Bitcoin's main purpose is as a store of value. You have to compare it to other stores of value. Bitcoin is not the "best" store of value just like javascript is not the "best" programming language. But both are the defacto in their category. This is what I'm trying to explain.

I don't think people do see it as a store of value though - they see it as an appreciating asset, as proven by the linked article and Elon investing to "maximize returns on [Tesla] cash". And very few people are using it for spending.

So what does that mean?

Rising prices -> More new investors buying into the currency -> further rising prices -> more new investors buying into the currency.

What happens when the price eventually plateau's and stabilises? Well we know that particularly Bitcoin isn't a good currency to actually use in daily transactions, so people are going to want to take their Bitcoin winnings and do something with them.

So they withdraw -> prices drop a bit -> people withdraw more -> prices drop a lot.

It's bounced back before, but eventually the bounce back won't happen. There can only be so much new money pumped into the bottom to the people in the top - it's all a zero sum game, and the rich people at the start were just paid by people who joined later. As all pyramid schemes say, 'if you start now you won't be at the bottom of the pyramid!'.

Why not Ethereum?

Bitcoin is offering the 30%+ of the worlds population that is unbanked an opportunity to do so. Bitcoin is providing those living in a poor economy a route to economic alternatives.

How do people who don't have access to a bank get access to bitcoins?

Localbitcoins is one option. Lots of others.

Bitcoin is currently accepted by a large number of companies including Microsoft, Newegg and Namecheap. We've seen greater use in counties like Venezuela.

You don't know any people from Venezuela I take it, or any countries experiencing hyper-inflation. And not to say that that is THE killer use-case, but it certainly is A use-case for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin started with essentially novelty and "collectibles" value, like baseball cards or celebrity signatures or fine art pieces, but doesn't depend on shifting interests or demand to justify its underlying technical/foundational values of decentralized trust.

The comparison to digital gold is apt, especially if you don't stumble on the red herring that gold has physical industrial/commercial applications beyond just being shiny-and-rare-and-has-history. But, physical gold has pitfalls too: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Mystery-of-2bn-of-l....

What is the economic value of being able to 100% prove via battle-tested cryptography, that you own the asset that you say you do? What is the value of the technology behind being able to do that? The token's value is simply a proxy for the technology. Bitcoin being a store of value doesn't mean that, a bunch of idiots keep convincing each other that it's more and more valuable; it really means that, the global economy recognizes that they'd rather have provable ownership over X amount of bitcoin, then some equivalent $Y amount of fiat.

The red herring being that there actually is some intrinsic value, rather than zero intrinsic value?

And we should ignore that it has historically been a store of value for thousands of years?

What is the "intrinsic value" of fine art? Why is it a billion dollar industry?

Art can have intrinsic value - beauty, inspiration and enjoyment. Dependent on the artwork it may even have historic or spiritual value.

Art doesn't tend to be a good thing to invest in for returns - some artworks become more culturally significant and appreciate, while others fall into obscurity and irrelevance as their style falls out of fashion (see: Damien Hurst). Insurance, sale fees e.t.c. further cut into any kind of return.

What's your point? Art is valuable thus crypto is valuable? I don't think one follows the other.

Crypto has beauty too. Surely technologists can appreciate an elegant algorithm? Art takes years of craft to perfect, and part of the value of the final piece reflects the years of work that went into training and developing the artist's skills. Well, crypto too is a craft, built on decades of research and centuries of mathematics (much like the long view of art history would say that one school of art influences the next, over centuries). And much like art, not every piece of art appeals to every audience, but that doesn't mean that unpopular art can't have beauty, and likewise just because some may not appreciate the cryptographic beauty of the algorithms and consensus mechanisms behind Bitcoin, doesn't mean it can't have beauty... It just means you might not appreciate it, just like you might not appreciate all pieces of art.

My point is that, if you break the individual elements that contribute to the value of art, and think about why billionaires buy and sell art, then a lot of those first principles for why value exists, can also be applied to crypto (e.g. scarcity, ease of exchange relative to holding gold at least, a sense of value that isn't tied to practical applications, etc.). And in fact, trading pieces of art around and dealing with physical custody and preservation and forgeries/authenticity and "provenance", just seems to be like an inefficient/clunky physical world blockchain with extra steps and ineffective tokens, if you ask me. So really my point is just that, crypto having some inherent value beyond just tulip mania/pump and dump/greater fool/etc., maybe isn't so weird at all.

> You don't know any people from Venezuela I take it, or any countries experiencing hyper-inflation.

I agree that this is a use case but due to BitCoin's extreme volatility it is not really good for that either. Any stable coin is much better suited for this.

You missed the point. A Venezuelan stablecoin pegged to the bolivar would be useless to protect oneself from the country's hyper inflation