ROME, SPAIN, BRITAIN… Is The USA NEXT? The Empire Death Cycle

The 7-Stage Currency Collapse is here. This video breaks down the economic cycle that destroyed Rome, Spain, and Britain, and shows exactly why the US Dollar is now at Stage 5 of the Empire Death Pattern. The $36 Trillion debt and endless money printing mean the Fed can’t stop what’s coming.

00:00 Intro: The Cycle Kicks Off
01:44 Part 1: Rome – Poisoning Their Own Silver
05:02 Part 2: Spain – The Wealth That Killed the Money
08:25 Part 3: Britain – Handing the Flag to the Dollar
11:35 Part 4: The United States – The Stage Five Alarm
14:45 Part 5: The Final Collapse and The Crossroads

#financialhistory #financialliteracy #finance

Bro, there’s a single cycle that has absolutely demolished every great empire in history. It’s not a conquest. It’s not an invasion. It’s not even a revolution. It’s economic collapse. Specifically, currency collapse. And this story plays out the exact same way every single time. Rome, the superpower that ruled this planet for five centuries, fell when its currency was debased to nothing. Spain, who controlled more gold and silver than any nation ever, went bankrupt repeatedly until their empire crumbled. Britain, which dominated global trade for two centuries, lost its empire within a decade after its currency crashed. Four times in recorded history, a dominant empire has followed the same path. military overextension, unsustainable spending, debasing the currency, aka printing money, inflation, loss of confidence, and final collapse. And every time the guys in charge believed they were different, that their empire was special, that the old rules didn’t apply to them. Every time they were dead wrong. And now in 2025, the United States is following that exact same cycle. Warning sign after warning sign. The only question is, are we near the beginning, the middle, or the catastrophic end? This is the story of how empires destroy themselves through their own money. How it happened to Rome, Spain, and Britain, and why every single indicator is screaming that it’s happening again. Let’s start with Rome. The empire that ruled Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East for over 500 years. At its peak, Rome controlled 60 million people across three continents. Its military was unmatched. Its infrastructure was the most advanced on Earth, and its currency, the Daenerius, was trusted everywhere from Britain to Egypt. The daenerius was a silver coin, 100% pure, and it held its value for centuries because the Roman government maintained its purity. When you got a daenerius, you knew exactly what you got. Pure silver, real value that built trust. And that trust let Rome fund its expansion, pay its armies, and build those magnificent roads. But building an empire is expensive, bro. Every generation, Rome’s borders expanded. More soldiers, more forts, more roads, more administration. And eventually, Rome needed more money than it actually had. So, they did what every empire does when it spends more than it earns. They debased the currency. Emperor Nero, AD 54-68, was the first to significantly cut the silver content down from 100% to 90%. He needed to fund his lavish lifestyle and costly military campaigns. That extra 10% was pure profit for the emperor. He could mint 11 coins with the same silver that used to make 10. More money in circulation, same amount of silver. That’s the start of inflation. But the real destruction came later. By AD 211, the Daenerius was down to 50% silver. By AD 265, under Emperor Galinius, it was down to just 5% silver. A coin that was once pure silver was now 95% base metal with a thin silver wash. Think about what that meant. If you were a Roman soldier getting paid in dinari in AD 265, you were getting paid 12th the value of the soldiers two centuries before you. The government told you, “It’s fine. It still says dinarius on it. But the purchasing power had totally collapsed. Prices exploded. Farmers stopped selling food for coin and demanded barter instead. Soldiers refused to fight unless paid in gold or goods. The entire economic system seized up. And here’s the key takeaway. This didn’t happen because of foreign invasion. It didn’t happen because of plague or natural disaster. It was self-inflicted. The Roman government destroyed its own currency to finance spending it couldn’t afford. And when the money died, the empire died with it. Rome collapsed not because the Germanic tribes were stronger, but because Rome could no longer afford to pay its armies, fund its administration, or maintain its infrastructure. The currency was debased to irrelevance, and everything built on that currency fell apart. the cycle. Overspending, debasement, inflation, collapse. Rome proved it and every empire since has repeated it. Fast forward 12 centuries. Spain in the 1500s. The Spanish Empire is entering its golden age. They conquer the new world. In 1545, they discovered the mountain of Sero Rico in modern-day Bolivia, the largest silver deposit ever found. For the next century, that mountain would produce nearly half the world’s silver. Ships filled with silver cross the Atlantic, filling the Spanish treasury with unimaginable wealth. They meant this silver into coin. The Spanish dollar becomes the first truly global currency, trusted, pure, and seemingly from an infinite source. Spain becomes the wealthiest, most powerful empire on Earth. And then, just like Rome, they destroyed themselves. Because here’s a paradox of money. If everyone has more of it, more money doesn’t make you richer. As Spain flooded Europe with silver, prices soared. What cost one silver coin in 1500 cost 10 by600. The silver didn’t get less pure. There was just way, way more of it. That’s pure inflation. Spain imported so much silver that it destroyed the value of the silver itself. And worse, Spain wasn’t manufacturing anything. They just extracted wealth from the colonies and spend it on wars, palaces, and luxury goods imported from other countries. The silver flowed in from the Americas and immediately flowed right back out to France, England, and Holland. To pay for goods, Spain wasn’t producing itself. By the late 1500s, the Spanish kings were swimming in debt. King Philip II inherited a massive debt, and instead of cutting spending, he borrowed more and fought wars on multiple fronts. When the debt became unpayable, he defaulted. In 1557, he declared bankruptcy. The first sovereign default in modern history and not the last. Spain defaulted again in 1560, 1575, and 1596. Four defaults in 40 years. Despite controlling half the world’s silver supply, Spain couldn’t pay its bills. Each default crushed confidence. Lenders refused to loan Spain money. The government responded by debasing the currency, minting less silver, and introducing copper coins that were supposed to be worth as much as silver. Nobody bought it. Credibility was gone. By the 1600s, Spain was in decline. The army couldn’t be funded. Colonies started peeling away. By 1700, the Spanish Empire was essentially finished. The country that once controlled the world’s wealth had spent and borrowed itself into irrelevance. The cycle repeated. Massive wealth inflow, government overspending, extreme borrowing, currency inflation, repeated defaults, collapse of confidence, crash. Now we come to Britain, an empire that lasted longer, spread farther, and controlled more wealth than Rome or Spain. At its peak in 1922, the British Empire governed a quarter of the world’s population and a quarter of its land. The sun never set on the British Empire. And the foundation of everything was the British pound sterling. For over two centuries, the pound was the world’s reserve currency. Over 60% of global trade was invoiced in pounds. Everything was anchored by the gold standard. A pound could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. That built trust, stability, and power. But empires are built on credit, and credit has to be repaid. Then World War I hit. The national debt skyrocketed over 10 times in 5 years. To fund the war, Britain borrowed from everyone. But the war also forced Britain off the gold standard. They had to print money to finance the war effort and they couldn’t keep the gold backing up. The pound became a fiat currency backed by nothing but the government’s word. After the war, Britain tried to get back on gold. Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the ex-checker, put Britain back on the gold standard at the pre-war rate. It was a disaster. The pound was overvalued. Exports cratered. Unemployment soared. By 1931, Britain was forced off gold permanently. The pound was devalued and confidence in the British currency began to erode. But the real damage came after World War II. By 1945, Britain’s national debt had hit 270% of GDP. The empire had bankrupted itself to win the war. They were massively in debt to the United States. In 1944, the Breton Woods Conference redesigned the global financial system. The British pound was formally replaced by the US dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. It was over. They had the debt, but they no longer had the gold or the economy to back their currency. A slow, humiliating decline followed. The pound was devalued by 30% in 1949. devalued again in 1967. Every devaluation wiped out savings, crushed confidence, and signaled to the world that Britain was no longer a first rate power. Meanwhile, the empire fractured. Colonies peeled away, not because they were defeated by outside powers, but because Britain could no longer afford to maintain them. By the 1970s, Britain was on the verge of being a failed state with inflation hitting 25%. Begging the IMF for a bailout. The empire that controlled a quarter of the world was gone in 30 years, not by military defeat, but by currency collapse and debt. Which brings us to right now. The United States, the current empire, the current reserve currency. And every single warning sign that destroyed Rome, Spain, and Britain is flashing red. Just like everyone before us, America started spending more than it had. The Vietnam War, global military bases, social programs. By the 1960s, foreign governments realized America was printing more dollars than it had gold to back up. France under Charles de Gaulle started demanding gold for their dollars. The bluff was called. In 1971, President Nixon closed the gold window. No more gold backing. The dollar, like the debased Roman daenerius, like the pound after 1931, became a pure fiat currency, backed by nothing but the government’s word and trust. The spending never stopped. The debt kept growing. In 1980, the US national debt was $900 billion. Today, in 2025, it’s over $36 trillion. That’s a 40-fold increase in 45 years, and it’s accelerating. But debt is only part of the story. Just like Rome debased its daenerius, America is printing the money. Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars out of thin air. During COVID, they printed over $4 trillion in 2 years. More money created than in the entire previous century. And just like every empire before us, they told us it wouldn’t cause inflation. They told us modern economics solved the old problems. We’re different. We are not. Inflation peaked. The dollar is being debased. The cycle always speeds up. And just like Britain, the US is losing its reserve currency status. In 2000, over 70% of global reserves were held in dollars. Today, it’s 58% and falling. The BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and new members are actively building alternatives. They’re trading in local currencies, building new payment systems, and dd dollararizing. Central banks globally are diversifying out of the dollar. The world is getting ready for the dollar to lose its dominance, just like they prepared for the pound to fall. The cycle is crystal clear. And here’s the most dangerous part. The US has the same problem Rome had. military overextension. We maintain nearly 800 military bases in over 70 countries. The empire is expensive and it’s being funded by debt and printed money. Just like Rome couldn’t pay its legions with debased coins, just like Britain couldn’t sustain its empire after its currency collapsed, time is running out for the United States. So let’s define the cycle because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Every empire that collapsed economically followed the same seven stages. One, dominance. Two, overextension. Three, deficit spending. Four, currency debasement. Five, inflation. Six, loss of confidence. Seven, collapse. The math doesn’t change, bro. You can’t spend more than you earn forever. You can’t print prosperity and you can’t debase your currency without consequence. The cycle is absolute and we are currently in stage five, rapidly moving into stage six. So what’s next? History gives us three outcomes. Controlled decline, Britain after 1945. chaotic collapse, Rome in the fifth century, or reset and restructuring, a new currency system, perhaps backed by something real, perhaps digital, but a painful transition. The United States is at a crossroads. The debt is unpayable. The only options are default, inflation, or restructuring. And here’s what separates us. Those were regional empires. The US dollar is the global reserve currency. When the dollar collapses, it affects the entire world. Every central bank, every trade deal, every financial market, the interconnected global economy amplifies both the impact and the chaos. But the cycle says it’s coming, not because of a prediction, but because of precedent. Four empires, four currency crashes, four times the same sequence. The cycle doesn’t care about American exceptionalism. It doesn’t care about military power or tech advancement. This cycle is economic and economic laws are as certain as the laws of physics. You can’t print wealth. You can’t borrow forever. And you can’t debase your currency without destroying it. Four empires, four collapses, four times the same cycle. The only question left is the timing. How long until stage six? How long until the world loses confidence in the dollar? How long until the American Empire follows Rome, Spain, and Britain into the history books? The cycle says we’re close. The debt says we’re close. The money printing says we’re close. And the history, watching the same cycle destroy four empires before us, says the end is inevitable. The only variable is how fast and how painful it will be. If this gave you a new perspective, hit subscribe because when the cycle completes, you’re going to want to understand what happened and why. History has the answers and the cycle never lies.