The risk is in borrowing, not short selling. How many momo jockies out there think about the "unlimited risk" from buying Tesla on margin? In that case, you're shorting USD, but no one talks about that because it always will be fashionable to short USD.
Just like it always will be fashionable to short JPY, for carry and more. Until it's not.
If you borrow $1,000 to buy TSLA your downside is limited—you can’t possibly lose more than $1,000.
Tether provides a good illustration of the principle I mentioned-- which I concede is a bit theoretical in the case of USD:
Tether is supposed to trade at $1 and gets press when it trades below. But, sometimes it also trades above, at $1.01, $1.02 and even perhaps $1.03. So, if you sold a lot of it thinking trading higher was impossible, you can be surprised.
So technically buying almost any stock can be a way of shorting the USD in that you are selling it now and will buy it back later.
The risk - besides that of the company itself- I suppose is that if you have massive deflation you will end up with less USD. I don’t think anyone is worried about massive deflation of the USD, since the Fed can and would prevent that.
Today the only government (that I know of) committed to not printing money is Argentina but they have other issues affecting their economy and therefore inflating their currency.
Given that governments don't seem to have desire stop money printing any time soon, buying BTC is sound.
You don't know many countries, do you?
Argentina still prints more money, and has higher inflation, than most places around the world.
Singapore and Switzerland are some examples of nicely conservative monetary policy.