Very interesting read. Where I'm from there's no way you could survive solely on bitcoin. Unfortunately, no merchants in the area accept it, YET! I know that it's inevitable that sooner or later some alt currency will be used nation and hopefully worldwide.
No one's talking about surviving solely on Bitcoin, that's very near impossible anywhere. You'd be lucky if you could get a coffee for it, not to mention how crazily expensive it would be to buy with the fee being more than a quarter of the price most of the time.
Surviving on Bitcoin would require loads of people to accept it - your landlord for rent (somewhat practical); the petrol station (less practical); supermarkets (less practical again); and casual shops, coffee shops and places like that (completely impractical). Unfortunately shops are going backwards in terms of how practical it is to spend Bitcoin there - coffee shops sometimes accept it for no reason.
You'd still be lucky to buy anything with Bitcoin. In reality there aren't very many merchants at all and those that do accept it don't know enough about it. Some would even treat it as a gimmick, which for transactions like the ones they accept with it it is.
Articles like this don't help Bitcoin's adoption. Reality does.
