Just in case anyone thought that the cryptocurrency known as bitcoin was out of fashion, there’s great news: it’s alive, well, and pulling a lot of discussion. While the news isn’t exactly good on all fronts, there are plenty of positive developments that are keeping this currency alive and well.

The good news is actually fairly substantial. It’s becoming increasingly popular worldwide in the face of economic uncertainty. In China, bitcoin is becoming a surprising replacement for devaluing yuan, and the town of Keene in New Hampshire is putting some unusually strong support behind bitcoin. Keene is offering bitcoin as a payment method in several places, including a local food truck dealing in several breeds of food, along with a slate of local businesses. While bitcoin mining is proving increasingly difficult, there are reports of those still managing to mine bitcoins thanks to an advanced understanding of the high-energy systems needed to solve the necessary equations.

The news isn’t universally good, as noted previous, as some efforts are proving stymied by government regulations. In Turkey, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to mine or even buy bitcoin in the wake of a hacking incident. The hacking group, known as Redhack, allegedly managed to access the minister of energy and resources’ email account, which prompted a crackdown by the Turkish government against several services, including DropBox, GitHub, and OneDrive.

That’s just the start of developments, and it’s starting to seem like bitcoin may be breaking through to the mainstream. Perhaps the ultimate in digital currency, it could potentially make mobile payments a universal system, operating in about the same fashion as cash, and just about anywhere, too. It’s been slow to catch on, but there have been some fairly high-profile entrants in the field. With places like Overstock.com taking it, some have wondered if a wide-scale launch was to follow. While it hasn’t, at least not yet, there’s still plenty of room to suggest that it might. The sheer number of other cryptocurrencies in the field, from dogecoin to litecoin, is perhaps the biggest suggestion.

Bitcoin’s seen a lot of gain lately, and soon, we may well see this in places we’ve never seen it before. That will fundamentally change the mobile payments market with it.