I’ve just read, with genuine astonishment, Jemima Kelly’s column in the Financial Times (“Bitcoin is still about $70,000 too high”), which Expansión has also republished in Spain (“El Bitcoin sigue sobrevalorado unos 70.000 dólares”). Her argument boils down to two claims: Bitcoin is “thin air”, and the story “will end at zero (or close to zero)”. As rhetoric, the piece may land. As economic analysis, it doesn’t. What is most surprising is not the polemic itself, but that it appears—unchallenged—in two newspapers with a reputation for seriousness.

Let us briefly examine some of her words:

Saying “it will end at zero” is not an inference; it is a declaration—and declarations require a causal mechanism. What, exactly, drives the price to (near) zero? A technical failure of the protocol? A coordinated global ban? A superior substitute triggering mass migration? A structural collapse in demand? The column offers certainty and imagery, but no causal chain—no reasoning that connects premises to conclusion.

The “man falling” analogy (“so far, so good”) is meant to communicate inevitability. But it doesn’t even survive basic physics: a falling object cannot repeatedly bounce back higher than the level from which it fell unless it receives additional energy. Bitcoin has done precisely that again and again. If the metaphor is supposed to illuminate anything, the relevant question is not “when does it hit the ground?”, but where the energy behind the rebound comes from—demand, adoption, incentives, liquidity, expectations. If you refuse to analyze that, what you have is literature, not analysis.

Corporate failures, crypto liquidations, exchange malpractice, or fraud by intermediaries are perfectly legitimate targets of criticism. But treating those episodes as proof that Bitcoin “has no floor” is a non sequitur. At most, they show that leverage and trusted third parties can be toxic. They do not show—at all—that Bitcoin is “thin air”. And they also reproduce a common error: collapsing Bitcoin and “cryptocurrencies” into one undifferentiated category, when they are not.

The implicit move—“it has no intrinsic value, therefore it’s worth zero”—is not economics; it is poorly digested metaphysics. Since the subjective theory of value (Menger, 1871), invoking “intrinsic value” as an economic criterion is a foundational mistake. If value is subjective, then “intrinsic value” is simply the wrong lens. The proper question is: what utility do people perceive in Bitcoin, and what demand follows from that utility as a means to achieve their ends?

Money does not arise by decree, nor by mere agreement—and it does not begin life with exchange value. Money is an evolving social institution: first uses, then exchange, then gradual monetization. In its early years, Bitcoin had use values (intellectual, ideological, speculative, expectations, etc.). On that basis, a price emerged and, over time, an incipient monetary function. Dismissing that as “thin air” is simply a refusal to explain the process. Bitcoin has not yet become a common and generally accepted medium of exchange (money), but it is a medium of exchange that is undergoing that process.

A serious discussion of Bitcoin cannot rest on likes, dislikes, or convenience. It must be anchored in monetary theory: supply rules, credibility, resistance to political capture, the preservation of monetary calculation, and so forth. In a sound-money framework, the objective is not to “fix” a particular purchasing power, but to avoid exogenous, systematic distortions. Reducing everything to “if it’s volatile, it’s worth zero” confuses a feature of early adoption with a conceptual refutation.

What I find deeply troubling is that a leading financial newspaper such as the Financial Times would publish a piece that condemns Bitcoin while offering no arguments, no causal mechanisms, no operational definitions, and no separation of objects of analysis—and that Expansión would translate and republish it. This is not “informed opinion”. It is rhetorical activism wearing the costume of analysis. A serious outlet can (and should) be skeptical about Bitcoin—as about any novel phenomenon—but it should demand the minimum standard it would demand of any economic thesis: clear concepts, causal reasoning, and criteria by which the claim could be falsified. If what is offered is “metaphor + verdict”, then the public is not being informed; it is being steered.

In my doctoral thesis, Bitcoin as Sound Money: an interpretation of Bitcoin in light of the Austrian School of Economics, I develop the arguments that are missing here (and more). Anyone who wants to engage seriously with the topic can download it at the following link: https://hdl.handle.net/10115/128557