Is Bitcoin international or is there a digital divide?

[nwbitcoin]

Bitcoin has the potential of becoming the preferred choice of currency for the internet.  But, is all this speculation, mostly by Americans, going to limit its appeal to other, less well developed countries?

The internet is full of language based preferred websites, why would a currency be any different?

Are we going to see Bitcoin being the currency equivalent of Facebook, where world domination is dependent on the base language being English?

Where the rest of the world use the equivalent of Qzone or Orkurt and currencies don't mix or develop?

Would be interested in getting your opinions

[jim618]

Have a look at the 'Visitor domains/ country of origin' table in the MultiBit download stats:
https://multibit.org/awstats/awstats.pl?config=multibit.org

Click on the 'Full list' to see the full list of countries identified. The stats reset every month so that is just what has been seen since Friday 1st March.

Bitcoin is as international as the Earth's atmosphere.

[Stephen Gornick]

The internet is full of language based preferred websites, why would a currency be any different?

Bitcoin is a protocol.  It is an open -- it can be used by anyone from anywhere.

Do they use http:// in Brazil?   Do they use SMTP in China?   Or how about XMCP/Jabber in Tanzania?

Yes on all counts because those are all open protocols.

Now because of differing languages, governance, cultures, geography, and rates technological adoption there will be some areas in which Bitcoin gains traction and others in which it lags far behind. 

But just like how there is now an intro site for those who read Swahili (the language local to many in Africa, including Kenya), Bitcoin's reach is expanding further every day.
 - http://www.bitcoins.co.ke

[acoindr]

You  might be interested in my post Solution to the Block Size where I describe how I see Bitcoin, the concept of crypto-currencies, taking shape globally.

Holding a currency simply means having access to a set of goods and services. This can be important geographically, virtually, and remotely. A good comparison to a global Bitcoin footprint is gold. People can exchange gold pretty much anywhere in the world for goods and services. This may be what the future holds for Bitcoin (what we call the value now on MtGox at 30+) too.