Every asset falls into two categories
- Real Assets: land, metals, oil etc...
- Financial Instruments: stocks, currencies, bonds etc.
Real assets derive their value from their physical properties while the value of financial instruments is hidden in their contractual property. Fiat money being a financial instrument is an asset to holder while being a liability to the issuing authority. the issuing authority is central bank which represents the society.
those currencies that you hold are not a liability to US society and that is why they have no value there. it is common perception that central banks are fooling everybody by issuing pieces of paper, but that is not true since that piece of paper is like equity of society and very valuable in the society.
My comment is already going very long, so i suggest you search Money Enigma in google to read more on the value perspective i am talking about.
But even the value of real assets is subjective. Gasoline used to be a useless byproduct until combustion engines cane along. I think real assets only have value for the same reason financial assets do: human beings believe they have value and are willing to buy them which gives them financial value via price discovery from functioning markets. If context changes, financial value will change as well not becuase the physical asset changed, but because the belief about the usefulness of the asset changed.
I don’t think fist money is much of a liability anymore with it not being backed by anything, redeemable for anything, or securing anything. With zero (or soon even negative interest rates), where does the liability come from?
I’ll look into money enigma, thanks.