Gold being viewed as valuable has long predated its utilitarian usefulness in electronics. In an analog world, it gained value due to its beauty, the relative ease with which it could be shaped, the fact that it does not tarnish, and its rarity/scarcity. The primary utility of gold, aside from being used monetarily, was to flaunt wealth. It was proof of work, or more accurately, proof of the labor you have at your disposal, if you can afford to gild your possessions with something so difficult to acquire.

Where the gold bugs often go wrong is in believing that something must have a utility value outside of being used monetarily. For one, money IS a utility. Whatever is used as money just needs two people (those engaging in the trade) to see it as valuable for ANY reason – the fact they can transact with one another anywhere on earth, for instance – in order for it to have value in that trade. As soon as it has been viewed as valuable by even a very small percentage of people, regardless of the reason they believe it is valuable, the determining factor for whether it maintains, gains, or loses value over time will be how easy it is to make more of it.

There is also no single value of any good in the marketplace. There is the market price, which in itself can be highly localized, but every single person has a different perceived value of any given thing. Value is simply an expression of ones desire to possess, use, or consume something.

I don't care what the price of brussels sprouts is when I visit the grocery store. To me, their value is $0 because I can't stand the things. If I knew that my friend down the road REALLY likes brussels sprouts, and that there wasn't going to be another delivery of them for weeks, I might suddenly decide they are worth the purchase, if I wanted to gain some favor with my friend, or wanted trade him the last available brussels sprouts in town for something he has to offer. In such a case, even though I don't personally want any brussels sprouts, because I know they are scarce and desirable to someone else I know and I can expect to be able to trade them to, I am willing to make the purchase. However, because it's easy to make more brussels sprouts, I know I can't expect to pull off the same trade in a couple weeks, when the new shipment arrives and there are plenty to go around.

Now apply that same principle to gold and Bitcoin. Gold has had thousands of years for people to discover that you CAN make that same trade in two weeks. That those who want gold today are likely to continue to want more of it tomorrow, because it is NOT easy to make more of it. So most people have come to see gold as valuable, even if they have no "use" for it except to store their wealth with the expectation of being able to sell it for more than they purchased it for at a later date. Why anyone originally wanted gold in the first place is superfluous. All that matters is that they came to want it at all. As long as there are people who want to have gold for any reason, including just selling it to others later, and it continues to be hard to acquire more of it, then it will maintain or gain value.

Bitcoin has not had thousands of years to prove itself, so the majority of people see its value as $0. Yet, there is already a substantial number of people who do see it as incredibly valuable. More valuable than the current market price. How they came to believe Bitcoin was valuable in the first place really doesn't matter. All that matters is whether those who already value Bitcoin can be proven wrong by easily making more of it. If they can, then Bitcoin will go to $0. If it is found that the cost of creating more Bitcoin in large quantities is too high to effectively extract value from those who are supposedly fooled into believing it is worth anything, then it will only result in more and more people being convinced that Bitcoin's value is NOT $0, until eventually, just like gold, it will be difficult to find anyone who doesn't believe Bitcoin has value.