Cryptocurrency, the champion’s champion of free market economists, has had a rollercoaster ride since Bitcoin’s inception in 2008. Its explosive growth in 2017 triggered a series of violent market cycles and drew intense regulatory scrutiny, including China’s blanket ban on all crypto-related transactions and mining. Based on a vision of an economic system beyond the reach of governments, immune to inflation, and frictionless across borders, Bitcoin promised to do what centuries of monetary experimentation had struggled to achieve: combine the scarcity of gold with the utility of the US dollar.

That moment seems to have passed. Crypto has not displaced the dollar, which remains embedded in global trade, finance and reserves….