What can certainly be said is that bitcoins are fun to play around with and gamble with stocks/money that you created yourself. There's just one problem: It's not feasible to mine bitcoins anymore. With so many people mining, and the difficulty so high, you have to spend $10000 to get any reasonable amount back, and even then it won't pay off.
Enter Altcoins:
altcoins are derivatives of bitcoins which are much easier to mine due to their age and for other reasons. The most prevalent of these is Litecoins, which are currently worth $20-$30 each, and they're actually feasible to mine (using a 7950 I can get 1 LTC a week). I won't go into details on how to mine, as all you need to do is join a pool and click their "getting started" link.
However, even these other cryptocurrencies payout very small amounts over time, and they're relatively old for a cryptocurrency. The price in USD may be unstable, but the mining speed is very stable (ie slow). There's a much newer currency which is definitely on the rise:
Dogecoin - such profit
All jokes aside, dogecoin is currently 10 days old, so if you start mining now, you can actually gain a lot. At the current exchange rate, I've made ~$600 in the past week, and I could feasibly cash out right now. Dogecoins have the advantage of being hilarious, very young, and a quick and easy way to make some cryptocurrency to play around with without actually spending any money other than electricity. If you can time the bubbles right, you can even buy low and sell high on a day to day basis. Places like coinedup.com, btc-e and mtgox will let you trade cryptocurrencies, even for real money.
If you let bitcoin pass you by, there's still time to get in for free.
"Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman - do we have to call the Gentleman a gentleman if he's not one?"