Hey Ken,

First, I concede this: the word anything is a superlative in this case and doesn’t really add much value to the argument except to open it up to criticism. I’ll change that so it reads that “isn’t back by much” instead.

That being said, when you argue that the dollar is backed by the world’s most stable democracy, I assume you mean the United States, which is a democracy, but flawed at best, according the The Economist. In fact, according to its most recent study, the United States doesn’t seem to even rank within the Top 10 democracies — note that the Top 10 has more than ten democracies, as there are some ties.

I’m highlighting this specific aspect of your argument to point out a case for my rebuttal — I argue that you are considering the perspective of the past, or present at best. In fact, even the argument that the United States has the world’s strongest economy is questionable depending on your methodology for measurement; could very well be said that China now holds that title. And despite the discrepancy in results based on methodology today, that gap is widening at a rapid pace such that methodology may not even matter in a few more years.

The world is changing, and continues to change, there’s no question in that, I’m sure you agree. Whatever forces back the US Dollar are fleeting and the subsequent emergence of another potential solution is on the horizon. After all, the Mesopotamian Empire lasted a glorious 3,000 years, and I’d bet most of the literate world can’t even name a single event from that time. Imperial Rome fell after 1,500 years, and now is only a shell of its former glory, with a few preserved relics of the past to give tourists a glimpse into its prior majesty. Even the great Genghis Khan could not preserve his dominion’s immortality.

The stories of collapse are endless, time and time again — what makes the United States’s current position as a world power any more permanent? Would you agree that the question of its collapse isn’t a matter of if, but of when? I’m certainly not wishing such a fate to a country I’m a citizen of — just saying that history tends to repeat itself. Can you guarantee its existence, and therefore the existence of its currency, for 100 more years? 1,000? 5,000? After all, the last ice age was only 10,000 years ago — to provide some perspective on the timeline of human development.

Through all of this turmoil in change, shift in religious and political beliefs and the economic systems underlying it, what really becomes of the belief that a currency is backed by something truly substantial, other than a temporary conquest?

Before you ask me if I can guarantee any better fate for Bitcoin, I’ll just say that I can’t. But my argument isn’t that Bitcoin is better, the argument is that Bitcoin isn’t really any worse.