Apologies if I have any major facts incorrect here, but this is how I understand it:
The Free Silver movement of the 1890's popularly heralded by William Jennings Bryan arose after multiple deflationary crises in the US. The movement came to be seen as representing the views of working class farmers and silver miners in opposition to wealthy bankers and oligarchs. The ultimate goal as I understand it was to encourage inflation as a benefit to the working class stuck with loans that were increasing in value as a result of deflation. The movement hoped to achieve this by introducing silver-backed US currency to the country. All the deflation happening at that time was the result of the strict gold standard that was generally seen as beneficial to the wealthy elites sitting on top of a lot of cash that was only increasing in value with deflation.
Again, sorry if I have any major facts wrong here.
Okay, so fast forward to the 1970's. Nixon broke the US dollar from the gold standard and the results are often referred to as the "Nixon Shock". Obviously we hear a lot about inflation these days and very little about deflation. So my question is, by breaking the US from the gold standard, did Nixon ultimately achieve what those Free Silverites were seeking in the 1890's albeit from a different direction? Did our break from the gold standard change our economic trends from those leaning towards deflation to ones leaning towards inflation? I guess I just want to know how these two historic events (The Free Silverites and the Nixon Shock) relate to each other in terms of economic policy.
Perhaps I should mention that my questions about these topics came up as a result of learning about how cryptocurrency and specifically Bitcoin works. My understanding is that Bitcoin is inherently deflationary and akin to gold and that those treating it as a potential replacement to inflationary fiat currencies may misunderstand the nature of inflationary/deflationary currency.
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