Okay, you sonofabitch, let's talk about this because it's rare that I start so exactly in the same place as an author and then end up diametrically 100% opposed to his viewpoint by the end of the article. Also, this shit needs talking about. So let's do it.

From what I’ve been told (and I really don’t pretend to have a clue), we’re in the midst of some strange experiment with negative interest rates, where income inequality is the worst it’s been since pre-WWII, the gold standard is in vogue again, and oil prices are a signal of worse things to come. I’ve heard that the financial system is going through a “natural reset”, while others are birdwatching for black swans. Capital is in flight. Silicon Valley is a bubble. Student debt is a bubble. State pensions are vastly underfunded. China’s growth is slowing. The Big Short was better than the Revenant.

So... by and large, these are all economically accepted positions. Yes, there are crazies over at ZeroHedge that think the world is going to end, but most everybody else simply thinks that the central banks are working so hard to forestall recession that they've effectively given up control, and that's likely to be messy.

We don’t even know how much money is flowing through the financial system at any given moment — much of the world’s notional monetary value exists in over-the-counter contracts where annual estimates vary by hundreds of trillions of dollars. Knowing what’s at stake, with one expert is yelling ‘THE SKY IS FALLING’ and the next is whistling ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’, who should we listen to?

This is an important point, and something that Piketty (who had been namedropped the previous paragraph) burned a lot of paper on. Nobody picked it up, though. Piketty argued that by anybody's best guesses, something between 40% and 60% of the world's real money is off the books in offshore accounts. He further points out that the first and only real change in this situation has been made by the US dept of commerce, which has started cracking down on offshore accounts, and that utterly without fanfare they've already recouped something like 10% of the known outstanding. Think about that - that's the United States, basically laying claim to 5% of the world's total money, just by saying "hey, that's ours." The author's link, by the way, unhelpfully points at a block visualization of the value of derivatives contracts. Which are never meant to be redeemed. So... whatevs. But more on that later - the "off-the-books money" is a big deal and let's put a pin in it, shall we?

Fixing the existing financial system seems to me an intractable problem if it’s to be centrally planned; a problem that’s shared by all but is no one’s particular responsibility, and goes well beyond my pay grade and proverbial salt.

This is where the eyes start to roll. Who says the financial system needs to be fixed? Who says it can be fixed? Who says what "fixed" is? The financial system is making lots of people rich, and lots of people poor, and the poor people will never ever ever be able to do anything about it. Really, the financial system works, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, forever and ever amen.

And then, let’s say tomorrow the financial system explodes, or implodes, for no immediately apparent reason. Now what?

...aaaaaand we're done. Fuckin' Crusades, the Silk Road, The New World, Italian city-states, Colonial wars, revolutions, world wars, cold wars, Breton Woods, Euro and the financial system IS. It just goes. Even the Mark increasing by billions did not cause the financial system to "explode." Zimbabwean hyperinflation is a bitch, to be sure, but Brazilian and Mexican hyperinflation allowed those countries to shed their foreign debt and restart their economies. That ain't a bug, it's a feature and if the financial system can survive Europe in ruins it can bloody well survive the bond market.

Let us assume the worst case scenario, that most of my personal wealth is wiped out and any assets tied to my name are worthless.

Let's assume the real case scenario, which is that your debts are money and your assets are things. I'll play along with your "utter and total collapse of the financial system" and assume that for some reason, the banks and all their recordkeeping ceases to exist tomorrow. Chances are you have:

- a place you've been living, where you've been paying someone you know an amount you're both expecting

- stuff - a laptop, a scooter, a wardrobe, a bunch of clothes, other things that you've traded money for

- a reasonable presence within a group that exchanges goods and services, all of which are in the exact same spot as you, and all of which would rather not have to deal with global financial collapse over breakfast

- credit card debt that is an arbitrary number held on a computer somewhere

- retirement accounts that are arbitrary numbers held on a computer somewhere

- student loan debt that is arbitrary numbers held on a computer somewhere

So poof goes the economy and you're left with your stuff and your place in the world, while your savings and debt have been wiped out. if you have a shitload of liquid assets, you're fucked. But the majority of the planet doesn't have liquid assets. They have shit they can carry, drive, or huddle under. There's a hundred trillion dollars of wealth destruction going down right now and mostly what people are noticing is "shit, gas is cheap." So let's nuke the financial system and see who survives and who's fucked. Li'l secret: those guys with gajillions of dollars in liquid assets also have pretty pimpin' houses. I'll bet they come out okay in the end. Or, we could, you know...

I pull out my Ubuntu phone (which happens to be running an Ethereum node), open up my mobile browser and point the address to uPort.me. I take a picture of myself and upload it to the blockchain; I fill out basic information about who I am, where I live and how to contact me. I link some of my surviving social media profiles to my uPort persona and finalize its creation. Boom. My self-sovereign identity is born.

Just... no.

Now that I’ve entered the portal into the decentralized web, I need to get ahold of some cryptocurrency to transact with. Luckily, there is a faucet offering a little amount of Ether, but that’s only enough to get me through tonight. I will need to find work. Unsurprisingly, no one is hiring right now, so I need to get creative. I logon to my Twitter account and turn on the GPS on my phone to pull in location-based content so I can see how everyone else is handling the crisis. Luckily for me, people are tweeting odd jobs and requests for information and placing bounties on their posts using Horde. I find several easy jobs that I can immediately receive payments for, making the prospect of tomorrow a little less dim.

When the world ends, check Twitter! No.

I open up the DappStore on my Ubuntu phone and download a Dapp called WeiFund. This neat little Dapp lets me launch a crowdfunding campaign across the entire decentralized global network in as long as it takes me to write up a business plan. Thanks to my bounty hunting activity on Noncense and Horde, my uPort persona has been gathering a positive reputation that’s being collected in a RepSys smart contract and displayed on my WeiFund landing page. The combination of my high reputation and winning smile is bringing in many small investments and encouragement from people all over the world, but it’s still not enough to make this a success.

Twitter, then Kickstarter. Dude...

I fire up the Token Factory Dapp, which allows me to issue shares in my company, Average Joe & Co., in the form of digital tokens, which I send instantaneously to each owner. I link these tokens to BoardRoom, Ethereum’s decentralized governance tool, and grant each shareholder’s uPort persona access to the virtual boardroom dashboard.

The Great Humungus is eating Alpo out of a hubcap and you're launching an Ethereum onboarding company on your Ubuntu phone. Somehow, I suspect that the trappings of your Ethereum lifestyle are going to require more civilization than will necessitate your Ethereum lifestyle.

Just a year later , business is booming. I’ve helped onboard hundreds of clients onto Ethereum, managing to operate solo, due in part to how easy it is to invoice my clients and receive payments.

Unfortunately, the rest of them sat there starving, staring into the sun, unsure of what to do without the wondrous visionary wunderkind and his postapocalyptic Ethereum startup. If only he could have helped more...

This crypto-reverie paints a rosy, albeit simplistic, view of the future of finance,

Never trust anyone who describes a CTRL-ALT-DEL reset of the entire world as "rosy."