[PaperclipTaken]

It depends on how you define 'real money.' Bitcoin is a real medium of exchange. It offers advantages that you cannot get from any centralized currency. It is cryptographically protected, it runs on a distributed network, it's (relative to other currencies) easy to use anonymously on a global scale, and it has a large userbase.

Bitcoin's volatility is a weakness, but it's not an achilles heel. Bitcoin has many strengths that are completely unmatched by any other currency. People use it for these strengths, and people will continue to use it for these strengths regardless of how much it is worth. That's why bitcoin will not die until there is something to replace it.

Bitcoin can't be used to store value (due to volatility), but that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a medium of exchange. (USD -> Bitcoin -> Silk Road, and vice-versa)

[anologwintermut]

Bitcoin is harder to use anonymously than cash. Transactions are between pseudonyms and there is a huge amount of information one can get from that. From some view points, it is worse than credit cards since all of the data is public. Now, that might be fixable, but as of right now it is a problem. see :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5535321

[Retric]

If I hand you 50 cents there is no way to back track it whatsoever. With bitcoins every single transaction is public. So I fail to see any inherent ananimity advantage. Some peole might like the fact that current bitcoin banks are unregulated, but in just about every way that counts to normal people bitcoins are worse than cash.

PS: Want real ananimity online, buy visa gift card with cash.