Monetary Properties

The best type of money is one that is marketable to the greatest number of people at any given time. To be competitive as money, an item must be saleable across time, location, and scale. This means it should maintain its value over time, be easily transferable across geographical space, and accommodate transactions of any size.

Monetary properties are the characteristics that determine how effectively an item can fulfil the roles of money, such as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. Some of these properties include durability, portability, scarcity, and acceptability.

Many of these properties are fixed and unchanging over time, like divisibility — gold can be split into ounces or grams, dollars into cents, and bitcoin into satoshis. Others are variable, depending on the item's usage and adoption, such as its liquidity or level of acceptance.

Ultimately, the competition between different forms of money comes down to which one best fulfils these monetary properties. The item that is most saleable across time, location, and scale will tend to be the most useful and widely adopted money.