Interesting topic and arguments. To me something has value if it can help people do things that they can't do right now, or it can help people do things that they can already do now, but in a much more efficient way.

Some examples:

- the car has value. Yes, people could go around with horses before, but the car allows people to move more efficiently;

- the iPhone has value. Yes, people could make phone calls with mobile devices before, but iPhone was the first incredibly advanced device that expanded what people could do via mobile.

What about Bitcoin. Bitcoin seen at the early stage definitely had value in its electronic currency version. People at that time could transfer money online (wire transfer, maybe PayPal), but there was no way to transfer money peer to peer all around the world almost instantly. Now there are tons of apps that allow the same thing: Venmo, Revolut, etc. Yes, it's true that Bitcoin allows you to transfer money without the need to create accounts on other platform, it's true that nobody can stop you from using your Bitcoins, etc, but I would not say that this changes the transfer of money much more efficiently...quite the contrary.

Then we are left with something that definitely has a lot of potential (think about the blockchain), but we are still missing, in my opinion, a true user case that will improve how we do things more efficiently.