The writer was just raising some issues based on speculations and maybe addressing them. I almost slept while reading the article.
I wrote the article, by the way.
The article itself TBH I found hard to read and understand in places
I know a large section of it sounds boring and possibly too technical but it was originally supposed to be an opinion piece for Bitcoin Magazine (which has a more knowledgable reader base), which itself was put together from talking points I made in
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-doesnt-exist-or-how-satoshi-nakamoto-tells-lies-to-people-5342137, when I emailed them and didn't get a response after two weeks (they have a strict "unique, not published anywhere else policy"), I sent the draft to Coinfomania, hoping they'd publish it, but the same fate happened there too.
So I ended up sitting on the article for almost a month until while I was doing my daily read through Medium I found a huge swathe of "bitcoin is a Ponzi" posts. That's when I hit the nuclear button and published the draft on my own blog.
Speaking of that, here's yet another such post I encountered:
https://medium.com/personal-finance/bitcoin-is-a-giant-ponzi-scheme-ae4263008220Right now, Bitcoin is a textbook Ponzi scheme:
It has no intrinsic value. You can’t eat it, wear it, or heat your house with it. Unlike gold — which at least feels nice and looks shiny on your spouse’s ring finger — you can’t even see Bitcoin.
By this logic, bank credit that people borrow doesn't have intrinsic value either.
It is not a productive asset. It’s not a factory that produces an item. It’s not a field that produces cucumbers. It’s not a firm that offers a service. It contributes nothing to society.
Neither is the money printer that prints limitless amounts of cash. In reality, no currency is going to be a "productive asset" (and gold, silver et al are not used as currency).
It has zero underlying value. None. It’s not backed by land or commodities or — as with national currencies like USD or GBP — the threat of violence (in the form of wage garnishment, asset seizure, and imprisonment.)
It has minimal utility. Because the price fluctuates so wildly (what healthy currency doubles in a month?), it’s virtually ineffective as a safe representation of value or means of trade.
Its value is solely derived from the trust that the price will continue to rise indefinitely. That there will always be new investors to buy out the old ones.
All answered in my counter-post. In the case of the last argument, just replace "subjects" (i.e. lenders) in the article with "investors". The "users", "claimants", "people receiving money", and such are the full node programs, as I explained in the article.
It is surprisingly difficult to explain in simple terms why bitcoin has value, utility, does not depend on new users, etc. without bringing up convoluted examples such as skin economies in gaming
You could also print paper BTC.They can be touched as well. 
