Published November 11, 2025
By Anthony Wile, NatGold Founder

As the empire of paper trembles, a new reformation stirs beneath its ruins.

Every empire believes it is eternal—until one day it isn’t.

The Roman Empire, history’s most enduring symbol of dominion, did not fall overnight. It decayed from within—first in its money, then in its morality, and finally in its might. Its legions, once instruments of protection, became instruments of desperation. Its coinage, once silver, became lead. And its alliances, once rooted in respect, dissolved under the weight of coercion.

Two thousand years later, the pattern repeats—only now the empire’s emblem is not an eagle but a dollar.

The Currency of Empire
When President Nixon severed the dollar’s link to gold in 1971, he unwittingly set the stage for the same monetary decay that once unraveled Rome. Fiat money—money by decree—became the new imperial weapon, allowing America to print its way to global dominance. Every tank, every aircraft carrier, every social program and overseas base was suddenly financed not by savings or production, but by the promise of future printing.

The dollar became the empire’s tribute system. Nations that wished to trade, especially in oil, were compelled to do so in dollars. Those who resisted—Iraq in 2000, Libya in 2011—discovered how fragile sovereignty can be when it conflicts with monetary hegemony.

Force and the New Frontiers of Control
History teaches that when faith in money wanes, the empire turns to force to preserve it. Rome did it with legions; Washington does it with sanctions, military alliances, and now, trade tariffs—economic weapons of pressure dressed in patriotic language.

Tariffs—economic weapons often justified as patriotic renewal—have increasingly become instruments of geopolitical pressure. They punish allies as readily as adversaries, alienating the very trade networks that sustain the fiat order. From China to Europe to Latin America, America’s trading partners are being pushed toward alternative systems—not by ideology, but by self-preservation.

The 19th-century French economist and statesman Frédéric Bastiat saw this dynamic clearly in the wake of the French Revolution, when governments sought to control commerce through taxation and tariffs to sustain their political power. In his classic essay Economic Sophisms, Bastiat warned that “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” He understood that tariffs are a hidden tax on every citizen—a form of inflation disguised as patriotism—and that protectionism inevitably breeds both poverty and conflict.

Two centuries later, his warning rings louder than ever. In an age where fiat empires enforce compliance not only through bombs but through balance sheets, Bastiat’s words remind us that coercion—economic or military—can never restore a system that has already lost the trust of those it governs. And it is at home, not abroad, where the first cracks of that loss appear: as governments weaponize regulation, surveillance, and taxation to maintain order among their own citizens, they reveal the same insecurity that drives their interventions overseas. The empire seeks control everywhere because it is losing legitimacy everywhere.

Consider Venezuela. Ostensibly, U.S. hostility toward Caracas is about narcotics and corruption. But beneath the surface lies a more consequential struggle: control over the currency in which oil is traded. Venezuela has aligned itself with the BRICS initiative and is pursuing formal membership in a bloc that now accounts for over forty percent of global oil production—led by Russia, China, and an expanding circle that includes major Gulf states. Their stated goal: reduce dependence on the dollar.

If oil—the lifeblood of industrial civilization—were to trade more widely in other currencies, or even in emerging commodity-backed digital assets, the dollar’s imperial privilege would begin to crumble.

And what of Colombia, another significant petroleum-producing nation now caught in the same web of “anti-narcotics” enforcement? Petroleum and fossil fuel exports account for over thirty percent of Colombia’s total export revenues, making oil among the country’s most valuable export categories and a critical source of government income. The United States’ longest-running ally in South America is today led by a leftist government openly voicing support for Venezuela and forging new commercial ties with BRICS members. Washington’s unease is palpable: could Colombia, too, be drifting away from its Northern masters? If so, the façade of control over Latin America’s resource base—and the dollar’s dominance in regional trade—may be eroding faster than Washington dares admit.

The conflict, then, is not merely about borders or ideology. It is about who controls the unit of account that defines global value itself.

The Fracturing of Alliances
As with Rome’s provinces, once-loyal allies are beginning to defect. Saudi Arabia has joined BRICS dialogues; India buys Russian crude in rupees; China settles oil trades in yuan. Each transaction chips away at the petrodollar architecture built since Bretton Woods II.

The empire responds the only way empires can—by pressing harder. Sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs are its new siege engines. Yet each act of enforcement accelerates the fragmentation it seeks to prevent.

The Moral Rot of Fiat Civilization
Rome’s late years were marked by spectacle and distraction—bread and circuses for a public numbed by inflation and corruption. We, too, live in a world anesthetized by digital circuses and moral fatigue. Fiat money rewards manipulation over merit, speculation over creation. It finances decadence, not discipline. When money loses integrity, society follows.

The Great Reformation Cycle
In High Alert: How the Internet Reformation Is Causing a Financial Hurricane and How to Profit From It (2004), I wrote that technology would once again awaken the masses—much as the Gutenberg Press once did—igniting a Monetary Reformation that would expose the fraud of fiat money and the elites who profit from it.

The Protestant Reformation ended the divinity of kings; this next one ends the divinity of central bankers. The printing press democratized faith; the internet democratized truth. Now, blockchain and digital-asset technology are democratizing money itself.

In my most recent book, High Alert: Reformation Unleashed (2025), I revisited that prediction—written twenty-one years ago—and noted that it is now unfolding in real time. First thousands, then millions, and soon hundreds of millions are awakening to the illusion that their wealth is real merely because their screens say so.

The Reckoning Ahead
When confidence in a monetary order breaks, it doesn’t fade—it collapses. The aftermath is always chaos: finger-pointing, scapegoating, and suffering among those too late to seek shelter. Weimar Germany’s collapse after World War I offers a warning—hyperinflation, social breakdown, and the eventual rise of tyranny.

We stand at a similar crossroads today. The empire of paper still commands armies and headlines, but its money—the foundation of its power—is rotting beneath it.

A Choice Between Force and Freedom
The collapse of Rome birthed the medieval dark ages, but it also planted the seeds of the Renaissance. Our own monetary collapse may unleash similar chaos—or a renaissance of truth in money. Bitcoin began the awakening. Gold remains the anchor. And perhaps NatGold, by merging the intrinsic stability of in-ground gold with the transparency of digital validation, represents a path toward a sustainable post-fiat world—an honest and natural monetary path forward.

Empires fall; truth endures. The question is not whether the dollar empire will end, but whether humanity will emerge from its ruins wiser than before—and finally put an end to power-elite control structures.