re: Is bitcoin gaining legitimacy?

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Is bitcoin gaining legitimacy?

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"Selfie" was named the Oxford Dictionaries' 2013 word of the year.

However, one of the runners up was, yes you guessed it, "bitcoin". I think it's fair to say that it is gaining legitimacy.

LINK

Not bad considering 60 percent of its usage probably came from Tigerdroppings message board posts.

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bitcoin, noun: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank. Also, a unit of bitcoin. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from BIT, in the computing sense of "a unit of information" and COIN.] The term first appeared in late 2008 in a research paper, and the first bitcoins were created in 2009. By 2012, the virtual currency was attracting wider attention and we began to see its steadily increasing use. A spike in usage was apparent in March–May 2013, which may be due in part to the market crash around that time.

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What happens when the cost of mining the coins exceeds the value of bitcoin?

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According to this website, LINK, currently mining is not profitable for the network as a whole. Can segments of the network mine profitably? I doubt it, but there are those who claim it is being done.

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Are the miners consolidating? If they leave, does that kill transaction times?

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Transactions occur as rapidly as two computers can exchange the requisite information. Validation of ownership takes time. The network is programmed so that the difficulty of achieving the solution to each mathematical problem will require about 10 minutes of real time independent of the amount of computing power devoted to mining. However, there is a cap on the amount of change in difficulty that can occur when the difficulty is redetermined. So extreme changes in computational power could exceed the corresponding change in difficulty and impact the average time to solution. In practice, it would take a substantial reduction in computing power to result in significant lengthening of validation time.

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Is bitcoin not meant to be something that I can say, go get a cup of coffee?

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The purpose of any currency is to have utility in economic transactions. Bitcoins are not accepted by enough merchants to be called a currency. You asked about buying a cup of coffee, I issued the same sort of challenge involving chewing gum. To date, you can not buy a cup of coffee or pack of chewing gum using Bitcoins, but more importantly, you can't buy much of anything conveniently.