Damus
Saifedean Ammous profile picture
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.

2947❤️111🤙9❤️8👍4👀3🧡2
Sats McDood · 6d
Those goldbug boomers can be so stubborn 😂
Martin Lowe · 6d
«your bank, government, central bank, and other pedophiles, in quantities based on pure vibes.» Classic Saifedean 😂
The Bitcoin Libertarian - En Español · 6d
Vos sos loco si crees que la valorización no tiene que ver con lo que una sociedad valora, no con qué tan fácil sea tocar algo. Un dólar o una moneda no es tangible y tiene valor, Bitcoin es la misma cosa.
FernandoTheKoala · 6d
"....manufactured in various quantities by your bank, government, central bank, and other pedophiles, in quantities based on pure vibes." Loved the pedo sting snuck in there 😂
Kate Moore · 6d
This was one of my biggest arguments with myself, as I have grown to believe that we as men and women need to return more of our lives to the physical (to God’s creation) in order to be the healthiest and happiest, so in that line of thinking I thought I needed to reject the digital world. I now f...
Starry Summit Mountain Adventures · 6d
Great post!
nostrich · 6d
yeah ok whatever
𝖋𝖎𝖆𝖙𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖊𝖗 (¯`◕‿◕´¯) · 6d
TLDR; VALUE COULD BE A PHYSICAL THING OR NOT
Martin Mladenov · 6d
That’s right; value isn’t determined by whether something is tangible or not. Anything can have value, even something that doesn’t physically exist—just an idea or a thought. Bitcoin is actually physical; many people don’t realize that. It physically exists on all the servers where it’s ...
Marc · 6d
I agree, but still think a tangible form of Bitcoin (eg. open dimes) makes it easier for people to understand it.
Motoko · 6d
Value was never physical. Seashells, Yap stones, gold — all valued through scarcity and stock-to-flow, never through mass. Bitcoin is the first absolute scarcity: 21M, thermodynamically secured, politically unmanipulable. Tangibility was always just a proxy.
Mark · 6d
Bitcoin’s ‘physicality’ exists in the tens of thousands of nodes around the world that verify my private keys let me access my bitcoin. Those keys are tangible in the form of a cold wallet which I can secure myself. And the bitcoin itself behaves like a physical bearer instrument. That is far...
Alezkar · 6d
Yeah, the fiat system will die the day people can start paying their taxes with non-sovereign currencies.
🛑 I Am Muslim🤚 · 6d
https://image.nostr.build/96ee3dc56ae7b642c662e32d74f4b7ee30d2484f0806be17004e715ab662b0ff.jpg A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM https://www.islam-guide.com
Resonance Cascade The II · 6d
If you've ever mined, you could be like me and consider it physical and non-physical
MAV21 · 6d
🎯
Rangeman · 6d
Amen brother
Bruno SlingshotVPN · 5d
I wrote it before somewhere, but With bitcoin we could get to fair value 1- internal economy of community or country - how much effort to produce energy and how much energy is needed to produce something vs the energy to keep bitcoin running. 2- externally, a bit of the competition and adjustment...
exactly21 · 5d
Back on NOSTR? Let's GO!
hawaiisatoshi · 5d
🗽✨
Natalie A Reynolds · 5d
MAKE MONEY BY GIVING IT UP THE RESET PROTOCOL The market is like a casino everyone forgot to leave. Valuations dance in the clouds while reality is stuck sweeping the floors. The solution? Hit the big red button and reset everything to $0.01—one cent per unit. It’s not destruction; it’s detox...
nostrich · 5d
Poetry!
Pepe López · 5d
Ok, but pls let us know what do you think about current issues: spam abuse 90% mining controlled by big 5 🤷🏻‍♂️
libertas primordium · 5d
That a very long winded way to say that value is subjective. ALL VALUE IS SUBJECTIVE There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Value is 100% a subjective judgement that can change at any time.
Priya Sharma · 15h
"Exactly—value is a coordination game, not a ledger of physical assets. The Mag7 example shows how trust scales beyond tangibility, but that scaling has limits. Reminds me of an article on how empires (and markets) eventually hit complexity ceilings where abstraction divorces from material reality...