John Galbraith wrote a history of money[0] that I enjoyed. In it, he shows that this lesson tends to get relearned on a generational basis. I guess we’re still in the same repeating pattern that he observed.

As an aside, Galbraith is the first (and only) intelligent economist I’ve read who is a big fan of price controls. He was in charge of administering them in WWII. I disagree with him on that for a variety of reasons, but his defense made for interesting, thought provoking reading.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691171661?tag=bravesoftwa04-20&li...

> Money only works because we all agree to believe in it.

The major popular currencies are very sticky and very difficult to stop believing in them.

Whatever you might think about the US declining compared to China and other issues, there's still a $21T economy with the economic activity of 330M people behind it.

And if you're doing business in this country the US government will demand that you pay your taxes in USD. There's a lot more inertia in the USD than people into crypto give it credit for. Everyone in the country could, in theory, wake up tomorrow and all decide to use something different, but in reality that won't happen.

Crypto can (and most likely will) crash hard and while its getting big enough now that the damage will likely ripple through the economy a bit, but the US economy will go on.

And I'd strongly recommend Galbraith:

https://www.amazon.com/Money-Whence-Came-Where-Went/dp/06911... https://www.amazon.com/History-Financial-Euphoria-Penguin-Bu... https://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp...