I think the time has come, where it is reasonable to suggest that Bitcoin was not the "purely speculative bubble asset" that many thought it was.
A raw bitcoin (freshly mined) is not an asset per se, but a set of empty rows in the General Ledger.
By selling your bitcoins to others you're selling them an exclusive right to use those rows to record various transactions.
Only bitcoins that are supported by the actual transactions can be called an asset (the value of which is the value of transactions).
Recent hikes in the price of raw bitcoins are merely the Smart Money attempt to once again capitalize on the unsuspecting bitcoin fans.
Oh, come on. The "inherent value" argument in another guise. Nothing is an asset per se. NOTHING has inherent value of any kind. Inherent Value is a contradiction in terms, since value is always assigned.
There is no value without he (or she) doing the valuing.
One newly minted BTC is an asset, inasmuch as someone out there is going to assign value to the possibility of transacting it.