It's 2057. Bitcoin collapsed. Gold won. The world is back on sound money. You sell your car to a buyer across state lines. They show up with 8 gold bars and a portable scale. You weigh each one. Looks right, but you can't verify purity on the spot. You send it to an assayer. Results come back in 4 days. One bar is slightly under spec. You renegotiate. They drive back with a replacement bar. You retest. Three weeks later, the sale is complete. You try to deposit it at your bank. They charge a storage fee. You start wondering if there's a faster way to settle. Something digital, verifiable in minutes, divisible to eight decimal places, and transferable anywhere on earth without a single intermediary. Then you remember that existed once but we decided it was too risky.