Japanese to English Art/Literary Cinema, Film, TV, Drama

Dear ProZ members,

I have a doubt about the use of 壊滅した in the following sentence.
In a cartoon, all payments are made through electronic devices, and the main character is quite stunned when a friend of him pays in a bar using paper bills. His friend replies it's a local currency, and he says:

地域通貨の試みは壊滅したと思っていた
(I thought experiments with local currencies had been suppressed/abolished.)

It seems to me that 壊滅 is mostly used for physical destruction or for collapsing companies and such.

Does it mean "to suppress/abolish" here or is there more than it?

Thank you so much!