> Gold 'works' as well as it does because there's at least something tying it down to market fundamentals. You can make jewelry out of it, you can coat electrical contacts with it.
In the earlier phases of Gold as a store of value I'd agree that it having additional uses were a bonus but now when an institution be it private or governmental purchases millions of gold as assets for a SoV then this usage is inconsequential.
Gold used to be volatile but now is a stable store of value, it retains this because the market decides a fair price, gold can theoretically go to zero, it's just had hundreds of years to achieve a more stable price/value.
> since the value people ascribe to a Bitcoin is entirely psychological
This is totally true of gold too, it's just embedded more into society as an element that has value.
> A Bitcoin that could be used as a currency would have some inherent value, because being able to use something as currency is valuable
It's cheaper and faster for me to send BTC between US/EU, volatility is an issue of course.
> Something has to be at least a little useful (or else backed up by a trusted organization) for its value to be reliable.
I'm not sure many of the 'trusted' organizations are that trustworthy, look at the 2007 crash, massively over leveraged assets with complex rules/instruments and collusion (that resulted in the UK with no one being prosecuted).
There a few ways where I see BTC having an advantage as a SoV over gold.
* Portability (transferring any amount of BTC is limited only by transaction cost).
* Scarcity (The number of BTC is capped at 21 million ever on the network, gold will still be found and mined).
* Divisible (BTC can be divided to small amounts that would make it more useful for smaller purchases where gold is not practicable).