Bangladesh, Jan. 4 -- Twice in the last century, the global financial system was forced to reinvent itself because the machinery underpinning money could no longer bear the weight placed upon it. The collapse of the gold standard during the Great Depression and the end of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s were not merely technical adjustments; they were systemic ruptures driven by shifts in power, trade, and capital flows. Today, the world stands at the edge of another such transformation. This time, however, the challenge is not centered on exchange-rate regimes or gold convertibility, but on digital infrastructure: the rails on which money itself now moves.

At the heart of this transformation lies a deceptively simple question: will the...