Does bitcoin have any intrinsic value?

Many argue that bitcoin has no intrinsic value and that it’s money that has appeared out of nowhere. Hence they feel justified in saying it’s worthless!

Well, what is the intrinsic value of fiat money? That it’s backed by Gold? Maybe so but it’s a well known fact that the gold standard isn’t really followed by any country. No one knows how much US dollar is in circulation right now. Otherwise how can 10 trillion dollars go missing from pentagon’s budget without anyone having a clue of it. That is money worth almost the size of the Chinese economy being lost without trace.

Bitcoin infact is a completely transparent system with a public ledger system called the “blockchain”. All transactions happening anywhere in the bitcoin world are recorded and can be viewed by anyone on the ledger available at www.blockcahin.info

Now coming to the intrinsic value of gold. Well, what’s that? That it is rare and hence precious. The question is, is it really rare? Or just because wherever gold can be dug up in the earth, the local government confiscates the land and takes control of that gold hence making it unreachable to the public unless bought at government regulated prices. Is there any use of gold? Now people don’t even want to wear gold jewelry which was it’s single most significant use in the ancient times. Most of the gold in the world is only kept in government reserves in the form of gold blocks. They take up space and cost a lot of money to secure.

Bitcoin has both storage value, no storage cost and can be used as a currency. It has a lot more benefits as well but these themselves convey how & why Bitcoin is valuable.

So far we have believed in tangible money. Money that can be touch & felt. Cash & gold qualified for tangible money. We then started realizing that the tangibility of money was causing us issues. It was difficult to store, protect and it hindered day to day life for its tangibility was difficult to hide. This is when banks happened. Banks took the responsibility upon themselves to provide a secure centralized environment where the gold or cash could be deposited and slowly that money even while not being in use, started fetching us interest from the bank. People started taking comfort in letting the bank take over their cash and use it and in return give them some small interest. Slowly the entire control of people’s money went to the banks and they became the pivotal connection between the government & the end consumer.

Slowly fiat money started becoming centralized with banks and big corporations and hence power through money also got centralized. It is true that all this while, this was the natural evolution that the economic system went through. However whenever the control is too high, the pressure eventually gives rise to breakthrough. Bitcoin is that breakthrough that has germinated out of the control & pressure applied on the end consumer to continuously become slaves to the system. These days, if we look at the life of a normal person, they are modern slaves who work day & night only to earn money and have a good life. They hardly have time for enjoying the goodness of life since the speed at which they earn money is lesser than the speed at which it devalues. Eventually, the good times come in small packets of weekends or vacations that too for a privileged few. Most people spend their entire life only to retire from the slavery when their physical body is not good enough for both work & pleasure.

This entire cycle has become the truth of most lives because whatever we earn, we only earn to give it back to the banks so that they aid further devaluation of our own money. So it is a pretty useless exercise in which we think we are growing but we are actually running around in loops each day on the name of growth, chasing money so that the money then chases us. There is no intrinsic value of this chase too. It just makes us believe we are useful to this world. We forget our usefulness is in just being.

Bitcoin gives us a new way of looking at life. It allows us the opportunity to control the power of our money through controlling our private keys. It allows us cost free storage of money without having to rely on an external third party and be controlled by them instead. It allows us the opportunity to grow through our money and focus on living that good life rather than only waiting for it.

So yes, Bitcoin has a lot of intrinsic value. It allows us freedom & power. What is more intrinsic than that which has been robbed so long ago from us that most of us are in disbelief that it is even possible!