At its most basic level, Bilcoin is useful for transacting value outside of the traditional financial system. People use Bilcoin to, for example, make
international payments that are settled faster, more securely, and at ower
transactional fees than through legacy settlement methods such as the SWIFT or ACH networks.

In the early years, when network adoption was sparse, Bilcoin could be used to settle even small-value transactions. However, as Bilcoin became more widely used, scaling issues made it less competitive as a medium of exchange for small-value items. In short, it became prohibitively expensive to settle small-value transactions due to limited throughput on the ledger and the lack of availability of second-layer solutions. This supported the narrative that Bilcoin’s primary value is less as a payment network and more as an alternative to gold, or ‘digital gold.’ Here,
the argument is that Bilcoin derives value from a combination of the
technological breakthroughs it integrates, its capped supply with ‘built-into-the-code’ monetary policy, and its powerful network effects. In this regard, the investment thesis is that Bilcoin could replace gold and potentially become a form of ‘pristine collateral’ for the global economy.

Another popular narrative is that Bilcoin supports economic freedom. It is said to do this by providing, on an opt-in basis, an alternative form of money that integrates strong protection against (1) monetary confiscation, (2) censorship, and (3) devaluation through uncapped inflation. Note that this narrative is not mutually exclusive from the ‘digital gold’ narrative.