The fundamentals appear to be intrinsic scarcity + facilitating illegal transactions easily (circumventing currency controls, drug deals, malware ransoms, etc.)

The fundamentals appear to be intrinsic scarcity + facilitating illegal transactions easily (circumventing currency controls, drug deals, malware ransoms, etc.). I haven't seen much intrinsic value beyond those two things. Everything else is fluff (e.g. coffee shops taking bitcoin) or speculation. That said, illegal transactions are an absolutely massive part of the global economy. What's perplexing to me is that governments haven't yet reacted to this by bringing the hammer down. Realistically, if you're not involved in fluff or speculation you're probably using bitcoin to break the laws of some country.