Like so many other people writing about cryptocurrency, you might as well start by saying, "I've never spent any time reading or thinking about finance or economics at all, and..."

Please note that the next section is not an endorsement of capitalism or how it works, which I very much disapprove of, but it is true regardless.

The US dollar is backed by the largest economy in history. It is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, which has an objectively measurable value.

The US government has the ability to tax that economy and to spend money to grow that economy, and that economy has in fact generated hundreds of trillions of dollars in goods and services sold in dollars in my lifetime, from lentils to iPhones to haircuts to movies to beer to birthday cakes — over $100,000,000,000,000 worth of everything you can think of since 2000.

That is the dollar.

To blithely equate that dollar, the largest store of value in history, one with centuries of stability!, with any of over ten thousand cryptocurrencies, issued by random people or no one, mostly backed by nothing, none of which have produced any goods or services other than more cryptocurrencies, simply boggles the mind.

Again, I am no supporter of capitalism — industrial capitalism is destroying the biosphere. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand how economics works. Know thine enemy.