Word.ws English Dictionary

digital scarcity

digital scarcity noun: the lack of access to digital infrastructure such as the Internet.

Noun

digital scarcity (uncountable)

  1. (originally) The lack of access to digital infrastructure such as the Internet.
  2. A limitation, imposed through software, of digital information; in particular, the limitation on the total supply of a cryptocurrency or other crypto-based tokens.
    • Until 2009 digital scarcity did not exist in any meaningful way. If I had a file on my computer – a picture of a cat, say – I could copy that file for as many people as I wanted at a price too low to calculate.2018, Simon Dingle, In Math We Trust: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and the Journey To Being Your Own Bank, Jonathan Ball Publishers, →ISBN
    • With this technological design, Nakamoto was able to invent digital scarcity. Bitcoin is the first example of a digital good that is scarce and cannot be reproduced infinitely.2018, Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 177

Questions about digital scarcity

What does digital scarcity mean?
Digital scarcity means the lack of access to digital infrastructure such as the Internet.
What part of speech is digital scarcity?
Digital scarcity is a noun.

Words near digital scarcity in the dictionary

  1. digital rights management
  2. digital root
  3. digital roots
  4. digital rupee
  5. digital rupees
  6. digital scarcity
  7. digital service provider
  8. digital service providers
  9. digital shadow
  10. digital shadows
  11. digital sharecropping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: digital scarcity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “digital scarcity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/digital_scarcity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.