[ericb]

> a societal construct that has persisted for milenia across vast swathes of the globe is not your typical societal construct.

For sure, but until now, gold has not faced an alternative that beat it on a number of objective measures (portability, divisibility, scarcity, durability) so now we get to see the experimental result of what happens over time when there's an alternative that better meets the core use-cases that made it a good choice to a store of value.

Bitcoins have a base level of desirability even without currency use. They offer the ability to write (transact) on a public globally distributed time stamped, unforgeable verified data store.

The blockchain's a perfect place to store the hash of a document, for example, to prove it's existence as of a certain date.