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I agree with you, but I think the spirit of the article is to acknowledge the value of bitcoin as a technical solution to a problem we thought was simply unsolvable.

It probably shouldn't have gone into the economic value of bitcoin specifically, since it doesn't address most of the economic arguments against bitcoins.

>the real value of most paper currencies comes, circularly, from the fact that we've decided to settle on this set of hard-to-counterfeit pieces of paper, not a different one.

We can get more specific than this. US citizens use the US dollar because the law says that US taxes must be paid in dollars and because whenever a credible competitor to the dollar has arisen (like the use of casino chips in Las Vegas) the US Secret Service shuts it down.

can't help wondering how much of gold's value is derived from the fact that, circularly, people think it has value.

or for that matter, any human activity's.

It is. Gold's actually a particularly good example since its speculative value is much higher than its actual value.

You implying that there are things that have intrinsic, non-(social|market)-determined monetary value?

I don't think he meant monetary value, he just meant value.

The gold in the plating on my headphone jack has intrinsic value to me, measured nebulously in its quality and reliability. It has value to me, but it has no value to the market. My demand for gold-plated headphone jacks is currently zero and my headphones will never be a part of market supply. Supply/demand cancel out, so the market ignores me, and I ignore the market. But the value is still there.

Intrinsic value can indirectly affect the market by increasing demand. Obviously, at some point in the past, I had demand for a gold-plated headphone jack, and the market supplied it at a specific rate of exchange.

The question is, how does the value of intrinsic properties of gold, such as its ability to conduct electricity, compare to the value derived entirely from social factors, like its history as a medium of exchange and its current status as a trading commodity?

Social value is not intrinsic value, but it's still real value. The fact that everyone agrees something has value means I can trade it. We're getting extremely close to monetary value but not quite there yet. In theory, the socially-determined value of a currency could be measured in the same abstract life-enhancement unit as real intrinsically-determined value, and this unit still doesn't have to be money.

Monetary value isn't necessary until you actually participate in the market. And so I guess there is a couple of questions:

(a) If you could come up with a unit to measure all value, how does the intrinsic value of gold compare to the social value of gold?

(b) How does the intrinsic value of gold's effect on its market value compare to the social value of gold's effect on market value.

Sorry, I don't subscribe to the intrinsic value theory.

If the context is strictly investment, intrinsic value (aka "wealth") is not an especially useful concept. If your context is marketing, it might be more useful, though questions like the one asked of gold, and similar in the context of bitcoin, are mostly an intellectual curiosity. And either way, there is yet no known way to measure intrinsic value.

For example if you want to compare the value of a solar-powered calculator in 2011 to the value of a viking longship in 1011, market value doesn't work because the markets are simply not compatible. But there is still value there, both relative to people of the time and in an absolute sense.