Gold has been the go-to (You might even say "standard") medium of exchange for most of human history. It's only recently that it was decoupled from currency, and look where that's lead us.

Like it or not, Botcoin is the digital equivalent of gold.

I'm sorry you missed the stage where you could just pick it up off the ground, or even pan it out of rivers. Now we need heavy equipment to mine it, which means you'll need to make an investment to get any returns, or you can just buy the gold on the open market.

Now read that last paragraph, but replace "gold" with "bitcoin," and you might finally understand.