Bitcoin is probably the best thing that has come along in a long long while. As some members in this forum have called it the more defining moments in our history.
But bitcoin is two things.
1. It's a protocol.
2. And built on top of that protocol is a
unit of exchange (also being referred to as bitcoin). I wish this had some other name to it to avoid the confusion with the protocol. Like JR Willett writes on his business cards 'HTTP is to TCP/IP as Mastercoin is to Bitcoin". Perhaps we should just call it 'Mastercoin'. But I digress.
I have written two posts which I hope help explain how it is valuable as that second tool. As a unit of exchange.
http://swatopia.org/blog/2013/05/22/18/and
http://swatopia.org/blog/2013/05/23/its-a-unit/Peace,