An illustrative depiction of Bitcoin’s foundation in energy and natural law. The text in the image quotes Elon Musk: “Bitcoin is a true currency based on energy. You can’t legislate energy,” highlighting the idea that Bitcoin’s value and operation are anchored in physical reality.

Introduction: From Politics to Physics in Money

Bitcoin enthusiasts often describe it as “monetary physics” – a form of money governed by unbreakable natural laws rather than the whims of policymakers. In simple terms, this phrase means that Bitcoin’s monetary system behaves less like a man-made financial instrument and more like a physical phenomenon subject to principles akin to thermodynamics or conservation of energy. Advocates argue that Bitcoin’s supply, operation, and security are bound by mathematical and thermodynamic rules (energy, time, entropy) in the same way physical systems are bound by gravity or conservation laws . Whereas traditional fiat currencies can be altered by political decree or central bank policies, Bitcoin’s rules are fixed in code and enforced by energy expenditure, making them as indifferent and impartial as the laws of nature. As one observer succinctly put it: “Bitcoin is what happens when you replace human discretion with physical law… Rules without rulers means monetary policy enforced like gravity, not negotiated like politics” . In this view, 21 million BTC (Bitcoin’s maximum supply) is not just a policy – it’s a constant as inviolable as the speed of light in a vacuum. This introductory section lays out what “monetary physics” implies: that Bitcoin’s monetary properties (like scarcity, issuance, and value) are grounded in objective, non-negotiable processes similar to natural laws.

Bitcoin’s Laws of Nature vs. Human Laws

A key aspect of the “monetary physics” analogy is the contrast between physical laws and political laws. In a fiat money system, the value and supply of money depend on human institutions – central banks adjusting interest rates or printing money, governments deciding legal tender status, etc. These are subject to authority and discretion. Bitcoin, by design, strips away those human authorities and replaces them with architecture and energy. As one commentator noted: “Bitcoin is monetary physics. Architecture replaces authority. Energy replaces trust. Time replaces discretion”, meaning the network’s protocol (its architecture) dictates rules instead of regulators; the energy expended in mining creates trust instead of central bank promises; and the passage of time (via Bitcoin’s scheduled supply and block intervals) replaces discretionary timing of monetary policy . Once you see it that way, they argue, subjective narratives or political edicts can no longer sway Bitcoin’s fundamentals – the system operates with the cold neutrality of physics .

This perspective was echoed when Elon Musk praised Bitcoin as a currency rooted in energy, outside the reach of legislation. A 2025 discussion of Musk’s remark concludes: “Bitcoin is governed by physical laws, not political laws… You can outlaw transactions. But you can’t outlaw physics. And Bitcoin is physics monetized.” . In other words, governments may restrict banks or exchanges, but they “cannot outlaw the conversion of energy into value… just as they cannot outlaw gravity or sunlight” . As long as miners can obtain electricity, the Bitcoin network will continue to function. This resilience leads proponents to say “Bitcoin is monetary physics, not politics” – its operation is anchored in thermodynamics (energy consumption and math) rather than the changing winds of policy or opinion. In practical terms, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism enforces rules like a law of nature: every approximately 10 minutes a new block must satisfy the network’s energy-intensive hashing puzzle, and no politician can simply decree an easier way around this. The comparison is often made to an immutable force: “Scarcity is not voted on. Time is not lobbied. Settlement does not ask permission,” as the Bitcoin protocol’s rules are executed with finality like a natural process .

Thermodynamics, Energy and Proof-of-Work

At the heart of Bitcoin’s “monetary physics” is the role of energy and the laws of thermodynamics. Bitcoin uses a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Work (PoW), which requires miners to expend real-world energy (electricity) to solve mathematical puzzles and secure the network. This links the digital realm of Bitcoin to the physical world: the creation of new bitcoins and the validation of transactions demand the consumption of energy, an unforgeable cost. Advocates liken this to the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation of energy) applied to money – you cannot get economic value from nothing; it must be paid for in energy . “Proof-of-work energy expenditure is the thermodynamic bridge from the physical to the digital world. It transmutes the fundamental commodity of the universe, energy, into digital gold,” writes Robert Breedlove, emphasizing that Bitcoin’s value emerges from real work and energy input . In other words, bitcoins aren’t just numbers in a database; they are embodied energy, paid for by miners in electricity and computing power. This costliness is what makes the network secure – faking a block would require reproducing the enormous energy expenditure behind it, an endeavor as futile as breaking the laws of physics.

The analogy to thermodynamics goes further. PoW is sometimes described as creating a form of monetary entropy: miners performing trillions of hash computations inject randomness and consume energy, increasing entropy in the computational sense. This is by design – it makes cheating nearly impossible because there’s no shortcut to finding a valid block hash except doing the work (and expending energy). As one article put it, “Bitcoin as a system is inherently secured by and built around the concept of entropy, increasing randomness. This is what actually anchors Bitcoin to the physical laws of nature.” The Bitcoin network’s integrity emerges from this thermodynamic principle: ordered state (an honest, tamper-proof ledger) is preserved by expending energy and producing waste heat (entropy), much like a steam engine converts fuel into useful work and heat loss. In this light, Bitcoin has been called the world’s first thermodynamically sound monetary system . Its issuance of new coins and maintenance of the ledger are constrained by energy availability and computational difficulty, just as processes in nature are constrained by energy and entropy.

Crucially, proof-of-work ensures that Bitcoin cannot be cheated or counterfeited without real-world consequences. You can’t “print” Bitcoin on a whim; “you cannot counterfeit work”, as one author noted bluntly . To create or obtain a bitcoin, one must either expend the electricity and computing effort to mine it or pay someone who did. This is analogous to mining gold: gold’s value historically comes from the fact that it’s scarce and costly to extract from the earth. Similarly, “just as gold cannot be created out of thin air, but rather needs to be extracted from the earth (through mining), Bitcoin also requires a particular kind of computational effort – also known as mining – in order to generate new bitcoins” . The effort cannot be bypassed. If more people try to mine Bitcoin (pouring in more energy and hash power), the protocol’s difficulty adjustment ratchets up the complexity of the puzzles, ensuring that bitcoins are mined at a roughly constant rate. In effect, Bitcoin “runs on thermodynamics, not political decree” – increasing the network’s energy input doesn’t yield faster or more inflationary production of coins; it simply hardens the network’s security. This principle evokes the Second Law of Thermodynamics: there’s no free lunch in terms of energy. As Musk alluded, “you can’t legislate energy” – meaning no law or policy can wish away the physical energy cost underlying Bitcoin’s value.

Indeed, Bitcoin’s design deliberately makes fraud extremely expensive in energy terms, while making honest behavior profitable. “If a node attempted to include a fraudulent transaction… it would incur the cost of processing power without the prospect of a reward,” Breedlove notes, highlighting that wasted energy is the penalty for trying to break the rules . This dynamic is sometimes summarized as “proof-of-work, or more aptly proof-of-energy-expended, makes Bitcoin a thermodynamic fortress”. In everyday language: as long as the laws of physics hold and energy has to be spent to do work, Bitcoin’s core rules remain unassailable.

Scarcity and Conservation: Bitcoin as Hard Money

Bitcoin’s monetary system is often compared to a law of conservation – akin to the conservation of energy or mass in physics – because its supply is strictly capped and cannot be arbitrarily increased. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins in existence, as encoded in the protocol. This absolute scarcity is a novel concept in economics and is central to the “monetary physics” metaphor. Economist Saifedean Ammous emphasizes that Bitcoin is the first form of money completely invariant to demand: “Bitcoin is the first money that we have whose supply is completely irresponsive to demand”, he explains . No matter how much the demand for Bitcoin rises, the supply cannot expand beyond its algorithmic schedule – unlike any physical commodity or fiat currency. With gold or other commodities, a higher price incentivizes more production (miners dig up more gold when it’s profitable, adding to supply). Even gold, long considered the hardest money, has a modest annual inflation (about 1–2% new supply from mining) which can increase if huge new deposits are found or mining technology improves. “The supply of any physical thing can only be limited by the time and energy necessary to procure it: if we could force everyone on Earth to mine gold, the supply of gold would soon soar,” Breedlove notes . In contrast, Bitcoin’s supply schedule is fixed; throwing more energy or hardware at it doesn’t create more bitcoins, it only makes the cryptographic puzzles harder. This is enforced by the difficulty adjustment, which Ammous describes succinctly: “When you try and make more Bitcoin, you don’t make more Bitcoin; you just end up expending more processing power and electricity… making Bitcoin more secure.” In essence, Bitcoin has turned the monetary system into something like a conservation law: no matter how much effort is expended, you cannot inflate the supply beyond the set limit – you can only deepen the “gravity well” of its security.

This property leads Breedlove and others to call Bitcoin “absolute scarcity” – a brand-new phenomenon in economics. All previous monies or commodities had relative scarcity, meaning their supply could expand with enough effort or discovery. Bitcoin, by being absolutely finite, is often described as the discovery of a new constant, “a monetary constant,” similar to discovering a new number in mathematics . Breedlove analogized it to the invention of zero: just as zero introduced an “empty set” concept that revolutionized math, Bitcoin’s 21 million cap introduces perfect zero-growth supply, revolutionizing economics . “In this sense, what zero is to math, absolute scarcity is to money,” he writes . The Bitcoin protocol “algorithmically and thermodynamically enforces an absolutely scarce money supply”, making its scarcity “infinite” (as scarce as time itself, the one resource no one can create more of) . Time only flows forward, and Bitcoin’s supply only flows toward 21 million and then stops – a parallel that Breedlove and others find profoundly meaningful.

Because of this fixed supply, Bitcoin is often called “hard money” (or even the hardest money) – a term in economics for money that is costly to produce and resistant to debasement. Under a gold standard, gold’s hardness came from nature: gold atoms are rare in Earth’s crust and it takes enormous labor and energy to extract each ounce. Bitcoin mimics and exceeds this hardness in digital form. Its stock-to-flow ratio (existing supply vs. new annual supply) keeps rising over time, eventually becoming infinity when new supply ceases, something no physical commodity can achieve. As Ammous points out, Bitcoin’s supply curve, which asymptotically reaches a cap, means “there is no way for anybody to make more of it… no way of increasing the supply” even if billions of people want it . Instead, increased demand just makes the network spend more energy securing itself (via higher mining difficulty) without yielding more coins . This is a fundamental break from traditional economics, where higher demand for a commodity nearly always invokes a supply response. In Bitcoin, the protocol’s coded “laws of nature” forbid a supply response – a miner can no more speed up the creation of bitcoins than an alchemist can create gold by wishful thinking.

Philosophically, this has deep implications: it means Bitcoin transforms money into a fixed frame of reference, almost like a physical constant. Some Bitcoin advocates compare the 21 million cap to Planck’s constant or the speed of light in monetary terms – a universal constant around which economic activity can organize. As Breedlove eloquently puts it, “absolute scarcity is a one-time discovery, just like heliocentrism or any other major scientific paradigm shift” . With Bitcoin, humanity has (in their view) discovered digital gold governed by math and physics, where scarcity is enforced by the universe’s rules rather than central bankers. This enforcement is not only algorithmic but also “thermodynamic” – the costliness and energy burned in mining act as the thermodynamic guarantor that the monetary constant remains constant. Thus, Bitcoin embodies a principle akin to conservation of value: value (in terms of the monetary unit) cannot be created from nothing without expending proportional energy. This is why you’ll hear Bitcoiners say things like “Bitcoin’s monetary policy gives zero power to politicians – it gives zero fs**”* (a tongue-in-cheek way to say the code is utterly inflexible) . The bluntness reflects the idea that Bitcoin doesn’t bend to pressure; like a law of physics, it treats everyone the same. No exceptions, no bailouts, no do-overs – much as nature is indifferent, Bitcoin’s rules are immutable.

Advocates and Analogies: Physics Meet Philosophy

A number of notable Bitcoin advocates and thinkers explicitly use physics analogies to explain Bitcoin’s significance. Robert Breedlove, a writer and podcaster, frequently frames Bitcoin in terms of natural law. We’ve already cited his view of proof-of-work as a “thermodynamic bridge” and Bitcoin as the discovery of absolute scarcity. In his essay “The Number Zero and Bitcoin,” Breedlove likens Bitcoin to a cosmic breakthrough, saying “absolute scarcity can only be digital… absolute scarcity is a one-time discovery… in the same way that there has only ever been one analog gold, there is likely to only ever be one digital gold” . He argues that Bitcoin “uninstalls” trust in human monetary authorities and replaces it with “natural law”, forcing civilization to reorganize around immutable rules . Breedlove’s use of terms like “monetary natural selection” and references to thermodynamics and entropy in economics underscores a wider theme: Bitcoin is often seen by its proponents as an emergent phenomenon of both economics and physics – a convergence of game theory, energy, and computation that yields a new form of money.

Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, approaches the idea from an Austrian economics perspective but also highlights the physical realism of Bitcoin. He notes, for example, that under every previous monetary system, “if something gets used as money and its value rises, people find ways to produce more of it, which then lowers the value”. Gold was historically best at resisting this (hard to produce), but even gold had a steady 1–2% supply growth . Bitcoin, by contrast, is the first effectively non-dilutable money. Ammous often explains that Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment is the key: it ensures any additional effort just makes the network more secure, not more abundant in coins . He sometimes uses analogies of physical limits – for instance, you can’t speed up block production beyond the protocol’s ten-minute target any more than you can make nine women produce a baby in one month. The process has a natural cadence that can’t be shortcut without breaking the system. Ammous and others thereby see Bitcoin as enforcing economic reality through physical reality. In a recent talk, he described Bitcoin as “the hardest money we’ve ever discovered or invented” and directly ties that to its unchangeable supply formula . That hardness, he implies, comes from computing power and energy – objective quantities – rather than human promises.

Michael Saylor, a prominent entrepreneur and Bitcoin advocate, has gone so far as to describe money itself in physical terms. “Money is energy,” Saylor often proclaims, suggesting that money is a means to store and transfer energy (human time, labor, resources) across time and space. Bitcoin, in his view, is like a battery or capacitor for economic energy – one that doesn’t leak. Saylor notes that if you put $100 million into Bitcoin, it can be stored for decades with negligible loss, whereas storing that value in fiat currency is like holding energy in a leaky bucket (due to inflation) . He even called Bitcoin “the first digital monetary network” where you can “channel monetary energy through time and space” without loss . These metaphors – batteries, energy channels, vacuum-sealed containers – all evoke physical phenomena. Saylor explicitly uses thermodynamic language: Bitcoin is “thermodynamically sound money”, meaning you can’t get more out of the system than energy you put in, and it minimizes dissipation of value over time . In one vivid analogy, Saylor compares different monetary systems to vessels: fiat is a rubber raft with a leak (inflating away), gold is a wooden ship (stronger but still decays over decades), and Bitcoin is a steel hull ship that if maintained (secured) can last indefinitely without weakening . This engineering analogy conveys Bitcoin’s perceived permanence and resilience – “indestructible as long as you prevent corrosion”. The corrosion, in Bitcoin’s case, is the need to keep mining (expending energy) to uphold the network; as long as that continues, the “hull” (ledger integrity) is sound. Saylor’s colorful comparisons underscore a common refrain: Bitcoin is built on truths of engineering and physics, not on financial alchemy.

Another example comes from the broader Bitcoin community’s lexicon. It’s not uncommon to hear phrases like “timechain” (an old name for the blockchain, emphasizing that Bitcoin is fundamentally ordering events in time) and to see Bitcoin’s issuance schedule described as having a half-life (due to the halving of block rewards every four years, reminiscent of radioactive decay rates). These comparisons to physics and natural processes help enthusiasts frame Bitcoin as an organic or inevitable phenomenon – something discovered more than invented. In their view, Satoshi Nakamoto combined pre-existing components of cryptography and game theory to unleash a new force of nature in the monetary world. “Faraday did not ask whether electromagnetism was fair. Shannon did not debate whether bits should inflate. They described immutable systems and let civilization reorganize around them,” notes the pseudonymous writer “SaylorOfEntropy,” drawing a parallel to how Bitcoin presents an immutable monetary system . The implication is that Bitcoin, like electromagnetism or information theory, is a discovery of a natural law (in this case, the law of absolute digital scarcity) that society can either adopt or ignore at its peril. “Civilizations do not adopt better stories. They adopt better systems,” that same writer concludes, suggesting Bitcoin’s physics-like reliability makes it a superior system that will eventually be recognized, much as scientific truths eventually win out .

To explain Bitcoin as “a monetary form bound by laws of nature rather than human intervention,” advocates often use metaphors rooted in the natural world or engineering: Bitcoin is compared to gravity (an ever-present force that doesn’t care about you, but you must respect it), to conservation laws (you can’t get something for nothing), to predators and prey in ecosystems (miners compete like animals for rewards, following energy incentives), and to entropy (disorder that must be countered by work). A Bitcoin mining facility might even be analogized to a thermal power plant – taking in energy and emitting financial security as output, with waste heat as a byproduct. The language of “miners,” “hash power,” and “mining difficulty” itself is borrowed from physical mining and mechanical power. Even the concept of “hardness” in money is essentially a physical metaphor – hardness implies resistance to deformation or change, and in monetary terms Bitcoin is extremely resistant to change (new supply or rule changes), i.e., it’s harder than gold or fiat.

One striking metaphor used by Breedlove and others is that Bitcoin is like a flywheel or engine that absorbs shocks and maintains stability. When market volatility hits, Bitcoin’s protocol adjusts (through difficulty and the actions of long-term holders vs. short-term speculators) in a mechanical way. “Bitcoin trades in global liquidity pools, so when dollar liquidity contracts… Bitcoin will do it (reprice). That does not make Bitcoin a risk asset… It’s like a turbine shedding cavitation: violent but mechanical. Bitcoin is a monetary engine with a flywheel (the difficulty adjustment) that absorbs shocks” . Here Bitcoin is portrayed as a well-designed machine governed by physics-like rules: turbulence (volatility) may shake it, but it “does not change the laws of flight” , to quote another analogy, meaning the underlying monetary principles remain intact. Price is viewed as mere surface noise (like waves or turbulence), whereas the protocol’s steady block production and supply cap are the signal (like the steady force of gravity or thrust) . Such metaphors help Bitcoin proponents argue that short-term market drama is irrelevant to Bitcoin’s long-term trajectory as a monetary constant.

Criticisms and Opposing Views

While the analogy of “Bitcoin is monetary physics” is compelling to its proponents, it is not without critics and caveats. Skeptics argue that this framing can be overly deterministic and techno-utopian. After all, Bitcoin is ultimately a human-created protocol running on infrastructure built by people – it is not literally a law of nature, and human choices can alter its course (for instance, through software upgrades or, in extreme cases, if the community agreed to change the supply limit, however unlikely that may be). Scholars of technology governance caution against the notion that Bitcoin entirely eliminates human governance. As one analysis noted, “it is unrealistic to believe that human organizations can be governed by relying exclusively on algorithmic rules… ultimately, social and political processes still matter for how the technology evolves.” The “invisible politics” of Bitcoin – from developer debates to miners coordinating – suggests that it’s not a purely automatic system free of human input. Major upgrades (like SegWit in 2017 or Taproot in 2021) required community consensus and showed that rough consensus and even contention (the Blocksize War) play a role in Bitcoin’s trajectory. In this sense, critics say, calling Bitcoin “monetary physics” might downplay the social layer and the fact that Bitcoin operates in a human context with laws, regulations, and power structures. No matter how strict Bitcoin’s code is, its usefulness and adoption depend on people, and people operate in a political realm.

Another line of criticism targets the energy consumption that underpins Bitcoin’s “thermodynamic” security. Detractors argue that celebrating Bitcoin as being rooted in energy and entropy is just a nice way of saying it uses a lot of electricity, which some view as wasteful or environmentally harmful. From this perspective, the mantra that “you can’t outlaw physics” takes on a double meaning – you also can’t avoid the physical reality of carbon emissions or resource usage. Environmental critics often highlight the scale of Bitcoin’s power usage, comparing it to entire countries. To them, the notion that “Bitcoin lives as long as there is electricity” isn’t necessarily comforting – it underscores Bitcoin’s dependence on continuous energy expenditure. One economist starkly described Bitcoin’s energy appetite as “the equivalent of pouring gasoline in a hole and setting it on fire,” arguing that from a social standpoint, burning vast amounts of energy for a monetary system is simply inefficient and reckless . These critics view the proof-of-work as a brute-force approach – a system “purposefully designed to waste electricity,” in the words of a skeptical analysis . They question whether tying money so literally to energy is desirable, or whether it’s an costly relic of an early design that could be improved with more energy-efficient consensus mechanisms. (Bitcoin advocates, of course, counter that the energy is what gives Bitcoin its integrity and that much of mining uses renewable or stranded energy – a debate beyond our scope, but worth noting.)

There are also philosophical opponents who argue that money is inherently a social construct, not a physical object, and that draping Bitcoin in the language of physics might be misleading. They contend that value comes from collective human belief and utility, not from any inherent physical property. From this viewpoint, saying “Bitcoin is physics monetized” could obscure the fact that Bitcoin’s value still fundamentally derives from people agreeing on its worth and usefulness as money. Detractors might point out that no matter how strong the cryptographic laws, if tomorrow everyone decided to stop using Bitcoin, it would indeed go to zero – unlike a law of gravity which operates regardless of human belief. In other words, Bitcoin requires social adoption, and its game-theoretic guarantees (like difficulty adjustment maintaining scarcity) only matter if the game continues to be played by miners and users.

Furthermore, some economists challenge the idea that Bitcoin’s fixed supply is an optimal feature. They label it “inelastic money” and caution that an economy with a strictly finite money supply could face deflationary issues or lack flexibility in crises. While Bitcoin fans see the 21 million cap as sacrosanct, critics see it as a design choice with trade-offs, not a God-given constant. For instance, a paper titled “The Impossibility of a Fixed-Limit Money” argues that having an unchangeable monetary supply might not be sustainable or could concentrate wealth in early adopters’ hands . These voices remind us that monetary systems serve human ends, and whether Bitcoin’s physics-like attributes are beneficial or not is a matter of perspective and context.

Lastly, even within the Bitcoin community, there’s recognition that metaphors have limits. The idea of Bitcoin as digital gold or monetary physics is a way to communicate its properties, but it shouldn’t be taken to imply Bitcoin is infallible. Technical issues (like bugs) can occur, and external events (like government bans in certain jurisdictions or competition from other technologies) can affect Bitcoin’s utility. Natural laws are eternal; software, even if robust, is still maintained by humans. As one Bitcoin essay in Bitcoin Magazine conceded, “Bitcoin’s rules are enforced by physics in the sense that breaking them would require energy beyond what any fraudster can economically spend”, but this doesn’t mean Bitcoin is a force of nature in the literal sense – it remains an artifact reliant on infrastructure and the rule of law to some extent .

In summary, the framing of Bitcoin as “monetary physics” is a powerful dual metaphor conveying that Bitcoin is hard, unyielding, and rooted in the impartiality of math and energy. It captures the way Bitcoin’s design removes discretionary control and relies on proof-of-work, making it feel like a natural phenomenon (with its own emergent order and inevitability). This analogy has inspired many thoughtful comparisons – to thermodynamic engines, to conservation laws, to time’s arrow – and has been espoused by thinkers like Breedlove, Ammous, Saylor, and Musk in various forms. It emphasizes Bitcoin’s scarcity, security through energy, and resistance to change, painting it as a sort of digital natural resource or law. However, it’s important to balance this romantic view with an understanding that Bitcoin operates in the real world of humans, not just the realm of physics. There are valid critiques that remind us of the social, environmental, and governance dimensions of Bitcoin. Like any metaphor, “monetary physics” illuminates certain truths while oversimplifying others.

Conclusion and Further Reading

The notion that “Bitcoin is monetary physics” ultimately speaks to Bitcoin’s aspiration to be “hard money” beyond the reach of soft human influence. It embodies the idea of money with an objective, incorruptible backbone: 21 million coins, requiring work (energy) to obtain, secured by immutable algorithms, flowing at a steady pace like time itself. This concept has captured the imagination of many in the Bitcoin space, leading to rich philosophical discourse and vivid analogies, some of which we’ve highlighted here. For those interested in delving deeper, consider exploring the writings and talks of the mentioned advocates:

  • Robert Breedlove’s essays, such as “The Number Zero and Bitcoin,” for a deep dive into the philosophical and mathematical significance of absolute scarcity . Breedlove’s work frequently ties Bitcoin to concepts of time, entropy, and natural law.
  • Saifedean Ammous’s book The Bitcoin Standard, particularly the chapters on hard money and time preference, which outline why a money that cannot be debased (even by natural discovery or effort) is unprecedented . Ammous also discusses energy and Bitcoin in chapters and lectures available on his website .
  • Michael Saylor’s interviews and lectures, where he elaborates on the concept of “monetary energy”. A notable piece is Saylor’s discussion of Bitcoin as a means to “channel energy across time and space”, for example in the Saylor Series episodes with Robert Breedlove . He also explicitly uses thermodynamics terminology in various interviews.
  • Elon Musk’s commentary on Bitcoin and energy, which, while succinct, has spurred many analyses. The quote “Bitcoin is a true currency based on energy. You can’t legislate energy.” and the ensuing community discussion (e.g. on Stacker News) are enlightening . They highlight the contrast between Bitcoin’s energy anchor and the political nature of fiat money.
  • Articles like “Bitcoin Brings Nature to Economics” by The Bitcoin Buzz, which frame Bitcoin as reintroducing natural constraints (thermodynamics, conservation) into the economic sphere . This piece in particular addresses environmental questions while asserting that Bitcoin’s energy use aligns economics with nature’s realities.
  • Academic critiques, for a balanced view. For instance, Internet Policy Review’s analysis of Bitcoin’s governance offers insight into the social-political complexity behind the seemingly apolitical protocol . Likewise, economist Blair Fix’s paper on Bitcoin’s energy intensity contrasts the physics analogy with real-world data and concerns .

By exploring these sources, readers can further grasp both the enthusiasm behind the “monetary physics” concept and the skepticism around it. Bitcoin sits at an interdisciplinary crossroads – it is technology, money, energy, and social experiment all at once. The “monetary physics” metaphor captures its revolutionary promise (a money beyond human tampering, governed by the same forces that govern the universe), even as debate continues about the costs and implications of that promise. Whether one ultimately agrees or disagrees with the framing, it’s clear that Bitcoin has sparked a re-examination of monetary principles through the lens of physical science, and in doing so, has generated a rich narrative that bridges economics with the natural world.

Sources:

  • Breedlove, R. – “The Number Zero and Bitcoin” .
  • Stacker News – Discussion on Elon Musk’s Energy Comment .
  • SaylorOfEntropy (Reddit user) – Commentary on Bitcoin as Physical Law .
  • Bright, S. – “Bitcoin: The Entropy Engine” (Bitcoin Magazine excerpt) .
  • The Bitcoin Buzz – “Bitcoin Brings Nature to Economics” .
  • Ammous, S. – SALT Talk on The Bitcoin Standard .
  • Breedlove, R. – “Money, Bitcoin and Time” (Part 2) .
  • Internet Policy Review – “The invisible politics of Bitcoin” (Florence School of Regulation) .
  • Fix, B. – “Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance?” .
  • Saylor, M. – Saylor Series Episode 5 (transcript via Medium) .
  • Bitcoin Magazine – “Why Bitcoin’s Rules Are Enforced by Physics” .
  • Reddit (u/SaylorOfEntropy) – “What is Bitcoin?” comment .