Every other money that predates bitcoin in the long history of human civilization was valued for reasons other than its use as money. Cattle in Africa, postage stamps in prison, seashells and precious metals all have been used as money and fit this pattern. The only exception is fiat money something declared to be money by an authority but even national fiat currencies were once backed by something with prior value, like gold.

Bitcoin changed all that. Bitcoin had no prior value, and no one was forced to use it, yet somehow it came to be a medium of exchange. People who don’t understand and care little for bitcoin can nevertheless accept it as payment because they know it can be used to pay for something else or be exchanged into conventional money.