Raw economic demand seems to come from things like paying for ransomware and avoiding currency controls.
The fluctuations however are gambling, but one could argue the value of most shares in the US are the same.
How is that so? I know that the maximum nr of BitCoins is limited and that generating new ones is designed to become more difficult over time. But how does that make them deflationary? I would say that as long as the supply of BitCoins will increase, however slightly, BitCoins are in principle inflationary? The only reason for its value going up would be that demand increases more than BitCoin supply, but increasing demand is in no way guaranteed by design.
We don’t even know how many coins actually exist at the moment, for example this guy’s — https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-55658942
Or with the wiping of the keys shown in big bang theory for example.
While there continues to be steady demand powering things like ransomware, and we know the supply of bitcoin reduces every day, we don’t know the current size of supply or the rate of reduction.
By your "logic" $1 is just as valuable as $100.
New shares can be issued at any time.
If MS issues new shares, they will increase the total amount of shares. If you divide one BTC into smaller parts, it doesn't mean that the total amount of BTC has increased.
It will lead to old investors becoming richer and richer but also for new investors to stop investing because the spread is going to become to big.
And deflationary by design doesn't protect bitcoin by collapsing and it will happen alone through the reward halfing in no time.
That's just a fact of how technology works. It's better phrased as "supply of Bitcoin is fixed".
As to your other arguments: I don't really get the connecting logic or even the point your making.
What is the "spread" that will stop new people from buying Bitcoin?
Can you explain the "Tom got very rich on Bitcoin and therefore I won't buy it today even though the price goes up because reasons..." logic?
Also what does reward halving have to do with the price of Bitcoin? The mining business will eventually end but as long as Bitcoin price goes 2x by each halving, the mining is is just as profitable.
Of course Bitcoin price can collapse. It already did a couple of times. But it also recovered and then some each time.
Given that prices of anything are driven by supply and demand, supply is fixed, the only question worth asking about Bitcoin is: will the demand go up? If demand goes up, the price goes up. And vice versa.
If i invested into bitcoin 10 years ago, my $1000 are now worth (i don't want to calculate it) like $1000000.
So if someone else now wants to invest into bitcoin today, they have to accept that the old people have a tremendes financial advantage to this. The spread is a lot.
And no its not the same as investing into a company.
This will lead to rich people not investing into bitcoins because their return value is getting smaller and smaller.
Because the new bitcoin numbers are getting less and less through halfing, this effect gets stronger and stronger.
Bitcoin is hard limited on how much bitcoin exists while the normal fiat world creates new money based on humans and work capacity we have through a complex system. Bitcoin has not solved this problem. You can't lent bitcoins, create value and return this amount as an addition to the whole amount of bitcoins to represent this value.