USD value at introduction was referential. It's sort of irrelevant if it were initially only a penny, it was the trust in the gov't to back the currency for "whatever value they said it had" that garnered people's willingness to use and accept it. -despite the gov't trying several iterations of 'money'.

I love BitPay and the ability it gives merchants to ease into BTC adoption. Though I doubt the posters in this thread had this foresight 2.5 years ago.