Nothing in the _world_ has intrinsic value. Obviously, this an opinion, but I do believe it has strong epistemological backing. An easy overview of the opinion by wired: https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-intrinsic-value-n..., a 1970s era discussion by a historian economist: https://fee.org/articles/the-fallacy-of-intrinsic-value/, and a deep dive the theory itself: https://mises.org/library/introduction-value-theory

Now i'm not expecting nor wanting to get into a debate about the theory of value. I do not expect to be able to win, nor do I want to, but I do hope some doubt is cast into the proposition:

> Matches have a value, you light them and they produce a certain amount of energy

Matches have a _utility_, not necessarily a value. Additionally, compute is _also_ just "burning resources", only its electricity instead of potassium chlorate. Arguably a more fungible form.

> regardless of the fact that it has no debt instruments, lacks liquidity and is completely unregulated and prone to theft.

Only one of the four accusations stands up to any critical thought - which is that it is "completely unregulated". If that is the core of your argument against distributed, trustless currency, then that argument applies equally to all pre Federal Reserve transactions the world over, and I'm not sure what the implied problem is.

The best quote from the first and most approachable of the links above:

> All new mediums of exchange spawn skepticism, and should. For much of the 19th century, paper money was held in ill repute because it seemed so ephemeral and detached from value that could be easily recognized: land, gold, size of armies.