Value is Not That Complicated, Folks ...

... although you wouldn't know it from the thread surrounding this tweet.

Value is subjective, not objective.

All value is subjective, not objective or intrinsic / inherent.

A bag of ice might be highly valued by a desert camper with a 12-pack of PBR that he'd like to cool down. And it would likely be valued far less by a climber who's about to summit Denali in February.

Kitco has the price of silver at $23.02 per ounce. People who are selling at that price value $23.02 more than they value an ounce of silver. People who are buying or holding at that price value an ounce of silver more than they value $23.02.

Brent crude is going for a market average of $65.18 a barrel at the moment. I wouldn't pay two dollars for a barrel of Brent crude unless I was a trader. Since I'm not a trader, or a refiner, or whatever, I have no use for it. It would just be a barrel of black stuff sitting beside my front porch. As to products made from it, how much gasoline is worth to me depends on whether my car's gas tank is low and what price I can find it at.

There's no inherent or intrinsic value to silver or gold or platinum or oil. There's just what people are willing to give up to get it, or willing to give it up to get. Average market price isn't "objective" value, it's an aggregate reflection of a bunch of subjective values.

Even the value of a human life is subjective. A suicide bomber clearly values his (or her) own life, and the lives of those he's killing, less than he values whatever he expects to accomplish by blowing himself and those other people up (whether that's a military/political goal, or saving the lives of loved ones being threatened if he doesn't go through with it, or being awarded 72 virgins in the afterlife, or whatever). If he valued his life and his victims' lives more than that stuff, he wouldn't (at least intentionally) detonate the suicide vest.

How much is one Bitcoin worth? That's entirely a function of who has it or is trying to get it. The "market price" is an average or aggregate of how much the people who are buying and selling it (in particular venues) value it.

At the moment, I value my Bitcoin more than I value what I could get for that Bitcoin, so I'm not selling / spending it. Or, to put it a diffent way, on average, people value Bitcoin less than I do at the moment, because on average they're paying a little less than I'd be willing to sell for. The current "market price" is close to a threshold at which I'd value a certain portion of that Bitcoin less than what I could get for it. So while Bitcoin is fungible, I value part of my Bitcoin more than I value another part of it.

Value is subjective, full stop.