Nobody has an answer for you, but this is a very legitimate question. If you can't cash out at any time, the market is not liquid and the $1000 value is just smoke.

I believe that the BTC valuation is based more on newcomers expectations of growth and less on anything tangible - like trading it for goods or cash.

We will probably see the facebook scenario where everybody -before IPO- was shouting the incredible 100billion valuation while secretly hoping enough fools will jump to buy shares to raise the price so they could cash out in profit.