The value lies in the activity.

Actual money isn’t intrinsically valuable and same applies to cryptocurrencies. What matters is only that it is in fact used in trade and exchanges.

The value lies in the use of the cryptocurrency. It’s not that the exchanges and platforms use cryptocurrencies because the cryptocurrencies have value. Rather the cryptocurrencies have value because the exchanges and platforms have value. And this is due to the blockchain technology.

Or rather what we mean by crypto monetary value is made manifest in and through the activities of exchange and the myriad things we will do with blockchain technology. And once we see things that way round, it will now seem rather strange to say that cryptocurrencies are just worthless stuff. It looks that way and we became puzzled in the first place only because we tricked ourselves into separating out cryptocurrencies from their use in exchange and platform development.

Our problem was how to explain how certain stuff had value. So, we started looking for another kind of stuff to carry that value. And this is blockchain technology.

That is, we already committed to a particular view of what an explanation would look like. The solution was to change our view of what would count as an explanation or indeed whether one was actually needed at all.

We solve the problem when we dissolve the source of our puzzlement.