I like Saylor a lot, like 85%. Normally I'm super on board, because he thinks of these really cool metaphors, and like all metaphors, they illuminate the source domain in a thought-provoking way.

My annoyance w/ the digital energy thing is that on a few occasions he switches over and acts as if it's not a metaphor anymore. And, like @Undisciplined said, once you leave the territory of metaphor, the btc = digital energy statement is literally false. And you can bet that he is 100% aware of this.

Still, as a vehicle to expand understanding, the metaphor is great, and Saylor is great. Given how much the guy talks about btc, it's not surprising that, like everyone, he gets over his own skies sometimes.

As a pedantic person with training in physics, my main problem with it is just that it's literally false.

As an economist, I don't feel like it's the best way to describe what money is, but I get why it helps some people start thinking about money.

The shortest statement of the problem is this: energy is strictly conserved, which is in stark contrast to the win-win nature of economic transactions.

I like to think of bitcoin as a tool that efficiently facilitates the exchange of energy. The POW and code allows an exchange of joules for sats which represents something that can be redeemable for potential energy. And it's done so digitally. But doesn't mean Bitcoin IS energy that is digital, that isnt a thing.

I find the responses here interesting. It sounds like you all are saying money is not energy. Not really even a question about bitcoin. I agree with you there. It isn't. He may be overstating his idea/explanation.

It has been helpful for me to think about my life/time. You could use the term "life-force" as something. I'm not sure its energy technically but we don't really have a term for it. I spend that on work. I get something in return. Dollars. Thinking about money as a battery has been a useful thought experiment to help shift my thinking. This idea has been useful for me whether or not it is technically accurate to classify money as energy.

I wouldn't say Bitcoin IS energy, Bitcoin is backed by energy.

Saying it is energy is like saying gold standerd era dollars ARE gold when they are paper backed by gold.

Ever heard the expression "Time is money".

It's similar.

This triggers people who are on the spectrum or just unnecessarily pedantic.

The two concepts are extremely coupled, but not bi-directionally fungible instantaneously.

Bitcoin is ENERGY stored in the most secured and brilliant way.

What people do every day, every minute? People are always in a continuous run for gathering energy, in many different forms: to eat, to store, to trade, to use it as money, to use it as savings. People depend 100% of energy. People are spending also large amounts of resources just for STORING energy.

And then Bitcoin comes and fix all of these problems: Bitcoin is pure storage for energy, secured by mathematical algorithms, something that will be eternal. If you own Bitcoin YOU OWN ENERGY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Who doesn't understand this, is a moron and knows nothing about Bitcoin.

I'm one of those people that doesn't like the phrase. Not because I don't understand Saylor's point. I do. Bitcoin is proof of work (i.e. energy expenditure). Work has value. Therefore Bitcoin is a persistent store of the value that the work represents, and you should be able to trade it for equivalent work in the future. Actually, you should be able to trade it for more work, because the amount of work to make a bitcoin increases over time.

Fiat, by contrast, is proof of nothing. There's nothing that anchors it to an equivalent in the future other than vague beliefs, which can always shift with the winds of change.

But I don't like the phrase because it's needlessly imprecise. It sounds a bit like marketing hype / scientific mumbo-jumbo, even though it isn't. But I think that's off-putting to people who aren't already on board. Overall, I prefer sticking to the term proof of work as it's more precise and promotes better understanding

It’s a hard thing to explain to a newbie and I don’t think you could open with that to most people. But I agree with him so can’t offer an alternative. Michael Saylor gives some really interesting perspectives and the ‘digital energy’ makes sense as an explanation. Especially in contrast to fiat or gold etc. it looks like a highly efficient battery…

Some people only see; energy consumption + mining = bitcoin (and Bitcoin can be spent for future energy needs) but it can go a lot deeper.

Sorry! No help at all.

Thanks for tag @nemo

I don't like it because it's wrong. Not a little bit wrong, but totally wrong. It is adjacent to something true, but adjacency still allows you to be 100% wrong e.g. bitcoin is truth, but "blockchain technology" is gibberish.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so when people don't understand something, they will gladly take something that sounds nice that aligns with their views. But this is no different from faith or belief in bitcoin, something I do not have -- what I have is understanding.

Energy is related to value in that all things that are valued by human life are based on what is known as EMBODIED ENERGY, which cannot be measured accurately due to the complexity of inputs.

The nature of life is to use energy to reduce entropy by building order. Bitcoin maximizes this property, and it does so by LITERALLY BEING INFORMATION. It is information that is MINIMALLY LOSSY, which as I explained previously, maximizes energy capacity. Bitcoin is energy any more than a map that tells you where to find an oilfield.

Spouting gibberish is what arrogant people do who cannot psychologically handle the discomfort of knowing something is of great significance and failing to understand its true nature. This is reflective of a mix of Saylor's intellect and disposition. That he is smarter than other people means nothing to me, just like I do not accept "moral relativism". My standards are absolute (not that I meet my own standards).

One of the bast analogy I heard about Bitcoin as energy was from Pierre Noizat a Bitcoin OG who was in the Satoshi's mailing list and founder of the oldest exchange still active (Paymium in France) He basically explained that if Bitcoin is not energy per say, it's information which is kind of an indirect form of energy, or a potential form of energy. He stated that Bitcoin could be considered as an IKEA manual, which allow the user of the IKEA product to save a lot of his own energy while using it. So in that sens Bitcoin is energy actually, as a bottle of water is pure energy according to Einstein but not usable. Bitcoin is not energy in it's actual form, but it allows news forms of energies to be unleashed thanks to valuable informations it contains

I like it. I think doing commerce is exchanging energy. Bitcoin is a store of energy for mankind.

My favorite responses from the thread are of @elvismercury and @jeff.

I think Salyor is pretty precise in describing Bitcoin as digital energy. It is as accurate as any metaphor could be!

However, metaphor is not exactly the 'thing' it describes. And, I am pretty sure the digital energy metaphor may not work for Bitcoin from a specific POV.

2nd if Saylor came up with this metaphor at the time Bitcoin mining was getting attacked as a waste of energy, I would give him a couple more brownies for the metaphor.

In physics, words carry precise meanings. Using the way energy is defined in physics, this analogy is pure garbage. As someone with technical training, he knows that. Yet he uses it.

He is a salesman, with a pretty bad track record at that. Check how badly he performed in the dotcom bubble. But he has huge bags betting other people's money on Bitcoin's ngu belief. So, he will do anything he can to pump those bags. He knows the cult tendencies of the BTC crowd, and he knows how to talk to them, like a sleezy guru.

If he truly cared about Bitcoin, he'd actually contribute to its utility. E.g. he could have put some of his Bitcoin to use in the LN for a long time, yet he still hasn't, even though he mentioned it to please his simps.

In short, this quote tells you about what kind of person he is and his true intentions, thus triggering people who are actually putting in the work to make BTC useful and advancing it as a store of value and a medium of exchange.

I like his newer mantra “Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace”. I think this is intuitive for n00bs and technically accurate.

I think it was a novel idea that he invested his companies unused money into btc. This was a big step in the right direction. But you have to remember you will never be right 100% of the time.

Keep in mind that it's also better to believe in what you believe. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have been the hope for a democratic decentralized world economy for the last decade and are inching closer to this narrative day by day. Finally, what Bitcoin is doing right now, it's soaring and roaring. So, enjoy this phase and keep HODLing.

To those of us versed in science the word energy means something very specific and fundamental to the universe. Human-oriented monetary value is something entirely separate. “Digital energy” simply doesn’t exist, it is at best a metaphor, at worst it is incomprehensible nonsense. Saylor is an engineer and should know this which is why his insistence on repeating the term baffles me. My best guess is that he knows it’s just a figure of speech, but he uses it as though it’s actually true because he finds it resonates with non-sciencey folk.

The first time I heard him say it, my mind start thinking abstract drawing narrative in the different interpretation about Bitcoin

its wrong