I personally do not know what will happen to the entire Crypto market, but it seems it's about to be heavily shaken up in the coming weeks.
Reddit is killing off all 3rd party apps within the next week or two. I expect a mass exodus of users there shortly after. Reddit is by far the most popular place to go for crypto news.
Binance is now being sued by the SEC. They are the #1 crypto exchange, and we all know how dirty CZ and Tether are.
The perfect storm is now coming for Crypto.
Let's see if any coins/platforms survive it. I know many here are dug into the sand on both sides, I think we are getting that answer soon on what will happen with Crypto, and it's potential role in the future.
I personally think a few will remain, but I can also see it going the other way too, it all goes POOF.
Scarcity = value, and in any world where things are so bad we've fallen back to a materials physical properties to exclusively assign value, we'll have problems way worse than BTC losing worth. As long as civilization and the internet stands, BTC will always be considered to have value as only a limited supply exists, and people want in on that, regardless of any reductionist points that illustrate it's vulnerabilities.
None of the gold bars sitting in vaults are getting melted down to make electronics and jewelry. It's a method of storing value based on a multitude of human nature factors, as is BTC. Both have limited supply and attrition - industrial usage for gold, and permanent loss of wallets for BTC. It's a lot more complex than 'haha imaginary numbers, how stupid'.
The concept of 'actual value' being zero is correct, but to get to that point so many things need to utterly collapse, it's a meaningless point to make in the context of a society that will realistically continue on for the moment. That may well change, but until then it's ridiculous to write it off.
Oil is fundamentally worthless beyond a certain point of collapse if we forget how to make combustion engines and plastics. Uranium is worthless if we lose nuclear technology.
Gold just happens to be one of the lowest levels of collapse proof, because as you rightly pointed out it's shiny and pretty to look at. All the other uses came much, much later. Status symbol was first. BTC is exclusive and pretty to look at on a screen, so as long as screens are here, that desire will remain and there's nothing you can do about it. To deny this fact is to deny human nature, and the foundational attraction to gold.