What if to protect against inflation, it was less risky to have Bitcoin than not to have it?
On June 11, the European Central Bank (ECB) raised its key rates. A first since 2023, which officially closes the period of rate cuts.
The reason lies in one number: 3.2%. This is the annual rate of inflation in the euro zone estimated by Eurostat for the month of May, after 3% in April and 2.6% in March. Well beyond the 2% target, and growing rapidly in recent months.
This decision confirms what observers feared: inflation is here to stay, sufficiently so that it requires intervention from the Central Bank.
The signal of June 11
Why does a central bank raise rates? To make credit more expensive, slow down demand and, ultimately, contain the rise in prices. The problem is that the current surge comes primarily from a supply shock: oil and gas have cost more since the tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, and this additional cost is gradually spreading throughout prices. However, raising rates will not lower the barrel. Several economists also criticize Frankfurt’s decision: slowing down an economy already on the verge of contraction to combat a cause beyond its control means taking the risk of aggravating the problem in the name of the remedy.
This controversy reveals frequent confusion. The word “inflation” actually covers two phenomena. There is the cyclical surge in prices, the one that is making headlines and that the ECB is trying to curb. And there is an older, more discreet and deeper movement: the continuous increase in the quantity of money in circulation, which erodes the purchasing power of the euro year after year, whether the barrel rises or falls. The first will eventually ebb. The second, never for fifty years.
Inflation, the tax that no one votes for
Let’s do a simple calculation. Livret A pays 1.5% since February 1. Inflation is running at 3.2%. A saver who leaves 10,000 euros there therefore loses around 170 euros in purchasing power over a year. No sales, no crash, no red line on a bank statement. Milton Friedman called it taxation without legislation: a levy that no one votes for, that no one declares, and that hits first those who save in money.
Three percent a year seems painless. Compounded over ten years, they reduce a quarter of the purchasing power of capital. This is the perversity of the phenomenon: it is invisible on the scale of a month and considerable on the scale of a saver’s life.
An ever more abundant currency
The long-term figures speak for themselves. In the United States, the monetary aggregate M2, which measures the money supply in the broad sense, has multiplied by around 35 since 1971, or an increase of around 7% per year for more than half a century. In the euro zone, this same M2 aggregate increased from around 4,600 billion euros in 2001 to more than 16,000 billion today: three and a half times more money in a quarter of a century, when the production of goods and services progressed much more slowly.
When money is abundant, everything that is scarce appreciates against it: real estate, stocks, gold. The consumer prices that Eurostat measures are the foam. The tide is monetary. The saver who thinks only in euros does not see the tide rising. He only notices, years later, that everything has become inaccessible.
Bitcoin, a rare asset by construction
Faced with a currency whose quantity continues to grow, the savers’ parade has always been the same: also hold what cannot be multiplied. Earth, walls, gold. Since 2009, this family of rare assets has had a new member: Bitcoin.
Its decisive characteristic lies in one number. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins. This limit, which no state, no central bank, no company can modify, is guaranteed by the very functioning of the network. More than 95% of the units are already in circulation, and the balance issuance schedule is known in advance, until 2140. Where the quantity of euros depends on human decisions taken under political constraint, the quantity of bitcoins obeys a fixed rule that everyone can verify. Gold has this rarity in its natural state; Bitcoin adds what gold does not offer: it can be transferred in a few minutes, divided infinitely and stored for just a few euros, from a phone.
Certainly, the price of this young asset remains volatile: it has fallen by more than a third since its peak in January, after having exceeded $126,000 in the fall. This is why those who are interested in it generally consider it as a long-term diversification line, for a measured fraction of their assets, and not as a short-term investment.
The rallying of institutional finance
This reading is no longer marginal. BlackRock, the world’s leading asset manager, published a study in 2025 with the explicit title, “Bitcoin: a unique diversifier”, seeing it as protection against the budgetary, monetary and geopolitical risks that weigh on the rest of the portfolios. Its IBIT fund, launched in January 2024, has become the largest Bitcoin vehicle in the world, with more than 800,000 bitcoins held on behalf of its clients at the start of 2026. Larry Fink, its manager, who described Bitcoin as a vector for laundering in 2017, now describes it as digital gold, an asset class that protects when currencies depreciate, and observes that sovereign funds take advantage of declines to accumulate them.
The June 11 rate hike will stop neither the barrel nor the underlying monetary tide. Above all, it reminds us that the value of the currency in which we count, save and transmit depends on decisions that escape us. Previous generations responded to this risk with gold. Ours has an additional asset to study. Knowing him costs nothing. Ignore it, yes.
