We don't know anything really. I'm just offering the most plausible scenario from what I can see. By the way, you've been using money backed by "nothing" since you were born. Unless you watched Nixon get elected, in which case you might vaguely remember a time when currency was still money. The US dollar has been propped up by a two-fold plan in which it is used as the world reserve currency as well as being necessary to facilitate oil transactions (oh and the full power and might of the largest and most heavily funded military/intelligence/industrial complex in the world forces everyone to stay on the same fiscal page). The money we use now is FAR riskier than any other option out there. Faith is waning in government issued fiat currency. Nothing is "backed" by anything in this land of illusions.