That explanation is completely inadequate. Why do bitcoins need to be "things" at all? This is a requirement you invented without reason. You say, "if we now ask what actual thing outside the database is owned by Peter, we face an inherent contradiction."

Owning bitcoins doesn't entail owning "things outside the decentralized ledger." Why would it need to? The whole point is that they're a native currency in a monetary network. If you have a balance at a bank, you don't have a "thing" to show for it either -- only numbers in the bank's database, numbers on a screen. Do dollars have no value when they're just numbers in a database? What matters is what other people will pay for them, not your circular proofs that depend on your cherry-picked definitions.

Also, let's take a look at the definition of "thing."


How are bitcoins not "things?"

I will not say that bitcoin is now losing a lot, because the price for the coin is built very well, despite all the negative signs in the crypto-currency market, and in General in the world a bad reputation.

E-mail has value because it contains information about some aspect of reality i.e. it provides the answer to a question of some kind or resolves uncertainty. Bitcoin has zero value because it is just empty number connected to the addresses, it is just numerical symbols that point to nothing in the real world. Numerical symbols are valueless on their own. "45437368752737"  - I just created numerical symbols out of thin air.  Do they have value? Of course not. "11" - my computer just find this symbols via brute-force i.e. by spending energy. Did this gave these symbols value? Of course not - they are still just symbols in a memory. If I give name to them, for. e.g.  - XYZCoin, does this make them valuable? Of course not - naming something doesn't change its properties. Now, if I write them down into some database ("XYZ blockchain"), and connect them to some address(name): "John - 11", because John gave me 1,000,000 US Dollars, does that mean that two bytes stored in memory have value of a house. Of course not, these bytes are just as worthless as before  - their properties didn't change just because John did something. By connecting them to "John" we simply marked the fact that John gave me 1,000,000 US Dollars for free. We could also mark this event with symbols "John  - STUPID". Nothing would change. Symbols would stay symbols i.e. linguistic or mathematical objects with zero value.

You are just not the sharpest pencil in the box, thats all. I wont even explain You, how macro economics work, You are unable to understand even the simplest and most obvious arguments.

Your employer transfers Your salary, that You get for... I dont know... selling hot dogs... to Your bank account. Its is Your jobs value converted into more usable form - Your bank balance. Wtf You speak about, numbers have no value?

Your bank balance, usable in most places, together with reasonable assurance, that someone else can not use it instead of You - this is value. You basically carry Your job´s value with You, with opportunity to use it where You like and on what You like.

And certainty, that You can claim Your share from total pool of claims, anywhere You are and with very high (almost all certainly) probability there will be no problems with that, it is what makes it valuable. But OK, that was my last answer to this topic, its a waste of time.

There is no proof for the bitcoin and it is impossible that we should judge the crypto and bitcoin is not a value less currency and if some one make an observation that will be just illusion not not fact that shows actual value of bitcoin.

From the premises: people give value to things and bitcoin is a thing, it does not follow: bitcoin has value. Nobody can give value to something that has no capacity to hold value. In principle, anything that has value on its own, i.e. that has practical utility, can hold value. For example, a toothpick. Although the intrinsic value of a toothpick is very small it is not zero since a toothpick has practical utility. That is why a toothpick has capacity to hold value. But bitcoin is a number, and numbers are abstract mathematical entities that can only express values of other things, for e.g. in the form of ratio between X toothpicks to one iPhone, but numbers cannot in principle hold value on their own. Thus, it is true that people give value to things, but this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

Like I have already said, bitcoin is nothing but a numerical mark that someone gave his possessions for free.

Bitcoin never had, nor ever will have value. What you see on the exchanges is not value but letters and numbers, something like this: BTC/USD 6,352.02. Value of bitcoin has always been zero, i.e. numbers that you see are not quantifiers of value but marks of events where people give their possessions for free. In the legitimate market, like EUR/USD for e.g., number 1.1700 quantifies the value of claims derived from loan created money in the US in terms of claims derived from loan created money in the EU. So, we have ratio between two things (claims) with value of their own and number is only expression of that ratio. But in the case of BTC/USD, number 6,325.02 does not represent the ratio between two values, since bitcoin is a number and numbers cannot have value on their own. For that reason 6,325.02 is nothing but a numerical mark of the fact that currently, people are willing to throw away 6,325.02 US dollars for the alteration of worthless number in publicly distributed database. And this is stupidity on a scale never seen in human history.

USD is not pinted piece of paper. USD is claim derived for debt and backed by some form of collateral (land, car, home or borrower’s income). Paper is just a medium upon which numerical information about claim size is stored. This has nothing to do with what "people say." Comparing bitcoin to dollar is like comparing dirt to Ferrari.

Exactly. Bitcoin isn’t like air. That fact that bitcoin has been successfully used for the exchange of goods and services proves it has value. And bitcoin ATMs won’t be popping up around the world if it had zero value. The fact that something is digital and not tangible doesn’t mean it’s not real.