Elon Musk Says Money Won’t Matter By 2036. Investors Can Win Either Way

You may have read that Elon Musk believes money will be worthless within ten years. Speaking recently to The Economist at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, the richest man in history argued that robots and AI will soon produce more than humans can possibly consume, rendering money irrelevant. 

It’s an easy claim to laugh at and a surprisingly hard one to confidently rebut.  

For most investors, the useful interpretation of Musk’s thinking is in what it implies about where returns will come from over the next decade, and how to build a portfolio that thrives whether he proves broadly right, mostly wrong, or the usual Musk mix of directionally correct and chronologically optimistic. 

Musk’s Argument 

Musk’s logic is simple enough. Money is a claim on goods and services. In the future, if machines can supply those at close to zero marginal cost, then cash loses meaning as the main form of currency.  

This vision is based on AI driving a wave of global deflation with output dramatically outrunning money supply. 

It’s also based upon Musk’s opinion that AI will surpass the sum of human intelligence within roughly five years.  

He conceded that this transition will be bumpy, naming income transfers as the likely next global policy fight en route to his vision becoming reality. 

A Track Record of Getting Things Directionally Correct 

When most people hear a major prediction like this, their first question is: what is this person’s track record at predicting the future? 

While Musk has tended to be directionally correct in his predictions, his accuracy has been questionable. 

For example, he has forecast before that work would become optional within ten to twenty years, while Tesla’s Optimus humanoid has faced repeated delays versus expectations. Prediction market Polymarket at one point put the odds of Tesla releasing Optimus before 31 December 2026 at just 14.5%.  

In other words, Musk’s predictions tend to be directionally correct but wildly optimistic in terms of timing. 

Why Many People Think He is Wrong This Time 

Most industry experts put the probability of a moneyless economy by 2036 at an extremely low level since abundance alone is unlikely to completely erode the value of money. A post-money economy would probably still need mechanisms to allocate scarce resources, distribute the gains and preserve individual choice.  

Beyond money, none exist at scale.  

It’s also noteworthy that the physical constraints to an expanding global economy are tightening. For example, wholesale electricity costs are up 267% over the past five years near major US data centres as grid supply struggles to keep pace with AI workloads. 

Economists Tyler Cowen and Noah Smith argue that cheap manufactured goods don’t end scarcity. They just relocate it. A house with a particular view, a position at a good school, the attention of a person in demand: these remain scarce however cheap household goods become, and there has to be a mechanism to ration them.  

The Part Musk is Probably Right About 

A more plausible 2036 outlook is one in which automation delivers large productivity gains and the argument shifts to who captures them. 

Stripping away the timeline, there’s probably a defensible thesis at the heart of Musk’s moneyless thesis; that a rising share of output is likely to flow to the owners of capital rather than to the suppliers of labour.  

The AI capex numbers help spell that out.  

UBS estimates the hyper-scalers will spend US$4.1 trillion on AI infrastructure between 2026 and 2028, more than triple the US$1.3 trillion deployed over the previous six years, with Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft together committing about 102% of their cloud revenue to capital expenditure this year. 

What this Means for Investors 

We see three important takeaways for investors: 

1. Own productive assets  

If a larger share of the gains accrues to owners, the prudent response is to own productive assets broadly and hold them forever.  

The complication for Australian investors is that the ASX remains concentrated in banks and miners, both relatively old-world industries.  

Global equity funds and global ETFs are the practical access route to the type of assets positioned to thrive in the new world economy. 

2. Buy the bottlenecks 

The first phase of the AI trade was about computing power.  

The second is likely to be about the infrastructure an AI-dominated computing world needs to scale, particularly the end markets where the capex spend is capacity-constrained.  

For example, it’s estimated that 30% to 50% of planned 2026 AI data centre capacity will slip to 2028 because of grid interconnection queues and construction bottlenecks.  

If capacity is limited by power, grid equipment, copper and cooling rather than by demand, the most interesting exposures are likely to reside around the unavoidable bottlenecks.  

Infrastructure and mining and resources funds and ETFs may sit closer to these long-term constraints than the average technology fund.  

3. Maintain a hedge against Musk being 100% correct  

Let’s take Musk’s deflation prediction seriously for a moment.  

In a genuinely deflationary world, falling prices are likely to deliver strong real returns on cash and long-dated bonds while punishing leveraged real assets.  

That scenario is unlikely, which is exactly why insurance against it is so cheap right now.  

For example, fixed income may deserve a place in your portfolio because it is likely to outperform if Musk is indeed correct. 

Making Sense of a Changing World 

Musk’s prediction of a cashless world works better as a thought experiment than as an accurate timetable to be followed. 

However, there are two important consequences.  

The first is that asset ownership is likely to be worth more than income in the future. If automation keeps compressing the value of labour, the households that do well will be those holding claims on productive capital.  

That’s a compelling argument for starting early and contributing consistently to global and thematic ETFs and funds. 

The second is that the serious money is more likely to be made in the constraints than in the abundance. Energy, grid capacity, minerals and land are likely to remain scarce in every version of this story, including Musk’s own. 

These responses won’t make everyone a trillionaire, but they should help ensure your portfolio is still thriving in 2036, whether or not money is.

Disclaimer: This article is prepared by Simon Turner. It is for educational purposes only. While all reasonable care has been taken by the author in the preparation of this information, the author and InvestmentMarkets (Aust) Pty. Ltd. as publisher take no responsibility for any actions taken based on information contained herein or for any errors or omissions within it. Interested parties should seek independent professional advice prior to acting on any information presented. Please note past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.