It used to be based on something, which was the gold standard. Failing that, it was based on the promise that government wouldn't just print a bunch of dollars to save it's ass if it got in trouble. When every single one of your dollars was exchangeable for gold, the dollar wasn't just a widely accepted means of exchange... People had a powerful dual faith, both in the natural scarcity of gold and the financial fidelity of the US Government. When we came off the gold standard they promised us to be responsible stewards of the dollar and not just print a shit-load of them to save their own ass.
But both of those things have changed now.
The gold standard was abandoned, and the dollar has been tarnished by a "post-mine" scam that has destroyed the very foundation of trust on which we built the modern economy. Moral hazard, my friends. If you remove the penalties associated with risk from a self-serving creature or organization only a fool would believe that you would not encourage that entity to double down their bets the next time... And that exactly what we did, and that exactly what is happening as we speak.
If the government had come out and said, "We're totally fucked and we're going to run the printing presses day and night printing new US dollars to sell to anyone who will have them in order to save our ass," there would have been riots. Instead they obfuscated this mass devaluation of the dollar with complex financial acrobatics which still reduce to the same inescapable conclusion: the US Dollar, as a currency based on nothing, will collapse. It is inevitable. It is such a literal pyramid scheme they went ahead and printed a pyramid right on the paper note itself, just so you wouldn't be able to say you weren't warned when it happens.
Before when this mass financial collapse occured, like a wave sloshing around in a bathtub, the economy was forced to recover through the same flawed bathtub system. There was simply no where else for that value to go. Even if they increased the size of the tub unfairly, and made one side *way* deeper than the other, the world economy had no choice but to slosh around in that perverted bathtub of corruption.
But now cryptocurrency is about to pull the plug on the entire operation.
That value does have somewhere to go now, and it is into something far better than a paper note whose distribution and integrity has been fundamentally compromised. Bitcoin and (and my other favorite cryptocurrency, Monero) are based on something: the social contract between you and every other user, and some of the most advanced mathematical structures on Earth guaranteeing it. There will only ever be an agreed upon amount in existence, and no single entity can abuse the system for their own gain.
The future belongs to real money, not pretend money based on nothing.
What's in your wallet?
Did not bother to read all the bs. You know what would happen to the exange rate if you printed more dollar than you could back up? If not you should go and read about it.
