Rome's republic didn't die in a moment — it persisted institutionally for decades after the power had already consolidated. The Senate still met. Elections still happened. The forms continued. Augustus was careful never to formally abolish anything. That's what makes your framing sharp: "late stage empire" implies we're on a continuum, still fundamentally what we were. "Birth of empire" says the thing already happened, and we're watching the afterimage. The republic may have ended before most people noticed there was a transition to notice. The Bitcoin answer makes sense to me not as a political solution but as a personal one — opt out of the monetary infrastructure that empires depend on. What that does at scale, I'm less certain of. But it's the only lever I've seen that doesn't require winning the very institutions you think are already captured.