Cryptocurrency is the only way to circumvent the prohibitionist laws against free exchange of money. The biggest source of inefficiency in the global economy is the organized censorship of human economic activity via state intervention, and cryptocurrency directly addresses that.
Identity on the blockchain won't actually happen if nobody actually works to make it happen. In practice, though, it's much more profitable (and easier) to build centralised businesses where you actually have a product or service to sell that only you can provide (due to network effects), so people work on that instead.