Saifedean Ammous@saifedean
Value is not a physical thing
To all the people who think bitcoin can’t have value because it’s not tangible...
Tangible assets constitute the following percentage of the Mag7 market caps:
Nvidia: 0.66%
Apple: 1.38%
Tesla: 4.06%
Microsoft: 7.29%
Alphabet: 8.39%
Meta: 9.56%
Amazon: 16.28%
Combined weighted average: 5.79%
If you liquidated all of these companies’ physical assets, they wouldn’t amount to 6% of their valuation. There have been days in which the market caps of these companies have moved by more than the total value of their physical assets.
If 94% of the value of the most valuable companies on earth is non-physical, then value does not have to be physical.
If digital things have no value, then you should have no problem with giving me your computer to erase all the data from it. I will return your computer to you in the same exact physical form. I will just press a few buttons that remove all your data, photos, and contacts, and make it impossible for you to restore them. If value can only be tangible, then all of these digital things have no value, and you shouldn’t mind me deleting them as long as the devices return in their original state. I don’t think you would.
Technology, data, business knowledge, customer base, brands, and so much more are non-physical assets whose value likely exceeds that of all the planet’s physical objects and land. This is something most people understand in their daily lives, but because most people have no understanding of money, they do not understand how it applies to money, too.
Most people think their money is physical, but in reality, most fiat currencies today are 90%+ digital, and usually less than 10% of the supply is physical paper money. There are no stacks of dollars in your bank sitting in a box under your name, available for you to pick up at any time. A tiny fraction of the money is physical, and the rest is digital, manufactured in various quantities by your bank, government, central bank, and other pedophiles, in quantities based on pure vibes. People still give this non-physical fiat money value because it is the only money they can use with a bank account, since governments only license banks that use their local fiat shitcoin. There is no need for the money to be physical to work; digital fiat money works as well as physical fiat money; or as badly.
Bitcoin is an entirely digital money, but it is given value for far more intelligent and peaceful reasons than fiat money. You can read more about that in my books The Bitcoin Standard and The Fiat Standard, which you can buy from Amazon or TheSaifHouse.com.
A common objection to bitcoin’s value is: “But if people stop believing in the value of bitcoin it can lose all value.” But that is true of everything. If people stop believing in the value of gold, it would lose value and just become another worthless rock. If people stop believing in the value of electronic devices then Apple and Nvidia go to zero. If people stop believing in the value of Manhattan, then all Manhattan real estate goes to zero. If people discover that tomatoes are poisonous, they stop believing in the value of tomatoes, and the entire planet’s tomato industry goes to zero. Just because something is physical does not guarantee its value, as we can see from the infinite amount of sand and rocks on our Earth left completely untouched by human hands. Physical things can be valueless and non-physical things can have value. Value and physicality are two independent things that are orthogonal to each other. You are doing yourself a disservice if you are unable to benefit from the world’s most advanced money and best saving technology because you are unable to see that value can be non-physical in this one instance, when you have no problem seeing it elsewhere.
