Maybe there isn’t even an objective way to quantify value, even tho there’s many different kinds of values. Value is never a constant, it changes over time. Even the most stable store of value in humankind, gold, doesn’t have a fixed value, not even a market cap is ever constant. So you could ask what is real value in the first place.
Volatility indicates subjectivity, shouldn’t a „real value“ be a constant? And im not just referring to market prices here. You can write a perfect exam and get 10 different grades, depending on who evaluates you. The human mind isn’t objective, but we will be the ones to decide what has value and what not. If it wouldn’t be our subjective decisions that determine value, we wouldn’t even be here asking the question now, because we already knew.
To me Bitcoin might be priceless, to others it might be worthless. But then the sum of evalutions of all people create an average, that then determines, how much value is assigned to it at this moment in time, and from this a consensus starts to form and this thing will be chosen over things more often(the higher the average). The design behind Bitcoin is objectively superior to fiat for enabling universal trade(this is the main task of money), so we can assume more and more rational actors will deem it valuable in the future. But ofc there’s more factors on how people will evaluate it, each subjectively different and endless in variation and the sum doesn’t need to be rational.
In conclusion: it might be better to think about, if other people will find it valuable, than if the thing itself is physically valuable(even tho physical properties can influence other peoples perception), because people will form the value in the end.
Fourth, the subjective theory of value is wrong. People can be defrauded. Theranos is a recent example of this. People can also be mistaken about value. The housing crash or the numerous failed investments in start-ups are clear examples of this. When people are defrauded or are mistaken, this means their belief in something being a value is wrong. Just because a lot of people believe that something is a value doesn’t make it so.
Subjective value doesn’t mean that an individual can’t overvalue something, in this case their individual subjective value was higher than the average value the market assigned to it, and they lost. Which strengthens the conclusion i made. The housing crash was also caused by assigning too much subjective value into the credibility of banks and fiat, something that wasn’t deserved. Assigning subjective value isn’t free, it has real life consequences and so individuals have to constantly reassign their evaluation for things to succeed. Because this is the basis of real life decisions in the end.