One-dollar Federal Reserve note (current)

The portrait of Washington, the green seal, and the line 'THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE'. It is the one-dollar Federal Reserve note in use now (this piece is of the 2003A series). Since 15 August 1971, when President Nixon closed the window that exchanged dollars for gold, this paper has been tied to nothing. Even so — or rather, for that very reason — more than half of the world's foreign reserves are still dollars, the world runs into this paper at every crisis, and even the price of Bitcoin is spoken in dollars. In the paper of a country that began its daily life borrowing somebody else's silver, people all over the world now count their living. The story of the market choosing money has come round full circle into the story of the world choosing this country's money.