Gold has SOME intrinsic value. It is very good for certain applications, I believe trace amounts are used in compute parts. Worst case you can make something shiny to look at, that will be rust proof and easy to shape.
What is the intrinsic value of ETH or Bitcoin? It literally has nothing to back it.
That's an argument that they don't have intrinsic value, but only value contingent on their ability to look pretty or eat them, both things which themselves will depend on where you are on the Maslow hierarchy and your needs for food vs. decoration.
Same for your argument about gold.
Intrinsic value is not contingent on your needs, and, well, this is why it does not exist and there isn't anything that has intrinsic value and indeed the very concept is incoherent when you try to nail it down. Nothing has intrinsic value; it is all relative to some entity's desires or needs.
[1] http://nakamotoinstitute.org/reciprocal-altruism-in-the-theo...
computing power is inherently valuable. the value of AWS is less than zero because you could just buy a computer and do the computation cheaper at home. duh.
Gasoline allows one to use large amounts of power at the same time, say, to run a generator, start a power plant or run power tools for construction.
Bitcoin is not useful in and of itself as the current system of transactions is perfectly workable.
On the other hand, try running power tools on solar power... (including making the huge batteries and plastics)
The value of AWS is greater than zero because spending my day monitoring my server would be exponentially more costly than paying Amazon to do it at scale.
And Ether is worth less than zero (as a computation engine) because I could develop and run the computation in less time by opening vim, even if the Ether was free.
For gold, scarcity is enforced by laws of nature, which encourages networks to treat it as valuable. For BTC, is there a similar constraint? I'm pretty sure the tokens can be reverse-transmutated by the software that counts it. This is true for all cryptocurrencies. Gold today and pyrite (or worse) tomorrow, which would make all of them unsuitable as long-term stores of value.
The brand and the places where you can pay or donate with it, or exchange it. The fact that it can't be seized by the authorities, the limit on inflation wired into the software and system. And thats most likely not all of it.