Not at all - I can buy a bitcoin now, and then sell it, having not mined it.
I choose not to. But other people do.
> Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted.
As the OP said, little pieces of paper have essentially no intrinsic value. But use it for transactions, and it has suddenly has a value forced on it. We've all seen zombie apocalypse films with cash blowing around in the street and the survivors ignoring it for good reason, no one _values_ it.
Bitcoin is the same, it's a bit of paper in the sense that it's just some numbers on disc somewhere with no _intrinsic_ value, yet as soon as it's a medium of exchange, _which it is_, it has value. There are transactions made in bitcoin.
I choose not to. But other people do.
> Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted.
As the OP said, little pieces of paper have essentially no intrinsic value. But use it for transactions, and it has suddenly has a value forced on it. We've all seen zombie apocalypse films with cash blowing around in the street and the survivors ignoring it for good reason, no one _values_ it.
Bitcoin is the same, it's a bit of paper in the sense that it's just some numbers on disc somewhere with no _intrinsic_ value, yet as soon as it's a medium of exchange, _which it is_, it has value. There are transactions made in bitcoin.