Ethereum 2.0 could work as a currency among many other things.
Adopting something like that would be a very smart move for the United States. It would also be extremely difficult to do, and undermine the current sovereignty.
One of the nice things about Ethereum is its programmability. So I hope that future sovereign digital currencies will be integrated using something like that, assuming an alternate digital global governance system built on open non-national protocols does not become viable.
Ironically China beat the West to the punch here too. Conflux network fixed the throughput issues already. It’s similar to eth2 except has been live for months (and picked a diff solution). Just doesn’t get much English coverage
Maybe I should buy some CFX though.
That is the key yes. There are a hell of a lot of Chinese though & following their social media chatter they see this very much as a "this one is ours" type deal. So it has social momentum too, just a very different flavour.
Risky but I think the rewards could be there
Then there could be a fight to preserve the older dollar system in the form of a war. And since it's an inferior technology, the US would be on the wrong side of history.
The war would not be justified with financial arguments but rather propaganda as all wars have. So both Chinese and American citizens would feel a strong moral imperative to attempt to kill as many millions on the other side as possible in order to stop their "evil" ways.
Another aspect of this is the still unfortunately strong propagation of Social Darwinist perspectives that fundamentally do not value human life.
I think that the sane way to move forward is to apply our technology and social infrastructure towards resolving the political, philosophical and logistical conflicts directly. And I suppose it's quite unlikely. But this would mean leveraging things like smart cryptocurrencies and decentralization technologies (which in fact have large potential now for the next paradigm of government).