Bitcoin proved digital scarcity. This SSRN paper argues crypto’s next stage is settlement, not supply

Recently I was browsing SSRN (Social Science Research Network) — an academic preprint platform owned by Elsevier, where researchers publish analytical papers before formal journal review. It’s basically a public repository for research in economics, finance, law, and technology. I came across this paper: "Post-Scarcity Crypto: Scarcity, Settlement, and the Protocolization of Value" - by Ben Lewis. The paper starts with Bitcoin. The author describes Bitcoin as the original example of digital scarcity: fixed supply decentralized consensus commonly framed as “digital gold” Bitcoin is presented as the first system to prove that cryptographically enforced scarcity can exist without a central issuer, by solving the double-spending problem. But the author’s main point is that this innovation turned out to be replicable. Many distributed ledger systems can now enforce supply limits. Because of this, scarcity becomes a necessary but not sufficient condition for long-term value. Once scarcity is common, it stops being the main differentiator. The paper also explains how the “store of value” narrative grew as Bitcoin faced limits as a payment system (throughput and volatility). According to the author, this reframing allowed low transaction activity to be seen as a feature rather than a problem. Store-of-value status is described as a socially coordinated belief, not a purely technical property. From there, the paper shifts toward settlement. The author argues that crypto is increasingly better understood not just as scarce assets, but as ledger-based settlement systems. Value, in this view, comes more from how well a ledger can: clear obligations, provide transaction finality, support interoperability, reduce friction in moving value. The paper compares this to traditional finance, where scarcity usually attaches to clearing and settlement infrastructure, not to money itself. It also references historical systems like Hawala, where value transfers relied mainly on recorded obligations and periodic reconciliation, not constant movement of assets. Conclusion of the paper: Crypto may be entering a post-scarcity phase. Scarcity (first demonstrated by Bitcoin) still matters for trust, but future differentiation is increasingly driven by: settlement reliability, transaction efficiency, interoperability, integration with existing financial systems. Different networks may end up in different roles: some as stores of value, others as settlement rails, and others as computation platforms. Curious what others think — do you agree with the author’s view on where crypto is heading?