There are many things vastly superior to gold, but it continues to go up in value. When people are looking for a safe place to store their wealth they are not analyzing technical merits. They instead look at the historical value, which is exactly why we are having this conversation right now. Bitcoin is new and people are concerned about its future value since it has no history.
Well said! That is precisely one of the reasons why we are having this conversation. However, I'm still having trouble getting over the fact that even if paper USD completely loses all exchange value, it still has at least the intrinsic value of the paper it is printed on. Granted, this would be a near zero value. It could, for example, be burned to provide heat/warmth. Now that's what I call going up in smoke!
On the contrary, I can't seem to find any intrinsic value for bitcoins whatsoever. Is this correct? Historically all monies have started first as some commodity/good with at least some intrinsic value. Are bitcoins, however, the very first money with purely extrinsic initial value?