Yes. It's one of the biggest online revolutions going on at the moment.

You don't like programmable money? Ok, I'll try to post more CSS tricks and startups drama to make you feel more comfortable.

Bitcoin has the potential to be an innovation on the level of email. Fortunes will be created and destroyed. Companies will rise and fall. Whatever happens at the end, even if bitcoin itself fails, the world is unlikely to be the same.

At the same time, it's fascinating from a purely technical perspective as well. I think as a topic it's a gold mine for interesting conversation, because it touches programming, economics, mathematics, and human psychology all so deeply.

Maybe not as much, but I have to say that in regards to bitcoin, this is the most HN worthy link so far.

Many people may not perceive the importance of Bitcoin, hence the need to educate the public about it. Decentralized digital currency really has the potential to profoundly change society, on the same scale as the Internet changed it. As Jeremy Allaire [1] put it: "global digital currency represents one of the most important technical and economic innovations of our time".

[1] Multi-millionaire, creator of ColdFusion, CTO at Macromedia, now founded a $9 million-backed startup on Bitcoin (http://circle.com)

Imagine you were on a BBS or walled garden in the early nineties, and every day keep seeing news articles about this HTML-based Internet. Is the correct response to ignore it and make trite "get off my lawn" responses?

As oppose to what?

    "Blah in X lines of javascript"

    "Is college worth it?"

    http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/

Absolutely yes. Bitcoin is huge. If you don't like it, don't click it.