I think you're overly pessimistic on this. First, cryptography is power. No amount of cannons and horses could help Napoleon to calculate a discrete logarithm :) Performance of people without cryptography is not indicative of future performance of people with cryptography.

Second, the very existence of bonds and the very fact that we can own stocks are the spoils of past peoples' victories against the State. You don't focus on those because they happened before the Napoleonic Wars.

Third, the world outside US/Europe has alternative payment systems, for example hawala, that the governments weren't able to suppress so they gave up.