I posted my take on this recently on Facebook. (And I recently gave a TedX talk on the same concept entitled "Money: The Greatest Story Ever Told" [1]) Here is

I posted my take on this recently on Facebook. (And I recently gave a TedX talk on the same concept entitled "Money: The Greatest Story Ever Told" [1]) Here is an image of the entire world's Money supply [2]. In my eyes, the majority shift occurred due to two things: 1) Ending the gold standard peg 2) Creation of the derivative market 1 --- Ending the Gold Standard Peg In 1971, Nixon severed the connection between Gold and the US-Dollar. The USD now became purely fiat --- no actual resource backed the USD anymore. This allowed the dollar to change. Banks could create money -- really. Credit could be expanded and offered to customers. Debt could become an asset, and banks could trade. But the most interesting part is that it led to #2 --- the Derivate market 2 -- Creation of the Derivative Market By removing the gold standard tether, money became anything that people believe in In 1973, the first derivative began to trade. And banks utilized this to create futures, contracts, warrants, swaps --- bets against bets against bets against bets. The money isn't really there. It's just a financial instrument traded to hedge against fluctuations. It's a betting system. And it's turtles the whole way down. Here's the crazy part. The global derivatives market is 1.4 QUADRILLION dollars. That is, 20 times larger than the GDP of the entire WORLD. In the picture attached --- see that giganticly long section at the bottom? That is derivates. It outweighs the rest of the world's money by FAR. 1.4 Quadrillion USD are in derivatives. Guess how much money world-wide is in coins and banknotes? $5 trillion. That is --- derivatives are 280x the amount of coins and bank notes in THE ENTIRE WORLD. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G0F-VUPTa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G0F-VUPTa4 [2] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v...