1. the price the last person paid to buy a bitcoin
2. the price the next person is willing to pay to buy a bitcoin
Until human beings figure out the Truth of the universe or at least the meaning of life, the word "value" means nothing. We don't deserve to use the word "value", because we haven't being able to define it.
No one admits this simple truth that you just did. It worth what someone is willing to pay for it. End of story.
Asking WHY someone is willing to pay a certain amount is definitely an interesting question but a very different one.
the chain is worthless if there are regular re-orgs
The chain's security is primarily paid by the block subsidy
The block subsidy trends to zero.
Either the fees need to increase or the security property falls away and 1 Bitcoin = 2 Bitcoin
> The block subsidy trends to zero.
These statements are misleading. As the block subsidy trends to zero, the chain's security will be primarily paid by transaction fees. This will likely happen within two decades, in which the block subsidy will diminish by a factor 2^5 = 32.
> Either the fees need to increase or the security property falls away
The security will diminish, but not fall away completely as long as bitcoin maintains a constant backlog of high-fee paying transactions.
In the limit Bitcoin either is a chain that you can use for under 60 bucks a txn (two of which are needed for each lighting network channel) and it has meh security or it costs greater than 60 bucks a txn and is like an extra expensive wire txn system and used as financial infra.
As long as the problem is somewhere in the future it is in the present because it's all about speculation & speculation depends on future value.
There are two other things to think of in this thought experiment: other cryptocurrency, they can set higher subsidy, use different L2 solutions
And dark miners. Even if bitcoin's security parameter is stable is it goes down then miners will turn off and try to sell their hardware at a discount. If that happens >50% then there's a persistent threat that a single actor bought it all and is waiting to turn it on.