THE FIAT DEVALUATION INDEXPURCHASING POWER OF $100 · SINCE 1913
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$100 has always been $100. What it buys keeps changing. This tracks the actual purchasing power of $100 since 1913, the year the Federal Reserve was created, using the US Consumer Price Index.
The chart's fill is an actual photograph of a US bank note, clipped into the area under the curve rather than drawn from scratch. Near 1913 that area is tall enough to show most of the note. By today it's worn down to a thin strip along the bottom.
· $100 IN 1913 IS WORTH: $100 adjusted for US CPI inflation from 1913 to the selected year, in 1913 dollars.
· TOTAL CHANGE: the dollar figure directly, minus 100.
· A note on Bitcoin, since that's the rest of this site: this specific chart is plain CPI purchasing power, no bitcoin in the math. The 2009 marker just flags where bitcoin enters the story, for scale against 113 years of dollar history.
· Tap any marker on the timeline for a short explanation of what happened.
US CPI-U annual index, in2013dollars.com (BLS data)
Not financial advice; one collapsing data point.