Commodity/currency? Nah, it's a penny stock.
FT Alphaville are doing some serious financial analysis of the whole BitCoin phenomenon here:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/tag/bitcoinmania/
(Registration but no payment)
Some interesting discussions on the practicality and viability of the whole concept. The comments in themselves are quite enlightening, and it might be interesting to get some more techincally minded people throwing their opinions into the mix.
The argument put forward by proponents of BitCoin is that it's a government-less currency of the people, for the people, by the people. But given that there's no intrinsic value to the currency (it's bits in the ether) and there's no backing to it (legal, militaristic or material), once there's a large enough crisis of faith (as that is all the currency is trading on), it will eventually return to its intrinsic value: 0.
Which means it's essentially a con and a Ponzi scheme.
The more vehement defenders of the concept come across as penny stock pushers, with classic quotes such as "Price drops are opportunities to buy", "If you think it's stupid, stay out of the market and let me make my easy money" and the classic "Volatility is by design and one of the benefits!"
It's a bubble, it's going to pop. The "anonimity" it provides is for paranoid conspiricists and illegal transactions. The fact is that the market can (and will) be easily manipulated. As there is no underlying assets, obscure supply and virtual demand, at the end of the day it's a deer market. Price goes up, more people hype and buy, self-perpetuating. Price gets to a certain level and there's a security "scare", confidence collapses and so goes the value. Manipulators buy at the start of the hype, sell into the bubble and "create" the scare to allow themselves back into the market at the bottom.
There'll be tears enough for all.