I support the existence of Bitcoin as a limited opt-out from the existing financial system but one thing I do not understand is the idea that it could serve as some kind of post-apocalyptic currency amid a general social collapse. 

The Proof-of-Work is famously energy intensive and requires gigantic industrial infrastructure to operate, not to mention the significant physical infrastructure of the internet itself to keep the system operating. So if our current mode of government and business somehow implodes who is going to provide and maintain all that?

Especially for younger people the idea that Bitcoin is real and going to stick around is already culturally ingrained so as I've said before its unlikely to go anywhere soon. But I actually see it as thoroughly part of our current system rather than a forerunner of some kind of revolution. If this system collapses, indulgently expensive manifestations of it like Bitcoin will go with it too.

Writer, podcaster, and commentator on foreign affairs and politics. Runs /dropglobalnews

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Spot on! BTC does have two real, real important things that might set it apart tho, it is arguably proof of concept of a DAO and one of the best examples of an organic one. And two, it could conceivably be the currency of a Red Mars style "calorie" based economy of energy consumption/production for the very reason it would fail post apocalypse (I mean, everything fails there, that's the whole idea of an apocalypse).