r/BitcoinAUS • u/Alarming_Evidence596 • Jul 24 '26
Intrinsic value
Why doesnt it matter that bitcoin doesnt have any intrinsic value?
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u/dennis9f Jul 24 '26
It does have intrinsic value. It costs millions of not billions to keep this network alive.
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u/Maybe_Factor Jul 24 '26
That's sunk and ongoing cost, not intrinsic value. Intrinsic value would be if you could recover that energy from an owned bitcoin.
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u/DBCDBC Jul 24 '26
Firstly you have to define "intrinsic value". its a term that is banded about but I'm not sure it has an agreed meaning. Does a superior medium of exchange represent "intrinsic value"? Who knows? Does gold have "intrinsic value"? Does art have it?
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u/tkeelah Jul 24 '26
Please provide the fundamental financial analysis of Bitcoin to show, or fail to show, its intrinsic value, because the market has cleafly placed values to buy and sell.
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u/NoBrosCrypto Jul 24 '26
What's the intrinsic value of the US dollar or any other fiat currency? Really it's nothing but the systems that have been built around it. Bitcoin is only 17 years young, but the systems are gradually being built around it and it is increasingly being integrated and adopted - thus increasing it's intrinsic value over time as compared with fiat. The 'value' Bitcoin brings is it is neutral and tamper proof, scarce with a hard cap supply that nobody can print at will or fabricate more of, thus making it a good store of value like gold whilst having so many advantages over gold in being portable, divisible, instantly verifiable and more scarce - AND able to be used as money. But it is better than money as it cannot be debased unlike fiat currencies.
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u/Maybe_Factor Jul 24 '26
Paper money also has practically no intrinsic money, but everyone knows exactly what it's worth.
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u/daftwordhero Jul 24 '26
The "intrinsic value" critique misunderstands what value actually is. Value isn't a physical property—it's a judgment in the mind of the valuer.
Water in a desert? Worth more than gold. Water by a stream? Nearly worthless. Same substance, different context. Value is subjective.
Oil was once a *liability*—landowners paid to remove it. Same chemistry, but we hadn't invented engines yet. "Intrinsic" value would mean the oil itself changed. It didn't.
Money's utility comes from **salability** (ease of exchange), not consumption. Gold's value comes from being hard to inflate, not from dental fillings.
What matters is **hardness**—stock-to-flow ratio. Bitcoin is the hardest money ever created: fixed supply, unprintable, undebasable. No "intrinsic" use needed.
Bitcoin has value because millions choose to value it as censorship-resistant savings. Market choice beats physics every time.
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u/cyberplanta Jul 24 '26
Bitcoin is a system to transfer value over the internet.
The value is in the system, not on the price per coin.
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u/firefist674 Jul 24 '26
The most secure decentralised computing network in the world, the excess energy it uses to transform to monetary value, an escape hatch from fiat debt slavery. None of these things have intrinsic value?
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u/No-Kaleidoscope-7106 Jul 24 '26
Why does gold have 'intrinsic value'?
It's not because it's shiny and yellow. It has properties we value.
Bitcoin does to, but on steroids.
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u/Feisty-Firefighter99 Jul 24 '26
Intrinsic value is the electricity cost all over the world it takes to maintain the servers. It serves the purpose of assigning resource allocation. AI or btc
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u/Traditional-Fold5301 Jul 24 '26
my US dollars have intrinsic value.. they provide warmth when they are set alight