Some commodities are in greater general demand among a wide circle of potential transactors. Some commodities are more readily transportable and more easily divisible into convenient amounts to reflect agreed-upon terms of exchange. Some are relatively more durable and scarce and difficult to reproduce. The commodities that possess the right combinations of these attributes and characteristics tend to become, over a long period of time, the most widely used and readily accepted media of exchange in an expanding arena of trade and commerce. Therefore, those commodities historically became the money-goods of the market because the very definition of a money is that commodity that is most widely used and generally accepted as a medium of exchange in a market.
Money begins as one of the ordinary commodities of the market.
But because of its particular marketable qualities, it slowly comes to be demanded for its usefulness as a medium of exchange, as well. And, indeed, over time, its use as a medium of exchange may supersede its other uses as an ordinary commodity. For Menger and later members of the Austrian school, this was a strong demonstration, both theoretically and historically, that money is not a creation or a creature of the state. In its origin, money naturally emerges out of the processes of the market, as individuals search for better and easier ways to satisfy their wants through trade and exchange. In a state of barter, when every commodity directly trades for all the others, each good on the market has as many prices as goods against which it exchanges.