Recap : How to Value Cryptocurrencies ( and a note on International Political Economy )

TLDR : 

Cryptocurrencies are currently weapons of mass enfeeblement, implicitly allowed by states, in a passive strategy of mutually assured vulnerability. There WILL be a time in the future when international treaties are signed regarding the use of cryptocurrencies, but I think it has not yet happened in a very structured way yet.

Implicitly, nationstates condone NGO-cryptocurrencies, simply by not making non-state currency issuers illegal. Part of this is basic international political economy ... each state has an incentive to destabilise every other state's currency. In short, cryptocurrencies run by NGOs are a hedge against international tensions ... the need to hedge against this goes away when you reach Star Trek-level one-world-order. Not too soon. :)

• Type 1 : money-supply hedges ( behaves like gold )
• Type 2 : technology infrastructure ( behaves like tech companies )
• Type 3 : voting infrastructure ( behaves like vote buying )

How to value cryptocurrencies :

It might come as a small surprise that there are frameworks for valuing crypto. It's generally well-documented, about how nationstate currencies are first exchanged for cryptocurrencies, and the how they are subsequently governed. It's only as arcane ( arguably less arcane ) than figuring out how much any nationstate currency is worth on any day. I avoid using the popular term 'fiat' as both are fiat in my view.

Yes, basically its down to guns/germs/steel. Taxes denominated in fiat are meaningless. Cryptocurrencies are basically international NGOs with their own private currency and central bank.

• 1. The demand for cryptocurrencies comes from the fact that the governance of money supply is transparent, and in some cases capped. This is less true of nationstate fiat and guns/germs/steel, therefore the cryptocurrency asset class exists as a hedge against nationstate fiat. Above refers to the low-tech cryptocurrencies which behave like commodities. 
• 2. The high-er-tech cryptocurrencies function to implement governance over guns/germs/steel entities ... and these are basically seeking to displace existing nationstate mechanisms for the governance of physical objects and physical trade. Basically it's a power grab, instead of letting say China and the US govern a business transaction involving 1 MM USD, 1 ton of bricks, and 1 ton of fish, the governance layer is moved to an "NGO" and implemented on a blockchain protocol.
• 3. Finally, some cryptocurrencies are actually involved in voting power over money supply, and the governance protocols, for example. So that creates a more nuanced model of demand.

To recap, let's qualify fiat as being of two varieties, statefiat and non-statefiat. State/non-state is an orthogonal dimension to crypto/non-crypto.

• Statefiat : traditionally non-crypto : will inevitably include more crypto implementations. Popular hashtag hashtag #cbdc, whereas the "d" may or may not be implemented using cryptocurrency - there are various use-cases for not/doing so.
• Non-statefiat : has always existed as non-crypto, but was harder to govern, so crypto technology basically enabled non-statefiat to be taken more seriously. This is/was the current/initial main motivation for cryptocurrencies. The arguments about whether non-state organisations should be take seriously is not new. Is the Catholic Church more powerful, or is China? Is Islam more powerful, or is Singapore?

The dichotomy decays slightly for geopolitical reasons. When every state wants their own statefiat to be the fiat franca, then every state has a non-zero motivation to destabilise every other state's statefiat. This is why states did/have not simply banned cryptocurrencies across the board.

It is a very simple international political economic / IPE situation.