I love that you brought this up. It should be wrestled with continuously, imo.

My best guess is that "use" is overwhelmingly speculation / SoV, to such an extent that on-chain transactions aren't even happening -- having IBIT take care of it for you while it sits in your Schwab account is the full use case manifesting. It is the actual state of what is globally demanded for the time being, and every other story is self-soothing and hopium. The Alex Gladstein talking points about how thirty to fourty women in the Middle East use btc to route around their abusive husbands is nice (truly) but irrelevant. Perhaps a provocative picture of what could be possible in thirty years, but it has nothing whatever to do with why btc is at $100k.

It's fascinating that all of this is built on a credible possibility of transacting in the way we're all familiar with from the Standard Bitcoin Narrative -- btc really is technically sound, decentralized, capable -- but the fact that it's possible seems to be enough, nobody has to be actually doing any transacting. The threat of transaction is sufficient for finance bros to ape in and for Saylor's rousing speeches to have their intended effect.

It's worth asking how long this can go on for without the whole thing collapsing. I think about that all the time.