I'm not quite sure what are you getting at. Would you say the same about gold or silver? Gold is not backed by anything, in itself it has absolutely no use for

I'm not quite sure what are you getting at. Would you say the same about gold or silver? Gold is not backed by anything, in itself it has absolutely no use for me, I can't really buy a piece of bread with it, but it's still valuable. > Is this the case for Europe and the US? Hell no. You've basically described Post-WW1 Germany and similar is true of Eastern Europe under Soviets, so it's recent stuff.