Bitcoin is not true money in the U.S., from the standpoint that the Constitution says that only gold and silver are money.
Fiat currencies are not money. In the U.S. and most developed and semi-developed countries, fiat is debt. But it is not debt the way you generally think of debt. It is debt from the standpoint that it is value owed by the banks to the people. Why? Because it was created out of thin air, usually by the banks in concert with the people (or their leaders), when the people signed loan and mortgage notes with the banks. It is government leaders that allowed it to be this way by agreeing that the banks and the people could do this.
Because fiat was created out of thin air, and because it is not being paid back to the people as it should be (since the banks received creation of it from the people when the people sign loan and mortgage notes), and because nothing that the bankers own has been given in return, fiat belongs to the people, not the banks. The reason that Bitcoin was created is that the banks have withheld repayment to the people beyond the banks' ability to repay. If the banks had acted fairly by returning mortgage money to the people at the end of the term of the loan (since it is the person's signature on the mortgage note that created the fiat in the first place), there would have been no need for Bitcoin.
Grocery store coupons and such are riders on fiat the same way Mastercoin and Counterparty are riders on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin does not purport to be money. Bitcoin is just there. Bitcoin is being used as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin was set in place to start to limit the banks that are monopolizing fiat, fiat that really belongs to the people.
Part of the reason that gold and silver was taken off the market is that there is a limited amount of both, and they both are used in industry and for other things, and the people were literally LOSING the substances in their daily handling of it. In addition, the supplies of both were not able to keep up with the growing populations or the world. Now, these may be excuses that the bankers used for bringing the fiat idea into existence in the first place, but they DO have some validity. There are other excuses as well.
Now, here is an important part of all this. Perhaps most important is the fact that all money is or represents stored up labor of the people. That's what money (gold and silver) is; that's what fiat is; that's what Bitcoin is. That's all they are. You can't eat money; you can't eat fiat; you can't eat Bitcoin. The value of all three lies in the fact that they are or represent stored up labor of the people.
When the bankers hoarded up the fiat that the people created with them (note that the formal national debt of the U.S. is $17 trillion, but that the informal national debt lies around $200 trillion), something was needed to fill the vacuum created among the people. Bitcoin. But if it weren't Bitcoin, it would be rebellion.
Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin.