> Where is this value coming from? People transitioning from one currency (USD) to another (BTC). When countries joined the EU and started using Euros, holders

> Where is this value coming from? People transitioning from one currency (USD) to another (BTC). When countries joined the EU and started using Euros, holders of say Francs, could exchange their Francs for Euros at a set exchange rate. This was a planned transition where Francs would become unusable at some point and Euros would become the new standard. There is much more uncertainty with Bitcoin, people don't know what the utility of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies will be in the future yet at the same time there is a massive reward for speculating on it's success because most cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply. > Why is the price of the coin going up while the price of dollars is relatively stable? There are many reasons for this, a few are related to the points I touched on in my first answer. Another one is the value of USD as a whole is much larger so it is much less prone to manipulation. Another is the federal reserve regularly diluting the supply of dollars which keeps the value of a dollar from rising as the economy grows.