The only value I can see in bitcoin is that they have a relatively strong ecosystem for which to trade to USD. Regardless of how worthless bitcoins actually are, as long as people can obtain hard currency from them easily, I don't think it will crash to zero.
That could change rapidly though, as the companies that are doing this exchange might take some pretty large losses if the volatility stays like this and go bankrupt.
I think a new name needs to be given to this scam. I don't think it's a Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme or anything like that. But now that there's more and more "crypto-currencies" popping up (litecoin, namecoin etc.), it's pretty obvious there really isn't significant value of bitcoins as a currency. Attract some computing power and people with dreams of being the early adopter with 10000 coins when it's worth $0.01, then pump/dump and move on to the next.
However, as people say, there's a lot of money to be made and lost in these bubbles. If you're brave enough I'm sure you can make a killing timing the markets.
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