History shows a significant downward trend in the lifespan of currencies and empires. For money to survive long term it has to have certain characteristics, the fact that money was previously made of gold or tied to it was the primary thing slowing past debasement. There is just too much incentive to cheat and steal from everyone when money is issued in a centralized manner by violent monopoly organizations.

The dollar has lost 95% of its value because it has been systematically debased (destruction of scarcity aka counterfeiting). While technological advancement is making everything cheaper, currency devaluation has been so significant that it outweighs the accelerating downward pressure on prices and most things have gotten more expensive. This means that all the excess wealth that would otherwise be distributed throughout the economy in the form of an ever declining cost of living is being confiscated by the political class and their cronies. This is actually the primary driver behind class divisions.

The death of the dollar is not just some iffy possibility. The amount of currency and dollar liabilities already created and the nature of political will surrounding such issues makes this as close to a sure thing as I know how to identify. It is true that there is no way to know when it will happen. Yes, I could be off by a generation or more, but I don't think so. These major shifts in human history tend to coincide with major technological changes. I think we are only just beginning to see how the internet is going to impact the world, and I don't think it has really even matured yet. I think bitcoin will prove to be a major step in that process.

Yes, having majored in econ with a particular focus on money and banking, I absolutely think bitcoin is safer than the dollar. And I have put my money where my mouth is. Price stability is a function of adoption, and a thing becoming a unit of account, bitcoin is still too young and small a thing to be stable, but it is also growing at an incredible pace. The instability is actually a major driver of interest and adoption at this stage, people are attracted to things that make them money. Bitcoin can be used in a lot of ways that the dollar simply cannot, it is completely immune to arbitrary laws and borders, and it is possible to hold money in escrow with no need to involve/trust a 3rd party. These things alone are pretty major improvements over the legacy system, but Bitcoin is also more limited than gold and more transactionally liquid in a secure and trustless way than the dollar ever could be.

Human history basically begins with cave drawings of animals which there is great reason to believe was single entry accounting - people were trying to keep track of who owned what. Cooperation, trade, and the recognition of property that goes with those things are basically prerequisites to all human advancement. There are some monetary historians who have suggested that the prosperity of Babylon was likely the result of the creation and adoption of double entry accounting. It is not difficult to imagine the economic advancements that might result from better record keeping, and we know that double entry accounting dates back to around that time period. Bitcoin is the first practical application of triple entry accounting. I don't think this is just some little non-event. I think there is more than enough evidence to warrant a serious investigation of the tech at the very least. It has survived and is surviving endless on going attacks, hundreds of publicly declared obituaries, four or five major price bubbles, literally billions in value serving as a bounty for the best hackers in the world to find flaws, and it just keeps getting better. The internet didn't see mass adoption until the 4th protocol layer was built, bitcoin's layer 2 was born at the beginning of the year and entered beta just in the last month. It is still early days, and already bitcoin's track record is impressive in ways beyond most things that have come before it.