What's falsifiable is the theory of value.

With my theory of value, Bitcoin has to collapse. Keynes talked about how markets could remain irrational longer than he was able to remain solvent, but that said, with my theory of value it has to collapse. So my theory of value is falsifiable.

The theory which says Bitcoin is valuable is "its valuable because its valuable". It's not really falsifiable. They say it's valuable because people find it valuable. If it loses value, they'll say it was because people stopped finding it valuable. How is that theory falsifiable? Whether it goes up or down, they can claim they were right. It's a tautological argument.

Gold is valuable because it is useful. It can be used to fill teeth, it can be used in electronics, for industrial purposes etc. Geologists spend time looking for where gold might be, then speculators spend time looking there, and if they're right, miners spend time mining it. As gold has a use, and has been useful for thousands of years, investors have a fairly certain (but not absolute) idea that they can exchange the gold they mine for other things.

Gold does have an inherent value. Compare an ounce of gold to a 1971 dollar. The 2014 dollar is worth a fifth of what the 1971 dollar was. An ounce of gold did not have it's value removed. Gold has an inherent useful value. The Papiermark, dollar etc. depend on the shifting winds of governments. The US government can fire up the printing presses and half the value of the dollar in a few days. You can't half the value of gold as easily, you'd have to make some kind of major scientific breakthrough.

> With my theory of value, Bitcoin has to collapse.

There's absolutely no risk to a vague claim like that. It's unfalsifiable. Either we witness Bitcoin collapse, in which case you made an amazing prediction, or we don't witness Bitcoin collapse, and on your deathbed you can be proud that you haven't been proven wrong yet.

To make a meaningful prediction, name a time (preferably within most of our expected lifetimes) and a market price. Of course, if you could do that with any confidence, you should also trade with that same confidence.

Gold and diamonds have inherent value - they're both used industrially. Bitcoin perhaps doesn't have less inherent value than a non-backed currency though; but even being decades passed gold standard, and such, currencies that have a "reliable" government as support are still pretty reliable.

Very little of gold and diamond's prices are their industrial value, just like very little of the value of a dollar bill is its industrial value in burning it to heat a factory.

What was gold's inherent value to industry prior to 1930 or so?

The fact that gold now has industrial uses makes it less suitable as money or a store of wealth than it had been for thousands of years, because saving/hoarding/speculating artificially reduces supply and increases its cost.

I can grant that people might be more trusting of bitcoin if it had some kind of intrinsic value to insure against collapsing 100%, but realistically it wouldn't be more than a tiny fraction of the market value, anyway. And as with gold, those other applications would be more expensive than they ought to be.

Wouldn't the value of gold and diamonds in that case be instrumental value, not inherent value? They are valuable by virtue of the aesthetic pleasure they cause in onlookers, or in their use as drils, and so on, where something with inherent value would be worth sustaining and creating even if it served no further end, like the life of a person for example.

I dare say you're right; never got far with Kant beyond the Imperatives - you appear to use his definition from within value ethics. My assessment was closer to the use in economics but still a bit aberrant - the context was the comparison of the value within the exchange articles themselves across paper money, gold, and cryptographic currency. The essence of my argument is that there is nothing else to be done with non-physical "articles" of exchange.

One might argue that the use of crypto hashes to certify documents or perform escrow-like services is comparable to the physical utility of gold and "paper" money. That seems a more apposite objection to my point, but hey ...

no value is inherrent and it makes no sense to talk about it from that perspective.

You are confusing historical with universal facts.

No value is inherent? The universe, say, has no value? I can certainly see possible frameworks in which this is true but they don't really appear to be useful in assessing relative worth. If we agree that things which can be utilised in order to provide gains in efficient production of fulfilment, happiness, [sense of] achievement, etc., then it seems that there are many things with inherent value, no?

For example, Gold is more readily worked than other metals and it's relative inertness makes it useful for carrying charge without causing a reaction (such as oxidation), additionally it has low resistance - these innate properties give it an inherent value by virtue of it's suitability for electrical connections.

If you're speaking on a the level of "value is a human construct"; well that's as may be but doesn't really aid in the discussion of human economics. I'm more than happy to discuss that but it seems we should stay within the locus of human experience here.

Or ...?

The point is that if gold has inherent value so has the bitcoin-protocol and it's a useless distinction to try and claim that one has and another hasn't.

For instance for remittance Bitcoin has immense value compared to for instance gold.

Context defines value not the thing itself.