The side effect of making early adopters rich like a pyramid scheme (or e.g. a startup) doesn't prove that it isn't a currency. They are logically separate matters.
Competition for mining power could a good thing, as it would drive the market for more energy-efficient computing equipment.
There seems to be quite a bit of a Bitcoin interest around here, with several articles about it already: [1 2 3 4 5 6 7]
I propose that links and generic Bitcoin comments should be posted here, instead of making a new discussion thread for each interesting article about the subject.