Many of your statements are unsubstantiated and your logic is flawed. Where is the evidence to back up your claim that "no government has any plans to use bitcoin as a currency"?

In a case involving bitcoin two years ago, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan rules, “Bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term. Bitcoins can be accepted as a payment for goods and services or bought directly from an exchange with a bank account. They therefore function as pecuniary resources and are used as a medium of exchange and a means of payment.” (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-cyber-bitcoin-idUSKCN11P2DE)

Further, Canadian government's website clearly states, "Digital currency is electronic money." (https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/payment/dig…)

The Japanese government has been for the past years open to the idea of crypto and have established laws and regulations to oversee exchanges: "The Japanese government recognized bitcoin as legal tender in April and required cryptocurrency exchange operators to register with it." (https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-bitcoin/japans-fsa-gives-offici…)

Your claim that bitcoin "transfers no tangible or intangible property rights" is probably due to your lack of understanding of how bitcoin transactions are processed and recorded. The recording keeping nature of bitcoin in its current state is probably one of the most irreversible way of transferring intangible property rights.

Given your expertise in quantitive modelling, I'd recommend you take a look at Satoshi's white paper and the current hash rate and then calculate the amount of resources required to undermine the finality of a bitcoin transaction after certain amount of confirmations.

To expand, bitcoin has even received legal protection in countries that are not seen as openly friendly to crypto. For instance, a Chinese court rules that bitcoin, considered a "valuable personal property", is entitled to legal protection of property rights. (https://www.ccn.com/chinese-civil-court-bitcoin-are-legally-protected-p…)

You wrote that gold and bitcoin "both would be volatile investments with poor long-term returns." Did you know that gold was used as money for thousands of years? If so, do you consider holding money a form of investment? If so then "investing" in gold would have proved much more profitable than "investing" in government money over the "long-term".

The claim that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme is ridiculous. Bitcoin is a computer code that allows the transfer of information in a fashion never achieved previously; kind of like the internet. And just like the internet few decades back, crypto is in its early stage and has many challenges to overcome. Blindly labelling such a monumental advancement in technology hinders that process. You, as an educated member of the community, should know better.