So tired of the "intrinsic value" argument (as if fiat currency has intrinsic value). What does have intrinsic value? Gold, silver I guess because of the time, effort and costs of producing them. What happens if major, easy to retrieve reserves are found someday? What happens if governments decide to tax the hell out of gold and silver so much so that nobody wants them anymore?
Value is whatever someone is willing to pay for something, plain and simple. If you have a house that some bureaucrat appraises at 10 million dollars, yet nobody wants to buy it from you, your house is effectively worthless. If someone wants to buy a Bitcoin from you for $500, it's value is $500, regardless of whether it is "intrinsic" or not.
While I understand emphasis put on intrinsic value (by some), it is easy to dance around the intrinsic value argument and draw convenient conclusions for or against bitcoin. As a buddy put it to me, fiat has no intrinsic value other than the cost of paper/metal making it and the fungibility as legal tender (a little bit of a naive argument but nonetheless revealing). Bitcoin is really new and that newness, and lack of understanding it, can cause all sorts of anxiety before people accept the concept. Sort of like when email was introduced - some were anxious about moving from tangible letters to an invisible thing. The argument can be made to those saying you cant touch BTC, that email is the same way, unless you print it, you cant touch it.
That said, I recognize the complexity of this debate spanning many disciplines (economics, cryptography, banking, sociology, political science).
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