About the 'value' of cryptocurrencies: I consider most of them, especially Bitcoin, to be wildly overpriced for something that got almost no real world use. Probably some Bitcoin fanatic will get out of the woodworks and attack me for it, talking about 'ever increasing adoption', but the truth of the matter is that almost NO single Bitcoiner uses Bitcoin to purchase things. It is a speculative vehicle that has gone through a massive bubble phase. It will highly probably never ever rise again as it did in the past. The next months will reveal the fundamental flaws behind Bitcoin as the bubble will deflate further. I am predicting at least a few dozen suicides because of it, as some people that were so stupid to buy at the top will never see their money back. And that surely is not something I can laugh about, as I consider that a real human tragedy.
Almost no gold holder uses gold to purchase things, But the price of gold still has been rising for centuries. Btc is at the very least a way to store your money that is not affected by the inflation and taxes of fiat (btc inflation is temporary and will be over). That imo is an extremely valuable real-world use, more than enough for btc price to keep rising in the indefinite future, even if people can't "buy" anything directly with it.
Quite the contrary: gold got loads of real world applications, including jewelry. Gold is one of the few things that remained valuable throughout history and is still desired by a lot of people worldwide. Bitcoin however, is not desired by almost everyone. The exception there being the people that come to these boards and related places, to talk about their cherished 'currency' that never was.
Bitcoin might not be affected by the inflation and taxes of fiat (although the tax part might get you into trouble if you don't tell the authorities about your Bitcoins), but it sure as hell is affected by internal inflation due to mining. Inflation that only slowly bottoms out, and probably bottoms out too late to make any last minute impact. In this world things are moving fast, and a timeframe of about 10+ years to get rid of most of the inflation in Bitcoin is simply way too long. Satoshi should've thought of that when he created the protocol, as the inflation within Bitcoin makes it inherently more unstable.
But Bitcoin as a store of value? Surely not at this moment. Bitcoin just lost 80% of its value in 14 months time, which makes any talk about a store of value ironic.
What about platinum? It's worth more than gold and you don't make jewelry with it. It's just rare and deflationary, that's why it's expensive. Iron is common and people mine it all the time, so it's cheaper. People invest in those rare metals because they know their price will rise (and the fiat price will lower).
And Btc does have more usefulness, like the ability to transfer money instantly with low or no taxes.
Yes, btc may not be a good store of value for the short term, but I don't think that's a good reason to buy btc now anyway. But I expect that at least in 10 years it will be worth a lot more than now.
And fiat is not so much ahead of btc as a store of value if we consider just the inflation. Some fiat currencies have a ridiculous inflation and btc can be a safe escape route from it.
Btc is also by very far the most known and used crypto currency, and it won't be easy for another currency to reach its popularity, which is a very important factor in btc's survival and value. I would say the more people using btc, the more chances it has to survive, and the higher its value. And if it's still alive at the end of inflation, its price will have nowhere else to go but upwards.
