While I think most Bitcoiners generally agree with the concept of bitcoin as digital energy, I have seen some pushback that this is not consistent with physics, is just a metaphor or is just plain false.
It may exist in potential, kinetic, thermal, electrical, chemical, nuclear, or other various forms. All forms of energy are associated with motion.
When it comes to what things humans typically think of as energy, there is certainly something to say for our ability to control or direct that energy.
However, our original energy conversion device was, of course, the ability of the human body to convert the chemical energy in our food into kinetic energy that we inherently control.
The extremely high value of human energy is largely due to our ability to learn, adapt, engineer solutions and harness other forms of energy to provide valuable solutions to society.
Note, however, that the energy delivered by each human is exclusively controlled by the individual.
Love generally maximizes the efficiency of human energy because people who are motivated to cooperate via love genuinely want their work to achieve the best possible outcome.
One possible reason for this could be related to Dunbar’s number, which is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.
In addition, unlike love, violence can be stored and stockpiled for future use, offering the ability to scale the threat of violence as a means of channeling human energy.
Violence centralizes power because it favors those with the most powerful weapons, which grants them access to the most human energy and innovation, which enhances their ability to engineer even more powerful weapons.
Money motivates humans to use their energy toward someone else’s goals by promising them that the money they were paid for their work can be used in the future to deploy the energy of other humans.
Decisions about what a society needs could therefore be set by the market, where each human decides what they are willing to pay for a good or service.
Largely after the invention of nuclear weapons, when the threat of violence and the cost of war started reaching unimaginably enormous magnitudes, governments started relying on money printing more heavily to continue acquiring wealth.
As the newly printed money enters an economy, the decentralized market pricing mechanisms will take the new supply of money into account and raise all prices relative to how much individuals value their own human energy.
Users of bitcoin — like users of all other forms of money — can be subjected to violence, or the threat of violence, as a means of forcibly acquiring their wealth.
Although the supply of bitcoin in circulation is increasing over time , the inflation rate is public knowledge and can be accounted for when pricing goods and services.
The block reward is therefore a temporary measure designed to subsidize security while Bitcoin is still in its youth; it would be more accurate to view this form of taxation as a collective payment for a valuable service, rather than theft.
Although each human controls their own energy, we can be motivated using methods such as love, violence and money to work together.
Although money offers a more efficient scaling solution for channeling human energy, it has historically been susceptible to violence at scale and fiat based monetary units can be stolen via inflation.
It will take time for society to realize these benefits as bitcoin is still young in comparison to other forms of money and is not currently widely adopted across humanity.