> the same people who swear cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value and are therefore worthless continuously say “there is no problem because the government can simply create as much money as it wants out of thin air.” So they are implicitly saying that any currency has value because people believe it has value but don’t extend that generosity towards other assets where there is a clearly demonstrated group ascribing value to it.

I don't know if I'm one of those people, but I'd say that no currency has any intrinsic value. Land, labour and production capital have intrinsic value, but I don't even see gold as having intrinsic value; it only has value because we agreed to consider it valuable. The value of any currency comes from the economy that uses it to pay for stuff. Dollars are used to pay for a lot of stuff. Bitcoin was supposed to be used to pay for a lot of stuff, but it seems to have turned into an investment toy. Actually using it to pay for stuff is slow and expensive, and only really worth it for transactions where anonymity is important enough to make the cost worth it. And that seems to be mostly market for crime.

But please correct me if this is outdated and there's now a thriving economy of people buying all sorts of goods with Bitcoin.