By analogy, it would be the value of the currency as a currency, i.e. to facilitate productive financial transactions that would not otherwise occur. The reason non-speculators would ultimately want to have any.
Bitcoin doesn't generate intrinsic value from a business operation - it's just a digital version of a rock. There's no money for it to pay out. Therefore you have to limit the example to the exchange which gives it value, which again is a zero-sum game in a way that traditional markets for business and government equity and bonds is not.
Except that it makes the rocks not worth as much.
You had a corporation with a million dollar business and a million dollars in cash. It pays out the million dollars in cash as dividends. Now the rockholders have a million dollars in rocks and a million dollars in cash, when they used to have two million dollars in rocks. Their rocks decline in value by the amount of cash no longer inside the corporation.
> Bitcoin doesn't generate intrinsic value from a business operation
Sure it does.
Bob wants to buy something from El Salvador, the merchant in El Salvador wants payment in Bitcoin, so Bob has to buy some Bitcoin in order to pay the merchant. The more Bobs there are, the more valuable Bitcoin is as a currency, and the more the person holding the rock can get for the rock.
You, the holder of rocks, get the increase in business value as "rock price appreciation" rather than dividends, but you still get it.
So BTC for you is at the same time an asset AND a currency ?
How does it work ? It goes to the moon forever, so a loaf of bread cost goes ever higher forever ?
Nope, that is not the way it works. When you have ownership of a company (by holding stocks), the company can pay out a dividend and the price of the stock does not go down. On the contrary, the price of the stock may go up because the company has proven that it generates cash and will pay this cash out to shareholders periodically.
This is why companies viewed as assets have “intrinsic value” and something like BTC does not. If I own stock in a company that pays out dividends and the stock does go down, at least I still get money in the form of dividends. I can be assured that if the dividends continue (not a given), then the price of the underlying stock will “correct” to match the intrinsic value of the company over time.
Contrast that with BTC - I have no real way of knowing the “real” value of BTC. If the price goes down, then it may stay down forever as there is no way of accurately pricing it based on some real-world metric. It produces nothing, therefore this is why some people say it is not a good asset to own.