Quote from: Effingham Hoofnagle on December 17, 2018, 12:33:45 AM

Government: Give me $1000 in gold and I'll give you a piece of paper to represent it.

100 years later, that piece of paper buys 1/100th of what it originally did.

1's and 0's also provide immensely better security and portability than paper.

Hence, bitcoin.

Why is the price down?

Because it got too high for the current level of adoption and understanding.
That doesnt mean it has no value or will never go up again.

FIAT USD is backed by murder, if columbia doesn't sell its cocaine in USD, then the CIA goes in and changes cartel heads,

If saudi doesn't sell its oil to the world in USD, then CIA goes into Saudi and finds a new family to run the concession

At this point in time, BTC has no mercenary army to threaten death upon the world for failure to adopt.