Intrinsic value for an option's strike price is a special case, as the value is fixed to a historical moment by prior agreement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but i

Intrinsic value for an option's strike price is a special case, as the value is fixed to a historical moment by prior agreement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems from the rest of your post that you see intrinsic value as "non-economic usefulness". But gold's primary usefulness is as the best physical hard money due to it's fundamental properties: scarce, divisible, indestructible, recognisable, fungible, assayable (its weight, colour and softness) However, your definition states: > "if the other market participants disappeared, the value the last person holding the thing could still get from it" and money has no use/value if there is no one to transact with (i.e. no other market participants) So if we were to agree that intrinsic value is the usefulness of something but with the exception of any purely economic/market use, then to use "it has no intrinsic value" as an argument for why something would not be a good money (as the author does) makes no sense, as it ignores the exact usefulness that would make it a good money.