Bitcoin is money. It has the potential to be the best money humanity has ever used. At Bringin, we build products that help Bitcoiners use this money in real life spending it while keeping self-custody. This article explains how our product works and what role we play in Bitcoin's journey toward becoming the new monetary standard.
But first, we need to answer a fundamental question: What is money?
What Is Money?
Every person has goals, needs, and wants. To achieve them, they use resources, property, and services. When they do this, they're acting economically.
An economy is just people exchanging scarce resources to achieve their goals. We'll call these resources "economic goods."
Direct Exchange vs. Indirect Exchange
Say Alice has something Bob wants (economic good A), and Bob has something Alice wants (economic good B).
When Alice gives A to Bob and receives B immediately in return, that's direct exchange—a barter system.
When Alice gives away A and receives something else (economic good M) from Bob, which she later trades to someone for B, that's indirect exchange.
Money as Medium of Exchange
Economic good M in that second example? That's money—the medium between Alice trading away A and eventually getting B.
In Austrian economics, money is fundamentally defined by one function: medium of exchange.
Money is an economic good like any other, but it acts as an intermediary. People accept it not because they want to consume it, but because they know others will accept it for other things. This is what makes money unique.
This differs from the conventional definition of money as three separate functions: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. We think that's confused thinking.
Why "Store of Value" Isn't a Separate Function
Any economic good that can satisfy future needs "stores value." A farmer's grain, a craftsman's tools, real estate, wine cellars—all store value because they can be used or exchanged later.
What distinguishes money isn't that it stores value (everything does to some degree), but that it's most readily accepted in exchange.
When people say money "stores value," they're describing its use as a medium of exchange across time. Money lets you sell labor today and buy groceries next week—that's medium of exchange stretched across time (intertemporal exchange), not a separate function.
Why "Unit of Account" Isn't a Separate Function
Similarly, any good can serve as a unit of account if people use it for pricing. "This cow is worth 20 bushels of wheat" uses wheat as the unit of account.
The unit of account emerges naturally from whichever good people use most in indirect exchanges. It's a consequence of a good's success as a medium of exchange, not a fundamental property.
Only Money Can Be a Medium of Exchange
While every good can store value and serve as a unit of account, only some can be used as a medium of exchange—as an intermediary in indirect exchange.
Money exists to enable indirect exchanges because direct exchange (barter) is ineffective at helping people achieve their goals.
People accept money not for direct consumption or use, but solely because others will accept it for other things. This is money's unique and defining characteristic.
Critics who say "Bitcoin is just a store of value" operate under the confused textbook trinity. They think storing value and medium of exchange are separate functions, and that if something is primarily held rather than circulated, it must not be money.
But when someone holds Bitcoin, they're exercising its monetary function across time rather than space—engaging in intertemporal exchange, choosing to forgo consumption today for consumption tomorrow.
The person who holds Bitcoin for five years and then spends it on a car is using Bitcoin exactly as money: as the intermediate good between their past productive efforts and current consumption.
Money exists primarily because it solves the problem of the double coincidence of wants.
Saleability: What Makes Good Money
Now we can talk about the single most essential quality for an economic good to function as money: saleability.
Saleability is how easily a good can be exchanged for other goods. A highly saleable good can be traded quickly, at any location, in any quantity, with minimal loss in value.
It has three dimensions:
- Saleability across time: maintaining purchasing power into the future
- Saleability across space: easily transported and exchanged in different locations
- Saleability across scale: divisible for small transactions or aggregable for large ones without prohibitive costs
The most saleable good in an economy naturally becomes money because it offers the greatest flexibility in executing exchanges.
The more saleable a monetary good is, the higher the likelihood of it becoming a universally accepted medium of exchange.
Bitcoin: A Quantum Leap in Saleability
Bitcoin represents a quantum leap in all three dimensions.
Across time: Its fixed supply of 21 million coins makes it the hardest money humanity has created—immune to the debasement that has plagued every fiat currency in history. No government can print more Bitcoin. No central bank can inflate it away.
Across space: Bitcoin is pure information. It moves at the speed of light across the internet, crossing borders instantly without trusted intermediaries, armored trucks, or permission from gatekeepers. A merchant in Berlin and a customer in Tokyo are as close as two neighbors.
Across scale: Bitcoin's divisibility into 100 million satoshis per coin means it can handle both a €2 coffee purchase and a €2 million real estate transaction with equal efficiency, especially on the Lightning Network where fees are measured in pennies regardless of transaction size.
No previous money—not gold, not seashells, not fiat currency—has ever combined these properties so powerfully. This is why Bitcoin isn't just incrementally better money, but a fundamental breakthrough in monetary goods.
The Acceptance Problem
However, Bitcoin's saleability faces one critical constraint: it's not widely accepted yet.
Euros are widely accepted.
Your local bakery doesn't accept Bitcoin. Your landlord wants euros. Your employer pays in euros. Most price tags display euros, not satoshis.
Bitcoin is climbing this adoption curve, but during this transition, its practical saleability is constrained by reality—most economic actors still operate within the fiat system. The majority of goods and services can only be purchased with euros, creating friction every time a Bitcoin holder wants to engage in everyday commerce.
This acceptance gap—not Bitcoin's technical properties—is the primary barrier to its function as a complete medium of exchange today.
Bringin: Building Saleability Infrastructure
The acceptance problem has a straightforward solution: enable Bitcoin holders to transact with anyone, anywhere, regardless of whether they accept Bitcoin.
Bringin solves this by providing instant Bitcoin-to-euro conversion at the point of transaction.
When a merchant doesn't accept Bitcoin, Bringin lets you pay using Bitcoin anyway. You hold your wealth in Bitcoin in your self-custodial Lightning wallet. When it's time to pay—whether for coffee, rent, or online shopping—Bringin converts your Bitcoin to euros instantly and delivers the payment through channels the merchant already accepts.
The merchant receives euros. You spend Bitcoin. The acceptance gap disappears.
This dramatically expands Bitcoin's effective saleability. Every merchant that accepts euros effectively accepts your Bitcoin.
Your landlord demanding euro rent? Not a problem.
Your salary arrives in euros but you want to stack sats? Bringin works in reverse too—euros to Bitcoin via Lightning.
Here's the critical part: you maintain self-custody throughout. Your private keys are yours. Bringin doesn't hold your Bitcoin—we simply provide the rails to convert at the moment of transaction.
You live on a Bitcoin standard while operating in a euro-denominated economy.
As more people use tools like Bringin, Bitcoin's effective acceptance grows. Merchants who receive euros can just as easily convert them back to Bitcoin using Bringin. The circular economy strengthens. But during this transition, Bringin removes the primary barrier to Bitcoin's saleability: the acceptance gap.
Living the Standard
People on a Bitcoin standard hold larger cash balances because Bitcoin appreciates rather than depreciates. This isn't hoarding—it's rational economic calculation.
Under fiat regimes with negative real interest rates, people minimize cash holdings and rush to convert money into goods or assets to escape debasement. Under a Bitcoin standard, the money itself is the superior savings vehicle.
But this doesn't mean consumption stops. It means consumption is more rationally planned, based on genuine time preferences rather than artificially manipulated by inflation.
When someone spends Bitcoin, they're not abandoning the Bitcoin standard—they're exercising their time preference to consume now rather than later.
When you pay for coffee with Bitcoin (converted to euros via Bringin), the merchant receiving euros can just as easily convert those euros back to Bitcoin to hold. Bringin makes the reverse flow equally frictionless.
Eventually, everyone simply transacts using Bitcoin.
This is distinct from Bitcoin-fiat exchange on exchanges, ETFs, or treasuries, where exchange occurs between two monies, not money for real goods and services.
Tools like Bringin facilitate the monetary function—money as a medium of exchange for real economic goods—rather than merely speculative trading between currencies.
Bitcoin Appreciation and Savings
As Bitcoin continues its monetization process, appreciation relative to fiat currencies isn't a bug but a feature. A good becoming money necessarily increases in exchange value as it's demanded not just for its direct use but for its exchange value.
For individuals, Bitcoin serves the savings function well—better than any fiat currency, better than most financial assets. But savings and spending aren't opposites. They're complementary parts of economic life governed by time preference.
Bringin enables people to hold savings in the form that best preserves purchasing power (Bitcoin) while retaining the optionality to spend when time preference shifts toward present consumption. This isn't compromising the Bitcoin standard but fully realizing it—allowing Bitcoin to serve all aspects of the medium of exchange function, both intertemporal (savings) and interspatial (payments).
As fiat currencies continue their inevitable depreciation through money printing, more people will seek Bitcoin's superior store-of-value properties. But they'll only adopt Bitcoin as their primary money if it also functions well as a medium of exchange for everyday transactions.
This is where saleability infrastructure becomes critical. This is where living the standard becomes possible.
The Path Forward
The Austrian School teaches us that money emerges through a market process, not by decree. Bitcoin is undergoing spontaneous monetization driven by people recognizing its superior monetary properties—particularly its resistance to debasement.
But monetization isn't instantaneous. Network effects, institutional inertia, legal tender laws, and coordination problems mean fiat currencies retain significant usage even as their flaws become more apparent.
During this transitional period, infrastructure that enhances Bitcoin's saleability—reducing conversion friction, enabling instant transactions, maintaining self-custody—accelerates the monetization process.
Bringin directly addresses the saleability constraints Bitcoin faces. By making Bitcoin-euro conversion instant, low-cost, and straightforward while preserving self-custody, Bringin removes key barriers that would otherwise slow Bitcoin adoption.
Every improvement in saleability moves us closer to a world where Bitcoin functions as the predominant money—the most marketable good, the universal medium of exchange across both time and space.
This isn't speculation or ideology but the logical implication of Austrian monetary theory: the more saleable good, over time, outcompetes the less saleable.
Bringin builds the infrastructure that allows this competitive process to unfold more efficiently, enabling more people to live on a Bitcoin standard even while the world around them still operates primarily on fiat rails.
Live the standard. Not someday. Today.