>decks out Monopoly money with a bunch of smart-sounding technological bells and whistles
...ephemeral hyper-velocity funny money!
It's massively parallel, with smaller hash-producers/stakers having nearly the same profitability as large ones, and nearly no minimum investment required to enter.
This is diametrically opposed to any central banking scheme, which is extremely hierarchical, with the representatives of regional banks sitting alongside high-ranking political appointees to create monetary policy and make decisions as significant as buying a trillion dollars worth of privately owned assets from large privately owned financial institutions.
The current centralized monetary scheme is the reason 42% of corporate profits since 1972 have been earned by the financial sector.
Basically, a new form of fast finance has emerged, connected with a blockchain technology which enables the financing mechanism as well as potential applications that are financed. It is not monopoly money as much as it is speculative vendor financing.