[peterjlee]

I agree with the gold comparison. Gold is priced far higher than it's industrial usefulness because it's seen as an value holding asset.

The properties that make gold a good value holding asset is:

1. It's rare and supply is limited (holds value in low physical volume) 2. It doesn't decay or rust 3. It's easy to split into smaller pieces or combine into a larger one.

Bitcoin is good at all three plus added benefit of easy, fast, cheap global transaction (compared to gold at least).

[microtherion]

I'll grant you (2) and (3), but (1) seems more debatable. Even though the overall number of Bitcoins is fixed (By fiat ;-), cryptocurrencies are multiplying like rabbits. Each Bitcoin fork alone creates 21 million potential new coins. New elements, in contrast, are added rarely, and stable new elements seem rather unlikely at this point.