I do not know about abandoning fiat though,,, but them moving on to different fiat for sure. The thing about national currency is the whole idea of country/state and identity and all of those things that make 200+ countries feel like they are unique in this world.

That basic interest is stronger than just pure monetary power, collectively,,, this is why Zimbabwe and Venezuela have not abandoned their currencies despite it practically being useless:)

The OP mentions the use of Bank notes in England during the 16th century. Um, the Chinese introduced the concept much much earlier during the 7th century. Ref the Wikipedia article on Fiat Money.

Time and time again in that article it mentions things such as Note that last sentence, "Fiat money's value is created internally by the community and, at equilibrium, makes otherwise infeasible trades possible". To me that sure sounds exactly the same as what gives crypto value.

So, that gives us:
"Original or real money" - a physical thing be it precious metals, beaver pelts, silk, a barrel of oil, etc. that can be traded for goods and services.
"Historical Fiat" - a physical thing such a paper script/receipt produced by a trustworthy source that can later be converted into real money.
"Modern Fiat" - a physical thing (paper money) that has assigned value but the value is not tied to or convertible to a physical thing but is instead assigned value based on world-wide consensus.
Lastly, what I would call Crypto Fiat - crypto currency that has value but said value is again not tied to a physical thing.

In other words, Bitcoin and all the other crypto coins technically ARE Fiat!

These countries or other countries that have had their Fiat devalued to the extent it is looked as worthless would not abandon their currency because of the role that money plays in the system. If you Google that information about the role of money, you are likely to get these:
Unit of account, medium of exchange and store of value

That means the Zimbabwe currency or that of Venezuela has those functions still. Most importantly, they are used for exchange and whichever that will replace it has to play that role effectively and I don't think bitcoin or cryptocurrency has taken that spot yet in such less developed countries that are still considered high in the level of illiteracy.

I have to also add from my view that Fiat is a unifying model for the econony and identity , where government runs on digital currency at most, it still will not take the place of Fiat/paper money.

Before bitcoin, there was Ron Paul proposing to audit the federal reserve. Fringe minorities proposing to re-implement a gold standard. Glass steagall versus the Volcker rule. Keynes vs Hayek. In my state there was actually a guy who owned reserves of gold and silver who tried to mint his own coins. There were malcontents of fiat currency before bitcoin. I wonder what happened to all of those people, it has been a long time since I've seen or heard any mention of them.




The system can be improved. Or it can regress and devolve over time as people forget past history. Knowledge and learning can be forgotten and lost. Technology and standards can fall. As was occurring in space and aerospace industries before space x came along.

Modern monetary systems are definitely regressing in ways. From a loss of a gold standard. To work increasingly being taxed to subsidize nonwork in an unsustainable loop.

After reading the article (very long), I have the following views:
1. The evolution of currency forms follows the steps of the highly complex operation of the human economy, especially the industrial economy and commodity trade. Specifically, from physical currency, to precious metals, to credit currency, every upgrade is the continuous advancement of human cognition result.

2. Electronic currency is actually a revolutionary change in currency clearing transactions and convenience. For example, if online transactions are developed and run well, they can completely get rid of the problem of slow development of the banking industry due to the lack of overseas clearing banks.

This is the weakness of the banking industry. It is still in the development stage of personal checks and credit accounts. Using online clearing and trading systems, cloud computing and big data analysis and processing can better grasp the economic trend, better control practical assets, and bring The cost of currency transactions has dropped significantly.

I did say it was about identity, which is to me the most important, you can Google all the information you want, but I met many zimbabweans students from our local universities who only bring out their currency to give as souvenirs to people (because it is printed in millions and billions) and laugh about it. They tell us that Zimbabweans only use US dollars. If they accept local currency they will ask for 10x 20x what the actual price is and nobody wants to carry a backpack of dollar bills to pay for coffee. They have those functions but only because the government says it does but on the streets everybody pays with US dollar.

I was not talking about them using Bitcoin to replace it, I was talking about most fiat currencies being held on to by states because of national identity not so much monetary power.