Imagine a future where the vast majority of work is automated. Most of this is computationally expensive work, such as training large neural networks, and the average program takes a substantial amount of resources to run, comparable to paying a human worker.

In this scenario, labor power has been replaced by GPU power, which can be measured in terms of electricity. Everything from ordering a meal at a restaurant to building a house to designing a new computer system can be measured this way, and the price of everything is tightly coupled to the price of electricity and the price of compute.

Under these conditions, it might make sense that programs/robots would incorporate smart contracts or participate in some sort of generalized proof-of-work system to finance themselves. Running a program would require currency as input to cover the computational cost of actually running the program, even if the program is open source.

That's where I see this going. Traditional currency is great for incentivizing human labor, but the problem is it's not designed to be programmable.