Maturity Date

A maturity date is the date on which a debt instrument's principal comes due and is repaid to the holder, ending the obligation. United States Treasury securities span maturities from 4-week bills to 30-year bonds; a bond bought at issuance and held to maturity returns its face value plus the coupons paid along the way.

Why it matters

Maturity structures the entire bond market. Plotting yields across maturities produces the yield curve, whose inversions have preceded most modern US recessions, and distance to maturity determines duration, the sensitivity of a bond's price to interest rate moves. That sensitivity can be ruinous: Silicon Valley Bank failed in March 2023 largely because rising rates had crushed the market value of its long-maturity bond portfolio before those bonds could mature at par. Issuers manage maturity too, since a government rolling over trillions in short-dated debt must refinance constantly at whatever rates prevail.

In the gold vs bitcoin debate

Gold and bitcoin have no maturity date because they are nobody's liability: there is no principal to repay, no issuer to default, and no reinvestment decision forced by a calendar. That is the essence of their appeal as neutral reserve assets and the essence of the case against them, since assets with no maturity also promise no cash flow, ever. Bitcoin does borrow the word in one technical corner, as newly mined coins are unspendable for 100 blocks, a rule called coinbase maturity, though this governs miners' spending, not any debt.