Bitcoin is often described using metaphors like "digital gold," classified as an asset, and considered alternative money. It is traded on markets, people agree on a price, and some say they believe in it. All of this makes Bitcoin appear alive.
But from the moment it was created, Bitcoin was dead. No metaphor, classification, consideration, market, belief, or agreement can make it alive.
Why?
Because an asset is alive only if it has its own causal power, the ability to directly affect humans and thereby confer control and leverage over others to those who hold it. Bitcoin has none.
Now, why is trading a living asset for dead Bitcoin economic suicide? Those who hold assets like food or medicine control resources that directly sustain human life. This gives them leverage over millions of people, and long-term security comes from the fact that others will always exchange work or goods to obtain what they need to survive. That is the power of a living asset.
Some would now say that Bitcoin works as a currency and mediates exchange, so it does not need causal power over humans. This is incorrect. Simply mediating exchange does not remove the need for causality. Real money always has causal power, whether legal, physical, or biological.
For example, fiat money is created as bank debt and directly affects others through its legal causality. Those who hold fiat money have leverage over billions of people. They hold what families need to pay off mortgages. They hold what companies need to remove liens on their property. They hold what governments need to pay bonds held by central banks.
The same is true for traditional money like gold. Gold has physical causality through properties like corrosion resistance and conductivity. Those who hold gold have leverage over masses of people who need products that rely on these properties, such as electronics, medical devices, and durable materials.
By holding fiat money or gold, which function as means of exchange, holders still have economic power and leverage over others. Nothing changes in terms of causality. These assets are alive besides working as currency.
If you trade these living assets for Bitcoin, you commit economic suicide because you do not gain another type of living asset. You do not acquire another type of leverage over others. Instead, you receive tokens of past energy expenditure. The Bitcoin protocol awards these tokens to those who spent electricity to secure the database storing them.
These tokens are not issued as markers of someone's debt to have legal causality like fiat money, nor are they tangible objects to have biological or physical causality like gold, medicine, or food. Metaphorically, they are dead assets.
So, what happens when people trade living assets for Bitcoin is that they throw away the leverage they have over others. They surrender long-term security for the hope that, in the future, others will continue to throw away their leverage and long-term security.
All attempts to assign lasting value to Bitcoin rest on myths that cannot resurrect a dead token.
Chief among these is the myth that Bitcoin’s utility lies in storing value or hedging against inflation. But this is simply a reflection of past price increases, not something caused by Bitcoin. Nothing within Bitcoin compels anyone to part with goods, labor, or resources. Unlike fiat money, which derives power from legally enforced bank debt that compels debtors to exchange labor, goods, or resources with fiat holders to avoid default and foreclosure, Bitcoin’s exchangeability depends entirely on voluntary, revocable choices by others.
Defenders often cite hyperinflating countries like Argentina, claiming Bitcoin "protects" wealth there. This is illusion. Bitcoin does nothing active; it neither shields purchasing power nor enforces any obligation. Any temporary "protection" lasts only as long as people continue surrendering living assets for dead tokens. The moment that collective behavior ceases, the protection evaporates. The cause is always human psychology, never Bitcoin.
Another persistent myth holds that belief or scarcity confers value. Yet belief resides in people, not in Bitcoin, and can disappear overnight. Scarcity matters only for assets with causal power over humans. Scarce food, medicine, or energy compels behavior; scarce Bitcoin compels nothing.
No myth, not store-of-value narratives, not inflation-hedge stories, not appeals to belief or fixed supply, can breathe life into Bitcoin, because none bestow the missing causal power that defines a living asset.
Thus, trading real, living assets for Bitcoin remains economic suicide: by moving out of gold or food (physical leverage) and out of fiat money (legal leverage), you enter a space where your wealth has no anchor in necessity. If a farmer has wheat and you have Bitcoin, the farmer only trades with you if they want to. If, via fiat money, you control the deed to the farmer's land (legal leverage) or the only source of water (physical leverage), the farmer has to trade with you.
Bitcoiners are trading 'Have to' for 'Want to.' In a crisis, 'Want to' evaporates, while 'Have to' remains. Surrendering enduring security for the fragile hope that others will persist in the same irrational surrender is not the future of money or anything. It is a terminal retreat from the levers of reality into a digital ghost story.