“It’s still valued in US Dollars, as is just about everything else in the world that is bought and sold.”
By your logic then the British pound is not money!
Yes, it’s money, as it meets all the classic definitions.
But the British Pound doesn’t have the universal acceptance that US Dollars do. No other medium of exchange does.
The days of the US dollar being the worlds reserve currency or petrodollar...... are numbered.
A decentralized, borderless, secure store of value and transferrable over the internet, world wide, and no government can stop it.
That sounds like a free market to me.
Five years from now may be very different...