Quote from: Flanelcoin on April 18, 2013, 05:51:11 PM

Gentlemen,

Keep in mind that Bitcoin value is a very complex thing on a systems scale.
Uranium might be cheap if you have no nuclear power plants. Once you do, it is no longer so.

The perhaps paradox with Bitcoin is this: as a pure currency in the price mechanism sense (a calibration unit for measuring relative values) it might indeed very well be overvalued, but then Bitcoin right now is mostly an extremely convenient value carrier and not so much a currency.
But.
The benefits of it, as a tool, as a resource for financial operations engines of great power, can save up a lot of relative value and energy (in terms of transaction speeds, fees, ...). So the question is:
How much value would it generate when compared to today's systems while integrated into an X-sized financial market?
Please note, that this is the same as: "how much energy would lubricating oil save in mechanisms when adopted?" and practically boils down to "how much energy would uranium fission free?".
So the value of bitcoin in a extratemporal, systems perspective is in fact for a large part the value of the energy freed by the technical advantages of it in a market of a certain size. How big will the market be? Well, that's the question.
Oh, right, the paradox part. In order to be adopted by such a market, the bitcoin price needs to be massively higher than this to offer good liquidity and use for abstract financial operations.
So, it's overvalued now, but undervalued considering what can come, so overvaluation leads to correct value?!

Awkwardly worded, but yes, this is the crux of the problem. Everyone is always saying that in order for Bitcoin to be useful it must necessarily be worth much more than it is now, which is a true statement. It is a classic chicken-and-egg problem. So how do we get from here to there? I think the only real answer may be, unfortunately, speculation.