> But bitcoin does provide value to me.

Sure, as likely did whatever tokens were used to mark participation in Ponzi's scheme;)

> It is a quick and secure payment channel that isn't at the mercy of any one government or bank. That alone is extremely valuable.

You need to distinguish the concepts of holding the bitcoin and using a bitcoin. You do not need to hold bitcoins to use that as a payment channel. You can just buy one when you need to transact, and then the receiver can again convert the bitcoin to a stable currency. If this is the source of the demand of bitcoins, current valuation is staggering. It is something like 40 dollars on average under transaction for each and every person on the planet. (300 billion USD vs 7.6 billion people) Global GDP is 15,800 USD per capita so that would mean roughly the full global gdp would need to be under transactions that take about a day to create this demand. (If the transactions are faster, there is less demand for bitcoin). So to the Lightning solution, which says that it is enough to have the 40 dollars on each persons Lightning wallet to generate the basis for current valuation. Now, let's assume that an average person would need/want to top up or cash his Lightning wallet once a month with a proper bitcoin blockchain transaction. 7.6 billion wallets (let's be conservative and only one wallet per crawling/walking/wheelchairing person on earth) would mean about 3000 transactions per second on the blockchain. That is around three orders of magnitude more than what the current capacity is. (And not a single speculative trade included). These pieces just don't fit in my head to make sense.

> All too often i've found that I can't access my own money. Keeping it in cash is a recipe for disaster, banks often close accounts, have poor business hours, and have unfortunate amounts of fraud meaning I need to get a new credit card pretty often because some vendor I gave that number to decided to charge me more, or continue charging me after our business was done. I've been stuck while traveling multiple times because my bank decided to close my card due to what they thought looked like fraud, leaving me stranded.

Of course, this is highly personal and sensitive question so I definitely do not mind you not answering, but I am a bit curious whereabout in the world you are located and whether you are engaged in some kind of illegal business or is there some other reason you are targeted by financial institutions so often? What I actually do would like to get an answer for is that why would you think that is a representative state of affairs? In my neck of woods (Europe), if normal persons can't access money due to bank's fault, it is a big news. Most of my banking business I can take care of online whenever I want, and I remember precisely once that my credit card was cancelled due to some thing or another (don't remember details) and precisely twice when I have been travelling and all my credit cards have failed to give me money from an ATM.

> I can spend my bitcoin anywhere that accepts it without worrying that they will double charge me, or continue charging me monthly, or lose my account info causing a hacker to be able to charge me.

Again, where I am, I can call Visa and it is the burden of the vendor to prove that I actually bought the pizza twice. Those really are not worries to me. Especially if I start comparing that to the risk that someone hacks my cmputer/wallet/exchange account/whatever, and I definitely have no recourse on my money.

> it will continue to have value for me because of the secure, decentralized, and fast nature of using it as a payment system.

The "fast" applies only if you are willing to stomach the volatility and other risks holding bitcoin entails. And "secure" depends on the point of view.

(And just to be clear, I do see that gold actually is very similar to bitcoin as an asset. And I do think that any sensible central bank should sell their gold reserves before others come to their senses, as if all central banks sold their gold reserves, gold price would be a fraction of what it currently is.)