[danans]

> The value has a very weak link anchored to anything in the real economy

I think it has a pretty strong link to the degree of fear in the real economy (just like gold at the margin) and more fundamentally the degree of loss of confidence in governing institutions.

In that way it's useful as a hedge, but within limits. If the economy and governing institutions totally collapse, Bitcoin won't be very useful because most of our modern large scale and complex society, including security, shared infrastructure, and the goods and services we consume are built on the foundation provided by those institutions.

Bitcoin has no answer for the needs provided by those (admittedly imperfect) institutions, and it seems to have the historical goal of deconstructing them. Indeed, it can only exist if those institutions exist.