Just like in every other pyramid scheme. The believers buy/hold the coupons because they believe there will be more and bigger suckers in the future to whom which they can unload them. The unbelievers refuse to accept them because they believe exactly the same as the believers do but are unwilling to take the risk that they may end up being the last suckers holding the bag.
A persuasive dude could start a sect/movement/commune tomorrow and convince his herd to exclusively use sealed and stamped jars with his farts in them as money. Doesn’t mean anyone else would ever accept them as anything of value in an exchange. Would this scenario disprove Mises’ regression theorem?
My No Arbitrage Theorem states that $10 bills would/should exchange for exactly TWO $5 bills on the market. If dozen morons happen to accept a single $5 bill in exchange for a $10 bill, would that disprove my theorem?
In the Ithaca Hour thread I mentioned the problems inherent in every theory/theorem about markets and human behavior. There will always be islands of stupidity and irrational blind faith within humanity that would seem to falsify it, unsustainably so. On the other hand, Keynes concluded that – sustainability, rationality, logic, or plausability notwithstanding – we’re all dead in the end.
EDIT: Did USSR and North Korea prove that no such thing as the Calculation Problem exists?