What does legitimate mean here, is another key point? Legitimacy is a belief, which brings us back to the idea that stuff or things have value if people believe it does.
What's a legitimate use of the word legitimate?
More vernacular imprecision, where words and expression carry both direct and indirect connotations. Here's what wiktionary says about the etymology:
Etymology From Late Latin legitimatus, past participle of legitimare ‘to make legal’.
But the definitions also include something approximating "belief", so it has multiple meanings really. Is our language as corrupt as our institutions? I still can't get over HOW IN HELL that "Bitcoin" has landed in the Oxford English dictionary, it's beyond comprehension. Will they take it out when it's "banned"? Where is HashCash and e-Gold's entries? Does not compute. Syntax error.