Second. When goods compete, they also compete in their monetary qualities. Some goods can displace others as money when they possess qualities better suited to that role. Salt, for example, is a consumable good that dissolves in water. Metal—particularly corrosion-resistant metal—does not share these shortcomings. American cigarettes became a scarcer commodity (less is needed for exchange) than the Reichsmark, and so cigarettes became money in Germany under American occupation. Bitcoin emerged only because fiat money accumulated enormous problems. Bitcoin is free from the shortcomings of those monies; this is its competitive advantage. Under conditions of a free economy, it would hardly have arisen, and if it did arise, then not so much as money, but as a technology for confirming the authenticity of a transaction.