I never understood economists view of Bitcoin.
Gold is completely useless to me. I can't buy anything with gold. Nobody accepts it as payment.
They also use the word bubble a lot. Apparently they don't see the difference of bitcoins and the price of bitcoins.
The price of bitcoins can be a bubble. The technology behind bitcoin can not.
I also think they underestimate how fed up people are with government controlled currencies. They certainly did a controlled dive into the financial crisis.
Same with so called trusted services. If a service is "trusted", it has backdoors. People are not the horde of sheep they thought they were, and now they act surprised.
Gold has an intrinsic value beyond just being relatively rare and pretty to look at. Its industrial value as a crucial element of electronics, sensitive circuits, and other modern innovations give it a values above and beyond that of a mere luxury item.
Same goes for diamonds, although many people are only aware of the 'luxury item' aspect of it - some of the initial designs for mirrors and equipments in the SDI research (defunct, but still produced numerous branching off topics of research that benefited us later on - that's how scientific innovations work) included natural and artificial diamond as a component.
Bitcoin's 'intrinsic' value depends entirely upon its decentralization, security, ease of usage and ability to more easily reach people.
However, you can see how each and every one of those ideals (backed by technical aspects of bitcoin itself) is meeting obstacles every step of the way.
Is the crypto community dealing with them and advancing crypto in a positive way? No.
Instead, we see bitching and moaning about the 'rah rah rah fite da powa' bullshit that alienates many if only by their sheer infantile mentality and shallow motivations behind their complaints.
There's a reason why even someone like this hedgefund boss has an edge over your average bitcoiners. To the common public, crypto participant is a daydreaming ne'er to do well sitting in front of his computer with delusions of hitting it big someday.
If you want crypto to actually grow, start acting professional.
TLDR - check yourselves.