I would argue bitcoin is tangible for the purposes of the argument presented in the sense that you can lock it away from access to third parties ("physically own it"). "tangible" == "not paper" == "no third party risk".
Maybe it'd be better to say: "Anything that doesn't involve some kind of a promise and can be owned unconditionally will go up" instead?
Unfortunately, in some kind of an economic meltdown situation, bitcoin might become generally unusable for a while. Temporarily nonexistant.
The word tangible means 'perceptible by touch' or 'cear and definite; real' but the
etymology for tangibility has more to do with mental sense than corporeal status. It appears to be used to connote realness as opposed to fantasy, delusion or illusion.
I have been thinking a lot about
tangibility and how it applies in monetary science in an attempt to formulate a rule or theorem.
In the Information Age I think
organized information,
information objects, can have properties of tangibility just as clear and definite, or real, as
physical objects. Thus, for something to be
real it does not have to be
corporeal.
The Bitcoin Magazine exists in both a corporeal (paper) and incorporeal (PDF) form. Both are both clear and definite thus they are equally real. One is an information object the other a physical object. But this distinguishment does not go to tangibility as they both exist in the real world and are not figments of imagination, fantasy, delusion or illusion. We would agree that the Bitcoin Magazine Issue #1 is tangible, regardless of of paper or PDF form, and flying fire breathing black dragons are not tangible.
A bitcoin is real because it has clear and definite organization of information therefore making it an information object in the real world and is not a figment of imagination, fantasy, delusion or illusion. Therefore, a bitcoin is tangible.
Anyone up for logically attacking the assertions?