Quote from: hazek on January 30, 2013, 10:16:31 PM

Quote from: mobodick on January 30, 2013, 09:46:21 PM

Quote from: Walter Rothbard on January 30, 2013, 08:42:23 PM

Quote from: mobodick on January 30, 2013, 07:34:21 PM

Bitcoin otoh is not shiny at all outside of the context of bitcoin. So without the network actually functioning it is just a pile of bits and not shiny at all.

The network functioned for 503 days before somebody bought a pizza with bitcoins, so the bitcoins were quite shiny by then and promised to continue to be shiny for the foreseeable future.

Yes, but it is a feature of the system operating.
Bitcoins, by themselfs are stored energy that has no other use than to be bitcoin.
What you describe is economic value (the value it gets from being used in an economy).
Intrinsic value is what it is worth without the rest of the economy giving it value.

What you actually are saying is that after being a currency for 503 days it gained economic value. It was used as a currency.
A dollar bills intrinsic value is not that it can be used to buy stuff.
It's intrinsic value is that you can hang it on the wall to admire it or burn it for some heat, or some other such thing.
It is what you value about the thing when you disregad it's economical position.

So the 'I like it for its math' is actually some intrinsic value of the bitcoin system (like all forms of aesthetics) because it values bitcoin for something other than being used as currency.
Unfortunately that part is pure information so it is not specific to any combination of bits sitting on your computer. It would even be hard to appreciate that aspect of it so the best way to do it is propably to read some technical information.
And so it is just this technical information that is being valued, not bitcoin itself.

More semantics.

You should meet a hardcore MMORPG player and see how really they think some "stored energy" in the form of their fictional character that they play in a game is to them. If still don't know, we're in the digital age now..

You don't have to explain that to me, i know enough mmo junkies. Grin

But the intrinsic value of a mmo character would be what you value it without using it in the mmo.
So, say blizzard kills wow and you have this character there that you realy love.
Its intrinsic value it how much it is worth to you without the wow environment.
So if wow ends, how much is the character then worth to the players.

It's not semantics as the word intrinsic has a certain meaning.
Using 'semantics' as an excuse for not defining it properly is bad practice and will lead to nonsense.