Ok, I'll try to state where I stand in all of this from what I've learnt and read.
1) The current monetary system revolves around central banks and retail banks. The central banks have a national monopoly on the printing and issuance of paper (fiat) money digitally and physically. The retail banks have an oligopoly on the leverage ratio (assets/equity) which is then lent to the whole economy. Funadmentally, this means as long as there is no shortage of physical notes (if needed), the banks can never be made bankrupt if the central bank is always the lender of last resort.
Politically speaking, I can never see a scenario whereby deflation and hence bank squeezes, insolvency and bankruptcy are issues for any banks in the USA or here in AUS.
A corrolary is that this system is politicised, governments run deficits and central banks can buy this debt, making bank failures almost impossible.
2) As an individual, we essentially pay three kinds of taxes: income taxes, captial gains taxes and inflation taxes. At some point, we all realised this, and so we looked for other avenues to avoid some of these. Real estate is the biggest one, which is why real estate prices are so insane here in AUS but also in other places around the world. I believe the price of real estate is merely a reflection of the inflation of the money supply from central banks and the leverage ratio (or cost of money) by retail banks. I believe this is why we all got into precious metals as an investment, to avoid paying the inflation tax, and potentially the capital gains tax. If I could afford real estate, I wouldn't be here.
3) However, sometimes physically buying and holding precious metals isn't something you're keen on (storage, premiums, etc). P2P, cryptography and blockchains allowed for the creation of bitcoin etc utilising proof of work to buy and hold an asset with no storage cost and no counterparty risk. Remember, a lot of stuff has counterparty risk. While people may argue crypto holders of alt coins are gambling, which I believe they are, bitcoin and ethereum, I believe, have enough history, proof of work and decentralisation to make it comparable to buying physical gold and silver.
4) Globalisation: In history, only the political elites really care about status quo, power, influence and wealth. I don't believe anyone here, really, wants to get rich quick. They just want to make sure they don't get screwed by political elites through hyperinflation (destruction of savings), confiscation (police state and/or crazy capital gains taxes), regulation (using or owning something illegal). To this end, we have bought what we have because we do NOT believe in the current monetary system and the direction in which its heading, AND our time/effort is valuable (saved as fiat dollars and then converted to something else). We can speculate on what the political elite will do, but I think all we're doing is hedging and insuring ourselves as best we can from what they can do.
5) Consequences: I believe there are quite long time frames when political elites will change something (they love the current system because they don't pay the taxes mentioned above). I don't believe there is a conspiracy around bitcoin, gold or other potentially reserve and monetary assets that are fungible, divisible, etc. The political elites and the ones with big wealth have always been the ones that call the shots (directly or indirectly), we're just playing defence.