> cryptocurrency is...something worthless Cryptocurrencies aren't worthless though. Computationally expensive, cryptographically useful numbers are a valuable

> cryptocurrency is...something worthless Cryptocurrencies aren't worthless though. Computationally expensive, cryptographically useful numbers are a valuable commodity. They are valuable in virtue of the computational work that they make possible, the same way that electricity or silicon are valuable in virtue of the computational work that they make possible, i.e. successfully, verifiably lengthening the blockchain. > Fiat money is money that is in itself intrinsically valueless but that is accepted as money because the government says that it must be...require that it be accepted as money (emphasis added) There's the part where you say it. > The only difference from most other fiat money is that with cryptocurrency it is not a government declaring it to be money. It is a large group of people. And there's the part where you take it back. As you started to say, declaration is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fiat; it also requires forcibly maintaining the declaration. If a large group of people have that power then they're effectively a government, making "non-government fiat currency" an oxymoron.