Correct. The problem being the use of the word inherent to describe value. There is no such thing as inherent value unless you are describing a use and not the price someone would be willing to pay for something. For example, wood can be used to fuel a fire but that doesn't tell us anything about its' inherent value in exchange. That it has inherent value on these terms is obvious enough. For me it has almost none because I don't have a stove to safely burn it. Others feel differently.

You have to take a more general sort of view to things. To the median person making use of the value, how much are they getting out? How many people would find value?

For example not everyone likes shiny things but gold is also compact, protective, conducting, nonreacting, testable, etc.

Wood has a thousand and one uses but it's a bad currency because in addition to being bulky it's easy to make more wood. But in certain circumstances it would work fine.

There is barely any use people can get out of bags of sand, so it wouldn't work as a currency. Salt looks similar but used to be hard to get and is important to food and living, made a great currency.

Bitcoins by themselves don't have value. You could make a hundred knockoff block chains and they wouldn't do you any good. The bitcoin network as an entity that you can trust is where anything useful is actually derived from.

Just because some things have intrinsic value and have been used as a currency doesn't imply that something that doesn't have intrinsic value and is a currency can't be trusted.

You have to take a look at society's motivations, situation and psychological makeup, and from there you can make a prediction as to whether a currency can be trusted or not.

And more people mining leads to higher difficulty rating which leads to longer block times.