We’ve been down this road before - but I think this explanation is much more easily understood:

mcdonalds menu and silver half dollar

In 1964 a burger and fries was about $0.50. Today, it’s about $20.00.
In 1964, the melt value of the silver in the coin was about $0.50. Today, it’s about $20.00.

In 1964, you could pay for that burger and fries with the silver in the coin.
Today, you could pay for that burger and fries with the silver in the coin.

In 1964, you could pay for that burger and fries with the “legal currency” face-value of the coin.
Today, you need forty of those coins to pay for that burger and fries with their “legal currency” face-value. Or you could still just use the silver in one of the coins.

Confusing, right? This should help:

grid showing the difference between money and currency

It happens to be the case that in 1964, the “money” and “currency” existed in the same object - the silver half dollar. But suppose the government issued both silver half dollars and “half dollar plastic tokens” at the same time. In 1964, you could use either one to pay for things that costs fifty cents. They were legally equivalent. You might have a mix of both in your pocket at any time.

If you kept both kinds of coins until today, they would both still pay for items that cost $0.50, since that’s their “legal currency” face value. But if you melted the silver one down, the metal would still buy you a burger and fries today, while the melted plastic would probably just give you cancer.

Today, when you look at a Twenty Dollar bill, you are looking at the equivalent of the plastic play money token. The government has removed the “money” part of the currency it issues (just like the plastic tokens of 1964) but it doesn’t also issue a real money at the same time (like the silver half dollars of 1964). Where did all that real money go? You sure as hell don’t have it in your wallet…

Fast-forward another sixty years from today - would you want to be holding onto that piece of paper when a burger and fries is $800.00? What can you get your hands on today that will hold that “burger and fries value” over the next sixty years?

One of the greatest tricks the government has ever pulled was keeping the apparent form factor of the currency media the same (coins, bills, etc.) but removing the money from it. You can see this is true when you read this note, but I bet it still hasn’t fully landed for you. Very few people have fully wrapped their heads around what happened.
If you’re reading this and you’ve got a little sparkle in your brain of “this is weird; something about this seems important, but I can’t quite make sense of it or care about it” - that sensation is what it feels like to be under a spell. You’ve been under it your whole life. But if you hold a silver half dollar in your hand and stare at it long enough and think about this note, the spell will eventually break. If you let it.

You’ll know the spell is fully broken if you actually go and take some action about it. If you read this and think “Man, that’s crazy! …I wonder what’s new on my Instagram..?”, then you’re still hypnotized. See you at the burger stand in 2084.

Also posted longform on nostr