The Dollar Has Lost 97% of Its Value Since 1913
$1 in 1913 has the purchasing power of about 3 cents today. That's a 97% loss over 113 years.
This isn't a theory or a political opinion. It's straight from the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data. The same government that manages the dollar publishes the data showing what it's done to your money.
Here's how it happened, decade by decade.
1933: FDR confiscated private gold and devalued the dollar by 40% overnight. Your dollar was now worth about 53 cents.
1971: Nixon ended the gold standard entirely. The dollar was no longer backed by anything. Since 1971, the dollar has lost over 85% of its remaining value.
2020–2022: The Fed printed roughly 40% of all dollars in existence in just two years.
The Slow Erosion of Dollar Purchasing Power
The pattern is always the same: crisis, money printing, your savings worth less. The dollar doesn't crash all at once. It erodes slowly enough that most people don't notice until they look at old prices and wonder what happened.
Milk was $1.50 in 1990. It's over $4.50 now. A house that cost $120,000 in 2000 costs $350,000 today. Your grandparents bought a car for $3,000. These aren't just "prices going up." It's your unit of measurement shrinking. See it for yourself with our inflation calculator.
Why Bitcoin's Fixed Supply Is the Alternative
This is why Bitcoin's fixed supply of 21 million matters. For the first time in history, there's a form of money that nobody can print more of.