A Cypherpunk's Library

Ideal Money and Asymptotically Ideal Money

John F. Nash Jr.

2002 · 8 pages

The game theorist and Nobel laureate's argument that money becomes “ideal” when its value holds steady over time: a stable standard of measurement, not a thing managed by inflationary discretion. Nash proposes pegging currency to an objective index of prices, and sketches “asymptotically ideal money” as the practical path: currencies that, through competition and credible policy, converge toward a reliable long-term store of value.