Do big government debts and fast rates of adding to them threaten our collective well-being? In this groundbreaking analysis, Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors of our time and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles, shares the reasons behind his fears for the US debt markets, answering some of the most important market and economic questions we now face: Are there limits to debt growth? Can a big, important reserve currency country like the US really go broke?

What I like the most is the metrics of the rise and fall of reserve currencies. The Dutch guilder, Europe’s dominant reserve currency after a century or more of Dutch economic outperformance, was overtaken by the pound sterling when Britain’s industrialization and military strength later surpassed the Dutch. In turn, it subsequently lost to the US dollar during the first half of the 20th century. A dominant currency, observes Dalio, lags heavily the economic punch its economy packed in the past.

We’ve only had three or four of these global monetary transitions, so it’s hard to assess Dalio’s claim that this is a universal pattern. And if so, what does it say about the renminbi? About currencies like bitcoin, which are unconnected to a nation state?