Imagine this: you open an Excel spreadsheet and type your name in column 1, the number 15 in column 2, and "Excsalt" in column 3. Someone nearby peers over your shoulder and asks, "What’s that?" With a grin, you reply, "I just created a new currency, Excsalt, symbol XST. The name comes from salt, which was once used as money. I can sell you some. Give me your dollars, and I’ll add your name and quantity to the spreadsheet."
They hesitate, then push back. "Quantity implies existence, like salt has physical mass. What is your Excsalt, exactly?"
"It’s digital," you say confidently. "Excel operates in a digital environment."
They’re not convinced. "Digital things still occupy space. An MP3, PDF, or JPEG takes up storage, and 15 units of something digital would take up more space than one. Where are your 15 units of Excsalt? And what do they do? MP3s play music, PDFs store documents, JPEGs compress images. What Excsalt does?"
You pause, then dodge, pointing at their wallet: "What do your dollars do?"
They are ready, "They redeem debt owed to the U.S. banking system. The system issued them as debt and redeems them for settling it. Will you redeem Excsalt? If not, what it does?"
You lean in. "Don’t you get it? Excsalt circulates! From me to you. Just give me dollars, and I’ll add a row with your name in the spreadsheet."
They shake their head. "Circulation assumes something exists to circulate. Adding a name and number isn’t circulation. You need 15 units of something identifiable first, tangible like salt, digital like a PDF, or redeemable like the dollar. What are you circulating? Units of what?"
"Units of value," you declare.
They scoff. "Value? That’s a generic term. Something must exist first, tangible, digital, or redeemable, for value to be assigned. What can I evaluate to assign value to?"
You freeze, then laugh. "Okay, I was kidding! Excsalt doesn’t exist. It’s a fake quantity in a spreadsheet, referring to a non-existent thing, a ghost."
Then you drop the bombshell. There’s another ghost just like Excsalt, one that millions believe in. Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, or BTC, is the Excsalt that hallucinated the world. Someone created a digital ledger, basically a fancy spreadsheet, and a program to update it with quantities of something called Bitcoin. But just like Excsalt, there’s no identifiable thing. Nothing tangible, digital or redeemable.
Bitcoin is a ghost. A non-existent currency dressed up with shiny gold coin graphics to make it feel real, just like you might show pictures of salt to sell Excsalt.
People buy into the illusion, updating the Bitcoin ledger with apps, convinced they’re holding "digital coins". You know, like Excsalt is "digital salt."
Someone claiming to own 100 BTC can’t show you 100 times more of anything digital than someone with 1 BTC. There’s no digital substance to identify or measure. No digital coins exist. Quantities are fake.
But people still believe coins exist. It’s madness. Enthusiasts even insist it’s revolutionary. You can’t make that stuff up. It’s hilarious and crazy at the same time.
Whole markets have emerged from this. Exchanges, brokers, and everything. And the price? It went from zero to one hundred thousand dollars. Imagine that, the price of three new cars for one unit of a ghost. In the past, people at least hyped existing things, like tulips or Beanie Babies. Today they are hyping a non-existent thing.
And many profit from the delusion. Exchanges rake in fees for trading this ghost. Governments tax the "profits." The cycle continues because anyone can invent new ghosts (cryptocurrencies) with different names. It’s endless fuel for the machine.
But madness doesn’t last forever. The belief in Bitcoin’s ghost will fade, leaving only spreadsheet entries and dollars lost chasing a digital mirage.