“In comparison few actually use it as money”
in effect, no one who matters uses it as real money, as all retailers who purport to accept payment in bitcoin IMMEDIATELY convert it to “real” money. Almost no one sees bitcoin as a store of wealth, which is the primary purpose of “money”.
As has been pointed out, most who actually hold bitcoin are simply speculators. They might as well just be speculating in rotten sardines or tulips for all practical purposes.
See Balding Eagle's post 28 above. Rotten sardines and tulips can be created at will. Bitcoin cannot. I am one of the lucky speculators. Yes, it is speculation, not a currency to any practical extent. Nor is it a store of value like gold. But it is designed to simulate a store of value like gold except with even more limited new supply than gold. As a simulation it has worked well so far.
Something new will replace after a while. This is inevitable since the ECDSA and SHA256 protecting the private key and public key respectively are going to be compromised sooner or later. Imagine if you knew for virtually certain that your gold will turn into water in 50 years. Maybe 20 years, nobody really knows. Would that be a good store of value?
I will be buying the replacement. I might even help invent it (obvious pipe dream). But either way people will still be here yabbering about how it is all just speculation, ignoring the excellent work it took to simulate store of value relatively flawlessly.