ASC vs Fiat — Three Years of Purchasing Power

Which yardstick you use decides what looks unstable

Measure gold in pounds and gold appears to swing about. Measure pounds in gold and it is sterling that has collapsed. The arithmetic is identical; only the denominator changes. A troy ounce in 2023 and a troy ounce today are the same quantity of the same metal — nothing happened to it. What changed is that it now takes more than twice as many pounds to obtain one. This page therefore prices in weight, because that is what ASC is denominated in, and because a yardstick that can be printed is a poor instrument for measuring anything.

The one caveat that survives the reframing. Someone who must pay rent in pounds still faces the pound price of their holding on the day they sell. Gold fell more than 25 per cent between 2011 and 2013, and a holder needing to realise into fiat during that window would have taken a loss in fiat terms. That is a real exposure — but it is exposure to the fiat leg of the trade, not to the gold.

What £100 buys, priced in gold

The same £100, held as currency from the start of 2023, measured in the one thing that cannot be issued by decree. Consumer price inflation is shown alongside — and note how much smaller it is than the gold measure. Official inflation counts a basket of goods whose composition is periodically revised; gold simply counts weight.

Priced in gold

£46.72

Sterling lost 53.3% of its gold value

Priced in goods (UK CPI)

£87.32

14.52% cumulative inflation

Euro, priced in goods

€90.34

10.70% cumulative

Yen, priced in goods

¥91.35

9.47% cumulative

Held in gold (flat, by definition) Sterling, priced in gold Sterling, priced in goods (CPI)

Purchasing power of 100 units held from the start of 2023, indexed to 100, priced in gold. A gold-denominated holding is flat by construction — that is what it means to be the yardstick. The sterling line is the same currency measured against that weight. The CPI line is shown for contrast: official inflation and the gold measure disagree by roughly a factor of three and a half, because one counts a revisable basket of goods and the other counts grams. Gold path endpoints are anchored to published figures; intermediate points are interpolated for the shape of the line.

The figures, and where they come from

Every number here is published by a third party. Nothing is modelled or projected.

Measure	Value	Period	Source
UK CPI inflation	6.72% / 3.34% / 3.84%	2023 / 2024 / 2025	Statista, G7 series
Germany CPI inflation	5.95% / 2.26% / 2.17%	2023 / 2024 / 2025	Statista, G7 series
Japan CPI inflation	3.25% / 2.74% / 3.20%	2023 / 2024 / 2025	Statista, G7 series
US CPI inflation	4.12% / 2.95% / n/a	2023 / 2024 / 2025	Statista, G7 series
Gold, sterling, today	fetching…	live	gold-api.com, this page
Gold 52-week range	£2,677.37 – £3,968.87	to Sept 2026	Forbes Advisor UK
Gold annual gain	64%	2025	Reuters — largest since 1979
Gold, prior 12 months	broadly flat	to Sept 2026	Forbes Advisor UK

What this actually argues

Three conclusions the figures support, and two we will not stretch to.

Supported by the figures above
The instability is in the currencies, not the metal. A troy ounce is an unchanging quantity. Over three years it went from costing roughly £1,520 to £3,253 — that is a statement about what happened to the pound, expressed in the only unit that could not be issued to order.
Official inflation understates the erosion. UK CPI records 14.5 per cent over the period. Measured in gold, sterling lost 53 per cent. The two disagree because CPI tracks a basket whose contents are periodically revised, while a gram is a gram. Both are shown above rather than only the one that suits the argument.
Every major currency moved the same way. Sterling, euro, yen and dollar all lost purchasing power over the period. This is not a story about one badly run economy; it is what happened across the reserve currencies at once, during sustained deficit spending.

Not claimed here
That the fiat price of gold only goes up. It does not. Gold fell more than 25 per cent between 2011 and 2013. Anyone who must convert into a currency on a particular day is exposed to that currency’s price on that day — which is an argument about the fiat leg, but a real exposure nonetheless.
That this is ASC’s track record. ASC has never traded. Nobody has held it, spent it or redeemed it. Everything above is what gold did. ASC is designed to track a fixed weight of gold, so this is the closest honest proxy available — but a proxy is what it is.

What this page is, and isn't

What's real here

The inflation figures are published annual CPI from a third-party G7 series and are reproduced exactly, including the gap where 2025 US data was not available rather than filled with an estimate. The gold range, the 64 per cent 2025 gain and the flat twelve months are all from named public sources. Today's gold price is fetched live on page load, so the comparison updates itself rather than freezing at whatever it was when this was written. The purchasing-power arithmetic is straightforward compounding and can be checked with a calculator.

What this is not

Not a forecast, not a track record, and not investment advice. ASC does not exist as a traded instrument and has no performance history; the gold series is used as the closest honest proxy for what an ASC holding would have tracked, and is labelled as such throughout. Past movements in gold do not predict future ones, and gold has had long periods of decline — more than 25 per cent between 2011 and 2013. Meridian is not authorised to provide investment services and nothing here is an offer, solicitation or recommendation to acquire anything.