Either Bitcoin is a service or it is money. If is only a service (e.g. for money transfer) then the value of the token declines to near zero, as Warren Buffet pointed out. If is money then it must serve at least one of the functions of unit-of-exchange, unit-of-account, and/or store-of-value.
This is a rehash of the Gavin vs small blocker ideology. Gavin believes the price of Bitcoin is solely derived from the utility of the network. Small blockers seem to believe the network effect creates a captive audience where the price will continuously go up anyway, although they will never admit their ideology specifically relies on the terminology as I've defined it: "captive audience". This captive audience effect does seem to have legs since there's plenty of other rare materials people could trade in real life rather than overpaying for a mostly cornered gold market.
I don't agree about your assesment that Bitcoin as a service makes the token worth zero. Bitcoin as a service means you still have to submit to the network effect and transact in tokens with the largest market cap to avoid slippage. There's still plenty of scarcity in the system such as transaction throughput to bid the prices up as well.
Even if nobody on earth can figure out why Bitcoin should have value, the fact that it already has value means that random individuals holding tokens as the cost of doing business, even if only for short term and they don't consider it a store of value, creates a constant demand on float that allows others to use it as a store of value.
Me and the annoying small blockers like Brg444 and Belcher already had this argument. It's a chicken and egg scenario:
adlai: bitcoin is useless if nobody views it as a store of value; not everybody is required to, but if nobody does, the incentives get quite funny
r0ach: assuming you achieve decent scalability, you really don't need to view it as a long term store of value because...we use fiat every day and that's exactly how it works (not a store of value)
r0ach: If I'm a business and find Crypto valuable for international transactions for example, but don't even care about it's store of value, I might have tons of it on-hand just as the price of doing business with international customers. That demand on float amount held by many businesses will prop the market cap up and suddenly people can use it as a store of value even if nobody believes it is a store of value...so the chicken and egg scenario is, payment processing (utility) comes first before store of value
brg444: That's backwards. Read Szabo's paper Schelling Out on the origins. Most forms of money not fiat start off as collectibles. Same for Bitcoin. If no one cares to hold it as a store of value it will be impossible for your business to use it for international transactions.
r0ach: well, Bitcoin itself didn't have value until someone bought a pizza, so the ability to buy pizza (utility) was the prime mover
brg444: no see that is backward because the only reason somebody was able to buy pizza is because the recipient of the btc valued them enough to consider them worthy of holding them
r0ach: if you assume the initial coin recepient was a rational actor
brg444: huh yes I do assume the guy didn't buy a pizza for someone on the other side of the world for shits and giggles.
r0ach: Yes, that's exactly why he did do it. Some guy acting a fool was the prime mover in creating a 7 billion dollar market.