After reading the post I would say that I agree that app coins don’t have any inherent value except for their usage on a network. If the market price of the app coin then fluctuates, the relative utility of the app coin will also fluctuate. Meaning people won’t hold the coin, and prices will tend to approach zero because of this selling pressure.

But this is just how that app coin model was designed. By fixing the relative utility to at least a baseline (1 coin = 1 service) then that becomes an enforceable contract and the utility does not approach zero.

The MaidSafe example was given, where a MaidSafeCoin did not guarantee a certain amount of storage on the network. But if it did, then it would be a different model and is not “debunked” as you say. If 1 coin = 1MB (enforced by the network software) then you could extrapolate the value of the coin in USD based on current cloud storage prices.

What am I missing here?