Purchasing Power Over Time

How to read this chart

The bars

Each bar shows how one asset moves over time — they use different scales and cannot be compared to each other. Watch the direction and speed of movement, not the height relative to other bars.

The fiat bars (USD, GBP) show purchasing power lost from £100,000 held as cash, based on official government inflation figures (US CPI-U, UK RPI). The gold and Bitcoin bars show price appreciation from their January 1971 baseline.

Logarithmic scale

The chart uses a log scale so equal visual steps always represent equal percentage changes. On a linear scale, movements at small values would appear invisible — a 50% loss from £10 would look like nothing compared to a 50% loss from £1,000, even though both cut the value in half.

For the fiat bars, the y-axis labels (100% → 32% → 10% → 3% → 1%) show how much purchasing power is retained at each gridline. A bar near the 10% line means roughly 90% of purchasing power has been lost.

Cards below the chart

Average home price — what a typical US/UK house costs at that date, plus its ₿ equivalent.
Cash since 1971 — what £100,000 held as cash is worth in real terms today.
Gold price — USD per troy ounce, plus the ₿ equivalent.

Data sources

BLS CPI-U (US inflation) · ONS RPI (UK inflation) · FRED (house prices) · Yahoo Finance (BTC & gold) · LBMA historical records (gold pre-1975). Full links at the bottom of the page.