Adam no worries, your honesty is refreshing, but you seem to be learning quick. At least you are interested. I think you have it correct. It is fair to say the value of Bitcoin represents availability of primary energy, that is really a good way of putting it, thanks for that.

Comparing with ordinary money, the difference is that it is not controlled by banks or governments, therefore can’t be meddled with.

There is no reference against which we can value ordinary money since the gold standard has long been lost. So its value can be, and is manipulated, without us seeing it.

But Bitcoin can be referenced to something physical, we can already compute an amount of primary energy flow by guessing our eventual total rate of power consumption, deducing that it will be pretty much all solar, since that is cheapest, and dividing by the eventual total number of Bitcoins. As outlined, it comes out at around 1MW per Bitcoin.

That is about the power of a reasonable sized electrical train.

So having a little Bitcoin assigned to us is a little like having a mini primary power plant in our hands.

With it, we can, in theory at least, generate further proof of work tokens corresponding to the rate of work represented by the Bitcoins held.

Note this property is intrinsic to Bitcoin, it is independent of any market.

But also on market value, we are seeing the Bitcoin mean value increasing per a mathematical law, known as Metcalfe’s law, which comes from the study of network theory.

There is no way we can relate the value of ordinary money to an energy flow of any kind, nor its market value to any mathematical rule, it is completely manipulated, by adjustments of things like LIBOR (the international interest rate)

I had a quick look for a starter reference to Bitcoin, most seem to focus on how to put money in, rather than explaining simply how it works.

This one from a few years ago, which doesn’t seem to have had much attention, is as good as any I think:

https://link.medium.com/EV4u19HyFfb

I hope that helps…