I don&#x27;t think bitcoin has much utility as a means to transfer value, over the existing solutions.<p>It might be a superior means to <i>store</i> value. The theory is that is as the amount of dollars (or any fiat currency) constantly increases, anyone holding large quantities of dollars will want to exchange them for something with a more fixed supply. Usually this is stocks. Oil futures, property, and gold are also used as stores of value. (In countries with weak currencies, people also hoard dollars as a comparatively stronger source of value).<p>So the purely monetarist argument says if there are only 21m bitcoins, and an ever-growing amount of dollars, one would expect that the dollar price of bitcoin will only be stable at 0 or infinity. E.g., either the network crashes and bitcoin becomes worthless, or the dollar collapses and bitcoin reigns supreme.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nakamotoinstitute.org&#x2F;mempool&#x2F;im-hoarding-bitcoins-and-no-you-cant-have-any&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nakamotoinstitute.org&#x2F;mempool&#x2F;im-hoarding-bitcoins-an...</a> - see here for more on this theory as regards bitcoin.<p>The counter to this argument is that a. despite seeming logical, money supply inflation doesn&#x27;t always seem to occur in reality. E.g., quantitive easing hasn&#x27;t noticeably increased consumer prices.<p>b. Bitcoin is volatile, which means it isn&#x27;t actually a safe store of value. One persuasive argument I heard (from goldbugs) is that bitcoin, having a fixed supply, has no mechanism to stabilise the price, and so booms and busts become self-reinforcing. With gold, on the other hand, the amount mined varies depending on the market price, which smoothes out booms and busts.<p>I&#x27;m expecting both gold and bitcoin to increase in value over the next ten years as the EU and US both lurch from crisis to crisis. This will bring a debate over the future of fiat currency into the mainstream, after which things will get very messy and political. (You can&#x27;t run a welfare state on gold or bitcoin, for one).