At the 2024 Lugano Plan B Forum, Nick Szabo delivered an interesting speech. This legendary figure in cryptography didn't talk about Bitcoin prices or predict market cycles; instead, he took the timeline back to 100,000 years of human archaeological records and 6,000 years of monetary evolution. He posed a provocative question: the fiat currency system we use today is actually a super-ambitious civilizational experiment—and it hasn't been fully validated.

Szabo's core point is straightforward. Looking at humanity's 6,000-year ledger of civilization, mainstream currencies share a common trait: they are backed by physical assets with minimal reliance on trust. Shells, copper, silver, and gold became money not because some authority declared their value, but because they are naturally scarce, difficult to counterfeit, and costly to obtain.

But what about pure fiat currency? It has no physical backing. The system's true operation only began after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. In other words, it's been just over fifty years—barely a blink in the scale of civilization. In these few decades, global debt has exploded exponentially, and central banks have been forced to print money endlessly to keep the system running. The economy is stuck between two dead ends: continue to flood the system, and inflation will keep rising; stop printing, and debt defaults and economic depression will erupt.

Szabo's judgment is cold: this is a debt bubble that must be continually inflated. Once it stops, the entire system will collapse. Moreover, fiat currency has never been a neutral tool—that's the most important thing to consider.