[Fjolsvith]

I beg to differ with regards to your valuation of Bitcoin. It, like gold, has a practical use value. It, also like gold, has a value attributed to it due to it's rarity. However, Bitcoin has an advantage over gold, in that it can be traded without having to be transported _at cost_. This is why so many people are bullish on it.

Oh, and so many people "who are in control of it" have too much of their own money invested into it to allow it to fail.

[saalweachter]

The advantage of gold over Bitcoin is that you can evaluate the non-"it's gold!" uses of gold and make a good guess of its floor value, what it'd be worth if people weren't hoarding it, and say something like "it might be 2-3x overpriced right now, but probably not more than 10x overpriced right now". So you can say, worst case, you probably won't lose more than half the money you put in gold, and almost certainly not all of it.

What is the floor price of Bitcoin, once you eliminate all speculation/hoarding?

[wpietri]

Sorry, I missed this in all the noise.

Gold has use value in that even if the commodity speculation activity drops to zero, I can still turn the gold into jewelery and sell that. Or I could sell it to somebody who needs it for industrial purposes. Heck, I could sell it to the people who put gold leaf on candy.

Bitcoin has no such intrinsic floor. It only has exchange value. If people stop accepting it as a medium of exchange, you're left with bits. Bits are approximately free.