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Not exactly. Money used to be backed by something valuable like gold (while the gold itself was mostly faith-based valueable).

These days, it is backed by debt. Money comes into existence in some federal bank/central bank out of thin air, and is then put into circulation by granting loans i.e. creating debt. So money was and is really an IOU. And governments guarantee that you will be able to collect on it, one way or another.

crypto on the other hand comes into existence either by proof of work (work that cannot be recovered and it lost forever and therefore worthless) or blind faith, with not even an IOU backing it.



> (work that cannot be recovered and it lost forever and therefore worthless)

That work secures all the transactions that came before it, it's certainly not worthless.

> with not even an IOU backing it.

That is not backing, it's just a promise that you'll get your faith-based paper back.




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