How does Bitcoin have an intrinsic value? I have read several articles about how Bitcoin have an intrinsic value. Aside from the fact that some of those articles confuse "intrinsic value" with "benefits of adoption", I found that none of them could prove that Bitcoin is actually money and not a currency.

Take this example, if I take my Bitcoin from the US to Yemen, it would be the equivalent of taking absolutely nothing to Yemen. Why is that, you ask?

Because Yemen has no Bitcoin bank/supplier/merchants, no one cares about Bitcoin. Now, if I take Gold to anywhere on Earth, people will take that. In the case of Gold, the supply is limited but the demand is unlimited (everyone accepts it) for two reasons. One reason is that Gold is money in itself (if the country uses Gold standard, which I don't recall any that does), and two, is because even if Gold is not money in the country, it's still a commodity to be sold to get money!

So Gold indeed has a value just for being Gold! Bitcoin is a supply and demand currency, which Bitcoin.org clearly states ("The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand"), yet they also say "Much of the trust in Bitcoin comes from the fact that it requires no trust at all", that's illogical as it's dependent on the demand of people which varies by location, i.e. you need to trust that that place has a Bitcoin bank! 

If people of that country don't have Bitcoin bank, then that immediately means that Bitcoin value is almost 0 in that country. If Bitcoin's value is zero, no bank would want to spend money to build a branch there. So it's more like fiat currency!

I wouldn't go very far with a Dollar in the country that doesn't have its currency tied to Dollar (even though I don't recall any that doesn't, except the Islamic State, which recently announced Gold and Silver money). This proves several things, that Bitcoin is a currency, that it's dependent on the demand (specifically the location of the market), and thus, that, very much, takes the "universality" it's so much praised for when people talk about how you can make international transfers so easily. You really can; but the problem is that you probably wouldn't do so to most countries that actually need that capability; due to the nature of those countries and the lack of a Bitcoin bank. The only reason why one might want to get Bitcoin in countries where no Bitcoin bank exists, is to buy stuff online. But then again, this has never been the main problem. Credit Cards have solved this for a long time.

So I guess the question is, does Bitcoin have an intrinsic value (is it money) or does Bitcoin have "location value"/trust value (is it a currency)?
Talking about intrinsic value is always a difficult discussion. What gives Gold or really anything intrinsic value?


It is of limited quantity. Bitcoin also has a limit to the total
amount in circulation, and so has an element of digital scarcity
built into its design to mimic physical scarcity.

You can't counterfeit it. (Actually you can create gold, it just costs way more than just buying it) Bitcoin can't be copied through
any known process. You can't transmute lead to gold, nor simply
convert a random collection of bits into Bitcoin.
People accept it for Barter You can use Bitcoin with merchants all over the world, as well as person to person payments. The number
of people accepting and transacting in Bitcoin is growing every day.
You can build physical products with it While not a direct correlation the Bitcoin network is a highly secure trust network.
Nothing like it has existed before on its scale, and it seems clear
that quite a bit can be built on top of it. That gives the network
real value for companies emerging in various new sectors, and how do
you get access to this network? Bitcoin.



If people believe it has value, trade in it, and it lets you do things that were previously impossible it seems like it has intrinsic value by any definition.