> If I started my own country in the middle of the ocean and started issuing my own currency it would be worthless. Not necessarily, if you were using it withi

> If I started my own country in the middle of the ocean and started issuing my own currency it would be worthless. Not necessarily, if you were using it within your own country, the use case for most currencies. A fiat currency is little more than a promissory note or IOU (think about how I could go to a bank and exchange my dollar for a dollar's worth of gold during the gold-backed fiat period). In fact, less than 200 years ago many banks were able to issue their own currencies as promissory notes in many US states and were valid, but only with those banks. The idea of an all-powerful national currency that bans all others is relatively new from a global perspective and even today, there are parts of the world where small communities have and still do issue their own local currencies in order to facilitate local trade.