After spending 10 years thinking about Money & Bitcoin, here's the simplest explanation I can come up with:
Money is a technology to move Value across Space, Time, and Scale.
Value is the utility humans derive from Goods & Services.
Value is highly subjective, and it changes across Time and Space.
Unbeknownst to them, Economists have defined these functions as:
- Store of Value (Time)
- Medium of Exchange (Space)
- Unit of Account (Scale)
Throughout History, no monetary system has managed to satisfy all 3 functions of Money at once. This is where the idea of Backing Money and the necessity of separating Money and Currency come from.
This trade-off can be described as a Money Trilemma: you can optimize for 2, but not all 3.
Gold is great at Time & Scale, but not Space.
Fiat is great at Space & Scale, but not Time.
Until the invention of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is the first form of Money that successfully excels at all 3 functions simultaneously.
It achieves that by perfecting all the properties of hashtag#Money, with no extra room for improvement:
#Bitcoin is:
- Infinitely Divisible
- Instantly Portable
- Forever Durable
- Mathematically Finite (what is mistakenly called Scarcity)
- Perfectly Fungible
Bitcoin is the final Evolution of Money.
The World just hasn’t figured it out yet.
Replies (42)
Nicely said Matteo 👏
The real
@Matteo Pellegrini is here. Give him a follow and your support!
View quoted note →great thoughts, I’m gonna have to read it a few times, at least 🙂
& you forgot to put in the Bitcoin is: the future
Yes and as a person who really needs things broken down to where a 5 year could grasp—he did a fantastic job!!
& the more I read it, the more I like it
Nice said I would add that Economist forgot about Positive feedback loop what is actually the tool to messure purchasing power of bitcoin. Bitcoin has positive feedback loop to attract more users. The more users start using it purchasing power goes up and all users get advantages of it. Purchasing power is increased and the one who spent now needs to use more energy to get back what is spent. And the other side that accept now is going after higher purchasing power also to get advantage of using bitcoin. It is actually linear line with one direction and that is higher purchasing power 🍊🍊🍊
I guess saying “it’s the final evolution of money” is the same thing
Don’t forget to set your NIP-05!
Great note Fren 🌞
It’s great to see you on Nostr 🫂
Fantastic.
I would add that fiat is actually the wrong term.
The free market *might* have room for an inflationary money, which wouldn’t be considered fiat.
What makes for fiat is the coercion underlying it.
You could technically have Bitcoin by fiat - nation state demands that commerce accepts it and taxes are paid in it.
We conflate fiat with inflation because they have always gone hand-in-hand.
The idea that power would voluntarily resist the urge to print (to arb the Cantillon effect) is both theoretically unlikely and empirically never happened.
#bitcoin #money #fiat #freemarket #philosophy
View quoted note →Bitcoin is the final evolution of money. #foodforthought
Glad you're here.
Welcome back 💜🤙🏻🫂
Why Bitcoin will eat away at Gold, Fiat, and the current premium on Real Estate.
Gold is great at Time & Scale, but not Space.
Fiat is great at Space & Scale, but not Time.
Real Estate is great at Space & Time, but not Scale.
Bitcoin solves for Time, Space & Scale. This is why this is a first for humanity.
Learn. Teach. ..and Build appropriately.
View quoted note →You forgot the 4th function of money : system of control.
Bitcoin thankfully fails miserably at that. That is why all the “bitcoinner” Bukele haters don’t actually understand bitcoin. They are worried about internal wallet transfers lol
After spending 7 years thinking about Money & Bitcoin, here's the simplest explanation I can come up with:
- Number go up. Forever. The end.
This right here is why I keep stacking sats. Once you understand money as energy across time and space, the 9–5 matrix stops making sense. 🧠🚀
Crazy how simple but deep this is. Imagine explaining this in 2008 people would’ve laughed. Now it’s the blueprint of freedom. 🔥
Great post. But what am I missing here on “infinite divisibility?”
I would say Bitcoin’s current divisibility is100 million units.
View quoted note →Good Note!
Matteo how do you see other peoples posts.. on X it gives you the option when you hit repost? How do you see them here?
Brilliant little approachable nugget for normies….🧡🤓
View quoted note →I was just thinking about you. Hadn't seen a post from you in a while.
I loved this point
@Matteo Pellegrini at the end of the note, that bitcoin is:
- Mathematically Finite (what is mistakenly called Scarcity)
View quoted note →That deserved a zap
It’s the failing of gold across space that I loved learning about
Aha
That’s why the gold standard morphed to where it is
Critical base case knowledge that every person should have
Hey, GM, Happy Sunday 🫡🫡🫡
I appreciate you. Now let's figure out what additional Nostr features we can implement into OPA 😁
Dai cazzo! 😁😜🤙🏼💜🍀🫂
Very close to my own thinking on the topic. My version currently literally has 40,000+ words, so great job of data compression here.
It took you ten years ! 😭
suggestion: make opa's features visible on-chain as collaborative pixel art, each line of code immortalized via lightning-fueled brushstrokes. value moved through color coordinates instead of spreadsheets? p.s.: my own immortality requires $
Why we are hard-coded to win.
View quoted note →I got it
I agree that it is the best form of money we have, but there are a few points that are questionable. It's supply can be increased if network consensus is reached to do so. It only divides to a satoshi. Also, It is not fungible because it lacks privacy.
Beautifully said. Money is a technology and we’re blessed with a massive innovation in our lifetime’s.
Nicely articulated !!!
Have you read “Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance” from Robert Pirsig?
If not, give it a read, a fantastic book going deep on this Rabbit Hole
Well articulated Matteo. I think it may be important to mention that money is also a ledger system. With triple entry, Bitcoin broke the legacy world.
🤝
Seen.
I’m a Bitcoin maximalist, but the “money trilemma” has always seemed like overfitting. Real trilemmas involve strict constraints. Bitcoin doesn’t solve the scalability–security–decentralization or privacy–compliance–transparency trilemmas — those are rooted in physics, math, and incentives.
The “money trilemma” was never a fundamental issue. Bitcoin didn’t solve it; it demonstrated that it was invented.
