> Bitcoin also has underlying properties, but instead they are guaranteed by mathematics and game theory instead of physics.
The Bitcoin algorithm has some interesting properties but they don’t have much practical value to balance the enormous inefficiency and, far more important to this topic, that doesn’t make any particular blockchain valuable - anyone who wants those properties can set up their own for free without enriching the current Bitcoin holders. The only reason why you would consider those hashes to be worth paying money for is the community belief that they have a certain value - nobody has any need to use it otherwise. That’s why Bitcoin is an especially pure fiat currency: the community consensus is quite literally the only thing backing it’s valuation. In contrast a currency like the US dollar has curbs on fluctuation not just from much greater usage but also because millions of people receive it from government salaries and purchases or need that currency to pay taxes — unlike Bitcoin, which has value only to the extent that you can find someone else who thinks it’ll be worth more in the future.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
The source of your misunderstanding is here:
> Bitcoin also has underlying properties, but instead they are guaranteed by mathematics and game theory instead of physics.
The Bitcoin algorithm has some interesting properties but they don’t have much practical value to balance the enormous inefficiency and, far more important to this topic, that doesn’t make any particular blockchain valuable - anyone who wants those properties can set up their own for free without enriching the current Bitcoin holders. The only reason why you would consider those hashes to be worth paying money for is the community belief that they have a certain value - nobody has any need to use it otherwise. That’s why Bitcoin is an especially pure fiat currency: the community consensus is quite literally the only thing backing it’s valuation. In contrast a currency like the US dollar has curbs on fluctuation not just from much greater usage but also because millions of people receive it from government salaries and purchases or need that currency to pay taxes — unlike Bitcoin, which has value only to the extent that you can find someone else who thinks it’ll be worth more in the future.