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.