LTBStephanie

According to a recent survey by Zero Hedge, the most common use of bitcoins was actually as donations or gifts (55%). Almost 40% of users said they don't use drugs at all, and only 11% of respondents said they had ever purchased drugs with bitcoin. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-10/demographics-bitcoin

I would speculate that some of the value of bitcoin comes from the fact that one can buy drugs with them, but most of its value does not come from the ability to purchase drugs.

Kraken is a new exchange that is billing itself as forex for bitcoin: https://www.kraken.com/ Also, I know a lot of people who do arbitrage between different cryptocurrencies on BTC-e and Vircurex.

Full disclosure, my PhD has nothing to do with bitcoin or computer science. :) It's in Biochemistry, and I am a recent grad. My thesis project was designing and testing a gene therapy system for Alzheimer's Disease, in mice which are meant to model human Alzheimer's Disease. I got super interesting in bitcoin while I was in grad school and there were definitely days where it was on my mind a lot more than the experiments I was desperately trying to troubleshoot! I do think in some ways bitcoin behaves like a biological organism, and that there are some parallels between neuroscience and decentralized networks.

I think the best way to bring people into the bitcoin community is to make them an owner. I have done this with several friends and it's gotten them really excited. I also help set them up with a wallet. Educational resources like http://www.weusecoins.com/en/ or http://bitcoinquickstart.info/ also help. If you don't know the answer to a question you're welcome to refer the question to us at Let's Talk Bitcoin - it would probably make a great topic for the show!

Yes, I think bitcoin is important locally! Here in New Hampshire where I live there is a good sized community of bitcoin enthusiasts, encouraging local bars and restaurants to accept bitcoin and trading bitcoin among themselves and with others in the larger community.