Far from disappearing, digital assets have evolved into a market worth roughly $2.58trn, increasingly functioning less as money and more as infrastructure. The failure of the currency thesisFollowing the global financial crash of 2008, the overall sentiment towards banks was one of deep mistrust. On a basic level, our financial system relies on money being a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Rather than replacing the dollar system, crypto in many cases extends it, allowing users to access dollar liquidity without touching the formal banking sector at all. The global financial order is becoming less universal and more regionalised.