legit question, but the answer is easy - too much manipulation... you look at the chart it's not driven by real supply/demand.... just whale(s) waking up and decide let me (us) pull it up by $1000 and sell a few there, or vice versa.... pure gamble.. no fun.
BTC isn't a market where I can adequately control risk. There are lots of other places where I can lose my money more safely.
Neither gold nor bitcoin are investments, they're speculations. A better question is: what would you rather store your wealth in, gold or bitcoin? Gold has withstood the test of time. Bitcoin has only been going on for a little over a decade. Bitcoin makes a lot more sense to me than does gold. I think for a lot of younger people bitcoin makes more sense. For older generations gold makes more sense. As wealth passes down the generations, it's going to be interesting to see how everything plays out. Ultimately I can see bitcoin being a better store of value than gold. Sure people talk about the volatility today, but if bitcoin gets the same number of holders as gold has, the volatility will be dramatically reduced. The comparison to tulips is amusing and you can make the same comparison to gold. Since in the end gold is just a speculation that has been going on for thousands of years. Still waiting for that bubble to burst. For me, bitcoin is the superior asset compared to gold. Gold isn't going away any time soon, but neither is bitcoin.
Golds as predictable as the worlds markets area, BTC is just dead dead dead, then a 5000pt move in a few days, gamble only.
BTC and gold fill the same theoretical niche in a portfolio, which is to say, a "store of value" hedge against currency debasement and socio-political/economic turmoil. BTC has one significant advantage over gold, which is portability. You can carry millions of USD with you on a flash drive. However, BTC has two major disadvantages which make it unsuitable as a full portfolio stand-in for gold: 1. Gold is "the original asset class", and has been around since time immemorial. It is a 100% tangible asset whose properties are well understood, and for which there are many centuries of data available to evaluate its portfolio performance under a variety of political regimes and economic scenarios. BTC is a novel asset class with no such extended history, whose performance and properties are not very well understood. 2. BTC is subject to a variety of specific risks and vulnerabilities which gold is not. Its portability also makes it insanely vulnerable to loss or theft (both physical and digital). Its value relies on the proper functioning and operation of other complex systems: electricity, the Internet, the BTC network and crypto exchanges. One or more of these are likely not to be around when you need it most. Finally, within the crypto space BTC is subject to enormous "competition" from other coins and has numerous well-known technical disadvantages, such as the extreme inefficiency of its network. At any time, the BTC market could be killed off by a combo of government repression and the emergence of alternative coins which are much more secure, efficient, and usable, institutionally-backed etc. and thus far more appealing to both serious investors, and non-techie everyday users. For all these reasons, an "investment" in BTC is really a speculation - thus it should make up only a tiny fraction of your investment portfolio. This is actually a huge problem for BTC in the near term (next 5-10 years). It's been two years since the bubble peak and the market is well below the highs reached at that time. Yet, market sentiment remains dominated by HODL'er hard-core true believers who claim to be "investors" waiting patiently for the Big Move, but are in reality classic bag-holding suckers who will mostly puke out on the next move lower.
A hedge against currency debasement and socio-political/economic turmoil is one thing, but for electricity, the internet and the bitcoin network to crumble, that's a whole different level of catastrophe. In that case we'd basically be building civilization from scratch, so gold might not be that valuable anyway. Crypto exchanges pose a risk, but already we have decentralized exchanges and they are only going to become more popular. If crypto exchanges are legally shut down in a country, exchanges will move to the underground, which will only make it more difficult for the government and not so much for the citizens. Additionally, even without exchanges bitcoin is still capable of acting as a standalone currency. It's not currently in wide use as a standalonne currency, but like gold it doesn't necessarily have to be exchanged. I think this could've been true a few years ago. At this point bitcoin has grown to a size that would make it virtually impossible for any government to shut down. Governments can make its usage more difficult for sure, but shutting down would require seizing the majority of bitcoin nodes across the world. These nodes are also mobile and can be moved across continents at any time. This is definitely a threat, but bitcoin has the largest network and is the most decentralized. First mover advantage is huge in this area. Whichever cryptocurrency has mass adoption is what will have the most secure network (in terms of decentralization), and right now that's bitcoin. As bitcoin continues to grow it becomes even more difficult to overthrow it. Bitcoin might not be the best at all things (and it doesn't need to be, since other cryptocurrencies can live alongside bitcoin), but when it comes to a hedge against currency debasement and socio-political/economic turmoil, bitcoin is the gold of cryptocurrencies. I agree with most of your other points.