When I was a teenager, I delivered newspapers. I made 10 Deutschmarks (DM) per hour. This was enough money to buy 33 scoops of ice cream, as each scoop cost only 30 cents, or pfennig, as was the case at the time.
Fast forward to 2025: today, a teenager delivering newspapers earns at most €12 per hour. However, a scoop of ice cream now costs €1.50, and sometimes more than €2 in major cities. This means that for every hour of newspaper delivery, you can at best buy eight scoops of ice cream, but it is often less than that.
The value of a boy or girl’s working time has been greatly devalued in Germany over the past 40 years. An hour’s work yields only six to eight scoops of ice cream, compared to the 33 scoops she used to get in the 1980s. This is a loss of about 80%.
If I put the 10 DM in a drawer, found it forty years later, and exchanged it for €5, I would only get two or three scoops of ice cream – a loss of more than 90%.
This relates to inflation and its redistribution effects. It’s not just savings money that depreciates in value; It’s also time spent earning that money — or, more accurately, earning a steady basket of goods. When money loses its value, so does the actual time we spent earning it. On average, we get much less real goods for the work we do.
Inflation, the continuing decline in the value of money, is a big problem. The global money supply (M2) is estimated at approximately $120 trillion (see Figure 4). Even at an inflation rate of 4% (and the global rate is likely to be higher), direct money income of about $120 trillion would imply the destruction of $4.8 trillion in purchasing power each year. This is more than Germany’s gross national product. Inflation affects billions of people. Almost everyone, in fact. The less you earn, the more inflation strips you of your assets. The vast majority of people, which I estimate to be about 90% of all citizens, have no way of avoiding the devaluation of money. They lose out as the value of their savings declines and their wages fail to keep up with rising inflation.
Often, major historical upheavals and revolutions preceded inflation, for example, the French Revolution. Currency devaluation also played an important role in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, about a thousand years before the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. Therefore, inflation also represents a serious threat to democratic societies today.
The amount of Bitcoin will not increase in the long term. There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, and no one will ever be able to change that. At this point in early 2026, there are already 19.9 million Bitcoins in existence, 95% of the specified amount. This means that any remaining expansion (or new issuance) of Bitcoin will be just under 5%; Not next year, but over a period of approximately one hundred and fifteen years. By approximately 2140, 100% of all Bitcoin will have been mined, and there will be no more. This means that the share of money you hold in Bitcoin will not be devalued against a basket of goods over a decade or even a century. Your share will not be diluted. Bitcoin does not inflate; When measured in Bitcoin, goods actually become cheaper over time. So the money you exchange for Bitcoin today will buy you at least as many scoops of ice cream in ten years as it does now, and maybe more. Much more. This is the basic essence of Bitcoin.
Find out more at Bitcoin: honest money!
This snippet is just the beginning. Dive deeper into how inflation affects your money, savings and time Bitcoin: honest money By Alex von Frankenberg, Ph.D. Paperback is available now.
