Paper money is what created Venice. It created Flanders. It created Shanghai. Paper money means "finance" basically and I agree, crypto is orders of magnitude more versatile than "banks."

But none of those trading powers would have existed without navies and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the money is or what it does. What matters is where the rubber meets the road.

If I were Visa? I'd be prototyping the shit out of crypto escrow. I'd roll that shit out ASAP. First to the post on this one - if I gotta pay Visa 1% to get a service agreement that allows me to contest charges I'ma sign up. If I have a choice between buying insurance per transaction or buying it all the time, I'll pick and choose. If I can get miles? Bully. Hey maybe I can get pennies for viewing ads. Now you're talking about a centralized organization running on the blockchain, and it's going to be taxed. THAT is how the normies are gonna blockchain - they'll use Metamask by Visa. And it'll probably run Tether or whatever. It'll be big monolithic organizations assuming the risk for a percentage, same as it ever was. We're switching from phone lines to fiber but for the normies it'll still be a telco world.

Normies bought beanie babies. Still do.

110k players on Axie Infinity? Million users on NBA Top Shot. I'm not saying "I'm right, you're wrong" I'm saying I feel your certainty is misplaced. "Cryptopunks...have a nice aesthetic" is a judgement call. Some people love Jeff Koons. I've never met them but I can objectively argue they exist. More people know Thomas Kinkade, though. Everybody knows the Mona Lisa. But everybody owns Maxfield Parrish.

The market cap for all Punks is what, $5b right now? I believe we've definitely reached a point where the market is TBTF. Once the taste-makers get ahold of it there's no letting go (short of a scandal, and art scandals have to be outsized). NFTs-as-art have the additional advantage of legal tax evasion. Since there's nowhere for the article to physically reside, there's no tariffs to be charged. That's a good 20% incentive for piling into jpegs over Jackson Pollacks. There's also the constant online marketplace which changes the broker equation.

But I don't think the question has even been properly posed yet, let alone settled. I'm a long-term guy and we're still this side of the event horizon.