i dont understand why bitcoin has to be just base on people perceive value of it. and for someone to just artrarily fix the supply of them at 21 million doesn't make any sense. it should be able to contract and expand the # of bitcoins in existence. but because bitcoin is design very simplistically it is kind of like monopoly money. not backed up by anything.
The world has moved on for many years now to place the value of money on a commodity. In the past countries had a fixed exchange rate between their currency and gold, which was very a difficult issue for the country. They always had to store large amounts of gold in the central bank and could be attacked by speculative traders. UK stopped the Gold standard in 1931, and USA in 1973 after Bretton Woods. Today it is enough for a country to guarantee the value of money. It doesn't make sense for crypto currencies now to go back to an outdated monetary system. First of all, which commodity should the value of bitcoins be based on? Gold? Then Bitcoins would just mirror the gold price and we wouldn't need cryptos. The same effect we could have by buying ETCs on gold. I think we are past the time where we other to tell us the worth of things. Just because there is no big central bank behind bitcoins guaranteeing it's valu doesn't mean it will be worthless.