Bitcoin as Money: Mythos, Logos, and Value

Musing on the nature of money has long been regarded as an exercise in futility, yet the history of such reflection is as long as money itself. A persistent point of reference has been the tripartite definition of money as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. This framework, traceable at least to Aristotle, runs through medieval thought, classical political economy, and remains embedded in contemporary macroeconomics. Modern debates in political economy are largely structured by disagreements over which of these functions is primary. These disagreements align with a deeper divide between logos and mythos in social thought. Approaches grounded in economic reasoning emphasize money’s role as a medium of exchange, portraying it as a bottom-up solution to coordination problems and treating it as a special form of commodity. By contrast, institutional and state-centered approaches foreground money’s role as a unit of account, understanding it as a top-down contractual relation anchored in political authority. Despite their differences, both positions privilege logos: rational calculation, institutional design, and functional necessity. The emergence of Bitcoin exposes the limits of this shared orientation. For both orthodox and heterodox traditions, Bitcoin is typically denied the status of money ex ante, as it is neither a widely accepted means of exchange nor a direct liability of the state. This paper argues that such dismissal rests on a systematic neglect of the third function of money, the store of value, when value is understood not as stability or purchasing power but as shared symbolic meaning. I argue that this function operates primarily in the register of mythos, as a narrative sustained by collective belief, temporal expectation, and symbolic coherence. Seen in this light, Bitcoin’s claim to moneyness does not depend primarily on its transactional use or legal recognition. While volatile, marginal as a means of payment, and experimental as legal tender, Bitcoin nevertheless exhibits a degree of moneyness grounded in the dense mythos surrounding it, including its origin story, its enigmatic creator, and its promise of monetary autonomy. Its exclusion from monetary theory is therefore not accidental. It reflects a rationalist and reductionist tendency within modern political economy that seeks to expel myth while remaining unable to recognize the mythic foundations of value it continues to rely upon. To develop this argument, I draw on the intellectual history of monetary thought and recent work in economic sociology and narratology, particularly the Simmel–Zelizer–Dodd tradition.