Will alternative currencies triumph over the U.S. dollar?

This week, Janet Yellen was confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee to succeed Ben Bernanke as the next Chair of the Federal Reserve. The final vote will head to the Senate at an unspecified date where she is believed to garner the necessary 60 votes to lead the central bank once Bernanke’s term ends.

Many Austrians and libertarians are concerned that Yellen will further devalue the U.S. dollar, even more so than Bernanke has done since the decline of the U.S. economy. Over the past few months, Yellen has hinted in speeches of using additional stimulus tools and increasing its $85 billion per month bond-buying program – some fear that it could be as high as $1 trillion.

An infographic by Landmark Cash was recently posted on Visually, which looks at the history of the $100 bill. It coincided with the Fed introducing brand new $100 bills that will have enhanced security features in order to combat counterfeiters from replicating it. Of course, this won’t protect the country from Bernanke or Yellen.

With the storied history of the $100 bill, which dates back to 1862 and has portrayed numerous statesmen, such as President Abraham Lincoln, Senator Thomas Hart Benton and Admiral James Glasgow Farragut – for years, Benjamin Franklin has graced the front of the $100 bill – it is inevitable that all denominations of U.S. currency, including the $100 bill, will crash.

Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

So what’s the alternative? Soon after the economic collapse, precious metals were widely seen as a hedge against inflation, hyperinflation and the monetary destruction. However, after gold and silver have been experiencing a short correction, many have become concerned over their choice of alternative, though the demand remains rather high among investors, goldbugs and central banks.

As of late, due to numerous media reports and its skyrocketing price from $10 to as high as $900, many so-called investing anarchists have turned to bitcoins. There has been some dispute among the libertarian and Austrian circles that whether or not bitcoin is a genuine and legitimate alternative currency.

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, recently issued a video that listed the differences between gold and bitcoin. Furthermore, soon after the Winklevoss twins compared bitcoin to gold, Schiff disagreed as Global Gold News reported.

“I don’t see bitcoins as an alternative to gold,” Schiff told CNBC. “If anything, [the creators of bitcoin are] modern-day alchemists, but you can’t make gold digitally. It’s no better than a fiat currency.”

He added: “The reason people are buying bitcoins is because they think they’re going to make money. They think the price is going up. And the price probably will go up. It’ll keep going up until it implodes. And a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in bitcoins.”

One question that has been asked as of late has been: what is the anarchist’s currency?

A simple answer: gold and silver cannot be traced, while bitcoin, by using some computer programming skills, can be tracked and found.