are bitcoins still a good investment?

Not an expert, but my 2c is like anything bitcoin is not a great investment unless you know it and understand it better than everyone else.

Would not personally think you were stupid if you bought a reasonable amount that you could reasonably have a use for.

Bitcoin has been an on and off fascination of mine so this thread might have inspired me to pick some up if they get all the way down to $200/coin more so as a risk a little to win a lot, rooting for the home team education experiment. As far as an idea and from a humanitarian perspective Bitcoin has amazing potential. Definitely rooting for it to evolve as a much improved, more ethical alternative compared to how pretty much all of the shady currency/banking centralized institutions and infrastructure operate today.

Bitcoins aside, the system that supports it called the blockchain is technologically an incredible innovation for decentralized systems. To me it's a no brainer that blockchain technology or derivatives of it will become essential as they become more integrated into everything we interact with, even if it's behind the scenes but at a fundamental level. Right now the most obvious and prominent utilizing technology is Bitcoin which is in the financial space making its purchase the simplest way to invest in the technology. There are hundreds of other cryptocurrencies you could also throw money at and hope for the best.

Since I'm so incredibly bullish on the technology, I invest heavily in it by diversifying between direct cryptocurrency holdings, miners, equity in cryptocurrency companies, etc. Also, strong networking within the rapidly growing space could pay off down the road. Whether Bitcoin itself is a good investment is extremely high variance. Personally, I like the odds.

if you are putting more than 10% of your net worth into any single asset it's never an "investment"

perhaps rephrase "are bitcoins still a good speculation?"

>not investing in America

I don't think it is going to be any worthy if you aren't the ones who regularly use it (on silk road/dark net/bitcoin poker/gambling site, or other more legal things). Because the exchange market are getting more and more "regulated". I recently did post on /r/bitcoin and /r/poker that my personal bitcoin exchange account has been blocked because I used it directly on a online poker site. The exchange wanted to be more regulated and did not want to deal with illegal online gambling shit in the US. So now I don't even have a good way to buy bitcoins anymore.

I mean I was kinda dumb when I forgot to transfer to my personal wallet first before spending directly onto the sites (they also will manage the bitcoins for you if you want to, as a bitcoin noob back then I didn't think about it too much). Still. So that's part of the reason I think bitcoin prices have been dipping very hard over the past couple of months. If people can't get it easily and do what they want, they represent less value.