Not a Currency

Fundamentally, one of the critical characteristics of currency is that it be current.

It needs to be there when you need to spend it, and not appreciate by 1000% in a year or lose one-fifth of its value in 24 hours.

While there are exceptions, Wiemar Germany Deutschmarks and Zimbabwean Dollars come to mind, currency should be a relatively stable means of exchange of commerce.

Bitcoin is not this.  It's a trip to the casino:

Bitcoin slid to as low as $9,000 in volatile trade on Thursday, having lost more than a fifth of its value since hitting an all-time high of $11,395 on Wednesday. BTC=BTSP.

The cryptocurrency fell as much as 8 percent on Thursday on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange to hit $9,000 exactly, marking a fall of well over $2,000 in under 24 hours. It then edged back up to trade at around $9,400 in the hour that followed, still down roughly 4 percent on the day. (Graphic: Bitcoin searches exceeds that of Trump - reut.rs/2zSavA6)

One market-watcher attributed the fall to outages in bitcoin exchanges and the heavy price surge of recent times.

“Naturally a few of the early bitcoin traders are taking some profits off the table,” said Charles Hayter, founder of CryptoCompare.com.

“Volatility is in the market at the moment and that means both positive and negative moves.”

While the technology behind Bit Coin, the block chain, appears to be generally sound, for any crypto-currency to function as a working means of exchange, it needs to have some sort of stability engineered in.

Otherwise, it's just a speculative vehicle.