your right but remember that these ASICs are dedicated for mining you can not do anything else with it so i don't thing any regular person will take it as an alternative for GPUs. i agree with you that bitcoin may be a solution for many of the problems being a p2p digital currency but i believe its still not mature enough and risky.
Does anyone know how much Lebanese Pounds are in circulation. It would be a good measure to compare against Bitcoins. I believe bitcoins easily surpass single digit percentage of this indicator of Lebanese economy.
Am not a financial expert, but I do believe if that's the case, it can indeed be more safe than Lebanese Lira's to begin with or just as safe...
A bit of googling:
Total Bitcoins: ~11,000,000 BTC ~ $500M
GDP Lebanon: $42B
Ratio = 1.19%
Not bad in my books.
I'll try and get a figure tomorrow.
It's 2011.
The volatility of the currency has decrease a lot. The reason the currency crashes was because one of the markets still had some security problems (not the protocol itself, but one of the popular exchanges). The exciting thing is, BTC after having reached $30 in the past has crashed into $2 and now has reverted and overshoot to ~$50.

I think it's an early adopter market, and worth investing in. Nevermind the miners, that's a solved problem, and is already marginally profitable for a niche of people. The currency by itself has growth value at the moment.

You'd never know. BTC have a non-zero chance of always crashing if everyone decides to sell. This http://mtgoxlive.com/orders can give you an idea of how much bitcoins need to be sold in order to decrease the value of bitcoins to what...
I had my eye on those bitcoins since they were around $20 and was trying the mtgox route back then. Couldn't make myself go through all the loops.
Being in Michigan, it's easier than you can imagine. I used coinbase.com which is a YC startup graduate.
Hey guys, for buying bitcoins in Lebanon and Africa you can use https://bitcoinnordic.com/ ( also there is the method of CashU but its a hassle to wait 48hr to receive the bitcoins)
They offer services for our region.
I was into bitcoins a while ago coz of its anonymity and safe undetected transactions online used in .THOR based hidden services. When i was buying bitcoins it was at still 28$ and man its getting popular now. I wish i stalked up some and started trading now :) but i was just using my bitcoins to purchase online.
Anyways hope for success for all of you who want to enter this market its definitely booming. Word of advice, don't buy and trade bitcoins with individuals online before you thoroughly understand the methods, there are many scammers and thiefs who're taking advantage of this trading. Be sure, if you're going to trade wallet details and such, to reasearch fully and read all reviews about the trader your going to do transactions with. Reputation is very important in bitcoins, when you build up a good one you can control the Lebanese bitcoin market ;)

Good luck folks.
Wow, to think they were worth $5ish some 6 months ago ... this is crazy. Also, IIRC, the amount of bitcoins that can be mined is limited to a certain number with the current system, at that point it would be interesting to see the value of the coins (or am I missing something fundamental?)

also worth checking out : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses
9 days later
So let's say you want to go with this kind of investment. How many bitcoins is safe to purchase? Is this considered a serious investment plan? Do you recommend to give it a try by purchasing a couple of bitcoins or just go large?
5 days later
What the heck! It's for $64.992 now!
Guys why does each bitcoin market have the same High price but various Low price? Do they all have the same buying rate but sell in different rates?
High and Low price are the lowest and highest prices for a transaction in a given period of time.
Last price is more indicative of current status.

http://mtgoxlive.com/orders
This graph shows how much BTC you need to buy or sell to raise or decrease, respectively, the BTC price.
6 days later
I monitored the rate for the past week. 20$ increase in just a week. Went to the bank and finally made the transfer; will wait till it goes down a little to do the bitcoin purchase, but I dont think it will go down anymore :(

I think it will go beyond 100$ soon.

Check out the date of my last 2 posts, the rate was 65$ back then. Now 86$.
I'm not cashing out, probably ever (I don't have that big amount invested anyway).

I didn't "invest" in Bitcoin so I could cash out. I "bought" Bitcoins because this currency makes more sense to me, and I want to progressively transfer all my cash into this. As more merchants accept it as a way of payment, I will gladly use it as my only currency.
How much do you think sounds as a good investment? 3-figure number or a 4-figure number?
@rahmu You're such a hippy.
Bitcoins are in a deflationary mode. They are not nearly saturated, and they are just getting introduced into the mainstream.
Some people have predicted it should become a "x 10 000" over a 10 year period investment.

Risky strategy
If you have balls of steel, I suggest you borrow some money, buy some bitcoins, then only cash out to return the borrowed dollars.

I made my first purchase on Feb 21, 13. By March 10, I sold my 9.5 BTC for $444, which I bought in three installments for $315. On March 15, I bought 10 BTC for $476. I can sell them for $845 on Coinbase.
This is crazy ... it doubled in less than 9 days