Currency is backed by only one thing: army. Even during ancient times, when people thought that the currency was backed by gold, it really wasn't. Why? Think wh

Currency is backed by only one thing: army. Even during ancient times, when people thought that the currency was backed by gold, it really wasn't. Why? Think who owns all the gold mines? In ancient times, if you discovered a gold mine, king will automatically take ownership while paying you handsomely. Soon, neighbour king will attack and swallow your kingdom with a gold mine because it had a bigger army. You get the point. Currently, US army is the strongest and so US gets to dectact the world reserve currency. US can print trillions and export the inflation out. It doesn't matter if country X adopts gold or bitcoin as currency. They are always valued against US dollar. So US gets to dectact what a gram of gold or 1 bitcoin is valued, not other way around. Therefore, gold and bitcoin are commodity, not currency. You can sure do limited barter trades using commodities but if rest of the world suddenly ganged up and try to force in gold/bitcoin as reserve currency then you can be absolutely sure for US army to intervene. At the last resort, you can be sure for US to secure majority compute resources so they control the bitcoin. There is no reverse cycle as Ray Dalio suggests. There is no real hard or soft money to begin with. Person with the army gets to control the cash and call the shots.