If all that Bitcoin ever has is a healthy exchange market, it will still work as a store of value similar to gold, and will still be ok. Even speculation by itself, in something that retains value and can be easily traded, has "intrinsic" value.

I will loose faith, if the "up next" economic breakdown will kill the internet, before that: all sails up, and ahoy btc

It's not really a store of value in the system it has now though - disregarding any possible future of it becoming more than it is right now, it's merely a game of hot potato. If no economy surrounding it develops like we hope it will, then everyone criticizing Bitcoin, calling it a game of "hot potato" is suddenly correct. IMHO they're only wrong because these people consider it a foregone conclusion that it will never amount to anything more than a crypto-geek libertarian wet dream, but that doesn't mean I think it's impossible it could go that way.

All the speculation and valuation surrounding Bitcoin right now is from people looking at what could be not what is. If that "could be" disappears, and the groups of people who end up wanting Bitcoin dry up, value goes to the shitter. As such without the hopes for a real economy (or at least a need for the type of pseudo-anonymous worldwide funds transfer) it is not a store of value at all.

By that assumption gold, which also really doesn't have much of an economy, can be considered a "hot potato," too. It's not just the economy of Bitcoin that we have to consider, but the market surrounding it. If some third-world country (or US) has its currency tank, and people decide to use Bitcoin to secure their savings, because buying gold is not an option, that "speculation" or store of value alone will keep its price up. In that case, Bitcoin can even survive and grow before any economy is actually built to use it as an actual currency (kind of like what it's doing now)

Gold is not an appropriate analogy because it has been demanded as a show of opulence for centuries.  Yes, gold does not have the practical use of a commodity like oil, but it is still useful (often in a mating context).  This property of gold has actually been studied and various shows of opulence have existed across cultures through time.

Why don't you think the latter is likely? All it would take is a more concerted branding effort and a more user-friendly operation and it would wipe this shit out of the water.

To an extent, yes. The price of gold is vastly over-inflated for it's actual uses, however:

Despite the fact that it's useless in every respect, people will gold plate a firearm as a display of wealth. Bitcoin has no such application. Bitcoin has also only really had any worth for a year (give or take), whereas we've been conditioned for millenia that gold == wealth. Bitcoin does not share the same "store of wealth" conventions that gold and other precious metals enjoy. While I can't explain the motivation behind people considering to pay $1500/oz or whatever the fuck gold is worth right now, the fact is that for some reason people think it's worth that much right now.

People only think Bitcoin is worth $17 right now because of what could be in the future, not because of the things they can do with it right now.

Yup, cryptocurrency with a crypto-denominated financial market would also "wipe this shit out of the water".  There is a good chance though that facing competition would encourage developers to address these issues. i.e. the successor could wipe bitcoin out or or it could just serve as a much needed wake up call. Current adoption levels would give bitcoin some time to react.

It takes time. Although Bitcoin has existed for about two years, it has only "existed" in the public view for maybe two months. I'm working on setting up some exchanges in other countries, and that alone will likely take months, even before people can use those exchanges with their local stores to actually use them to sell stuff.