They will just point out that PoW incentive systems existed in the 90s along with Merkle chains; bitcoin marries the two but maybe its rise is simply revealing

They will just point out that PoW incentive systems existed in the 90s along with Merkle chains; bitcoin marries the two but maybe its rise is simply revealing to banks how useful distributed consensus protocols could be for building private exchanges instead of these crypto primites remaining one among many in the huge collection of esoteric crypto protocols to arise in the crypto-Cambrian era of the 90s.