Except that Bitcoin is at a 50% inflation right now.
Gold is also a deflationary currency and yet its price is skyrocketing.
But if people were mining gold faster than people were buying it, it too would be losing value.
Where did you get that statistic?
Gold is about to explode. There are plenty of investors shorting gold right now.
A lot of the people in Bitcoin are just treating it as an investment, but there are a lot of people, myself included, who have actually spent some coins on businesses that take Bitcoin. I honestly think the recent value drop has more to do with the fact that markets just change than anything. There's certainly been enough unrest in pretty much every other market the last couple years -- to expect that Bitcoin wouldn't experience some of the same is unrealistic.
Anything that makes investors flock to "safe bets" like government-issued bonds is going to hit Bitcoin to some extent because right now we simply have the fiat value set primarily by traders and speculators, and there is currently no real reason to buy bitcoins for the purpose of spending them. If that were to change the whole definition of the exchanges' markets could change as well.
I've used bitcoins to buy products as well. I think that all markets change, but you can find definite reasons for those changes. I totally agree with you on the last part though. There is no incentive to use bitcoins for online transactions yet. Almost all of the BTC businesses have predecessors that use USD.
Looks like you speaking the truth. Maybe once all the bitcoins are issued people might start spending them.
We only have 3 years to wait, right?