It doesn't seem to be mostly just fluff to me.
MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos' ex wife) show it can be turned into real money. As of December 2025 She had given away $7.1 billion in 2025 charitable donations, and $26.3 billion since 2019.
In reality there is the ability to execute on the shares to turn them into real money.
Jeff Bezos holds less than 10% of Amazon stock himself. Which is a huge amount of money, and a not insignificant amount of which can be turned into "real" money and even with some decline is still a phenomenal amount.
In that same time period the stock valuation has more than doubled.
It’s real and unreal at the same time - as is true of many non-cash wealth.
You have a house? You can sell it next month for a certain price, sell it tomorrow for a bit less.
You own every house in your town? You can still sell a few for “full price” but liquidation of all of them is going to be a shock to the market.
She is in fact on top of more value in shares than when she started giving away money.