Mark MossChief Bitcoin Strategist Satsuma | Partner BTCOppFund | ArchLending | BlockwareTeam | 100M+ YouTube

How The Breton Woods Agreement Fell Apart...

26 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief segment, Mark Moss outlines the origins and collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Established in 1944, the agreement pegged global currencies to the U.S. dollar, which was itself backed by gold. Moss explains that excessive U.S. dollar printing eroded confidence, prompting other nations to demand gold redemption. As gold reserves dwindled, President Nixon announced in 1971 the temporary suspension of dollar‑to‑gold convertibility, effectively ending the gold‑backed monetary regime. Moss concludes that, without gold constraints, the money supply has since expanded dramatically, growing at a near‑parabolic rate.

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from 1944, the whole world got together and agreed to something called Bretton Woods Agreement. And the Bretton Woods Agreement is that the dollar would be backed by gold, and then all the currencies of the world would peg to the dollar. So that system worked for a few decades. But of course, the government did what the governments do, which is they printed way too many dollars. And the rest of the world started realizing this. And they're like, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on. We don't want these paper dollars. We'll take the gold. And so each nation started redeeming the paper dollars for the gold until the US was running out of gold. France sent over their warships to the United States to collect the gold, President Richard Nixon in 1971 said, hang on, hang on.
I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold.
So they basically defaulted on the debt that they had. That officially ended the gold-backed currency. And so since 1971, we've seen this money supply just continue to expand at a parabolic rate because there's no longer that gold backing to hold it there.