The Crypto wars and the Segwittish upgrade to the Galactic exchange

I've been researching the spread of smartphones across the world for my PhD, and looking at statistics — like the "developed" world being about 17%, and the "developing world" making up the other 83% of the global population (for the record, I don't condone those terms, they are actually used by the UN), and seeing figures showing that people who've never used a computer are accessing the internet for the first time by the 100s of millions of people every year for the past decade, mostly with 'smartphones', and I think a lot of people in this "developed" world are going to be genuinely shocked at the implications of this emergent "internet of money" we're witnessing the birth of. People have no idea what is about to hit them.

I actually do think we may be about to see the end of "Western civilisation", but only in the sense of ending its dominance, because the entire concept is a stupid, outdated, Imperialistic idea based on a premise of conquest and 'state violence'. But there are many in the "West"
who will be genuinely shocked to discover they aren't the only people in the universe.

But this crypto stuff is so bewilderingly complicated that it will be a while before it becomes mainstream. Maybe not as long as many might think, because a lot of very smart people are working on realistic front-ends, so it's only a matter of time. But there is still a buffer zone for a short time longer before most people even have the faintest idea what is going on here. It's a bit of a wild-west turkey shoot right now.

But I also feel genuinely concerned about how the 'state violence' oriented "howcome Brawndo the thirst mutilator is worth zero billions" massive will react when they eventually figure it out.

So, while my own independent line of research led me down this rabbit hole, and I feel genuinely positive that something good could come from it, it desperately needs more people who vaguely understand what is going on and can translate it back into human from über-geek. This is really "fix all the world's problems" technology, but only if enough people understand its significance.

I like to indulge in the suspended-disbelief fantasy idea that maybe this could be a subtle step towards informing the humans that the Earth is like Mos Eisley, Tattooine, and and we've been quarantined because we somehow ended up with a bunch of psychopaths in charge of nuclear weapons — an issue we still haven't dealt with — but that's really a good question: What would we do if we were about to join a galactic community? Would we try and impose a single petro-currency on Alpha Centauri or Sirius with neo-liberal strategies of forced compliance with our fossil-fuel based explosive projectile enforced state violence system of current geo-political trade? Or we could come up with some kind of fluid, genuinely free-market system that could easily absorb the Glaznork Coin from the Regulus system, and find a realistic way of giving change in Xccharrxxravarrs from Betelgeuse?

Put in another, slightly more "sane" way — this planet is globalising, and so this "internet of money" will happen, just like the internet of communications did. The only question is how we deal with that reality, and the possibility that the current system might have to be flattened first, which will be terrifying for a lot of people, but only temporary. I'm most worried about what the people with the missiles will do when it eventually happens, but all the more reason to collectively figure out what those of us in the 'light' could do to prepare.

The most important thing to remember is that there are literally billions of people on this planet who won't even notice.
This is the great levelling.