I know this is sacrilege to cryptocurrency believers, but the primary value of controlling a fiat currency is the ability to stabilize your economy. It permits

I know this is sacrilege to cryptocurrency believers, but the primary value of controlling a fiat currency is the ability to stabilize your economy. It permits you to decouple the unit by which you measure economic value, from fluctuations in the total economic value in your economy. If you think of a currency unit as the unit of measurement for economic value, then when the economy shrinks you will need less of them, and when it grows you will need more of them. Fiat currency is desirable for the same reason a tape measure is more useful than a yardstick. This is directly observable in the economic history of the United States. If you chart constant-dollar annual GDP growth from 1930 to today, there is an obvious decrease in volatility.