Traditional money and conventional financial transactions will lose practical significance in the future, and fundamental physical measures — power, energy, and mass — will become the true yardsticks of economic value. That forecast was made by Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, in a conversation with his biographer Walter Isaacson on The Builders podcast, Reuters and other outlets report. “Money becomes irrelevant. Conventional currency will not matter,” the entrepreneur said. Earlier this month, Musk again reclaimed his status as the world’s only dollar‑denominated trillionaire.
Musk argues that rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, and the industrial development of space will massively expand the global economy. In that environment, mass production of goods and services to meet humanity’s needs will become a routine, low‑cost task, undercutting the rationale for accumulating fiat capital. He also noted that societies often conflate resource management at the global level with individual consumption and that physical limits to personal consumption are reached relatively quickly.
This is not the first time the tech CEO has outlined a vision of the monetary system’s gradual obsolescence. At a previous Tesla shareholders’ meeting, he suggested that future units of account might be measured in kilowatts and tons. In the light of inevitable automation across production chains and the disappearance of many traditional jobs, Musk has also advocated for a universal basic income to distribute excess goods while autonomous machines take over physical labor.
