Edit: oh no I mentioned China here come the tankies

They’ve been saying this for years, the problem is that none of them trust each other’s currencies or banking systems enough to do it. Nobody trusts China’s economic stats. They really, really want to get off the dollar. They meet like every year and try to figure out how. But they can’t figure out how because of that lack of trust. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (with lightning):

• trustlessly sends a transaction across the globe in under a second for pennies in fees. You don’t have to worry if “your bank trusts their bank”, Bitcoin will secure the transaction.
• Is immune from influence or corruption. China or whoever can’t make Bitcoin print extra coins for them, spend money that they don’t have the key for, or otherwise do anything it isn’t designed to do. The protocol is enforced by the network.
• All you need is a cell phone with a halfway reliable internet connection, no need for complex banking infrastructure. No single building with a bunch of money stored in it. No paying extra for your liquidity because your region is “risky”. This is a big deal for poor countries.
• It’s been doing this global transaction role for 15 years without a single bank holiday, a single hour of downtime, or a single hack. It. Just. Works.
• If your population has learned not to trust banks, for example through political instability and coups, this can help them get back into the “formal economy” as you can say “see, our corrupt government doesn’t run this money, so you can trust it more. The 1 BTC you earn today will still be 1 BTC in 5 years”.
• For <1% of global electricity usage, mostly from renewables since off-peak renewable generation is the cheapest energy around. It helps incentivize adding more renewables to the grid by ensuring there is always a buyer for any surplus supply. And it helps keeps rates lot for regular ratepayers through that same mechanism. Moving value around costs energy and human time, we just don’t see headlines like “WESTERN UNION AGAIN CONSUMING TERAWATTS A DAY OF ELECTRICITY WE’RE ALL DOOMED” because there’s nothing novel about remittance services using tons of energy and making their customers pay exorbitant fees.

Smaller countries like Ecuador are using this technology to bring Bitcoin to millions of people who don’t have access to (or don’t trust) banking infrastructure. Smaller countries can now participate in the global economy without using the USD and retain more of their sovereignty in the process. They have a plan B. And they don’t have to run their own central bank or having stable enough political/legal ifrastructure for a banking system. They just need old android phones and 3G connections.