Regarding the risk it is clearly stated
here :
Quote:Bitcoin price is volatile
The price of a bitcoin can unpredictably increase or decrease over a short period of time due to its young economy, novel nature, and sometimes illiquid markets. Consequently, keeping your savings with Bitcoin is not recommended at this point. Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.
I keep reading more and more on this subject. Looks like it may lack privacy and security if not used under specific guidelines.
A considered "safe" way is to have an offline computer that will be used to sign your transactions, and then transfer them
through a USB stick to an online computer to complete the money sending.. However there are several privacy matters to be
considered when using Bitcoin..
All transactions are public and stored permanently on online servers so anyone could practically access it and see how many
Bitcoins you have and how many you have spent at any time. There are some ways to work around this like creating new
bitcoin addresses with every transaction plus using a fake IP generator to not let your own be traced. There's too much stuff
regarding privacy so for more information on bitcoin privacy read
here.