mon·ey (noun)
- a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.
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cur·ren·cy read as ˈkərənsē (noun)
-a system of money in general use in a particular country.
So, is bitcoin money or currency?
- a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.
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cur·ren·cy read as ˈkərənsē (noun)
-a system of money in general use in a particular country.
So, is bitcoin money or currency?
Up 158 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, bitcoin is now the best-performing currency. Many are confused as to how this mathematical protocol can be worth more than $2,600, and why it keeps going up. The short answer: Bitcoin is money, just a little better and cheaper than the alternatives.
If you don’t understand money, you cannot understand bitcoin. For most of us, money is the U.S. dollar, the fiat currency of the United States issued by the Federal Reserve and maintained by the commercial banking system.
But even this system is confusing. Most people don’t hold Federal Reserve notes anymore; they hold money in checking accounts or use their credit cards to buy things. This is electronic fiat money, stored on the servers of banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.
This type of money is a great medium of exchange. Because the state mandates the acceptance of fiat money by all commercial actors, you can pay everywhere with dollars and, as a bonus, the prices of consumer goods seldom change more than a few percent per year.
Other attributes that make the dollar useful as a medium of exchange are its divisibility, recognizability, and indestructability—at least in electronic form—and the ease with which it can be exchanged.
