Bitcoin is not primarily a currency used for buying stuff. It’s highest purpose is a store of value, and that is extremely important. Gold was the same, but you can’t go around buying gold bars, certainly not arbitrary fractions of them.

Speaking of gold, it used to be what “backed” fiat currency, but that ended 50 years ago. Because the dollar is no longer linked to the value of gold, it is easy to a nation to print more money “out of thin air” to pay their loans and costs. The problem with this is that YOUR money is now worth less than before. The federal reserve has created literally trillions of dollars in the past few years - an insane amount.

Let’s take an example with simple numbers:

Let’s say the country’s entire value used to be one million dollars, so one specific part (your groceries) is worth a hundred dollars. You have a thousand in the bank, so you can buy ten carts full.

They now print another million, yay cool, we have more money. But the country still has the same basic value, which is now two million. That means, the part you just bought, now costs two hundred dollars. This also means that the thousand dollars in your bank account is now worth less: you can only buy five carts of groceries. Welcome to inflation! What did you do to deserve that your hard-earned money is worth less??

Now, why is Bitcoin so great? Because nobody can do that stupid magic trick. There are only so many coins, and the math doesn’t care about politics.

If you have a bitcoin, you have one bitcoin, out of a total 21 million. It will always be exactly one twenty-one-millionth of the entirety. Unlike the dollars in your account.

No government can devalue it, or control it. It is yours, outside of their control. Unlike the dollars in your account.