Well, seeing as I'm pretty new around here, it's best to start with the pleasantries. Greetings, steemit community. Let me just start by making it clear that, the way I see it, everyone involved on this platform - from content creators to readers, and everyone in between - is a visionary. So there, you may now take out five seconds of your life and bask in that tiny bit sunshine. It's not everyday that you get called a visionary.
Speaking of visionaries, Satoshi Nakamoto rings a bell. Yep, the bloke (or possibly blokette, as I'm sure the feminists shall remind) who simply got up one day and decided to change the world. Jot down a white paper, program the bitcoin protocol and lift off. Enter mining. You've all heard that one before, I'm sure. So he starts mining a ton on his pc or lappy. Obviously, that isn't (can't be) done now (sigh). The aggregate hashing power of the network has been, and will continue to, increase exponentially in accordance with Moore's law. With increasing hash power comes more sophisticated technology plus bigger power bills (generally speaking). On the macro scale, if mining ever ceases to be profitable for a long enough time, miners won't mine. The only variable thus left is the price of BTC. The net of this must always be big enough to reward miners for mining, or else they lose the incentive to continue. If you think mining is expensive right now, just think of what it's going to be like in say 10 years time. Yep, you thought right. Hence, value. Real, tangible value that as the old adage goes, only money can buy. For everything else, we've always got bitcoin.