Its 1971 again today as I've noticed nickels are worth $.0523336 melt value and copper pre83 pennies are worth well over .022 cents melt. I've been pulling copper pennies and Jefferson nickels from my pockets change every week for years when I get home from work and today I went through the last of it since winter is here and I'm off for a few months. I looked up the melt value of a copper lincoln cent and the jefferson nickel and low and behold I was right after all these years. I'll need a safe for pickle jars now! I'm penny rich! No seriously tho the prices could always drop back below at least for the nickel as I would expect it to in a market crash but I thought that was cool. I figured they would at least have changed the metal content by now.
The US dollar simply took the place of the GBP (partly), as the UK went down like a colonial power. Later, the Euro partially "stole" the power of the Deutsche Mark (or got transferred into it), because the French Frank was peanuts. I think the US is also in (slow) decline, now as the multipolar world is about to be "re-born". Still, the US will remain a superpower for potentially decades (I think), but if the dollar tanks, this could be sped-up and they could end up lower than Russia after the Soviet "implosion". I think some new reserve currency is going to appear: like a crypto-fiat supported by the IMF (I intentionally avoided using the term "backed"). Lagarde recently talked about the importance of a crypto Euro. I would expect a cryptocurrency that could take over. And if that happens, gold's future might not be as bright. In fact, I think they could introduce the new cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin came into existence. Bitcoin is like a "bypass" through which value is drained and "pumped up". It could be an ideal tool for creating a controlled hyperinflation. The new cryptocurrency would be more expensive, but it would take a heck-of-a-lot more dollars and euros to buy it. (the exchange rate would simply soar as it would be introduced and all countries would go poor) Unless a new gold standard would be encouraged (Russia, China and several other countries)...