What are you're thoughts on binary options?

While the markets are fairly quiet I thought I'd have a look at binary options. I've mostly viewed them with some suspicion that they are stacked in the houses favour and that the potential risk/reward is skewed to the risk side

I've been messing about on a demo account just now, playing the 1minute EURUSD, price to finish above or below current price, and I've been taking the sell or 'lower than' option when it ticks up to 1.0896/97/98/99

As with all trading instruments my first and foremost thought is "What is the benefit to me?". I want to know if it's something I can use to turn a profit that's not available by other instruments.

My thought in playing with it today is that it's quiet and there's not much movement in currency pairs. My reason for trading them in EURUSD right now is that it's finding 1.0900 resistance but there's no real value in trading it normally as it's only moving two or three pips between 1.0900 and 1.0890 every minute, and therefore it's not conducive to trading an instrument which has a spread. When I looked at what was available to trade I specifically wanted to see levels that were looking decent intraday support or resistance. I'm not interested in guessing but trading levels like I would normally

Now I know that in effect this is like playing red or black, or odd or even (zero/green excluded) on a roulette wheel but I'm basing the trades on this 1.0900 resistance. I only need it to be 1/2 a pip below my entry price at expiry to win, rather than the price having to move lower than the spread if trading spot, thus why I'm only trading 1.0896/97/98/99

As with any trades I'm watching the risk parameters and I'm using a demo to see what things are all about. I'm certainly not going to be throwing thousands into an account and start trading them full time but want to see if they can be of use.

There's also some stigma with the regulation side of binary trading but as we saw with this post from Dukascopy, regulation will likely follow in the path of the forex market.

The question to you folks is, are they really a legitimate way to trade? Are there certain market conditions that favour using them instead of normal FX spot trading, like today's quiet market (I wouldn't dream of trading them on a normal volatile day)?

Do any of you use binary's and what methods do you use them for?

And in case you're interested, I'm three wins out of three so far