The idea of paying money for goods is not new

The idea of sending money is not new

The idea of using meaningless ledger entries as money is not new

The idea of generating meaningless ledger entries via laborious mathematical procedures is new

But to presume that the (machine) labor involved gives the ledger entries value requires one to forget the most basic lessons of economics

I think it is and will be seen as a mark of shame on many otherwise-brilliant Austrian school economists to have fallen for this nonsense

The classical & Marxists notion of value as being based on labor creates unresolvable paradoxes, such as why trade occurs at all. With a single objective scale of value, a trade is either greater for lesser (in which case why would the one with the greater value agree to give it up for lesser?) or equal for equal (in which case why does anyone bother?)

So either the labor theory of value is wrong (even when the labor is machine labor or electricity or whatever) or all of human trade is pointless.

Instead, value is subjective, which does not mean arbitrary and made up. Rather, the value of a good is the highest use to which it may be put.

But Bitcoin has no use to which it may ultimately be put, because it does not exist. There are no Bitcoins. You have (in essence) a ledger entry saying how many Bitcoins Satoshi owes you for running some calculations for him, but he will never pay up and can never pay up because the units in which he is meant to pay you are made up nothings. You might as well have a ledger entry saying you own 8 jabberwockies.