You are right that you need utility, though forgive my adding that without utility you lack liquidity. Dutch tulips and 1990s comic books had a similar craze. People rushed to buy as an investment only to find the only reason for prices rising was a desire to sell at even higher prices, not an increase in utility (rough definition of asset inflation).
A warning that recently a lot of sites are posting and reposting some hogwash article suggesting that bitcoin = Edison dollars. Forgive this external link but this article does a great job of explaining the difference:
Will Digital Currency Replace the US Dollar?
Bitcoin currency has an exact limit for how many bitcoins will be available at the end, BUT here's the rub. Anybody at any time could make their own identical bitcoin system. So while it is perfect in its own environment, anybody can theoretically invest their own future bitcoins thus causing inflation within the bitcoin system. I guess you'd call that digital alchemy.
Gold for all its faults is used in electronic devices and in jewelry. It looks shiny and does not rust. When women get it they often give the men who give it to them something those men want. Bitcoin can never do that.
I think we are talking about different ideas of utility; I meant suitability for use as currency while I think you mean intrinsic value or usefulness of a thing for its own properties. Bitcoin's only possible utility could be as medium of exchange. I think the properties that a medium of exchange needs are ease of authentication (is it genuine?), a high degree of existential persistence (will it go bad or evaporate in your purse?), stability (will it fluctuate wildly in value?), scarcity or difficulty in obtaining the thing. The last two are interrelated. IMO, no potential medium of exchange has all of these properties to anything but an acceptable degree of certainty, i.e. a degree which affords a practical time horizon for the holder in addressing changes in its "monetary properties" (there's probably a technical term). Bitcoin
seems to have good marks as far as these properties go. Even if something has these properties it is only potentially useful as currency, because if it isn't accepted as such it lacks utility in my sense. (Acceptance would have been on my list of properties, except that it's not intrinsic to a thing.) You mention liquidity, which roughly corresponds to acceptance, so I think we are on the same wavelength. I would disagree that something needs to have intrinsic value to serve as a medium of exchange, although that always is a plus (I also like gold). Of what intrinsic value is fiat currency other than its rag content? Yet it is universally used, albeit with hidden cost to its users. I agree with your point that Bitcoin is not a new version of Edison dollars, but that doesn't mean it's a stillborn idea. Whether or not it could or will reduce the overhead of using money to "ye person on ye street" is a question I wouldn't bet the ranch on.
If others made their own Bitcoin systems would that be like having silver coins and gold coins? I guess if enough people did start mining bit money, there might be a glut of it and that would be inflationary as far as bit money goes. What would that do to regular money? It gets crazy complicated pretty quickly and maybe that's a warning sign that the tail is starting to wag the dog. I disagree that Bitcoin is perfect within its own system as there might be advantages or disruptions that could affect miners and users of Bitcoins but this is based on my sketchy understanding so I have no strong position. Your example of investing future Bitcoins is interesting and a more conventional objection to my feeling that there might well already be a tilted field. That would indeed be digital alchemy.
As I mentioned, I also like gold and it has a high degree of excellent properties which explains its historical position as the premier "real money." Interestingly, Bitcoin boosters include in their pitch reports that the Chinese have quietly begun to dump their vast hoard of gold. Ye person on ye street has no way of knowing for sure what's going on except to make this stuff a profession. Even gold can be manipulated, unfortunately, but the problems inherent in a gold standard might be equally well or even better managed than those inherent in fiat money. Anything is manageable in a fair way if there is a will to do so.
IMO, although gold has various technical uses in the physical world, not enough of it is used to be a significant component of the end products value. For instance, what fraction of your dentist bill is due to the cost of the gold in your filling? How much of the cost of your iPhone is due to gold used in the electronics? These uses probably consume a only a very small fraction of the gold supply and the goods in question would probably not change much in price if the price of gold doubled or halved. Probably gold is valued mainly because it possesses ideal qualities as a repository of value itself and secondarily because over the millennia its aesthetic qualities and physicality have made it an ideal medium to craft symbols and works or art which are intended to convey great value. Which, I think, is what you said more succinctly. To be sure, one cannot bestow a Bitcoin necklace on the woman of one's desires and even if one could, it could never mean the same thing.
Will look at your link as I like to get opinions from all quarters. Gives one a slightly better chance of figuring out what's going down.