That statement keeps resurfacing whenever the market goes through turbulence — and once again, it’s sparked a wave of pushback.

Steve Hanke, a long-time crypto critic and Johns Hopkins professor, recently doubled down on this claim during a period of heightened pressure across crypto markets. But many analysts argue this view misses the bigger picture entirely.

On-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. called the assertion flat-out wrong, pointing out that Bitcoin isn’t collapsing — it’s correcting after years of exponential growth. According to him, BTC is gradually embedding itself into the global financial system, not fading from it. Corrections are part of maturation, not evidence of worthlessness.

Others shifted the debate toward trust and monetary history. One trader made a sharp comparison: if Bitcoin has “no value” because it isn’t backed by a government, then what gives fiat money its worth? The U.S. dollar itself has lost significant purchasing power over decades, yet remains widely accepted because people trust the system behind it.

That’s where Bitcoin’s strongest counterargument lies. Despite volatility, millions of participants assign it value every day — through mining, transactions, custody, and long-term holding. Markets don’t price assets at hundreds of billions of dollars by accident.

You can debate Bitcoin’s future. You can question its volatility.

But calling it “zero value” in a world actively using, trading, and integrating it?

That argument is getting harder to defend.