>The other way is to consider it as an abstraction of value independent of these tokens.
What I honestly can't comprehend is that people somehow want this but then they twist their brain somehow into wanting something even more contradictory. Humans are loss averse, so the first thing they do when they hear of a loss is to shoot the messenger. In economics that messenger is the interest rate. The price signal known as the interest rate isn't allowed to fall into negative territory. The price signal that tells everyone in the economy that there is too much financial capital is now gone. People will now accumulate financial capital i.e. money and money like assets (bonds) above and beyond what debtors actually want because the debtors have been silenced. Their opinion doesn't matter. Only the opinion of the saver who wants to shove the losses and risks onto someone else is being listened to.
At the end, people are surprised to hear that they have accumulated way too much financial capital than the economy can handle and that their financial capital is actually worth much less than they thought.
Why didn't anyone warn them that this is occurring? Oh right, they shot the messenger. An interest rate below zero means that there is too much financial capital, nobody wants your bloody money rich guy, and that the biggest savers should reduce the amount they are saving, yes, that means the rich must spend off a greater portion of their savings than the poor which decentralizes money into the hands of those who need it the most.
I am honestly tired of this. Conservatives and hardcore capitalists shout "central planning!?!" or "price controls!?!" at everything but the moment you point out that a 0% interest rate is an artificial price control they will fall silent or think they are genuinely owed the enslavement of the young.