It's all equally imaginary; cryptocurrencies can be the underpinning of a working economy just as well as pieces of paper or shiny metals. Why will Boeing make me an airplane if I give it lots of pieces of paper? Because their supplies accept it, their employees accept it, and on down the line, and the employees accept it because grocery stores and banks accept it... What keeps it going? A shared understanding that the pieces of paper are "worth something", combined with a government decree that businesses have to accept them.
The benefits of deciding that crypto underpins the economy in your game world is that it's immediately empire-wide by nature (like you don't have to transport it), and it's produced by buildings you already have (power plants and/or research centers). It's basically a way of theming "energy" as "funds", without having to worry about how you actually transport "energy" across the map.