It exists only in human mind, not in reality. In my mind I am the richest person in the world just like you are the owner of Bitcoins. In fantasy, everything is possible.
In my mind I have around 1500 BTC, but in reality I won't be accepted by the network if I told them so. So is it really in fantasy?
If a coffee shop give me coffee because I told them via Bitcoin software that quantity is money that doesn't make my statement true. Money is not quantity, but a thing measured with quantity.
Money is
anything that is accepted by a community of people as a medium of exchange. Whether if it's physically (banknotes, coins) or digitally represented, in this case an immutable ledger, if some of us agree that it's useful, its units will start having value.
Number is an abstraction, it holds no value and it is impossible to compare it to the value of the coffee to find out whether the "exchange" is beneficial or not.
It depends on that number. If the number
- Cannot be erased no matter the excuse.
- Can only be transacted by the owner.
- Can be accessed by anyone in the world 24/7/365.
Then, I don't find any reasons why it shouldn't be valuated.
Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't exist and all you have is numbers. Numbers that express the ownership of nothing.
Just because it isn't used for expressing the ownership of governments' debts, doesn't mean that it can't.