Back to the future with peer to peer coinsystem for the internet... or merely a scam?

It's not clear to me whether BitCoin is a serious system or merely an interesting way to create money with people who still believe in these kinds of systems. Non-centralized payment systems with digital coins in my view have a tendency to not be possible/workable. So I'll leave it at this pointer only to find out in some 15 years time that I may have misjudged the new paypal here... ;-)