Mr. Black

Elon says money will become obsolete and energy will be the true currency. Half my timeline understood: "there won't be any currency anymore." It's the exact opposite. There will always be a currency. What's going to die is fiat money. And with it, the power of the people who print it. Quick masterclass on why. First, what is money? Money isn't wealth. It's a tool. It has three functions: unit of account (measuring value), medium of exchange (avoiding barter), and store of value (carrying today's work into tomorrow). At its core, money is a database. It records who produced what, and who has the right to consume what. It's a system for allocating human labor. And good money has one non-negotiable property: you can't create it out of thin air. Otherwise, it lies. For centuries, money was backed by something real: gold. Every banknote was a claim on a weight of metal. You couldn't print more than what you had in the vault. Then we dismantled it, piece by piece. In 1914, World War I. Countries suspend gold convertibility to finance the war on credit. In 1933, Roosevelt bans Americans from owning gold and devalues the dollar right after. In 1944, Bretton Woods. The dollar becomes convertible to gold at $35 an ounce, and every other currency gets pegged to the dollar. On August 15, 1971, Nixon "temporarily" suspends the dollar's convertibility to gold. That "temporary" measure has now lasted 55 years. In 1973, exchange rates float. Not a single major currency in the world is backed by anything physical anymore. Since 1971, the dollar has lost nearly 90% of its purchasing power. US federal debt has grown almost 100x. Housing prices have decoupled from wages. That's not a coincidence. It's the direct consequence of money with no physical limit. Now, central banks. A central bank does two things: it sets the price of money (interest rates) and it creates money. Two massive levers, in the hands of a handful of people nobody elected. When they keep rates too low for too long, they create bubbles, keep zombie companies alive, and push everyone into debt. When they print, they dilute your savings. The Fed's balance sheet went from roughly $900 billion in 2007 to nearly $9 trillion in 2022. The US money supply grew about 40% between 2020 and 2022. Result: 9.1% inflation in the US in June 2022, 10.6% in the eurozone in October 2022. Inflation is a tax nobody voted for. And it doesn't hit everyone equally: those closest to money creation (the state, banks, asset holders) get the new money first. Workers and savers get it last, after prices have already gone up. Now let's reason from first principles. If AI and robotics produce most goods and services, human labor is no longer the limiting factor of the economy. So a currency whose job is to allocate human labor no longer has a purpose. What stays scarce? Energy. Every physical good is matter transformed with energy. Every AI is computation, meaning electricity. With enough energy, you extract, you recycle, you manufacture, you reason. The natural unit of account of a robotic economy isn't the dollar. It's the kilowatt-hour. And this is where it gets beautiful: energy-backed money is tied to a real, measurable asset governed by thermodynamics. As Elon puts it, governments can print money, but they can't print energy. No more inflation manufactured by bureaucrats playing with the printing press. We go back to a standard. But this time, not a metal sitting in a vault: the very input of all production. My prediction: within the next ten years, the fiat monetary system will break. And with it, the grip that politicians and legacy bankers have on money. Elon is designing the new global economic order. Not a communist system: private property stays central. But capital will flow to those who best allocate energy to create more goods and services. A meritocracy of physics. That's what will bring us abundance. Money isn't disappearing. It's becoming honest again.