoin is widely used in criminal activity because criminals are morons, as bitcoins transactions are inherently semi public in order to prevent it from being used for criminal activity (so that it isn't shut down even quicker by governments). Semi public as in, every transaction is public but done under an anonymized wallet ID. If you find out someone's wallet ID (aka, make a deal with them or capture their computer) you can look online and find every transaction that ID has ever made. And if you capture their computer you can find out all their wallet IDs.
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