Alden argues that the post-1971 fiat standard (after the end of the gold convertibility under Bretton Woods) is structurally flawed and increasingly unstable:
She traces this through historical monetary regimes:
Her conclusion: the system is addicted to inflation and cannot be reformed without significant pain. Something eventually has to break.
Alden (along with prominent Bitcoin advocates like Erik Cason, Swan Bitcoin, and many others) presents Bitcoin as the first viable monetary competitor to fiat in modern times because it fixes the core problems of fiat:
In this view, Bitcoin isn’t merely a speculative investment — it’s potentially the base layer of a new, parallel monetary system that becomes attractive precisely when trust in legacy institutions erodes.
The “Broken Money” narrative has moved far beyond crypto Twitter:
Even traditional economists and skeptics now engage seriously with the long-term fiat sustainability question — a topic that was previously dismissed as fringe.
“The fiat standard…is addicted to constant monetary expansion and inflation to survive. This expansion favors those closest to the source of new money… The integrity of money’s purchasing power melts away over time, making saving a losing game.”
This line has been shared and quoted tens of thousands of times and is now a cornerstone of the Bitcoin-as-hard-money argument.
If the thesis holds, expect:
The conversation has shifted dramatically: it is no longer about whether Bitcoin has value — it is about whether the existing monetary architecture can survive the 21st century without a serious, open alternative.
Bitcoin is moving from the margin to the center of serious economic discourse.
This narrative is one of the most powerful intellectual drivers behind Bitcoin’s growing institutional and mainstream acceptance.
