It is a simple yet not easy question to answer:
why does bitcoin have value?
The answer, we believe is summarized in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv2-6KDlZSEBitcoin has value because it has
both scarcity and utility. It is a limited
and useful resource. It is important to note that something must be BOTH in order to command a market value, NOT either.
Bitcoin is limited to the software-imposed hard limit of 21,000,000 bitcoin units ever in circulation. It is useful because it allows payment information to be secured by a decentralized computing network backed by magnitudes of raw hashing power. That raw hashing power is energy (electricity) converted into digital utility. Each transaction must compete (fee market) to be included in the next block of transactions which has a limited [block space] due to the block size limit (2MB) imposed on each ~10 minute block.
We can expect both the value to increase and the number of users to increase exponentially so long as the current technology maintains itself and remains both useful and in a limited abundance.
Bitcoin will always retain market value so long as miner nodes are actively contributing their hashing power to secure the network (proof of work).
Learn more about bitcoin at
http://diginomics.comI think you're missing a key third factor - people give it value. This utility and scarcity could not be enough, the fact that people who use bitcoin think it has value also gives it value. This third factor I'm talking about is what made it rise so much during 2017, utility and scarcity might have got it up to $2k on 2017, but it was people's perception what got it to $20k. It's also why it crashed so fast, but still the point is valid, it's when there's equilibrium between these that you get a stable price.