What does "value" mean? What gives a thing "value?" What does "value" look like?

I got to thinking about this recently, as a result of reading various Hive posts — as well as external articles —about value.

In the course of the past few weeks, we've seen SpaceX (briefly) reach a trillion dollar valuation, and I watched a podcast in which a financial expert with 40 years of experience emphatically insisted that Bitcoin would head to zero within a decade because "there is no real use for it."

Meanwhile, the world is eternally worried about the value of the US dollar, and the value of gold and silver.

On a more "local" level, many of us put considerable energy into discussing and fretting about the "value" of the Hive token... and — since I write these words from Hive — what we can do to boost the value of Hive.

Then I look at something like the stock market — which is still toying with new highs... and I ponder what gives it value, in the context of an otherwise fragile and dodgy economy, in which not only many people feel insecure about their jobs, many have lost jobs and have questionable prospects for finding employment.

So What Is VALUE?

In the traditional sense, "value" seemed to be tied to the utility of something; it was the figure arrived at between a willing seller and a willing buyer for some commodity or service, and how useful something was often had a major bearing on value.

Value was typically limited to things that were tangibly useful, like food... a sack of potatoes were valuable because we could eat them and save some to plant later. A saw was valuable because you could use it to cut wood and make planks to build things.

But then comes this thing called "investing" and that tends to throw a veil of mystery over how we look at value. And, as time goes on, it seems like value becomes less and less tangible with every year that passes.

Let's take the stock market: It used to be — for the most part — that a company's stock value was predicated on that company's products, sales and profitability. In other words, there were some tangible underpinnings, in the process of determining value.

In time, that has become less and less important, and was replaced by the potential of a company to create a profitable product/service sometime in the future, even if the timeframe was not clearly specified.

Pure Speculation?

For me, the scenario changed again with the SnapChat IPO in 2017, which valued the company at $33 billion on its opening day... and this was a company that not only had never made a dime, but also had absolutely no concrete plans for how it was going to generate substantial revenues or profits.

Which, of course, brings us to the issue of how we value cryptocurrencies.

When we take off our rose-colored glasses, are there any tangibles that make Ethereum worth nearly $2,000 and Hive worth $0.05? Or, closer to "home," what makes TRX (Steem raider Justin Sun's token) worth $0.02 in early 2020 but worth $0.33 today while Hive is worth $0.05?

Clearly "usefulness" doesn't have much to do with it. If you look at a rankings site like "dAppRadar" Hive still ranks near the top 50 chains among tens of thousands.

Which kind of leads us into the uncertain territory of rumors and speculation. Or a category I call dumb intangibles (like a superb restaurant underperforming because people don't like the color of their logo).

Answers, Anyone?

I'll be the first to admit that the cryptosphere is still in its "infant" stages. For those of us who've been watching Bitcoin since the beginning, it may feel like we have been doing this forever, but we really have only been here for a very short time, compared to the greater scale of everything.

Perhaps the answers to how we determine value is something that can only be established in the long term.

And we don't have a long term, yet...

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other engagement is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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2026.07.06 01:20 PDT
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