If a system is distributed enough, with complex financial and legal dependencies, a great deal of indirection becomes stable, because to violate the indirection would put so many direct relationships in peril.

And when there is reliability, even over vast distances and time, that future-value can be traded as today-value. With risk assessments of course, but this is how a great deal of the economy works. More and more of the economy, as it becomes growth and innovation focused, operates on the currency of expectation.