what is money? 5 properties of sound money

5 properties of sound money
An ideal money should possess the following qualities:
divisibility, durability, portability, recognizability, and scarcity.

Portability:
A commodity fit to be used as money must have the ability to be transported from one place to the other easily. In other words, it must have the ability to traverse space easily while maintaining it’s value. Bitcoin is the ultimate example of this, as it is infinitely portable. Precious metals on the other hand are heavy and hard to transport

Durability:
As money is passed from hand to hand and is kept in reserve, it must not easily deteriorate, either in itself or as a result of wear and tear.
Destructible articles, such as eggs, dried cod fish, cattle or oil have all been used as currency, but none of them can last over time. Gold coins are very lasting; they take about 8,000 years to wear out completely. Silver coins are not equally lasting but wear out fairly slowly. As such gold and silver are considered to be excellent money commodities.

Divisibility:
The money material should be capable of division; and the aggregate value of the mass after division should be almost exactly the same as before. If we use diamond as money and by chance it drops from our hand and breaks, we will suffer an enormous loss. This is not the case with precious metals. Their portions can be melted and remelted together any number of times without much loss.

Recognizability:
The capability of a substance for being easily recognised and distinguished from all other substances. As a medium of exchange, money has to be continually handed about; and it will cause great inconvenience if every person receiving it has to scrutinise, weigh and test it.
It should have certain distinct marks which nobody can mistake. Bitcoin achieves this flawlessly with SHA-256 (Secure Hashing Algorithm 256). Fiat notes and coins attempt to achieve this with elaborate markings that are continually updated from a central body.

Scarcity:
Scarcity, also known as paucity, is an economics term used to refer to a gap between availability of limited resources and the theoretical needs of people for such resources. Gold and Silver have a perceived scarcity produced by the difficulty to mine it from the ground, however this is only guess work and is subject to change day-to-day. Bitcoin on the other hand, has a fixed supply of 21 million coins agreed upon by the consensus of the network.