I think, he frankly doesn’t get it.
Here is why Bitcoin is valuable beyond speculation:
Nobody denies the value of the bitcoin blockchain. Agreed?
With that in mind, for any blockchain to work successfully, every transaction should have a small monetary reward, paid in the native currency – i.e. bitcoin.
I.e. bitcoin system records participants have to reward intermediaries for propagating these reliable records throughout the network.
Obviously, how much bitcoin is worth is subject to speculation…
And, yes, bitcoin does face competition from a long list of other blockchains.