> Empirically, value of bitcoin relative to other cryptocurrencies appears unconnected or only weakly connected to the properties that we think give it value in the first place.

This is an important point that anybody who has been into cryptocurrency for a while can attest to. We have watched the Bitcoin network exploding in price while meanwhile becoming worse and worse at what it is supposed to do.

Enthusiasts have changed the goalposts, claiming that Bitcoin instead is like digital gold, an idea which Satoshi himself convincingly argued for: http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/428/ However, since there are now so many competing products to Bitcoin, equally as scarce but with many better features, I'm not sure peoples' faith in its long-term value can hold forever.