I'm rather unconvinced that the cryptocurrency folks (or at least large numbers of those who're following the movement) have grasped Alan Watts' meaning in that "money is pure abstraction".

Rather, what Watts is saying (as I understand it) is that money itself is a derivative of real wealth, it's the abstraction of wealth. It's a tokenization of wealth, but it isn't wealth in and of itself. What it is, principally, is an exchange mechanism, one which also, over short terms, tends to be reasonably consistent in value.

The crypto currencies suffer from the challenge that in order to be accepted, they've got to be acceptable. For national currencies, this is accomplished largely in taxes and petroleum transactions (both very significant aspects of the present financial system). Probably also reserve currency status, though I won't pretend to fully understand that.