Bitcoin - Intrinsically Worthless?

If bitcoin has no non-monetary use, then either Mises’ Regression Theorem is incomplete, or bitcoin is a medium of exchange, but not for the reasons an Austrian economist might think…[1]

Bitcoin is not a ready fit with the typical categories of commodity money and fiat money, or with a new proposed category of synthetic commodity money. The absence of fit is unsurprising given bitcoin’s conjoining of the material and the abstract, which presents an ambiguous (liminal) computational artefact.

For bitcoin to fit any money category it must possess intrinsic value. This has the meaning attributed by monetary economists: the object has a non-monetary value independent from any role it might exert as a medium of exchange.

Under Mises’ Regression Theorem an object cannot function as a medium of exchange without first possessing an objective exchange value based on some other non-monetary use. Over time, the non-monetary attribute(s) become widely accepted as a medium of exchange. For example, gold was valued for its own non-monetary sake before it became a medium of exchange.

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises gives the thumbs up for the Regression Theorem

A medium of exchange is any material object, or abstract or liminal artefact, in the set of assets in an economy that people regularly exchange for goods and services, or anything that a creditor agrees to accept to discharge a monetary…