Excellent post, rare to read something that really shifts your thinking.

I never realized the dollar is the baseline "story" of our culture. Or gold or diamonds, whose "intrinsic" value actually does have to be explained a bit. Gold, we're taught, is pretty because of its shine but valuable because it has the unique property of being slightly more malleable than human teeth, so you can bite it and confirm the metal easily.

Individual SMTs sound ludicrous at first because there would be so many, and it seems immodest to expect anyone to accept the value of your individual coin. But it's the same with many small country currencies like Lao Kip in @world-travel-pro's comment. As you said SMTs would stream together much more efficiently than existing foreign exchanges. It could catch on as a way to financially support people in a much more direct way than Twitter.

Haven't learned yet exactly now ERC20/SMTs work but I guess the risk then becomes protecting your private key for an entire currency rather than a wallet.