RE: ►Why Bitcoin. Refresh your mind. Open your mind. Or simply help a broke student! ☺
Bitcoin never was intended as a store of value, but as a payment system. The comparison with gold is foolish.
Gold truly is scarce, it is forged with the energy of exploding stars - no other element has its exact physical properties, no process known to man can reproduce it cheaply.
Bitcoin can be copied by anyone, creating another system with the exact same properties, but a different history - the ledger. Why should an entry in the ledger have value? There are two major reasons:
Intended Usage:
In order to be able to transfer ownership of real-world value, Bitcoins need to be purchased. The larger the value that is being exchanged via Bitcoins, the higher the price will need to be.
Speculation:
People observe a rise in value, so they speculate on a future rise in value. Their purchases drive the price up as well.
Neither of these things require the Bitcoin blockchain in particular, it merely has the first-mover advantage and the resulting higher adoption. The value "stored" in Bitcoin today can and will be moved into other cryptocurrencies, should the market decide to do so.
You named it, SHOULD the market decide. Do you really think the market looks like that right now?
I believe that if the main driver of value was usage as currency, the market would've already shifted towards other systems, given the current problems with network congestion and high fees.
This brings us to the next issue: When there will be a hardfork (possibly soon), there technically won't be a "Bitcoin" anymore, but rather "Bitcoin Classic" and "Bitcoin Unlimited". The market will have to decide which one to make dominant. Either way, value will be moved out of Bitcoin and into fiat and other cryptos, simply as a precautionary measure. I certainly know I will be doing that.
We don't know if they will split yet. But moving money out of Bitcoin before 1. August is certainly a smart move!