So, are bitcoin businesses really that important to giving value to bitcoin? If not, then what does give it value? Like I said, I hope someone can clear this up for me. Thanks.
Start with an exchange. Someone posts a bid offer; they will pay $6 each for 1000 BTC. That offer sits, and props the price up over a volume of 1000 BTC. The price cannot fall lower than $6 without the volume being at least 1000 BTC.
Imagine now that all the exchanges group together making one giant virtual order book of bid offers (arbitrage is what makes this virtual order book in reality). The total volume might be 100,000 BTC to get to $6.
What if we add in the other currencies, but we pretend they are in dollars? Even more volume to $6.
All that volume represents part of the bitcoin economy.
Now imagine a car salesman is willing to sell you a second hand Suzuki for 1000 BTC. You can think of that as being a bid offer of one thousandth of a Suzuki over a volume of 1000 BTC.
That Suzuki can go on our virtual order book too. As can all the baklava, alpaca socks, lap dances, etc on offer at any one moment.
They all represent someone saying "I believe a bitcoin is worth X". The more people that say that, the more reliable that statement becomes and the more robust the price and bitcoin economy are. ("robust" here meaning "robust against someone who does not think that")