Question to you specifically. What is gold backed by? Nothing. It has value because it meets the 5 monetary properties. It backs itself. It takes a great amount of work and energy to mine gold. So does Bitcoin.
just because something takes a huge amount of energy to obtain does not necessarily make it valuable i would think. for example someone could clone bitcoin and modify it so that the difficulty target had more leading 0s. meaning its harder to mine takes more energy. does that make it more valuable?
Bitcoin also meets 7 monetary properties. It also takes an extreme amount of computational work and energy to create it. Thats why it is called a Bearer Asset, Base layer, apex property. Its the properties that it meets for monetary value, not backing.
You mean these? I'd say bitcoin meets most of them pretty well but not all of them sufficiently for example fungibility. bitcoin is not fungible. because bitcoin is not private and anonymous.
Bitcoin’s monetary properties include:
Transferability — The ability of an item to be transferred anywhere in the world with the highest possible speed and at the lowest possible cost
Divisibility — The ability of an item to be divided conveniently and reliably into smaller pieces, thereby accommodating any transaction size
Storability — The ability to be self-custodied by anyone, without relying on a bank or financial institution
Durability — The ability to be as resistant to degradation as the medium in which it is stored
Verifiability — The ability of an item to be reliably verified as real by its users
Fungibility — The ability of each item unit to be equivalent to any other item unit
Scarcity — An item’s resistance to increasing its supply
Censorship Resistance — The ability for anyone to use a form of money without fear of the money being confiscated or frozen.