If youre reading this piece, you likely already know that El Salvador recently decreed Bitcoin legal tender. The dollar will similarly continue as legal currency in the Central American nation.

Word has it that Bitcoin will enable much easier and safer remittances from Salvadorans working outside the country. The giant leap for the once obscure medium doubtlessly has some crypto-optimists with stars in their eyes about the future of decentralized money. El Salvador is the surely the beginning of increasingly common Bitcoin circulation.

The enthusiasts would be wise to curb their enthusiasm.

Bitcoins not about to replace the dollar, or any other broadly circulated money form. While theres much to dislike about the dollar, Bitcoins creator(s) dont know why the greenback is disliked.

To the reflexively libertarian in our midst who arent quite sure why theyre libertarian, Bitcoin is logically superior because its not government money. Fair enough, at first glance. Except that the lack of trust in the dollar is not because its government money; rather more than a few disdain the greenback because it lacks stability as a measure. More than that, they hate when the dollar is devalued. Stop and think about it.

Money isnt wealth. Money is an agreement about value that facilitates the movement of wealth. Ill pay you $10 for your HoneyCrisp apples, and youll sell them to me because you eye the butchers ribeye longingly. Money well predates government simply because money is as old as trade is. For as long as producers have been producing, theyve used a variety of money forms (agreements about value) to exchange their surplus with others eager to get for their own surplus.

Gold eventually became money par excellence (Marx) because it was so price constant. When gold moves, its a consequence of the currencies in which its priced moving up and down. Which is why currencies have so long been defined in terms of gold. The connection between gold and money for thousands of years hasnt been some randomly arrived at association as much as it was a logical market conclusion: an agreement about value facilitates the most trade among producers if its value is viewed as constant. The golden constant was married to money, and trade logically took off.

Back to the Honeycrisp/ribeye example, its hopefully a reminder that no one exchanges money. All trade is products for products; money merely the value agreement that enables producers of disparate production and wants to relentlessly exchange with one another. But since money is the measure that binds us, trust in the measure is of utmost importance. Gold was yet again connected with money long ago to enhance trust among eager-to-exchange producers; trade the central purpose of production.

Except that money hasnt had a stable definition since the early 1970s. Keynesians, monetarists and mercantilists to varying degrees fell for the fantasy that a floating or shrunken measure would boost prosperity, which was and is the equivalent of a short-in-stature basketball player shrinking the inch in order to catch the eye of NBA scouts. No one would be fooled. No ones fooled by unstable, untrustworthy money either.

Evidence supporting the above claim is the fact that currencies are traded daily to the tune of nearly $7 trillion. No one trades feet or inches simply because theyre uniform in length. Money used to have feet and inch qualities. Now its value is largely ignored by the U.S. Treasury, which means endless trading takes place per day to mitigate the dollars lurches, along with those of other currencies.

Looked at through the prism of the Honeycrisp owner and the butcher, the owner of the ribeye doesnt exactly rejoice in giving away a tangible cut of meat for dollars that might be worth less, and subsequently exchange for much less. Which explains frenzied currency trading. Since currencies arent as trustworthy as they used to be, we must hedge all manner of product for product transactions to at least somewhat protect producers from being ripped off when they exchange real goods for money that bounces around in value.

Looked at from a Bitcoin perspective, hopefully readers can see where this is going. Bitcoin and other private money forms are arguably a market response to government money that hasnt been very trustworthy since the early 70s (a dollar bought 1/35th of a gold ounce in 1971, now it buys roughly 1/1800th), but there would likely be greatly reduced interest in the cryptomonies if government money were stable in the way that is used to be.

Of course, the problem is that Bitcoins volatility as a measure makes the dollar appear rather rigid by comparison. Put another way, Bitcoin magnifies the dollars worst qualities many times over. And its not going to get better.

Indeed, when it comes to money, the focus can either be on price stability or supply; never both. Bitcoins creator(s) have made plain that supply will not be elastic, which means its price will be much more than elastic. The previous truth no doubt pleases the monetary cranks in our midst who think inflation a phenomenon of rising money supply as opposed to it being a logical consequence of currency devaluation (two very different phenomena), but with Bitcoin being a supply-limited concept, it can logically never exist as money. Whats a speculation, and Bitcoin is a speculation, rarely does.

To then pretend that whats a wildly volatile speculation (Ill pay you in Bitcoin. Ok, which Bitcoin?) will replace less volatile government money isnt serious. It wont happen in El Salvador, and it wont happen in the U.S.

This isnt to say that cryptomoney wont replace the dollar and other well-circulated government currencies. Of course it could, and should. Good money is a stable measure of value, and right now government money isnt living up to its billing. Neither is Bitcoin. It wont make it. The bet here is that Amazon AMZN , Target TGT , Facebook and other private monies rooted in stability eventually will.