It's only scarce when it isn't very useful and the market has little real adoption, as now, where the only real reason 99% of people have it is speculation.
If we actually needed a lot of cross border transfers, you can print an infinite amount of different coins/systems to duplicate that function (this is ignoring BTC actually has more money printing via Tether than any other "currency"). This isn't even including just having new systems for moving electronic US dollars around in Apple wallets etc, and cashing into local currency as needed through other services.
Bitcoins "real" value is a storage of value, which is currently based on speculation desires of holders, which in theory could hold forever (or at least longer than you can remain solvent as a short or long enough for you to 10x or 100x so who cares) but could also disappear forever and not be missed once gone.
The only moat is belief, which really who knows if that is sticky or not. There is no tangible functional moat.
>you can print an infinite amount of different coins/systems to duplicate that function
But what does it take to bootstrap trust? The idea of conjuring instruments to move money has a long history. I found value in knowing that such a system already exists: Hawala[0] which means "transfer" or "trust". Its existence clamps, in my mind, the possibilities of the "how do we make value transfer systems" question. The Bitcoin network with its proof of work clamps the other side of that question. In some way, the altcoins and other various systems of payments exist somewhere between these two systems.
Bitcoin's current speculation is based on the theoretical "it'll replace fiat", otherwise what other utility does it have?
Gold technically can be melted down to be used for jewelry, wiring, etc. so in theory it would never go zero. If BTC doesn't work out and no one ever uses it to transact, then in theory it can go to zero.
