> I think at this point it's fair to say that nobody has any idea of the real 'value' of a bitcoin.
Nonsense. They have no use, not even as a status symbol or as a practical unit of exchange. The “real value of a bitcoin” is zero, and the fact that this isn’t obvious to everyone is, frankly, astonishing.
We have to be careful when we question the "real value" of specific assets as we may tumble in an essentialist philosophical debate where we have to question the "real value" of every single asset in the universe. There is no inherent difference between gold and bitcoins, they're both scarce assets, one in slightly higher demand than the other. The value of assets is mostly[1] determined by both supply and demand, and as long as the demand is higher than the (more or less) fixed supply of bitcoins, the value will always be > $0.
[1] Please enlighten me if you know more ways of determining the value of assets.
But bitcoins do have a use. There's at least a few million dollars a month of value moving through Silk Road.
However, it's not in the interest of users of BTC to use a wildly unstable currency. My prediction is that bitcoin will be replaced at some point by another crypto currency which fixes some of its major flaws - particularly its deflationary nature.
As far as I can tell, there's no real reason it has to stay deflationary.
At some point there could be a consensus that inflation would be good for bitcoin and they could patch the client to start increasing the new bitcoins per block.
tbh I don't know why it isn't inflationary, if it was you could remove/reduce transaction fees as miners would always have an incentive
Bitcoin has no use? And after saying this, you find yourself qualified to comment on the "real value of a bitcoin"?
Sometimes it is more valuable to accept what you do not know instead of pretending. Bitcoin may drop to $0 or bounce back to $250. I do not know, but I know why it made it this far and that is something that I would suggest you attempt to grasp before making any broad, unsubstantiated statements.
Given that they are used to buy things in the real world, I'd say their total value is the value of the goods exchanged, divided by the bitcoin velocity of money. Varying expectations of future value screw with the price though.
Willingness to pay is someone's valuation. That's not the real value. That's not the inherent value. The inherent value of BTC is nill, except as a speculative commodity.
I won't further comment on BTC since both sides are staunchly rooted in their positions.
