It's not semantic, it makes bitcoin a currency rather than a money, which makes it an irredeemable currency just like fiat, which makes it worthless.
Discussion
You can redeem your Bitcoin for immutable record-keeping created through energy expenditure, math and cryptography
At what rate?
The most free and open market rate that ever existed
When you realize you are watching the order book for blockspace buyers and energy sellers worldwide come to global consensus every 10 minutes without any central authority or trusted third party it’s really a sight to behold
That's a tremendous caveat.
Usually redemption means a fixed rate.
For example US citizens used to be able to exchange $20 in bank-notes at their local bank for a 1tz gold coin (ie actual $20).
The fixed rate meant that the paper was merely a stand-in for gold.
Now the US dollar is still kind-of backed by gold - the US Mint sells gold & silver coins for US dollars (or more precisely Federal Reserve Notes). This is the issuer "redeeming" its notes.
But the Mint does so at arbitrary "free market" rates, not at a fixed rate, so the dollar/FRN is not a stand-in for some fixed weight of gold.
Similarly, if Bitcoin can be used to store data at some fluctuating market rate, it cannot be a stand-in for a fixed volume of data storage. Rather, the data storage is yet another service that can be purchased with Bitcoin and not the ultimate source of value.
There’s no need for a derivative to trade at a fixed rate against the underlying: insurance is the perfect example. The cost of car insurance goes up as you rack up accidents, but the automobile insurance still derives its value from the fact that it can pay for damage your car causes. We don’t all pay the same rates to insure the same cars because our driving records and ability are not all the same. There are many variables. However, car insurance is still a derivative of cars and drivers.
The variable exchange rate, though, highlights the primary argument against Bitcoin as a usable money today: the volatility.
As long as the exchange rate for energy and immutable record keeping is volatile, so too will it follow that the relative value of the token of this exchange versus the rest of the world’s goods and services will be volatile.
So, I’ll concede that a bet on bitcoin is a bet on the eventual stabilization of this blockspace market, and that a permanently volatile blockspace market might lead to a permanently volatile (and thus unreliable) money
If Bitcoin can never be stable, then its upward trajectory might still make it a risk-on asset for young people saving for the long-term, but it won’t be a day-to-day medium of exchange and certainly can’t become a unit of account.
I expect, though, as so many other Bitcoiners, that as the dollar becomes a less reliable medium of exchange (CBDC, censorship, etc) and a less reliable unit of account (entrenched double digit inflation) people might consider alternatives and that this decay of the dollar might coincide with a general stabilization of the Bitcoin ecosystem as more participants and more capital join the party.
I recognize this is a bet on an uncertain future, but I feel comfortable making it with the available knowledge I’ve accumulated about all this stuff, and especially considering the drawbacks of the many possible alternatives.
Said shorter: it’s a tremendous caveat if and for as long as the market for blockspace/energy is volatile. If that market stabilizes (as Bitcoiners predict) then so too might the price (relative value against everything else).
The risk/reward proposition of bitcoin is that there is tremendous upside because this stabilization appears so uncertain to the vast majority of people.
The first person to cross the glass bridge is probably an engineer who crunched the numbers and concluded it wouldn’t collapse. But even as he takes his first steps, the outcome is uncertain.