Gold
About 1.7% a yearAverage growth of above-ground stock over the 25-year period described by the World Gold Council. Mining adds gold; recycling moves existing gold. There is no fixed cap.
World Gold CouncilInflation
Explore how money supply and prices change, what that means for purchasing power, and how gradual erosion can become collapse.
How much new money can be made?
Supply inflation means more units. Price inflation means those units buy less. They are related, but are not the same measurement.
Fiat
No fixed ceilingSupply varies with central-bank policy and commercial-bank credit. There is no single inflation rate for all fiat currencies. The dollar price history below shows one currency’s purchasing power.
Bank of EnglandBitcoin
About 0.83% a year, falling to zero at 21 million BTCThe block subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks. The 2024 halving reduced it to 3.125 BTC per block, around 0.83% of the scheduled supply at that point per year at the target block interval.
Bitcoin issuance rulesIncreasing money supply of the $ and its loss of purchasing power
Buying what $1 bought in 1913 took about $33.56 in 2026.
The U.S. dollar is a familiar fiat example. CPI estimates how consumer prices change; its goods and weights are updated over time, so this is not one unchanged shopping basket.
1913$1.00CPI-equivalent cost
1950$2.43CPI-equivalent cost
1971$4.09CPI-equivalent cost
2000$17.39CPI-equivalent cost
2020$26.14CPI-equivalent cost
2026$33.56CPI-equivalent cost
Put another way: $1 held from 1913 retained about 3.0 cents of its original purchasing power in 2026. This measures uninvested cash, not wages or investment returns.
The fiat graveyard
Imagine being paid in the morning and finding the same groceries cost twice as much by the next day. Hyperinflation destroys a currency’s usefulness for saving and pricing everyday life.
71 episodes in the Hanke–Krus table (as of 2026). The 2012 study documented 56; later additions include Venezuela (2016) and Lebanon (2020), and a 2025 revision added four more: Zambia (1984–86 and 1988), the Central African CFA franc zone (1994) and Belarus (2011). This counts episodes, not different countries or national bankruptcies. The nine cases below are a selection, not a complete world count.
The study uses a threshold of at least 50% inflation in a month. War, falling production, fiscal breakdown and money creation often interact. Not every fiat currency experiences it.
Read each case in two ways: the full percentage shows the size of the monthly price increase; the doubling time shows how quickly a household budget lost its buying power at the peak.
France
Mandat
Prices doubled about every15.1 days
304%
peak monthly inflation · August 1796What went wrongRevolutionary war finance and repeated paper issuance undermined confidence.
How it endedThe mandat failed after replacing the assignat; metallic money returned.
Germany
Paper mark
Prices doubled about every3.7 days
29,500%
peak monthly inflation · October 1923What went wrongWar debts, reparations, production disruption and deficit financing combined.
How it endedThe Rentenmark and fiscal and monetary stabilization ended the collapse.
Hungary
Pengő
Prices doubled about every15 hours
41,900,000,000,000,000%
peak monthly inflation · July 1946What went wrongWar destroyed production and revenues; money creation financed the fiscal gap.
How it endedThe forint replaced the pengő in August 1946.
Bolivia
Peso
Prices doubled about every20.3 days
183%
peak monthly inflation · February 1985What went wrongDebt stress and falling revenues drove reliance on central-bank financing.
How it endedA stabilization program curtailed deficit financing; a new boliviano followed in 1987.
Yugoslavia
Dinar
Prices doubled about every1.41 days
313,000,000%
peak monthly inflation · January 1994What went wrongWar, sanctions, collapsing output and money-financed deficits reinforced one another.
How it endedA new dinar linked to the German mark anchored stabilization in January 1994.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe dollar
Prices doubled about every24.7 hours
79,600,000,000%
peak monthly inflation · Mid-November 2008What went wrongProduction losses, fiscal deficits and central-bank financing fed the crisis.
How it endedForeign currencies displaced the local dollar; a multicurrency system was adopted in 2009.
Venezuela
Bolívar
Prices doubled about every17.5 days
234%
monthly inflation measured mid-episode · April 2018What went wrongOil revenue collapsed while the government printed money to cover deficits and imposed price controls.
How it endedFive zeros were cut from the bolívar in 2018. Monthly inflation fell below 50% in February 2019, but only for just over a year.
Venezuela
Bolívar
Peak monthly inflationNot verifiedAbove 50% a month · April–December 2020
What went wrongDeficits were still financed with new money, and monthly inflation crossed 50% again in April 2020.
How it endedThe episode ended in December 2020. Six more zeros were cut from the bolívar in 2021, and much daily trade moved to U.S. dollars.
Lebanon
Lebanese pound (lira)
Prices doubled about every49 days
52.6%
monthly inflation when it crossed the threshold · July 2020What went wrongYears of borrowing to hold the currency peg ended in a banking collapse and the country’s first debt default, in March 2020.
How it endedThe pound lost about 98% of its value against the dollar, falling from 1,507 to roughly 89,500 per dollar by 2024, and the economy largely switched to U.S. dollars.
Rates and doubling times: Hanke–Krus (2012), Table 1; Venezuela and Lebanon from Steve Hanke’s later measurements (2018, 2020). These are reported estimates at each peak, not rates sustained for the whole episode. Large percentages are written in full; no shared chart shrinks the smaller cases. See sources and methodology for historical context.
What Bitcoin changes—and what it cannot promise
Bitcoin’s rules do not allow an issuer to print extra coins to cover a deficit. That closes one route to monetary dilution. It does not guarantee demand, stable prices or immunity to economic crises. Gold also resists discretionary issuance, but is harder to move and verify at a distance.
Optional experiment: more money, fewer goods per unit
This simplified quantity model increases goods by 2% each step and holds velocity constant. The named actions assume money-financed spending; they do not always create money in reality. These percentages are illustrative, not historical data or forecasts.
Money supply1,000
Price per good$1.00
Original purchasing power100.0%
- Initial stateSupply: 1,000Price: $1.00
Apply what you learned
Try without looking back. Check your answers, then revisit any explanation you missed. These practice checks do not certify readiness to handle real funds.
Reviewed 2026-10-25 · Sources & methodology · not financial advice