Han Dieperink: Everything is energy
By Han Dieperink, written in a personal capacity
In the maze of financial markets and investment strategies, we are constantly looking for guidance. We want to know the value in order to make investment choices. After all, we know the price of everything, but determining the value is not that simple. That is why we categorise assets. We distinguish between 'productive' and 'speculative', between 'traditional' and 'digital'. But what if this classification is fundamentally flawed? What if we need to look at value through an energetic lens to understand a new dimension of assets?
Traditionally, investors distinguish between two types of assets. On the one hand, we have productive assets – shares, bonds, real estate – whose value derives from their ability to generate cash flows. A share is valuable because the company behind it makes a profit and pays dividends. A rental property has value because it generates monthly rental income. These assets solve scarcity by enabling production.
On the other hand, there are assets that are valuable purely because of their scarcity. Gold does not produce dividends, Bitcoin does not generate cash flow. Their value depends on what others are willing to pay for them – the infamous 'Greater Fool' theory. This makes valuation complex and seemingly irrational. Those who invest in gold invest in fear of inflation, war or systemic crisis. But how do you value fear?
Einstein: everything is energy
Quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity have given us a fundamental insight: mass and energy are interchangeable. E=mc² is not just a formula, but a description of reality. Everything we experience as 'matter' is concentrated energy. That gold bar in the safe? A complex dance of energy patterns.
That Bitcoin in your digital wallet? Information organised by energy consumption.
At the subatomic level, there are no solid particles, only energy fields vibrating at specific frequencies. The gold we find so tangible is nothing more than 79 protons per atomic nucleus – a specific configuration of energy that we have learned to recognise as valuable.
This physical principle offers an interesting model for understanding value, even though many other factors such as usefulness, scarcity and market psychology ultimately determine economic value.
Gold: thousands of years of human energy
When we hold a gold coin, we are actually holding thousands of years of human labour. Each gram represents an enormous amount of 'life energy': miners working in dark shafts, geologists searching for veins, engineers developing machines, transporters bringing the metal to the surface.
This human labour was literally converted into energy. The machines that mined the gold ran on electricity or fossil fuels. The trucks that transported it burned diesel. Even the human muscles that wielded the pickaxes converted chemical energy from food into mechanical labour. From this perspective, gold is solidified energy – human energy converted into a durable form.
This helps explain why gold has been considered valuable throughout all cultures and centuries. It was not only beautiful or scarce, it also represented the energy that had been invested in it. It was a way to store labour and preserve it over time.
Bitcoin: energy in digital form
Bitcoin makes this energy principle even more explicit. Whereas with gold, the energy costs are hidden in the complex extraction and processing processes, with bitcoin, energy is central. 'Mining' bitcoin is literally converting electrical energy into digital security. Every bitcoin that is created is the direct result of kilowatt hours that have been 'burned' to solve cryptographic puzzles.
From this perspective, the frequently heard criticism of Bitcoin's energy consumption misses part of the story. Energy consumption is not an undesirable side effect, but is the way in which value is created, secured and distributed across a network without a central authority. At the same time, questions about sustainability and efficiency compared to other systems remain relevant.
As with gold, the amount of energy required to 'create' bitcoin plays a role in determining its value. The system automatically adjusts: if bitcoin becomes more valuable, energy consumption increases. If the price falls, mining becomes less profitable and energy consumption decreases. It is a self-regulating energy market.
No fundamental difference between gold and bitcoin
The distinction between 'digital' and 'physical' becomes blurred when we look through an energy lens. Gold consists of atoms that are 99.9% empty space, surrounded by energy fields. Bitcoin consists of information, which is nothing more than organised energy in digital form.
Both derive their value in part from representing energy invested in their creation. Both function as a technology for storing value across time and space. Gold does this by capturing human labour in a physical form that lasts for millennia. Bitcoin does this by converting energy into digitally scarce units that are mathematically guaranteed.
This energetic perspective offers an additional framework for valuation. Instead of simply asking 'what is the Greater Fool willing to pay?', we can also ask 'how much energy has been invested in this asset?' For gold, this means the cumulative energy of centuries of mining, processing and storage. For bitcoin, it is the direct electrical energy used for mining and network security.
This approach also helps explain why both assets have historically been resilient to inflation. When money is devalued by government spending or monetary expansion, the energy basis of gold and bitcoin remains relatively stable. They are not a claim on future cash flows that can be inflated away, but represent energy that has already been invested.
Future outlook and limitations
Applying this energy model changes our perspective on investments. From this point of view, gold and bitcoin are not so much competitors as different solutions to the same problem: how do you preserve the value of invested energy for the future?
In a world of rising energy prices and increasing scarcity, this lens becomes more interesting. At the same time, the model has its limitations. Gold could theoretically become more vulnerable if new technologies such as advanced nuclear fusion ever enable cheap synthesis – although this is still far in the future and highly speculative.
Einstein taught us that energy is never lost – it only changes form. The energy our ancestors put into gold mines is, in a sense, still present in every gold bar. The energy put into bitcoin mining today will still represent value in the network tomorrow.
But productive assets have their own dynamics: they can become more efficient at producing or utilising energy, which can affect the relative value of 'stored energy'. Energy may be eternal, but its economic value is not always so.
This energetic perspective therefore does not offer a complete theory of value, but it does provide an illuminating model that can help us understand the similarities between seemingly different assets.