Let's talk;

You're in Crimea right now. You want some gasoline. You have some magic numbers in your magic rock. It needs you to cast a spell to transmit those magic numbers to someone else. I guess it probably also needs ... some electricity and some network access and some time to make those magic numbers update in the gas station's magic number.

In what way is this actually going to help you in a total collapse? Let's stand around over my iphone and cold wallet and spacex terminal while we wait for things to beep the right number of beeps?

In the off-chance you find yourself in this situation, what's to stop the party with the gasoline from just pointing a gun at you or your corgi and asking you to add some zeros to the number of magic beans you're zapping into their magic number?

Now, perhaps you as an international agent of mystery, can use some shiny rocks or magic pieces of paper to make your escape, and you can then, once safely back in a stable society, use your magic numbers and spells to transfer "wealth" to some organization closer to your new physical location (let's say belize?) -- in which case, to avoid a bunch of tedious laws and such, perhaps that magic trick will work in the way you suggest.

But, when things go haywire and there's just Hobb's all against all, I'm not sure a magic cold wallet of certificates is going to do much.

If it was just a backup against failing/weak institutions it would be relavively benign, but the problem is that it incentivises machiavellian types to undermine society and nation states for their own personal profit - see e.g. The Sovereign Individual[0].

Combined with effective accelerationism[1] you can see why we could be heading towards somewhere a whole lot worse than The Bad Place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereign_Individual

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_accelerationism

It doesn't even do that. If there's complete collapse, there won't be a reliable network to transact over, and not reliable electricity to run the network and do the processing.

It's not even useful for that, it's controlled by those same institutions now.

> Just that. Like insurance, it was not there to make anyone's lives better

This is revisionism. That is not at all how it started.

However, I think there's an argument that the existence of that backup, or at least its marketing, might of itself encourage people to make the institutions fail so they can profit from it.

> Exactly. Cryptocurrency is useful as as a backup system against failing/weak institutions. Just that. Like insurance, it was not there to make anyone's lives better but simply to become a safeguard to avoid complete collapse.

Meh, it's arbitrage against slow moving financial regulations.

There are times when financial regulations are "bad" in a way that this trait is desireable - i.e. your failing institutions use case - but in many cases these regulations are, actually, there for a reason.

And now in practice crypto transactions for "normal" people are performed by bank-like institutions who log every transaction anyway, so this characteristic is really only valuable to the people deeply involved in the crypto world who are using it mainly to do "normal" crimes.

Except it requires institutions in order to work.