The smallest possible money unit! When money crashes into the laws of physics

Espen Gaarder Haug

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2020, vol. 560, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that there is an absolute physical limit on how small the smallest money unit can be, no matter how much we are able to improve our technology. The smallest money unit seems to be directly linked to the smallest possible energy unit needed to store one bit. If the smallest money unit is smaller than the cost of energy of storing one bit then there seems to be an arbitrage, which will also constrain money producers such as central banks from issuing money with a smaller denomination than this minimum money unit.

Keywords: Money units; Money creation; Arbitrage; Information theory; Landauer limit; The Planck constant; Minimum energy unit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437120305975
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:560:y:2020:i:c:s0378437120305975

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2020.125143

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().