In Chapter 3 of Capital, Volume 1, Marx provides the basis for money with no intrinsic value. Money has an expression of value, the commodity price list read backwards, because of its placement in the universal equivalent form. Marx’s explanation of money as means of circulation and as hoards establishes that this expression—the exchange ratio between money and commodity values—is maintained whether money has intrinsic value or not. With this, the expression of money’s ‘value’ is sufficient for money to express the value of commodities and so to function as the measure of value, whether money’s own value is real or imaginary. This interpretation is derived from S. de Brunhoff’s Marx on Money.