"sort-of just like a social network"
It's exactly a social network.
A country is just a word -- a global entity is just a collection of power of many people and influence combined with international recognition.
It doesn't matter if you open a bank - what matters is whether you can make other banks recognize you.
Think of bitcoin as an example - it's just a password .. it's worthless - it became worth something when websites started exchanging dollars for bitcoins.
Once you can trade it - it has value.
IMO it applies to a country thus :
Your "digital country" would exist once it's able to exert influence over others. How you defined it only matters once you can enforce your laws.
Open google and look for "transnistria" to understand just how vaguely defined the term "country" is.
"Some of the most successful tech investments of all time — among them Google and Facebook — came about in Silicon Valley’s lean times. This is a paradox of invention, as well as of investing: Bad times feed good ideas, which in turn lead to good times, which breed complacency, waste and lots of bad business plans."
This .. Just this
When tech entrepreneurs because too vague, too comfortable and start wasting their time on nonsense - it becomes a bubble and eventually bursts.
High tech is a market of supply and demand - when companies solve actual problems ( which market-low times force them to do ) they earn value and get big.
The opposite happens when everyone is trying to do the "next big thing" without an actual reason for it existing.
I would take warnings of impending doom with a grain of salt ..
It's all a matter of timing and the right idea as it always was.
We're left with converting each stream to 3 separate formats ( HLS,DASH264 and RTMP ) to stream on all browsers ..
What solution do they offer for that ?