>The intrinsic value of USD is it's the only currency you can use to pay taxes to the US government.

This isn't intrinsic value. The government can conceivably decide USD is worthless (it won't, probably ever, unless the US collapses). USD relies on the US government for value.

Being able to burn money to start a fire would be intrinsic value. Same for gold's conductivity and its other industrial uses. They are physical properties.

I think its a stretch to say that the US gov will decide USD is worthless. So the expected intrinsic value is as he stated, the power of the US government to levy taxes. I would also include the domination of the USD in oil trade as another intrinsic value.

Intrinsic value is a term with specific meaning going back to the days of commodity money. I don't disagree with your point, but by definition the things you mention are not intrinsic value in the monetary theory sense.

Not just taxes. The dollar says "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." Useful to have when you're getting sued.

Gold in industrial applications will probably be used at atomic-scale in integrated manufacturing processes sometime within the next three years.

If you look at an ATX motherboard from 2009 with an Intel processor and a MacBook Pro mainboard from 2017, the amount of material consumption to create a similar product has fallen dramatically. You can actually see Moore's Law, it's kinda beautiful.

>The intrinsic value of gold is it's industrial/commercial uses....

Excuse me ?

> and reasons it might not forever

Is there historical precedent for something to be as widely accepted as gold, which isn't considered valuable today?

Aluminum was once worth more than gold.

https://gizmodo.com/how-aluminum-cost-more-than-gold-1575564...

Again with the pay taxes thing. The duty to pay taxes cannot be the value of the usd. Lowering taxes would depreciate the coin!