Well, when the intrinsic value of something is lower than its cost to extract or produce it has for any practical effect no value and money paper net value is negative.

You could, but nobody would because it is cheaper to use non money paper even if the money didn't have its added value given by law. But then again most money is bits in bank accounts, paper money isn't going to last long.

No, it would not. If the probability to get caught is too low the law is unenforceable and the government should just give up instead of wasting taxpayer money. If the probability to get caught is something remotely worth the trouble 2-3 times the value is more than enough.

Sure but that does not mean the punishment must be 10 or 100 times the value of what you stole. Twice the value is a fair amount.

Bits in your bank account cannot.

Sure, but nobody does that. Considering you are giving value to the currency by law the lower its cost the better. That is why no fiat currency in existence has any innate value.

Innate value is intrinsic value. In this context innate and intrinsic are synonyms. And no, I haven't said anything that would imply sand or anything else (including dollars) should or should not be currencies. Sand does have innate value though, albeit low, differently from dollars.

Fiat money does have value, and again, nowhere I said or implied it does not, but it has no innate value, in the very same way bitcoins do not.

Like Zimbabwean dollars?

Any value comes from the use we apply to stuff. "Innate value" comes from the value something has on its own, without some external source adding value to it. Gold does have innate value because it would still be required to create many things even if all governments in the planet ceased to be tomorrow. The money in your bank account does not. If you have some cash it may still be used to make a good fire and warm your feet, though.

That said, yes, gold current value comes more from it being used as a currency (and stored increasing its scarcity) than from its innate value, and therefore the former is considerable greater than the latter.

That is virtual value that can cease to be in a moment, in the same way bitcoin value can. Sure, governments with strong economies can keep their currencies healthy, but any economy can dive nose down very quickly and unpredictably given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Gold has some innate value in the sense that it can be used directly to build stuff. It is just a much lesser value than its current market value at the moment. Fiat currencies have absolute no innate value.

No modern currency has innate value.

Many? More like "a few" paranoid ones, as in "a very few", and it is a completely ineffective measure anyways.

The problem is that it goes all way up to Ballmer.

M$ is losing more and more of its competent developers to Google, Apple and other companies. It is in no position to start firing people for Internet posts. And no, they can't take legal action against him because of this post. The post was very generic, no specific information was disclosed.