So, is a monero a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold? Yes or No!
I think you mean to suggest no, but the answer might be yes. Satoshi proposed viewing Bitcoin as a new and unusual kind of metal with the property that it can be sent instantly over long distances. Monero is similar except that it has the ability to be sent over long distances without leaving a public record of having done so. Bitcoin and Monero are different in kind, but both new and usual kinds of "metals"
I mean yes, and I see that brg444 agrees too.
This just serves to prove my rebuttal to his "capital growth priority over user growth" theory.
It is the increasing ecosystem size (including user-base and mining power) which gives a crypto-coin an increasing market price (capital value), and any of the 600 alts could potentially be "unique collectables", and many already are. The only thing holding them back is their rate of ecosystem growth and network effect.
The other important point is that markets always contain a speculative element about the future. Some percentage of the BTC price is purely a premium that the coin will scale to handle volumes of global significance. We will never know exactly, but 50% of the price may be an investor play on Bitcoin reaching MasterCard volumes. That is why many coins lie unmoving in cold wallets. The other 50% of the price is the current utility value of the payment network, free of capital controls, be-your-own-bank, escape from the fiat hegemony.
Ah, good points. I'd add that it might be 90-10 instead of 50-50 or even 99-1 or 99-1. As you say we will never know.