Bitcoin glossary
Fiat currency
Government-issued money backed by decree rather than a scarce asset.
“Fiat” is money that exists by government declaration (Latin fiat, “let it be done”) — not redeemable for gold or anything else, with supply managed by central banks. Every national currency today is fiat, a global arrangement dating only to 1971.
In Bitcoin discourse, “fiat” is the reference point Bitcoin defines itself against: elastic supply and institutional trust on one side, fixed supply and verifiable rules on the other.
The live number
How fiat currencies decay, ranked