What backs its value? Without that, its potential $38 billion value could literally disappear over night.
Sorry it’s potential $384 billion, not $38 billion.
But still, without some concrete backing, it’s nothing more than a virtual cat in the sack.
This technology will be here long after you and I are gone! This is worldwide and growing everyday.
When you ask your question, apply it to your favorite currency. Perhaps the US dollar?
Again you focus on the currency value and you miss the point. The encrypted blockchain hold tremendous value as we move forward. If you really care to know I suggest you do some of your own due diligence.
This technology has been looked at by the most accomplished computer scientist of our time and to a man they agree that Bitcoin the protocol is the greatest breakthrough in computer science history.
If the dollar collapses it will be because people no longer think that the US can continue to back it, e.g. because we are too far in debt, we are too corrupt, etc.
There is no backing at all to BitCoin. It is just an algorithm that determines how many BitCoin's will be available on such and such a date.
It may work out if enough people believe in it (e.g. emperor's new clothes.) It may especially work out if important folks have made huge bets on it and something happens to make unloading BitCoin's very difficult.
What's most likely going to happen is that around the time BitCoin reaches its peak government's around the world will accept BitCoins as payment. Those who have the BitCoins will sell them off slowly to governments and the last suckers who will end up holding worthless currency.
Any currency, USD or BTC, is backed by goods that are ready to be sold for it. The USD can buy anything that is manufactured or sold anywhere in the world. The BTC cannot do that, simply because only a few fans of the new digital currency offer anything for sale for BTC. Bitcoin can be purchased for USD, but the reverse process is much harder; people report delays up to 2 months after their private exchange deal goes through.
The BTC, as such, is not any better or worse than any other fiat currency. However its provenance is unclear; its security - unproven; its support by major players - nonexistent; its exchange rate - varies by 100s of percent by the minute. BTC depends on an advanced society to function, since each payment requires a computer and a connection to the Internet. There is no anonymous payments in Bitcoin, though you can make as many wallets as you want - they can be all tracked and linked to you, since all transactions are public by definition.
At this point the only purpose of those Bitcoin articles is to recruit more fools participants into the Bitcoin pyramid. There are some geeks who minted BTC in secrecy for first months and years, before they announced the Bitcoin to the world. Now those geeks are sitting on piles and piles of BTC - which is just numbers, unless a fool participant walks in, with USD in hand, and buys their BTC - which the geeks got for free. What we are seeing here is just an active recruitment of victims of yet another "get rich quick" scheme.