Gold has close to no use cases (80%+ is store of wealth) and seems to be doing fine at an $8tn global market cap.
Of the potential 21m Bitcoin in existence, 4m are assumed to have been permanently lose. 16m have been mined. That leaves 1m coins left to be acquired in the future.
Gold has had many uses in the past and continues to in the present. Sure, there's a load of gold in various national vaults but the fact that gold emerged as a standard for minting coins in multiple independent countries shows that it held some meaningful value.
You can't suggest with a straight face that all the speculation in bitcoin is because of its potential and not because people see the price going up and decide they're going to buy with intent to sell too.
I get what you're saying, but your math is a bit misleading. As far as I know, the missing 4m are a subset of the 16m already mined. That still leaves ~5m to be acquired in the future, albeit rather slowly.
Is there a timeframe for how long it will take for those 1m coins to be mined? Is it equally likely that the price craters or skyrockets once that happens?
I think the price will skyrocket anyway, because there is a limited supply. In a way, I believe it could be like an epic short squeeze. You have people wanting to buy in (retail + institutional money is coming in) over the next few years.
If you take the example of oil -- once the price of a barrel goes over a certain threshold price, you'll go and explore new wells that were previously not profitable. And you will eventually get more supply after a while. That's just not the case with Bitcoin (and probably Ethereum after next year).
Of the potential 21m Bitcoin in existence, 4m are assumed to have been permanently lose. 16m have been mined. That leaves 1m coins left to be acquired in the future.