[YokoZar]

Almost all of Intellectual Ventures assets are patents with unclear value. Maybe they can use them to extract millions of dollars of settlements. Or maybe they're worthless.

When that's the majority of your balance sheet, whatever method you chose will have legitimate criticism.

[varjag]

And maybe my $20 pickaxe can be used to mine gold nuggets?

They can be valued with at least their acquisition value, which is a start. For all we know the "true" value (come liquidation) may now be zero, but still it puts a practical cap to how much IV can hype its business model.