I don't really understand the Bitcoin hype. Yes it's interesting application of cryptography, but it's not really that useful as a currency. It's online only, and not really accepted anywhere very much, especially because there's too much of a barrier to casual usage. All of the transactions are public, making it a privacy nightmare unless you're careful to completely dissociate your real-life identity from your Bitcoin addresses. I just don't see the point other than as a speculative toy.
"Yes it's interesting application of cryptography"
Only as a way to illustrate that using cryptographic primitives like hashes and digital signatures does not make a system secure. If Bitcoin were a security system, the effort required to successfully double-spend the currency would be exponential in the effort required to use Bitcoin; as things are, the required effort scales linearly with the number of parties. Bitcoin may utilize secure cryptosystems, but as a cryptosystem Bitcoin is not secure under any accepted notion of "security."
It isn't hard to make yourself anonymous with your spending.
Want to buy a gift for your wife?
Send BTC to a coin mixer or a new eWallet, then pull it out to a newly created separate, anonymous, address. Use that address to purchase.
Use the reverse process for receiving money, if you want to keep your main account private.
New addresses can be created on the fly, so it isn't much different of a privacy nightmare than current card transactions.
