What does gold have to do with the US dollar?

Answer 1

America itself have a ton of gold locked up

a dollar bill is not a dollar but a paper note (like a IOU)

lets say if you added up all the US bill in the world together and have a made up number of 50 trillion dollar and if US has 50 trillion pound of gold than your dollor bill would be worth exactly 1 pound of gold in the vault, BUT you cannot go and take the gold out.

on the back of the dollar bill it says "In God We Trust" which means that you trust God that America will safe keep your portion of the gold, the meaning of it is not exact but it reference to it. It also has other meaning such as God has favored the US.

if more bills get printed the weaker the dollar bill gets and the more gold US has the stronger the dollar bill gets.

Gold is the universal currency