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

How The Breton Woods Agreement Fell Apart...

3 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief spoken excerpt, Mark Moss explains the origins and collapse of the 1944 Bretton Woods system, where the U.S. dollar was backed by gold and other currencies were pegged to it. He describes how excessive U.S. dollar printing led other nations to demand gold redemption, culminating in a depletion of U.S. gold reserves. In 1971, President Nixon, via Secretary Connally, suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold, effectively ending the gold-backed currency. Moss then notes that, without gold backing, the money supply has expanded dramatically at a parabolic rate since 1971.

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In 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.