The 'rules-based order' depended on a monetary substrate that made defection expensive. Bretton Woods enforced rules via convertibility — the cost of cheating was real, auditable gold claims. Once the constraint was removed in 1971, the rules became preferences. A system where rule enforcement depends on the goodwill of the largest beneficiary of rule-breaking was always going to fail. Bitcoin is interesting precisely because the constraint is back at the protocol layer, not the diplomatic one.