market cap is useful in that it shows the total value of the coin. Comparing the price of 1BTC to 1ETH doesn't make sense, but comparing their market cap does
The alternatives to fiat money are commodity money, e.g. gold, or representative money, e.g. pieces of paper exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate. Cryptocurrencies are more similar to fiat money in terms of their value being a function of social agreement versus utility.
gcb0 isn't proposing that value should be measured in ETH per BTC. Sounds like they think the value of currency is in people using it for a medium of exchange--e.g., Oversatock.com accepting bitcoin makes bitcoin valuable.
"Useful" might be a better term, but it makes some sense to equate those two.
Well you cannot eat, drink or breath gold either...
Gold is impossible to fake, but ETFs based on double-counted collateral and various other fixing fixes have made it a fool's errand to preserve capital with gold.
Well gold also has little intrinsic value. Of course, it has uses like in the manufacture of technology, but most gold is used for making useless shit into shiny useless shit. Crypto has uses, too though. Such as facilitating payments, DLT, etc.
All value is assigned. So, what then, besides traditional consensus, makes gold 'intrinsically valuable' without also making cryptocurrencies intrinsically valuable?