There's no other decentralized e-currency. This means bitcoin is the only electronic payments and storage system where your funds are not subject to seizure by a central authority. You won't wake up one day and find your account frozen (cf paypal, bitcoins are safe in the blockchain as long as you have your wallet) or be totally helpless if the domain name of some fly-by-night startup goes down (cf e-gold, bitcoins are safe as long as there are nodes in the network).

As for the economic critiques, of course bitcoins are no panacea. These critiques are relevant to any market; the punchline of the article was even "I'd say the same about the Euro"

There's actually a bunch of copycats. The libcoin library has actually made it very easy to make your own.

Right, so bitcoin (and its alternative blockchains). But the fact that there's already plenty of alt-chains that the market values at neglible fractions of a bitcoin shows that copycat crypto-currencies won't easily disrupt the "network effect" of bitcoin and dilute its value, as many detractors used to argue.

> This means bitcoin is the only electronic payments and storage system where your funds are not subject to seizure by a central authority.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin is not "men with guns entering your house or server location and taking your drive" proof.

Yes, bitcoin is exactly "men with guns entering your house or server location and taking your drive" proof."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/03/12/brainwalle...

Uh, really? They won't be able to get to your money unless they force you to hand over the key, but unless they give you back the drive, neither will you.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption

Sure, that depends on the government giving you your drive(s) back if they can't pin you with anything.