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One of the most striking phenomena of the last decade is how firmly large numbers of people believe that there is money in the Bitcoin system. They believe they are mining and buying coins, holding assets, exchanging currency, or owning something, even though it is easy to see that nothing is there. Not only that, but they give up large sums of money and expend vast quantities of energy to sustain that fiction.
The fiction originates from the Bitcoin white paper. In it, Satoshi Nakamoto used terms such as electronic cash, coins, ownership, transactions, and double spending. He suggested that the protocol and software he designed track something, that there is a thing to own, transfer, and spend. Yet all that his creation does is maintain a decentralized list showing which numbers are assigned to which cryptographic keys. People embraced the fiction and started treating that list as a ledger, as if the assigned numbers were balances expressing the amount of something.
Often, that “something” is claimed to be digital, although it is obvious that nothing digital exists in proportion to the numbers assigned. A person who has “50” assigned to their cryptographic key cannot point to fifty distinct files, data structures, or software artifacts. No digital objects exist that can be accessed, used, or moved.
Even more obvious is that there is nothing physical. Despite the common visual portrayal of Bitcoin as metal coins stamped with symbols, no such objects exist within the system. No set of fifty tangible units is stored, reserved, or delivered to the person whose key is assigned “50.”
But the most frequently made claims are that this “something” is comparable to fiat money, e-money issued by companies such as PayPal, tokens, or even corporate shares. Yet all of these are instruments that track liabilities. A liability means that an individual or organization is legally bound to act, resulting in the holder of the instrument receiving something.
That receiving may occur either directly or indirectly. Shares track a company’s liability to its shareholders. When companies decide to distribute profits, perform buybacks, or liquidate the business, they are legally bound to make direct payments to shareholders. PayPal’s e-money and tokens such as casino chips track the issuer’s obligation to redeem them for a stated amount of dollars or euros. In these cases, the holder of the instrument can directly demand something.
In other cases, the receiving occurs indirectly. Fiat money is created through bank lending, which means borrowers are legally bound to repay banks. The only way to meet that obligation is to produce goods, perform services, or offer labor to those who hold fiat money and, if the borrower is a government, to allow tax payments in that money. Holders of money do not have direct claims on individual borrowers, but they ultimately receive something from them because this repayment liability exists within the banking system. The instrument delivers actual goods, services, labor, and tax settlements precisely because it tracks liabilities.
In the Bitcoin system, no such instrument exists. The assignment of numbers to cryptographic keys does not express the amount of anyone’s liability. Consequently, no one in the system is legally bound to deliver anything, either directly or indirectly, to those who control these keys. The system assigns the numbers, prevents duplication, and allows reassignment. That is all.
Thus, there is no “something” in proportion to those numbers. No coins were mined, no asset units acquired, no money obtained. The entity implied by such expressions is a fiction, akin to a unicorn. References to digital objects, physical items, or liability instruments do not demonstrate its existence; they merely rephrase the fiction in more familiar terms.
Nakamoto’s creation is a cryptographic version of writing your name on a slip of paper, scrawling “50” next to it, and proclaiming that you own 50 units of an asset, all while being unable to point to anything beyond those two digits. If you decide to limit the maximum number you will write, this is not scarcity but an arbitrary rule applied to nothing.
What transforms this nothing into something people claim to buy, mine, and invest in is collective storytelling. In discussions of Nakamoto’s creation, the language of coins, money, and assets creates the illusion that such things exist within it.
Centralized exchanges amplify this fiction most powerfully by showing BTC and USD side by side on trading interfaces. This is a visual lie; it is like a store listing “Apples” and “Imaginary Apples” on the same price sheet. Because the interface treats them as interchangeable, the user assumes there is “something” behind the letters “BTC,” just as there is a liability behind “USD.”
Even critics participate in the fiction. By talking, for instance, about an “overvalued currency,” they assume its existence. They label the act of paying to have a number assigned to a key as “overvaluation,” yet there is no underlying “it” to evaluate. You cannot say the price is too high when there is nothing to compare it against. Since there are only numbers on the list, the word “overvalued” is nonsensical. You cannot overvalue the number 50; it is simply 50.
So it is not that Bitcoin is a bad, failed, or bubble currency. It is a fictional one. There is simply no currency in Nakamoto’s creation.