Let's continue our understanding of assets by considering tangible and intangible assets. Tangible assets are things we can touch and feel—cars, paper money, or coursework. Intangible assets are things such as mortgages, intellectual property rights, insurance policies, and music files. In an increasingly digital world, we're going to see a lot more intangible assets. You'll hear people say that objects are becoming de-materialized, and the idea of an intangible assets nicely captures this concept.

A couple of small points should be noted to avoid confusion on our usage of the word intangible. Firstly, as we're dealing with a digital ledger, in some trivial sense, everything on a blockchain is intangible. What's interesting is the nature of the object itself—using the word intangible helps you to remember to look out for things that you cannot see in the physical world.

Secondly, the use of intangible is not intended as a statement of value. Often, in accounting systems, we use this term when we have trouble defining something, such as goodwill. Again, we're not using the word in this sense; our intangible assets have a more concrete, definite, and exchangeable form than this, because they are things of value, even if you cannot touch them.