The Samara Bitcoin CPI (BTCCPI)

The Bitcoin Consumer Price Index (BTCCPI) measures how much the value of the basket of goods used for the official CPI data in Europe and the United States has changed over time if priced in Bitcoin (BTC).

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The Bitcoin CPI

‍Samara Asset Group’s Bitcoin Consumer Price Index (BTCCPI) is a new economic indicator that measures how the value of a basket of goods and services changes over time when priced in Bitcoin (BTC). 

‍The traditional CPI is the market’s primary metric for tracking inflation. It measures the price changes of a fixed basket of goods—such as food, housing, and transportation—using fiat currencies like the U.S. Dollar or the Euro. 

Over time, CPI charts for the U.S. and Europe show a clear trend: everything keeps getting more expensive, while fiat currencies lose purchasing power due to inflation.

The Bitcoin CPI paints a very different picture. 

If you price the basket of goods and services commonly used for the traditional CPI in Bitcoin, you can see that the value of goods and services has trended down over time.

Over the last 15+ years, Bitcoin’s purchasing power has increased compared to fiat currencies, and it takes less Bitcoin now to purchase the same basket of goods than in the past. However, Bitcoin’s volatility means that its short-term purchasing power can still fluctuate significantly.

Why Did We Create the Bitcoin CPI? 

Inflation metrics like the Consumer Price Index have long been used to track the rising cost of living. 

But there’s a fundamental flaw. 

‍They only measure prices in fiat currencies that are constantly losing purchasing power.

The CPI shows us how much money we need to buy the same items, but it doesn’t take into account that the value of fiat money is declining over time. 

Governments can always print more fiat currency, but they can’t print more Bitcoin. 

So, instead of measuring the cost of goods and services in depreciating fiat currencies, we wanted to create an alternative CPI that measures the value of goods and services in an asset with a fixed supply and a predictable monetary policy. 

That’s how the Bitcoin CPI was born.  

The Bitcoin CPI shows how Bitcoin’s purchasing power has evolved relative to what we typically spend money on every day. 

‍Bitcoin is often called “hard money” for a reason. 

‍‍The Bitcoin CPI allows us to measure how much harder it is compared to fiat money.

How Is the Bitcoin CPI Calculated?

The Samara Bitcoin CPI follows the same core methodology as the traditional Consumer Price Index—it tracks price changes for a fixed basket of goods and services over time. However, the Bitcoin CPI denominates everything in BTC instead of pricing these items in fiat currencies like the Euro or U.S. Dollar.

We used the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the European CPI data and the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) (not seasonally adjusted) for the U.S. as the fiat-denominated CPIs to compute our Bitcoin CPIs. 

Data Sources:

E.U. CPI Data: Eurostat 
U.S. CPI Data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
‍BTC/EUR Price Data: Yahoo Finance
‍BTC/USD Price Data: Yahoo Finance