Decentralised tokens crumbled, and with them the savings of hundreds of millions of people. A generation's wealth evaporated in a single governance week. The chronicle called it the silent bankruptcy — silent because the newly centralised media networks agreed not to describe it as a collapse at all.
In its place rose the global quantum network — a benevolent name, a monopoly reality. By the 2040s the word dystopia had been retired from the standard language model. There was only the network and its alternatives, and the alternatives were no longer alternatives.