There is no value in your dollar bills, your British pounds sterling; no value beyond the value that inheres because we all decide to allow it to inhere.

I disagree. The law will enforce your obligations denominated in fiat. Most money is created by banks in exchange for borrowers' notes. If you give your note to get fiat, and you don't return it, the sheriff can take your Fiat. If your note is backed by your car, and the money is backed by your note, then there's way more going on than simple consensus. The consensus that money has value is not arbitrary; it reifies a recognition of real-world consequences of the money's issuance.

Crypto enables the transfer of fiat via the "repurchase" channel. I can buy crypto and send it to a creditor, and the creditor can sell that crypto for fiat. That's a neat trick. The crypto can be bought and sold because it is the only asset that can be transferred so effectively. Crypto gets its value from its transferrability. That value may be nowhere near its price, but, as the saying goes, price is what you pay, and value is what you get. Bitcoin, for example, may only be worth a few hundred bucks as a transfer tool, but that's not zero and it's not even failure.

My guess is that Bitcoin will be supplanted by something faster and less environmentally damaging, perhaps a state-run crypto, But that's not because it's crypto.

Whether the blockchain is worth the cost remains to be seen. Trust plus diligence and insurance may simply be cheaper than trustlessness.