Elon Musk believes Swiss account, Bitcoin worthless, says ‘money just a database’; here's the future of actual economy

Elon Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X, believes that people mistake the economy for money.

Speaking to Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, on the WELT Documentary channel in April 2022, just after he announced his decision to buy Twitter (now X), the SpaceX and Tesla chief told the executive that money is “worthless” compared to the actual economy.

Elon Musk: ‘Money is a database, actual economy is…’

“What is an economy? People get confused; sometimes they think an economy is money. (But), money is a database for exchange requisite services and for time-shifting the exchange of written services, that's it. Money is a database; it doesn't have power in and of itself,” he said.

Explaining further, Musk said, “You can run the thought experiment: You're trapped, shipwrecked, on a remote island and you have a trillion dollars in a Swiss bank account, it's worthless. You would rather have a can of soup. You can have all the Bitcoin in the world and you're still going to starve. The actual economy is goods and services.”

Watch: Elon Musk on why money is worthless in larger economy

Labour is the limiting factor to economy: Musk

Speaking further, the Tesla CEO said that labour is the factor that “limits output of goods and services”

“The limiting factor for the economy is labour and so if you address the limiting factor for the economy then it's not clear that an economy in the traditional sense has any meaning. Because you have no constraint on goods and services, we (will) decide to make (things) scarce, like a particular piece of art,” he added.

Elon Musk paints a picture of the future economy

Last week, Musk, the founder of xAI and co-founder of Neuralink, said he believes that 10-20 years in the future, with artificial intelligence-led advances, people won't need to save for retirement as all healthcare, housing and income needs will be met by an abundant society.

“One like side recommendation I have is, don't worry about squirrelling money away for retirement. In 10 or 20 years, you won't need to save for retirement. If any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant,” Musk added.

Speaking on the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast, Musk was optimistic that the future is going to be amazing with AI and robots enabling sustainable abundance. And back in 2022, too, he expressed similar thoughts to Springer, suggesting that the limiting factor of labour will be addressed through AI and robotics.

Work optional, goods and services for free?

In October 2025, on social media, the billionaire said that AI and robots will replace all the jobs in the world, making work optional. 

“AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store,” he wrote on X. 

Prior to that, in an interview with United States Senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, he said that the goods and services available in the future of mankind will be almost free of cost because “tens of billions of robots will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing”.