[pmiller2]

This is roughly what I've been telling the HODLers among my friends and acquaintances for years: there is no intrinsic, fundamental reason why BTC has value. It has value because people say it has value. And, if that sounds awfully like the "fiat currency" they tend to heap so much derision on, well, it should.

The USD is nothing more than an "economy token" to show how much one is winning capitalism. Likewise, BTC is some sort of economy token, but I'm not sure what it means. I'm sure the bottom will fall out of BTC far sooner than the USD, and I will welcome that day, because then we can repurpose the electrical power that runs the BTC network toward productive uses, rather than propping up some financialized mirage.

[shawnz]

You are right that fiat currency and bitcoins are alike in that they both have no intrinsic value. I don't think any "bitcoin evangelist" would say otherwise.

[ineedasername]

It's not about "winning capitalism". Money is simply an abstraction layer over something like direct bartering which has liquidity problems that increase with the complexity and number of goods & services on offer. I might agree that capitalism is about "winning" and money is used to keep score, but not that money is intrinsically tied to that game. And there might be a better abstraction layer you could place over people's time & effort than either money or direct bartering. Command economies are one option, but economies seem quite a bit too complex for that to be a feasible alternative at the moment. There's probably other options, but I'm certainly not smart enough to think of something new on that topic.