“To say Bitcoin’s value is completely made up and to say it’s not backed up by anything suggests that the speaker has failed to acknowledge the value of a project that has solved what was thought to be unsolvable.”

So…..it’s backed by a philosophy?

(shrugs)

OK.

if we are to accept the authors supposition that money is indeed inherently an illusion,

I’m not sure which author you’re talking about, but that’s the exact opposite of the point I was making. Further, I also implied (but did not explicitly state) that bitcoin was not an illusion, either.

Fiat currency is itself a grand experiment, and whether or not it works is not necessarily clear.

With that I agree.