Its emergence amid the global financial crisis, which shook trust in banks was perfectly timed so BTC enabled transactions using only digital identities,This made Bitcoin the preferred currency. Btc value has importance to investors who utilize BTC for investment purposes.
yes technically(functionally) bitcoin 2012(price $6) could buy something worth $120 by giving the retailer 20btc
just as easy technically(functionally) as bitcoin 2022($20k) giving a retailer 0.006btc
so functionally yes bitcoin can pay retailers X amount at any token amount representative of a price
.....
as for your endless question your not satisfied with.. the reason for the price being at $20k/btc and not at $6/btc is again related to the mining /acquisition costs that propelled the underlying value up which then propels the price speculation above it up
the price is important because mining costs now do not cost the same $3+ per coin cost of 2012 GPU mining
if mining now was still say $3+/coin underlying cost, the speculative market would not be in the $15k-$70k range
it would be in the $4-$130 range
you are seeing ethereumPoS now learn this. they are trying their hardest to now pump ethereum speculative price up in a bubble to keep it up as long as possible but eventually the price will correct down to the new value level thats atleast 20x lower than its PoW underlying value last month
yep ethereums underlying cost has significantly dropped and the markets are responding and some pumpers are trying to fight that response. but they wont be able to pump it forever
..
anyway back to explaining the bitcoin market
most investors are minnow (small) investors doing trades of $400-$600 per order average
back in 2012 bitcoin sellers had costs of ~$4 and were wanting a lil speculative profit so selling 1 coin for $6 and obviously when a buyer had $400 on offer, a seller would give them 66 coin for that $400
now it costs $15kmin so those lucky miners want a lil profit so sell for more then $15k by offering the small minnows ~0.02btc for $400
which equates to ~$20k/btc
no one today would give someone 66btc for $400
because no one is foolish to sell for that kind of loss amount
as i said if they really need that $400.. they end up giving the buyer 0.02 to get the $400. but without selling at a loss
you wont find any seller today that really needs one of those $400 minnow offers. hand over a whole coin or 66 coin. they would give 0.02btc though. because thats a fair price for $400
bitcoins summer autumn 2022 price of $17k-$24k isnt just some random price picked out of a hat and set magically today.. its a build up of 13 years of price discovery based on the increased underlying costs of mining bitcoin which has increased over 13 years
the reason why bitcoin did not stay at $70k ATH this year.. is because the difference between the $15k bottom of this year and that ATH.. is the speculative price window.. not value
where $70k was not good value. it was not supported.. it was inflated/pumped into a bubble of unsustainable premium/greed. which reached its peak and corrected back down to good value because $70k was a unsustainable price.. and not supported to stay at that level