Bitcoin: Monetary Salability

When evaluating monetary assets, salability is often assessed across two key dimensions: time and space. Salability across time refers to an asset’s ability to preserve value over long periods, maintaining purchasing power rather than eroding through dilution or decay.

Salability across space reflects how easily and efficiently an asset can be moved between counterparties or jurisdictions, including the costs, frictions, and risks involved in transfer. These two properties are central to understanding why certain assets function better as stores of value and settlement instruments than others.

Comparative analysis of fiat currency, metals, and Bitcoin.

Fiat Salability:

Fiat currencies generally exhibit acceptable salability across space, as they are widely accepted, digitally transferable, and integrated into global banking and payment networks. Funds can move between accounts, institutions, and jurisdictions with relative ease, especially within established financial systems.

However, fiat currencies perform poorly in terms of salability across time. Because their supply can expand without a fixed limit, purchasing power tends to erode over long periods, meaning value is not reliably preserved. This makes fiat effective for short-term transactions, but structurally weak as a long-term store of value.

Data from the Federal Reserve illustrates the chronic deterioration of purchasing power with the USD.

Metal Salability

Precious metals tend to perform well in terms of salability across time, as their supply grows slowly and they have historically retained purchasing power over long periods. Gold and silver have served as stores of value for centuries, largely because they are difficult to produce and resistant to debasement.

However, metals exhibit poor salability across space. Moving physical bullion is costly, slow, and logistically complex, requiring secure transportation, storage, and verification. These frictions make metals impractical for efficient settlement or global value transfer, especially at scale. 

Bitcoin Saleability

Bitcoin excels in salability across both time and space. Its fixed supply and predictable issuance schedule protect it from dilution, allowing it to preserve value over long periods in a way that fiat currencies cannot.

At the same time, Bitcoin is natively digital and globally accessible, enabling value to be transferred across borders in minutes without reliance on banks, intermediaries, or physical transport. This combination of long-term scarcity and low-friction global mobility gives Bitcoin a level of monetary efficiency that neither fiat currencies nor precious metals are able to achieve.