Bitcoin needs an inherent value otherwise it will crash. I always believed Bitcoin provided a service to keep it's value stable. You argue against this.

I wonder if the same could be said about BTC, in that mining is effectively digging up new prime numbers right? and prime numbers do have intrinsic value for many communications and computing applications no?

I also think that altcoins don't compete with Bitcoin because Bitcoin is unable to saturate the market.

You could not. Exactly because it has some nifty use cases. The jewelry market is what keeps gold stable - it can absorb a small panic and stop it from becoming a large burst and anchors the gold price into a real world quantity.

If you create a store of wealth without any kind of real world anchoring, any small panic would be enough to permanently move its price to any random value. That makes it quite useless for a store wealth.

Yes. You could. I have, as have many others.

Thanks for re-iterating and further elucidating my point regarding gold's intrinsic value.

Losing the nifty usecases for gold would plummet the price. Luckily were addicted to technology and jewelery. This won't change quickly. However Bitcoin is losing their usecase and already struggling to stay relevant.

I don't think this is right. IANAC but from what I recall on the topic, prime numbers are used to "seed" cryptographic keys and the like.

A very good use-case for cryptocurrencies is taking money out of countries with strict capital control, like China. But obviously, such governments are also quite authoritarian and will not have problems blocking a cryptocurrency if they see fit.