Does Bitcoin has any intrinsic value?

[Bitcoin Guy]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

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[thecodebear]

Didn't watch the video, but I find it funny when people start talking about bitcoin and intrinsic value to try to say its worthless. Think about what is intrinsic value. I'd say intrinsic value is defined by something that people NEED, that people are always going to need. This is a very small amount of things. Stuff to survive. Like food, shelter, land, clean water. Not much else has intrinsic value. Most of the economy is not built on things that have intrinsic value. But things that simply have value are things that are in demand, and the less supply of something in-demand, the greater its value. Bitcoin is in demand and in the coming years will be much much more in demand, while the supply is capped and won't increase much more. Therefore bitcoin's value will be huge. Intrinsic value doesn't matter.

[CryptoBry]

There are so implied meaning for the word intrinsic but according to one site it means: "the qualities of something that have to do with its nature. An intrinsic quality of dogs is that they're loyal."

By that definition, we can easily see that Bitcoin has an intrinsic value and we just have to look at what Bitcoin can do and what it can offer to its users.

[pinkflower]

Intrinsic is defined as natural, inborn or innate. The traditionalists dont see BTC as having intrinsic value but what it has is utility. From that it has developed its own circular economy.

Compare that with gold. It's the most precious metal the traditionalists love because it has intrinsic value, it also has utility, has a circular economy and its scarce.

As a Bitcoiner you have to question their beliefs. Does having intrinsic value really matter if BTC has utility that gives it real value?

You can also go deeper in asking, what is value?

[ROT13]

Bitcoin's intrinsic value is it's virtual nature and the power of the network.

It's more transportable and easily transferable than any other store of value, and your balance is protected and secured by the most powerful computer network in the world by several orders of magnitude

[Bitcoin Guy]

Intrinsic is defined as natural, inborn or innate. The traditionalists dont see BTC as having intrinsic value but what it has is utility. From that it has developed its own circular economy.

Compare that with gold. It's the most precious metal the traditionalists love because it has intrinsic value, it also has utility, has a circular economy and its scarce.

As a Bitcoiner you have to question their beliefs. Does having intrinsic value really matter if BTC has utility that gives it real value?

You can also go deeper in asking, what is value?

Yes, the keyword is "utility".  I almost forgot about it from the Economics classes I took.   

I found one of the references in the video:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/you-say-bitcoin-has-no-intrinsic-value-twenty-two-reasons-to-think-again-1399454061/

Bitcoin intrinsic value properties:

1. It transcends nations, politics, religions, cultures and regulations. These vary from country to country in ways that may seem bizarre to populations out of its own borders. While one may believe that governments always have their best interests at heart, it may be wise to see that knife cuts both ways. Some drugs are banned in certain states or countries that are allowed in others. Bibles are banned from purchase is some countries. Religion, custom, dogma, superstitions prevent various purchases based on man-made borders that continually shift over time. These policies tend to be created by limited segments of populations that can be self-serving. If one happens to be included in the “correct” political party, race, religion, items can be purchased or outlawed. It’s all opinion.
The US government bans online gambling. Is this a moral decision? Many of the same governments think it morally acceptable to hold their own state-lotteries. The lotteries hold significantly worse odds and tends to target those in the community that are the least educated and most susceptible to poverty, alcohol abuse, and have a generally poor understanding of mathematical probability. Many have gone on to say that lotteries are simply “a tax on people bad at math”. Many argue that this is a double standard of governments which prevents them from taking the moral high ground.

2. It requires no trust. (in the short term). It can’t be counterfeit. There is a record of who owns it (by wallet id) and its validity is publicly known. It requires no central clearing house. With any other currency, one must trust the government from which it is issued will continue to maintain its value by not “overprinting” to pay for its own mismanagement. You can send it globally without having to trust anybody. This is not true with any state issued country, bank, credit card company, or anybody else. Volatility and long-term trust is still building, but when one transacts in bitcoin, nobody gets in-between sender and receiver unless agreed beforehand. It’s permission-less.

3. It can be transparent. By making wallet IDs public, one can track the flow of money through other transparent wallets. You cannot do that with any other currency. You can use this feature to do things like monitor your children’s use. This can make obsolete entire industries that are built solely on the fact that money can be hidden, disguised, cheated, etc. These can also happen to bitcoin, but pressure can be applied by the people to make it transparent and accountable when needed. Auditors may insist on it for compliance. The list of possibilities of this intrinsically valuable feature can scarcely be imagined.

4. It can be programmable. Plans for product layers on top of bitcoin to further its use to become spendable based on contracts that can be programmed to complete with built in variables, or be valid to purchase only certain items. Insist your college bound kid buys books and not beer for example. Or based on GPS in a cell phone, you could send your kids off shopping and it could be programmed to be spendable only in certain stores.

5. It can require multi-signatures. Wallets containing the currency can be set to only unlock with more than one signing key. This will leave hackers and thieves frustrated. Try doing that with your grandpa’s money. It is an intrinsic piece of bitcoin technology.

6. It can be spent over the internet without a bank account, credit report, identification, and pre-permissions. Prepaid credit cards can do some of these functions, but only to locations and countries that accept credit cards. This list of locations in countries outside of the US is actually decreasing with the amount of fraud in the networks. Technically, the only item limiting of bitcoin is the merchant’s acceptance of it. Given the natural law of least resistance, these limitations could erode as more merchants around the world realize the potential savings. The network effect will continue to work its magic.

7. It can store irrevocable and time stamped records of transactions. Absolute clarity of events and their corresponding order is available in the block chain. Proof of ownership and purchase can be established without a third party. The trusted and reliable distributed ledger cannot reasonably be altered (barring a massive scale network attack which becomes less likely as the network grows).

8. It allows you to keep your identity from being stolen.Bitcoin is nobody’s debt. Paying with bitcoin isn’t a “promise to pay”. It is payment in full. This could potentially reduces fraud related expenses on massive scale. http://www.statisticbrain.com/credit-card-fraud-statistics/ There is no need for a merchant to get bank information or any other kind of personal information that can be later used in identity theft.

9. It allows movement across borders. It can defeat government issued capital controls. The same governments try to hold their own citizens “hostage” monetarily by outlawing movement of money outside its own borders. Ask any citizen from any country ravaged by hyperinflation if this is important. Could it be possible that it might ever become important in the USA? If you can foresee the day people will be clamoring to get out of the US dollar, where do you think they are going to go? Ask Argentina.

10. The same wallet can be used anywhere in the world with a connection to the internet. As the money exists on the global ledger, all you need is the key. This can be memorized, or written on any piece of paper – even confined inside a microdot the size of the period that ends this sentence. Some old time gold bugs say you can’t bribe the border guards with bitcoin like you can gold. In the future, border guards will have cellphones and internet access too. We aren’t living in the 1960s Vietnam or before any longer.

11. It can move independently of banking rules, laws, and restrictions. The people in the USA may think this unimportant in their bubble view of the world, but is this also true of the 150 or so currencies and countries with terrible track records? Which other currency enjoys this property? Will enough of the world outside of the US believe it to be so? Is it hard to imagine the properties of bitcoin being intrinsically valued by populations subjected to terrible economic policies? It only takes a billion people in India fed up with corruption to want an escape mechanism out of the control of the system. At that point, they won’t give a hoot about what some American pundit said on “bubble vision” about intrinsic value.

12. It can be used to resist corruption. If the citizens stand up united and demand a transparent government, they can use bitcoin to follow the money in the same way governments use powers at their disposal for surveillance on their own populations. In today’s world money corrupts. In tomorrow’s maybe it will become vice-versa. Let’s see if 86% of the world agrees that any tool that makes less opportunity for corruption is valuable.

13. It can be made to settle contracts without other parties. You can program it to settle contracts based on certain events such as date, proof of ownership, death, or a host of other factors that can be validated programmatically without a third party to validate if the conditions were met. It can be used as a record keeping asset tag, and proof of ownership. Ownership of the private key to the bitcoin is by definition, the owner. In addition, it can be the source record of ownership for property title, copyrights, and intellectual property that transcends borders and locally interpreted laws. In effect, the records become the de-facto “single source of truth”. The currency itself is globally accessible proof of ownership. Can these functions and properties be reasonably argued to be valuable beyond the currency itself?

14. There are no age requirements. Paying for items in a global world requires bank accounts. Bank accounts are legal properties that can only be established with those of legal age (18 in most locations). There is no minimum age requirement to pay for items globally using bitcoin. How many people under 18 have cell phones, AND need to spend money with no credit card. Smart businesses have started to recognize this intrinsically valuable potential.

15. It is more difficult to be used as surveillance. The main attributes of money are often quoted these days, but one attribute is rarely mentioned. Money has become surveillance. As people continue to learn of the horrors of the NSA and other government efforts to spy on every aspect of their lives, it only takes one person drunk with power to make all the well-intention sounding policies reverse into shocking horror. One government required Jews to register themselves for easy identification, which was then used to “dispose” of them.

Now one’s religion, race, gender, national origin, political party, age, place of work, address, and much more can be determined by how and where one spends their money. To those who think they have nothing to worry about because they are not doing anything wrong, might ask themselves, what did the Jews have to fear during the time they were self-registering? They also were not (generally) doing anything wrong. That’s only one example in a history littered with them. Is the ability to obscure one’s spending habits intrinsically valuable? Is it possible to imagine how much of the population of the world would think it is?

16. Bitcoin as money bandwidth. If one were to transfer value between large companies or nations, much of the world has discovered bitcoin to be a very efficient payment network to do this. If bitcoin was thought of as envelopes to be stuffed with dollars or other currencies for transport, only the size of the envelope itself that contains the dollars inside would be the limiting factor. To increase the ability and usefulness of this feature, the envelopes represented in bitcoin price will have to inflate enormously to take on that load. The Federal Reserve and former Vice Presidents have caught on. So has smart Venture Capitalist firms that have a knack for being one step ahead of everybody else.

17. It can be the basis of a new eco system. Right now entire new ecosystems are being built up around the new currency (in use, if not government recognition). Gold towns sprang up into eco-systems but crashed when the gold veins ran dry. We know exactly how deep the bitcoin well can go and the rate at which it will be found. What other modern day ecosystems are being built because of the intrinsic values of a currency?

18. It can upend centuries-old money monopolies. The strangleholds on monetary policy continue to be held by relatively few extremely wealthy families for centuries. Bitcoin has the possibility to change the paradigm completely. These banks will likely find ways to maintain their power and wealth and there is nothing preventing them from moving into digital currencies to maintain it. However, which other currency has the possibility to change the dynamic? Many in the world will likely place much value in the paradigm shift that is possible. When was the last time a monetary unit threatened to rewrite the rules from the ground up?

19. Democratization of money. An explosive report from a whistleblower from the World Bank reports that all networked banking infrastructure throughout the entire world can be traced back to 12 people who make decisions at the privately controlled US Federal Reserve bank. Consensus driven, public records, and democratization of money made possible by bitcoin, might change the rules.

20. Gives the unbanked population access to banking features they might not otherwise enjoy. As the much smaller digital currency M-Pesa proved, the poverty riddled villages with no access to banking were able to lift themselves out of poverty with simple abilities to pay suppliers and start businesses. With the cross border scale and usability of bitcoin, imagine the same results x 1,000. Are there any national currencies up to this task?

21. It can be extremely hard to steal. Muggers of the future will be at a loss for what to do with the bitcoin they can’t take from your wallet or purse. That money will be no good to them without the private keys to spend it. There likely will no longer be credit cards there was well. Could robbery itself become obsolete? Hackers will soon have a difficult time stealing money from multi-signature wallets.

22. It represents economic freedom. Because of all of the reasons stated above, it might as well be called the currency of freedom. Dictators will hate it. Totalitarian governments will hate it in proportion equal to the amount of corruption the government enjoys. The worst countries for freedom believe that money exist primarily to serve the country and personal ownership of it is just an illusion they can confiscate at will. Banks technically own it as soon it’s deposited. Through court order, government taxation, or inflation, they always get it back. Bitcoin offers some protection. We become our own bank.

[Kprawn]

It has speculative value lately and that is all that count for some people. You have to ask yourself, "What intrinsic value" does cash have?

People are looking for reasons to discredit Bitcoin or to reduce it's significance and they forget that we {the users} give Bitcoin it's value. We

create the demand and Bitcoin provide the steady supply.   { not some central authority }  

[jaysabi]

Didn't watch the video, but I find it funny when people start talking about bitcoin and intrinsic value to try to say its worthless. Think about what is intrinsic value. I'd say intrinsic value is defined by something that people NEED, that people are always going to need. This is a very small amount of things. Stuff to survive. Like food, shelter, land, clean water. Not much else has intrinsic value. Most of the economy is not built on things that have intrinsic value. But things that simply have value are things that are in demand, and the less supply of something in-demand, the greater its value. Bitcoin is in demand and in the coming years will be much much more in demand, while the supply is capped and won't increase much more. Therefore bitcoin's value will be huge. Intrinsic value doesn't matter.

Intrinsic value isn't only things people "need" but things where the value comes innately from the object. You can think of intrinsic value as a synonym for "utility."  Does something have value because it is useful, or is its value arbitrary? For example, silver is used in far more industrial applications than a metal like gold. Silver has more intrinsic value because it is useful for things people need to do, whereas gold's value is more arbitrary. It's just valuable because everyone agrees it is. (This is not a perfect example since gold has some industrial or medical uses, but overall it is a generally good illustration of intrinsic vs. arbitrary value.)

[AmeSakibimasu]

Of course bitcoin has a any essential value because bitcoin helps many people and their country the government really appreciate what bitcoin do or makes people be easily living also to earn fiat also the population can still be stable because bitcoin can help to encourage people to express their knowledge or ideas it contain lots of time so be ready to do the time management having this. You can learn a lot of things also you can get a lot of  good benefits in bitcoin

[olushakes]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

For me, I don't see any intrinsic value the way or the normal economist and from lay man point of view because its a virtual currency the only way there is will be an intrinsic worth is where we have physical coins which is made of gold and in this case, only few people have that. However, the intrinsic value I see, is the fact that, the 1btc today which worth above $2500 if I should have the physical coin 3 years ago does not worth anything close to that and that's just by keeping it at home. What other intrinsic value would anyone wish for?

[Bitcoin Guy]

Intrinsic value isn't only things people "need" but things where the value comes innately from the object. You can think of intrinsic value as a synonym for "utility."  Does something have value because it is useful, or is its value arbitrary? For example, silver is used in far more industrial applications than a metal like gold. Silver has more intrinsic value because it is useful for things people need to do, whereas gold's value is more arbitrary. It's just valuable because everyone agrees it is. (This is not a perfect example since gold has some industrial or medical uses, but overall it is a generally good illustration of intrinsic vs. arbitrary value.)

Then does air have any intrinsic?  We need it to survive.

And just thought of this - if 1 satoshi = 1 penny, tten 1 BTC = $1M.

[Bitcoin Guy]

For me, I don't see any intrinsic value the way or the normal economist and from lay man point of view because its a virtual currency the only way there is will be an intrinsic worth is where we have physical coins which is made of gold and in this case, only few people have that. However, the intrinsic value I see, is the fact that, the 1btc today which worth above $2500 if I should have the physical coin 3 years ago does not worth anything close to that and that's just by keeping it at home. What other intrinsic value would anyone wish for?

I think most people think about "intrinsic value" as monetary unit.  Ex: the intrinsic value of a Call option is the market price - the strike price.

[Yakamoto]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

From a more conventional point of view I would say that Bitcoin does not contain any "true" characteristics that bring with them intrinsic value, since you can really use Bitcoin outside of the blockchain and it is mostly relegated to moving digital tokens that have value. Fiat money doesn't have intrinsic value either, for basically the same reason.

Now take a look at gold; you have manufacturing uses, luxury uses, it has uses outside of just being money where it can contribute to something else.

Gridcoin is something with a bit more intrinsic value, since it has a scientific researching network behind it. The token itself is not really worth anything, more just a reward for the contribution of calculating power.

[Pettuh4]

It has speculative value lately and that is all that count for some people. You have to ask yourself, "What intrinsic value" does cash have?

People are looking for reasons to discredit Bitcoin or to reduce it's significance and they forget that we {the users} give Bitcoin it's value. We

create the demand and Bitcoin provide the steady supply.   { not some central authority }  

Exactly, talking down Bitcoin has become the hobby of some people who should know better, they quickly go for terms and reasons that are no reasons at all and seek to explain the flaws of Bitcoin. It's about time they realize they've failed several times and ought to reflect and come again. Enough of the badmouthing, dude!

[gentlemand]

No.

But in almost all cases the intrinsic value of something that is commonly perceived to have it is tiny, everyone's excitement around it humongously inflates it.

The people who tout gold's intrinsic value always refer to the industrial purposes. That being the case gold's intrinsic value is piddling. It's the speculative value that gives people boners. Gold's common as muck compared to many other metals but 95% or more of the value is down to sentimentality and racial memory.

Tens or hundreds of millions have died in the pursuit of dollars or the dollar of the day. The only value they have these days is the collective faith that it's worth something. That's a universe more powerful than something with the intrinsic value of curing your itchy arse or conducting electricity rather niftily.

[mrcash02]

One definiton of intrinsic I have here is: "What is real, that matters independent of relation with other things".

Bitcoin depends internet to work and desktops, pen drives, storage informatic items to exist. So it's not intrinsic, it's virtual and without a lot of conditions it doesn't have any use. If the guy says the opposite it's just talk talk.

[Kyraishi]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

The definition of intrinsic value is extremely ambiguous. When searched up on a dictionary, the definition of intrinsic is naturally occurring. So in my opinion intrinsic value is how well the currency can perform as a currency, and how much trust the public puts into the currency.

People say that gold is the only currency that has intrinsic value, but i beg to differ with these people. Gold is only valuable because people think it is valuable, and this belief has developed through many centuries. The only useful feature that gold has really is its shininess.

I definitely disagree with the person that said this. Bitcoin is essentially digital gold, and a big part of why so many people like bitcoin is because bitcoin is decentralized. Only when something cannot be abused by governments or businesses can it have "intrinsic value".

[aTriz]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

I don't know why he seems to think that bitcoin will go to greater heights than it is at right now(actually he mentioned 1 million dollars in the video per bitcoin), but thinks that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. What the actual F***?

I'll tell him what bitcoin's intrinsic value is - its ability to serve as a functional, decentralized and pseudoanonymous currency. Its intrinsic value is its in code, because of the rarity of bitcoin(much like gold and silver), it means that bitcoin will always be sought after. Both because it is useful, and because it is limited in number, meaning that it is a store of value.

It's not surprising that he would say this, as he is part of the big business elite that is threatened by btc.

[szpalata]

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxycmMo8Z2o

If Bitcoin has any intrinsic values, then what are they?  The author of the video did bring up 10 "intrinsic values".  It is very hard to determine if they are intrinsic values or just characteristics.

What do you think of all of these?

I don't know why he seems to think that bitcoin will go to greater heights than it is at right now(actually he mentioned 1 million dollars in the video per bitcoin), but thinks that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. What the actual F***?

I'll tell him what bitcoin's intrinsic value is - its ability to serve as a functional, decentralized and pseudoanonymous currency. Its intrinsic value is its in code, because of the rarity of bitcoin(much like gold and silver), it means that bitcoin will always be sought after. Both because it is useful, and because it is limited in number, meaning that it is a store of value.

It's not surprising that he would say this, as he is part of the big business elite that is threatened by btc.

Exactly, these guys will cease the smallest opportunity to run down Bitcoin and its becoming an alarming trend which needs to be stopped somehow because they seek to create panic for people (especially newbies) to sell.

[hv_]

What intrinsic value has a globally reachable secure programmable open information ledger ?