Power abhors a vacuum. No such thing can exist without some state eventually dominating 51% of it. We've just tested this out since 2009 and it's already obvious that no crypto can escape state control, because the ingress and egress points are already under state control. Short of establishing your own colony on the moon or Mars, this ain't gonna happen.
Luckily, it's still possible to change governments. Sometimes, in some places. Maybe not for much longer. But the idea that crypto will free us is a fantasy that at this point is mostly being peddled by secret police agencies in name-your-country.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what a currency actually is.
A currency is a social construct. It has no inherent value beyond what people who trade in it place on the currency.
As a result people don’t want a currency whose rules of trade are defined once and it’s unable to respond to actual world events.
If you have a currency that is indeed responsive to changes in the world then there needs to be someone who you entrust with making those changes.
At that point it doesn’t matter whether that currency is digital or cash based. I mean, in actuality even the USD digital trade is order of magnitudes greater than its physical trade.
The U.S.’s monetary institutions and its role as a trade promoting superpower is what makes the dollar stronger. Now that those institutions are not as reliable anymore and the U.S. is clearly not a trade promoter anymore, the dollar is definitely at risk.
A currency is a social construct but it doesn't just come down to people who trade in the currency in a decentralized sense: the US govt imposes taxes on economic activity, and demands those taxes be paid in dollars (as other states do in their respective currencies), and this is enforced by the coercive power of the state, which is ultimately based on its military strength, since that's the ultimate guarantor of the continued existence of all the other institutions of the state.
Of course, there's more to it in the complex system of the global economy, but the power of the state is still an important central factor in a currencies' strength - it's not just about collective perceptions of value.
