We agree 100%. I am buying $100 Bitcoin. I also buy lottery tickets now and then. I kick myself because I almost bought $100 worth of Bitcoin 2 years ago.
“The value of the U.S. dollar is backed up by the confidence in an economy that generates one of the largest (if not largest) GDPs in t”
That “confidence” in the dollar comes from us demonstrating responsible monetary policy, not from our economy. When we stripped away the gold standard, foreigners were basically told that we would not devalue their currency holdings by rampantly inflating the money supply like the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe.
When we owe massive amounts of money, like 20 Trillion, and we move to devalue the dollar to make that debt easy to pay in increasingly worthless dollars, the confidence is sodomized.
And if you’re a Chinaman holding US debt, you don’t want to be paid out in dollars that have been inflated away. And you don’t want to buy or sell oil or other commodities using dollars. You might insist on gold or bitcoin.
Confidence in our currency is not fully connected with confidence in our currency.