I'm new here too and not a guru of bitcoin. But I've had a keen interest in economics and finance most of my life. To understand what good investments are, it helps to study the most successful investors. None of them made their fortunes from cryptocurrencies.

A lot of people, including me, believe an investment is something that produces cash flow. For example, stocks, bonds, commercial real estate. Warren Buffett has said many times that gold is not an investment because it produces nothing. The same can be said of bitcoin.

Incidentally, some people bought bitcoin when it was worth $800, or $900, or $1,000. Last year it was down to $200. That shows that bitcoin doesn't always go up.

A lot of people mentioned borrowing money from banks. But isn't it better to get free money from banks? Some banks pay people to open checking accounts. I discovered that recently when a bank that's new to my area mailed me an offer. I opened the account and it's giving me $75.

Days later I was shopping at the supermarket. Over its public address system a different bank, located inside the store, announced that it's also paying $75 to people who open a new checking account. When I got home I did some googling and found a number of different banks that pay people to open checking accounts.

Another source for money is www.mturk.com. It's owned by Amazon and pays people to do little tasks online, especially answering surveys. I make about $4/hour that way. It's not much but it's better than wasting time, so I try to make $3/day that way. That will pay for my next laptop. But people can use it for emergency money.

Bitcoin is already a global currency. But it's useful only to an extremely tiny minority. The global economy produces the equivalent of about $78 trillion per year. It's hard to think that bitcoins worth only $9 billion can have a significant role.

The largest retailer that accepts Bitcoin is Overstock.com. The most recent information I found is that only .25% of Overstock's sales used bitcoin. Then when bitcoin dropped in value, Overstock lost money because of the devaluation. That very public example must be making other retailers doubt whether they should accept bitcoin.

Sure, among select groups bitcoin will gain in popularity. For example, gamblers, the digerati, and some tax evaders. In the world economy, bitcoin will be the equivalent of a currency of a very small country. But bitcoin doesn't offer an advantage for the extreme majority of people.