> Is it a store of value based on [insert lurid fantasy about digital energy crystal magic on the blockchain]? No, see above.
To play devil's advocate, I do wonder if once the get rich quick ponzi scheme ends, it will come to represent the "value" of it's investors innate skepticism and hostility toward the institutions that govern the global economy.
The remaining investors would be a cabal of cheerleaders for the destruction the current institutional structures (probably to replace it with yet another "purer' one more to their liking).
Maybe that underlying value isn't $30k but instead is only $5k, or maybe because BTC's only output is destructive (IIUC there is no future revenue stream of consequence - only the burning of fuels), it is $0 once it's "job" is done. I don't know.
But its original thesis involved undermining fiat money and bypassing tax levying authority by taking transactions away from the purview of institutions involved in both.
At it's most potent, I liken it more to a WMD against those institutions (which seems to be why it is particularly popular among the anti government crowd), not as some kind of basis for a hypothetically productive anarchist economy.
And as you say, at it's least potent it's largely, though not exclusively, a means of exchange for illicit and criminal activity.
> Is it a way for North Korea to get paid when extorting Western companies?
To be fair, Bitcoin didn't invent extortion, it is just a better tool that facilitates it at a distance - no suitcases of cash or diamonds or physical middlemen needed. Also traditional banks have come under scrutiny for looking the other way for all kinds of criminal activity, so it's not as easy to move illicit funds as it used to be.