Surprisingly, few days later I encountered
this article. Again,
a pos proponent (I suppose) is questioning the value of bitcoin being measurable by the amount of "work" miners do, this time, by directly claiming Marx's theory to be a fallacy!
For the bolded text, I believe this is incorrect as it is heavily implied the author is a bitcoin supporter in the very last line of the article: "Long may [Bitcoin] remain desirable."
It is why I'm becoming more and more convinced that the PoW/PoS debate is nothing less than a final debate between true political economists resurrected after bitcoin on one side and fake mercenary economists with their utilitarian interpretation of value that is incapable of understanding why bitcoin has an inherent value not based on a subjective convention or an artificial demand caused by speculation nor even its usefullness as a medium of exchange and a utility.
Your tone seems to imply that you aren't willing to honestly discuss this topic, but I will take a shot anyway.
On at least two points, I don't believe your association of mining costs to value aligns well with Marx's LTV. Firstly, Marx's LTV is not simply about labor being the defining aspect of a product's price - it is "socially necessary" labor. If the socially necessary constraint were not in place, then by that argument all products' prices would be a function of their labor cost, even when there is zero utility (or socially necessary labor). Secondly, the cost to produce any given bitcoin has varied between roughly $0.00 and $5,000.00 even though they are absolutely identical. The cost to produce a new bitcoin (loosely) follows the price. I don't believe that this can be explained by Marx's LTV. It can, however, be explained by marginalism.
Additionally, there are currencies that do not use PoW and yet still have value. Significant amounts of value. A strong case must be made as to why this value is illusory, but you have not broached it. One could make the counter argument that the existence of these "labor free" currencies invalidates your argument as it appears to prove that there is no socially necessary labor cost. i.e. PoW's popularity is only a
preference.
This also seems a bit off-topic for D&TD and should probably be in the economics forum.