You don’t have to want it, other people want it. You want to have a pile of lightweight, secure doodads that other people want, because that’s easier to exchange than terminal wants like cars and sheep. What’s really crazy is the only reason other people want it is this same reason; it’s circular. It takes coordination to bootstrap, but once it’s set up it can be stable. Like those circles of people all sitting on each-others laps.

Yeah the greater fool theory doesn't sound too appealing to me.

It's not the "greater fool" theory. It's more like language. A new word doesn't have to have a real connection to its meaning. The word "cat" isn't structured like a cat, and when spoken aloud doesn't sound like one either. But we still like to be able to refer to cats without pointing, so we agree on something inherently meaningless and tie to to that.

Fiat currency is the same way. Rather than point a giant network of contracts together in order to create some monster transaction that satisfies a few hundred people evenly, we just agree to respect the unique-but-valueless papers produced by the crazy guy who will imprison anybody who tries to produce those same papers. It didn't have to be these papers; it didn't have to be bitcoin. It just had to be something that had the necessary properties: unique, scarce, lightweight, secure, and, most importantly, used by as many other people as possible.

The first question to ask is what is money? Money is just an efficient means of transferring value between strangers and storing value over time (second point could be debated, since the value of fiat currencies have almost always degraded over time due to inflation).

Why do we give USD value? Because most the population trusts the US government to keep the value of USD stable and we know it is widely used and accepted.

What has happened recently? Most fiat currency supplies have ballooned tremendously. This has undermined the collective view of the storing value over time argument. Bitcoin adoption has increased, which means more and more people recognize it as money and that it has value. Also since the supply is capped, it becomes more apparent that it will be a better store of value than USD.

If you have excess USD, why would you not want at least some exposure to bitcoin over USD?

I'm as skeptical as you are but the recent article by Ray Dalio explained well its value, which is still rather unconvincing to me. Still, I liken it to Monopoly money a group decided was worth actual money, obfuscated by technology, distributed systems, and other buzzwords.

Bitcoin is valuable as an investment in the same way that gold is valuable. It is scarce and the benefit it currently has over gold is it is completely portable and can be instantly be used as a means of exchange if necessary. Bitcoin has very little value as a currency.

The US Dollar is backed by 20 aircraft carriers, thousands of nuclear weapons, 350 million Americans who think they have a manifest destiny, and a government with a long history of invading countries that threaten the dollar.

What's bitcoin backed by?

Source code and miners.

Bitcoin is backed by the printer called Tether.

CNBC and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

carbon emissions.