Satoshi Notebook | The Myth of Intrinsic Value

The Myth of Intrinsic Value

True intrinsic value can only exist in what is universally interoperable between the minds of all rational actors - everything else is merely ascribed value.

The Fallacy of Gold

Gold is often held up as having intrinsic value, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Gold's value is largely usurpation value - value that someone else tries to impose on us through the argument "you ought to see this as valuable."

                        The common arguments for gold's value are circular:

                        • "It's valuable because others find it beautiful"

                        • "It's valuable because it can be used in electronics"

                        • "It's valuable because people have always valued it"

The Utility Paradox

If real-world utility determined monetary value, why aren't wheels or fire used as stores of value? These inventions arguably provided more utility to human civilization than any piece of gold. This paradox reveals a crucial truth: sound money isn't based on utility value at all.

                        The most useful inventions in human history - the wheel, fire, language - are never used as money. This proves that utility and monetary value are fundamentally different properties.
                    

The Truth About Sound Money

What made gold valuable as money wasn't its practical applications, but its sound money properties: scarcity, durability, divisibility, recognizability, and portability. Its supposed "intrinsic value" was always secondary.

Gold succeeded as money because of these properties:

                        • Relatively scarce and difficult to produce

                        • Durable and doesn't degrade

                        • Divisible into smaller units

                        • Universally recognizable

                        • Portable relative to its value

Bitcoin's Pure Approach

Bitcoin takes this understanding to its philosophical conclusion. Instead of pretending to have real-world utility, Bitcoin optimizes purely for sound money principles. It divorces itself entirely from the burden of requiring real-world applications.

                        Bitcoin's value proposition is purely monetary:

                        • Perfect scarcity (21 million)

                        • Absolute durability (digital)

                        • Infinite divisibility

                        • Universal verifiability

                        • Instant portability

The Medium vs The Value

Here we arrive at a crucial realization: money is not meant to be valuable in itself - it is a store OF value, a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE for value. This is a critical mental hurdle that many struggle to cross.

                        Just as a container ship isn't valuable for its own sake but for its ability to transport cargo, money's value comes from its ability to store and transfer human time, energy, and creativity.
                    

True Universal Value

Bitcoin achieves something unprecedented: it creates a form of value that is truly interoperable between all rational minds. We can all agree on exactly what Bitcoin is - it has objectively the best sound money principles ever designed, without the distraction of trying to justify its value through external utility.

This is why Bitcoin represents a philosophical breakthrough as much as a technological one. It is the first form of money that derives its value purely from its monetary properties, making it the most honest and transparent store of value ever created.