From Goods to Money, 3

Does anything have any value where there is nobody? There is not such a thing as an intrinsic value, in actual fact: things do not have value for themselves, however potentially valuable they can be, until someone considers they have. Value is a consideration. Considerations are made by individuals. And life and history show that individuals happen to change their minds or not, for a number of reasons.

So when we say that a given money or a given good does have intrinsic value, we are saying that it is us who consider it has. We may consider it because it actually has a direct use for survival such as food, or because it is useful in some less direct way, and we may have been induced to such consideration by someone having personal profit. Anyway, any money or good is a store of value to the degree we consider it will continue in the future to be acknowledged and accepted as having value, whether intrinsic or not, and thus purchasing power, which will be in turn the result of considerations, and all these considerations as such may be subject to change in time.

This said, while all money has more or less all the other additional qualities above, not all types of money are equal with regards to having the so−called intrinsic value, to being store of value. On the contrary this is the important aspect to look more deeply into now.