If you follow the Bitcoin forums carefully, it's actually not at all clear they aren't trying to defraud people. The behavioral patterns are very similar to a pump-and-dump scheme: many people have a large number of coins (usually acquired at a low price through early mining) and are aggressively and inaccurately promoting Bitcoins to people whose money they will be taking. Bitcoin as a technology has the potential in concept to be more than a scam, but the way it is being used appears, for all practical purposes, to be indistinguishable from a scam. Like Groupon, it gives people the appearance of a vested interest and turns them into marketers.

Even if not a scam, your conclusion that it's currently entirely speculative is inescapable.