Us dollars, Euros, etc. aren't something of value in return? They are. All that trading for USD is the real economy. It doesn't need to be trades for drugs, porn, or socks to be real economic activity.
No, it's not the same. If you have to exchange money every time you want to buy some real goods you can just as well get rid of Bitcoins completely and stay with USD and gold - it's less hassle and less risk. "Economy" based solely on generating numbers and selling them for USD is not sustainable in the long run.
Exactly, the gain of using bitcoin is not worth the hassle of switching cash to bitcoin and then bitcoin to cash (except maybe for drugs
).The current price is based on the speculation that real economy will pick up and has little to do with how rare a coin is. Let's say I invent Thanakcoin, there are just like bitcoin, there will only be 10 of them in the world... they are super hard to mine. How much would they trade for.... zero ! no one expect Thanakcoins to be worth something in the future.
No matter how hard it is to get a bitcoin, if people don't expect a real economy to pickup in the long run, the price will not climb with the difficulty.