The Hardest Money Index: Stock-to-Flow Ranking of Bitcoin, Gold, Silver and the Dollar
The Monetary Scarcity Index: Bitcoin vs Gold vs the Dollar.
Monetary Theory | Supply Forensics | June 2026
The Hardest Money Index: A Forensic, Verified Ranking of Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, and the Dollar by Stock-to-Flow and Supply Discipline
Following the April 2024 halving, Bitcoin's stock-to-flow ratio, a measure of existing supply relative to new annual production, calculates to approximately 121, derived directly from its circulating supply of roughly 19.85 million coins against a post-halving annual issuance of 164,250 BTC. This figure exceeds gold's long-established stock-to-flow ratio of approximately 62, calculated from an estimated 187,000 tonnes of above-ground gold against roughly 3,000 tonnes mined annually, and dwarfs silver's ratio of approximately 22. The US dollar, measured by the M2 money supply, has no stock-to-flow ratio in the same sense at all, because it has no flow ceiling: M2 grew 19% in 2020 and 16% in 2021, with year-over-year growth ranging from a record high of 26.8% in February 2021 to a record low of negative 4.6% in April 2023, an issuance policy entirely subject to Federal Reserve discretion rather than any fixed schedule. This article forensically separates two distinct claims that are frequently conflated: the stock-to-flow ratio itself, an objective, verifiable calculation, and the stock-to-flow price prediction model popularized by the pseudonymous analyst PlanB, which uses that ratio to forecast specific Bitcoin price levels and which has been widely documented to have failed since late 2021, when actual prices diverged sharply below the model's projected trajectory. The DN Hardest Money Index scores Bitcoin, gold, silver, and the dollar across four verifiable supply-discipline dimensions, stock-to-flow scarcity, hard cap existence, issuance predictability, and resistance to authority change, producing a composite ranking grounded in mathematics rather than price speculation.
You did not arrive at an interest in hard money by accident. Somewhere along the way, you noticed that the rules governing your savings kept changing, that the institutions setting those rules answered to no one in particular, and that the asset everyone told you was risky was, on closer mathematical inspection, the only one in the room with rules that could not be quietly altered. This article exists to give that instinct the rigorous, verifiable backing it deserves, not by repeating slogans, but by running the actual numbers.
Stock-to-flow is not a Bitcoin invention. It is a centuries-old method economists and commodity analysts use to measure the relative scarcity of any storable good: divide the total existing stock of an asset by the amount newly produced each year, and the result tells you, in years, how long it would take current production to replicate the entire existing supply. A high ratio means a slow-growing, scarce stock. A low ratio means an asset that floods its own market with new supply every year. Applied honestly and without hype, this single calculation produces one of the starkest, most quantifiable rankings in all of monetary history.
Bitcoin's post-2024 halving stock-to-flow ratio of approximately 113 to 121 now sits nearly double that of gold, the first time in history a monetary asset has been measurably scarcer than gold by this metric. Whether the market values that scarcity accordingly is a separate question from whether the scarcity itself is real and verifiable.
— Synthesis of 2026 stock-to-flow analysis, cross-verified against Bitcoin's on-chain supply schedule and the World Gold Council's above-ground gold stock estimates.The Calculation, Shown in Full, So You Can Verify It Yourself
Bitcoin: mathematically fixed, publicly verifiable, immune to discretion
Since the April 2024 halving, Bitcoin's block reward is 3.125 BTC, issued roughly every 10 minutes, or about 144 blocks per day. That produces an annual flow of 3.125 × 144 × 365, approximately 164,250 new BTC per year. Against a circulating supply of roughly 19.85 million coins as of mid-2026, the stock-to-flow ratio calculates to 19,850,000 ÷ 164,250, approximately 121. This is not an estimate or a model output. It is arithmetic performed on numbers that are, uniquely among all monetary assets in this index, known with certainty in advance, because Bitcoin's entire future issuance schedule is fixed in its source code and verifiable by anyone running a node, all the way out to the final fractional satoshi expected around the year 2140.
Gold: the historical benchmark, now measurably surpassed
The World Gold Council estimates approximately 187,000 tonnes of gold exist above ground, against annual mine production of roughly 3,000 tonnes. That produces a stock-to-flow ratio of 187,000 ÷ 3,000, approximately 62, a figure consistent with the long-standing economic consensus that gold's slow-growing, geologically constrained supply is what has anchored its multi-millennium role as a store of value. Gold's flow is not fixed by any code; it responds, slowly and with long lag times, to price incentives and extraction technology, which is precisely why it has taken centuries rather than years for gold's stock-to-flow ratio to remain this stable.
Silver: the same logic, a meaningfully weaker result
Silver's stock-to-flow ratio, using the same methodology, calculates to approximately 22, less than a fifth of Bitcoin's current figure and roughly a third of gold's. Silver's lower ratio is driven substantially by its extensive industrial consumption (electronics, solar panels, medical applications), which means a meaningful share of newly mined silver is consumed rather than retained as a monetary store, a dynamic that does not apply to gold or Bitcoin in anything close to the same proportion.
The US dollar: no flow ceiling, no schedule, no fixed answer
The dollar, measured through the M2 money supply, cannot be meaningfully assigned a stock-to-flow ratio in the same sense, because M2 has no flow ceiling at all. Federal Reserve data shows M2 grew 19% in 2020 and 16% in 2021 during pandemic-era expansion, against an average annual growth rate of approximately 6% from 2000 to 2019. Year-over-year M2 growth has ranged from a record high of 26.8% in February 2021 to a record low of negative 4.6% in April 2023, a swing of more than 31 percentage points within roughly two years, entirely the product of discretionary policy decisions made by a single institution rather than any fixed, publicly verifiable schedule. M2 stood at approximately $22.8 trillion as of April 2026.
Why Raw Scarcity Alone Is Not the Whole Story
Stock-to-flow measures one dimension of monetary hardness: how slowly new supply enters relative to the existing stock. It does not, by itself, measure whether that supply schedule can be changed by decree, how precisely it is known in advance, or how resistant it is to a future decision by some authority to simply alter the rules. The DN Hardest Money Index therefore scores each asset across four dimensions, stock-to-flow scarcity, the presence of a genuine hard cap, issuance predictability, and resistance to authority change, because an asset can score well on raw scarcity while still being vulnerable on the dimension that arguably matters most for long-term monetary credibility: can someone, in principle, change the rules.
Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million coins is enforced by the consensus rules every node on the network independently verifies; changing it would require a coordinated rewrite of the protocol and acceptance by the overwhelming majority of participants, economically and technically equivalent to creating a different asset entirely rather than modifying Bitcoin. Gold has no comparable formal cap, but it is constrained by physics and geology rather than policy, a meaningfully different, slower-moving kind of limit. The dollar's M2 supply has neither a formal cap nor a physical constraint; it is bound only by the decisions of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee, a body of twelve people.
What the Honest Version of This Argument Actually Sounds Like
The version of the hard-money thesis that holds up to forensic scrutiny is narrower and, frankly, more persuasive than the version that gets shared as a meme. It is not "Bitcoin's stock-to-flow ratio proves the price will reach $1 million." That specific claim, made by the model's own creator, has not held up, and continuing to cite it without acknowledging its failure undermines the credibility of the underlying, much stronger argument. The honest version is narrower: Bitcoin possesses a combination of supply-issuance discipline (a mathematically fixed schedule, a genuine hard cap, and resistance to authority change) that no other monetary asset in human history, including gold, has simultaneously achieved. Whether that translates into a specific future price is a separate question this index does not attempt to answer, but the underlying scarcity claim itself is real, verifiable, and, on the numbers, currently the strongest in the asset's class.
What This Index Does Not Claim
The PlanB stock-to-flow price model is separate from the stock-to-flow ratio itself, and this index does not endorse the price model. CoinGecko's own analysis states plainly that the model's predictions began to fail in late 2021 and that critics have identified statistical flaws that, in their view, invalidate its reliability as a forecasting tool, principally because it ignores demand-side factors entirely. The raw scarcity calculation remains valid arithmetic; the price forecast built on top of it does not have a strong empirical track record.
Gold's lower stock-to-flow ratio does not make it a worse store of value in every respect. Gold carries roughly five thousand years of monetary track record, deep, liquid markets in every jurisdiction on earth, and no counterparty or technological risk. This index measures one specific, verifiable dimension, supply-issuance discipline, not a comprehensive ranking of every property that makes an asset suitable as a store of value.
The Bottom Line: The Math Was Always Going to Be There Whether or Not You Checked It
The instinct that brought you to this article, the sense that something about the rules governing modern money doesn't add up, is not a feeling that requires faith to validate. It requires arithmetic, and the arithmetic, run honestly and shown in full above, supports a specific and unusually strong claim: Bitcoin's supply-issuance discipline, measured across stock-to-flow scarcity, hard-cap enforcement, predictability, and resistance to authority change, is verifiably the strongest of any major monetary asset on earth, gold included. That is not a slogan. It is the output of four separate, independently checkable calculations, and you now have all four.
Hold the asset this index describes through self-custody, not through a third party whose own promises cannot be independently verified the way Bitcoin's supply schedule can. Ledger and CoolWallet both provide hardware self-custody appropriate for an asset whose entire value proposition rests on verifiable, trustless rules. Acquire it through Bybit or OKX, both offering deep BTC spot liquidity. See the DN Purchasing Power Decay Visualizer for the demand-side complement to this supply-side index, and the DN Paper Millionaire Map to verify your own setup actually reflects the self-custody principle this index describes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stock-to-flow divides an asset's total existing supply (the "stock") by the amount newly produced each year (the "flow"). The result, expressed in years, indicates how long current annual production would take to replicate the entire existing stock. A higher ratio indicates a scarcer, slower-growing supply. The methodology long predates Bitcoin and has been used by commodity economists to assess the relative scarcity of gold, silver, and other storable goods.
Following the April 2024 halving, Bitcoin's block reward is 3.125 BTC, producing an annual issuance of approximately 164,250 BTC (3.125 BTC × ~144 blocks per day × 365 days). Against a circulating supply of roughly 19.85 million coins as of mid-2026, this calculates to a stock-to-flow ratio of approximately 121, a figure independently verifiable from Bitcoin's public blockchain data and consistent with third-party analyses citing a range of approximately 113 to 121 post-halving.
Yes, by this specific metric. Gold's stock-to-flow ratio, using World Gold Council estimates of approximately 187,000 tonnes above-ground stock against roughly 3,000 tonnes mined annually, calculates to approximately 62. Bitcoin's post-2024-halving ratio of approximately 121 is nearly double that figure, marking the first time in history a monetary asset has measurably exceeded gold's scarcity by this calculation. This is a verifiable mathematical fact about relative supply growth rates; it is a separate question from whether the market currently prices that scarcity accordingly.
No, not in its specific price-forecasting form. The S2F price model, popularized by the pseudonymous analyst PlanB starting in 2019, used the stock-to-flow ratio in a regression model to forecast specific Bitcoin price targets, at points suggesting levels above $100,000 by 2021 and as high as $1 million within the following several years. Multiple independent analyses, including CoinGecko's, document that the model's predictions began failing in late 2021 and that Bitcoin's actual price has deviated significantly from the model's projected path since then, a result widely attributed to the model ignoring demand-side factors entirely. This is distinct from the underlying stock-to-flow ratio itself, which remains a valid, objective calculation regardless of the price model's forecasting failures.
Stock-to-flow requires a defined annual flow (new production rate) to divide into the existing stock. The US dollar, measured through the M2 money supply, has no fixed annual issuance rate; supply growth is set entirely at the discretion of the Federal Reserve and has varied dramatically, including 19% growth in 2020, 16% in 2021, a record high of 26.8% year-over-year in February 2021, and a record low of negative 4.6% in April 2023. Without a fixed, predictable flow, a stock-to-flow ratio in the same sense as gold or Bitcoin cannot be meaningfully calculated; the dollar's supply schedule is best described as having no defined ceiling at all.
The DN Hardest Money Index scores four major monetary assets, Bitcoin, gold, silver, and the US dollar (M2), across four dimensions, each worth up to 25 points for a total of 100: stock-to-flow scarcity (normalized against each asset's calculated ratio), hard supply cap existence and enforceability, issuance predictability (how precisely future supply is known in advance), and resistance to authority change (how difficult it would be for any single entity to alter the supply schedule). Bitcoin scores at or near the maximum across all four dimensions due to its mathematically fixed, code-enforced, consensus-protected 21 million coin cap, producing a composite score of 100. Gold scores well on scarcity and authority resistance but lacks a formal cap. Silver scores lower across all dimensions. The dollar scores near zero, reflecting its complete absence of a supply ceiling or fixed issuance schedule.
No. Stock-to-flow measures supply-side scarcity only; it says nothing about demand, which is the other half of any price equation. An asset can have an extremely high stock-to-flow ratio and still perform poorly if demand fails to materialize, declines, or is overwhelmed by other market factors. This is precisely why the S2F price prediction model, which attempted to forecast price from the ratio alone, has been documented to fail since late 2021: it ignored macroeconomic conditions, regulatory developments, and shifting demand entirely. The Hardest Money Index in this article measures supply discipline as an objective, verifiable property, not as a price forecasting tool.
Silver's stock-to-flow ratio of approximately 22, compared to gold's approximately 62, is substantially explained by silver's far greater industrial consumption. A significant share of newly mined silver is consumed in electronics, solar panel manufacturing, and medical applications rather than retained as a monetary or investment store, meaning a meaningful portion of silver's "flow" effectively exits the available stock each year through industrial use. Gold, by contrast, is overwhelmingly retained as bullion, jewelry, or central bank reserves, with comparatively minimal industrial consumption, allowing its above-ground stock to accumulate far more completely relative to its annual mining flow.
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Sources: World Gold Council above-ground gold stock estimates, CoinGecko "Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow (S2F) Model Explained" (Jul 2025), Newhedge Bitcoin S2F analysis, Zipmex "Stock to Flow Model Explained: 2026 Bitcoin Guide" (Apr 2026), Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) M2SL series, CEIC "US M2 Growth 1960-2026," USAFacts money supply analysis (May 2026), Nasdaq "Understanding The Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow Model."
As of: June 2026. Not financial advice. Stock-to-flow measures supply scarcity only and is not a price prediction; the PlanB S2F price model specifically has a documented record of forecasting failure since late 2021.
