[Retric]

Gold is a store of value. Buy 1 lb of gold and in 100 years you have 1 lb of gold minus storage fees.

However, over a long enough timeframe storage fees eat up the entire value of gold stored thus it's not a long term investment.

[darawk]

So is bitcoin. Except that it doesn't have storage costs. Buy 1 bitcoin today, and you will retain it in perpetuity, in its exact same quantity.

[Retric]

Which would change nothing as gold is not an investment.

Also, if you 1 one bitcoin you can only sell less than 1 bitcoin from transaction fees. Remember, someone needs to spend real money maintain servers and that money is constantly being removed from the coin ecosystem.

[darawk]

Untrue. You can sell someone the private key to your wallet. That's free. If you're not going to classify commodities or real estate as investments, then sure, I guess bitcoin isn't an investment. But it's as much an investment as any commodity or real estate is.

[Retric]

real estate pays a dividend in the form of use of that land.

If I own a house I get to use the house today and still have a house tomorrow. With a field I could grow crops and then still have a field next year.

Commodities are an interesting 3rd thing. But, closer to buying something from a wholesaler than an investment as they represent actual goods (ie Oil) that will be sent somewhere. Think of it like this, if you buy coffee contract you get coffee which can be sold off. However it's a physical thing and it's got a physical expiration date, if you keep it in a pile somewhere for 10 years you end up with dirt.

[darawk]

Bitcoin provides a service though - a service that has demonstrable economic utility. Specifically: international value transfer. There are existing mechanisms for this (western union, swift) and they have costs. The sum of those costs is a reasonable way to think about Bitcoin's theoretical value by substitution, because it costs bitcoin to move bitcoin. And therefore if Bitcoin were to replace all other intl. value transfer mechanisms, the sum of those two sets of costs should be comparable.

[Retric]

Owning bitcoins don't facilitate these transactions by third party's. The service can create value but don't let the name of the service be confused with the coins.

You could speculate that the utility created will increase the value of the coins you hold. However, unlike mining there is no connection between buying a coin and enabling other people to do these transactions.