[smokeyj]

> money derives its value from 2 sources: 1) the actual goods and services (GDP) that it represents and 2) the fact that government demands taxes be paid in it.

This is historically and factually inaccurate. Currencies typically originated as highly marketable commodities that are naturally scarce and fungible - salt, gold, silver, cigarettes in jail, etc.

[turc1656]

sorry, i should have qualified that i was referring to FIAT money. otherwise, it would have no intrinsic value. The examples you give are all physical items that have intrinsic value because they can be used for something other than being money. what i said was directed at fiat only since that is what all modern economies use. without the 2 factors i described, fiat is nothing but useless paper with weird stuff printed on it.

[smokeyj]

> The examples you give are all physical items that have intrinsic value because they can be used for something other than being money

One could argue that's the definition of real money - but to say Bitcoin isn't real money is to move the goal post when what you mean is Bitcoin isn't a traditional fiat currency. There's no debate there.

[eridius]

I think the implication is that BTC has very little intrinsic value. Well, the BTC itself actually has zero intrinsic value, the only intrinsic value in the ecosystem is the blockchain (although the value of the blockchain itself is dependent upon the perceived value of BTC, as its ability to prove data existed at a point in time only works if a sufficient number of people are actually mining blocks, and people mine blocks in order to get BTC).