Is the U.S. Dollar out of borrowed time?

Longtime critic of the Federal Reserve and hard money advocate Ron Paul debuted his new online channel on Monday. Paul maintained his position that the U.S. Dollar is being systematically devalued and that a “dollar crisis” was inevitable. He said that he just couldn’t predict when it will happen, whether its months or years away.

That’s a view that’s been shared by economists who agree with Paul on economics. That may be changing.

Jim Rogers has long described himself as “the world’s worst short term trader,” preferring to buy and own assets he believes will increase in value over the long term. He sees the current pullback in precious metals as normal correction during a bull run, so he’s holding his gold, hoping to buy if it dips even further. But he made a curious statement back in March.

“There’s no paper money in 2014, 2015 that’s going to be worth much of anything,” Rogers told the Yahoo Daily Ticker.

It got a lot of attention is cyberspace from Rogers’ devoted libertarian and hard money following. Certainly, the statement could be interpreted in more than one way. Hard money advocates argue that paper currencies aren’t worth anything now, compared to their value in the past. The U.S. dollar has lost over 90% of its value since the Federal Reserve began issuing it in 1913.

Still, the statement is unusually specific coming from Rogers, who characteristically shies away from making predictions on timing. Rogers left investors with one piece of very clear advice.

“Don’t sell your gold and don’t sell your silver.”

Euro Pacific Capital president and Austrian economist Peter Schiff has always been willing to be aggressive in his predictions. He usually takes the traditional Austrian view that outcomes are inevitable, but timing is impossible to predict. He successfully predicted the housing crisis in advance, and now sees a worse crisis coming soon due to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program.

“I think that what’s coming is a sovereign debt crisis and a currency crisis that will make the financial crisis of ’08 look like the proverbial Sunday school picnic.”

The message coming from people who have been right in the past is paper currencies are failing and may be nearer their end than most mainstream investment advisors think. With all central banks inflating, hard currencies could emerge to fill the void.

That’s why Mulligan Mint is so excited about its new paraDimes. The one tenth ounce silver coins are intended for use as currency as well as a means for small investors to accumulate precious metals positions. In a scenario where there is no safe haven in paper money, hard currencies like the paraDime could emerge.