Over long time periods, you're right that lending and borrowing don't make sense. People borrow bitcoin over very short time periods to do leveraged trades. >

Over long time periods, you're right that lending and borrowing don't make sense. People borrow bitcoin over very short time periods to do leveraged trades. > As a store of value BTC is highly uncertain. It will multiply or decimate whatever value you try to store in it. If it ends up being an accepted store of value, this property will change over time. It'll look more like gold. Most people wouldn't' consider 'SPY' (SP 500 index shares) a store of value, but this is essentially how people are using them. You save money, and store it somewhere that will best preserve that value. Given the rate of asset price inflation, as well as increases in costs like medicine, you need to earn a return just to store the value. The bitcoin price volatility you're seeing now is an adoption curve ramping up. Of course there are huge rewards for early adopters. All it takes is enough people believing that this store of value works, acting on the belief, and that belief becomes real. Financial markets are formalized mechanism to control what is really like magic; beliefs that become real when sufficient people believe them.