The community of cryptocurrency has pushed bank on the Bank of England Governor’s comments concerning the intrinsic value of bitcoin.
According to a report by Reuters, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey criticized bitcoin earlier in the week, questioning whether the asset had any intrinsic value.
He said,
I have to be honest, it is hard to see that Bitcoin has what we tend to call intrinsic value. It may have extrinsic value in the sense that people want it.
Bailey continued, saying he was “very nervous” about people using bitcoin for payments due to its uncertain value and warned investors of the crypto asset’s price volatility.
Microstrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor, whose analytics firm recently invested $425 million in bitcoin, pushed back on Bailey’s comments. In a tweet published October 13, Saylor highlighted bitcoin’s intrinsic value, calling it the first digital monetary system capable of storing all the money in the world for every individual and government.
Crypto community members were quick to point to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which claimed that neither bitcoin nor state-backed currencies were comprised of intrinsic value.
The report read,
Bitcoin is not the only currency that has no intrinsic value. State monopoly currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Swiss franc, have no intrinsic value either.
Long-time crypto supporter and ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees added his opinion to the debate, calling “value” an entirely subjective description.
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