I'm not exactly a guru of bitcoin, but I'll summarize as somebody who's tried it recently out of curiosity.
Getting into it is surprisingly difficult. Purchasing bitcoins right now (or before paypal maybe) is pretty hard. Near impossible to find a site that will let you buy with a credit card, because sellers get screwed over with chargebacks.
Mining bitcoin at this point isn't worth it. At all. A high end GPU working 24/7 would get you $10 per month while costing more in power. At this point mining is only profitable to people willing spend a lot of money on very specialized hardware.
Once you have some, it's easy enough to use. But it's an unregulated system, so there is some danger and no safety net. If you're ever going to put serious money into it, be very, very careful. Danger comes both from things like getting hacked, and from that the value fluctuates without any central control.
Tax-wise it seems tricky. It seems (you're nuts if you take advice from a random stranger on this) that it's considered an asset, and if bitcoin gains in value you have to pay tax on that. Up to you to figure out how to keep track of it and do it properly.
As far as working, it does. You can buy stuff with it fine, and the USD/BTC exchange rate is stable enough. If you have cash to spare it might be worth to get some, just in case it increases a lot in value (I doubt paypal would get into it without consulting a bunch of lawyers), but you'd be nuts to put your life savings into it.