The United States could lose its preeminent financial and political influence in the world as other sovereign powers make haste to legalize and adopt Bitcoin as their reserve currency.
The threat to America is not simply a matter of leaving a huge amount of (increasingly plausible) money on the table. Bitcoin is the largest deployment of public-key cryptography in history to secure a financial system that is experiencing parabolic growth.
The cryptocurrency has innumerable use cases for fundamentally reordering and securing the world’s energy infrastructure. Joining the Bitcoin hashpower and accumulation race is a matter of modern cyber warcraft. Strong cryptography has always in practice been a weapon of warfare and is legally regarded by governments as armament.
Cryptocurrency is an arms race to ensure peace
It is an arms race, but one that has the potential to function as a pipeline for the “animal spirits” of warfare, from conventional kinetic warfare that ends human lives to cyberwarfare waged on the layer of our global society, with real and substantial effects. a cold deterrent as the desired effect in international affairs.
Indeed, those who understand it have good reasons to believe Bitcoin is the best deterrent to a shooting war— which has historically been part and parcel of global financial competition and inextricably intertwined with the politics of the US petrol dollar— since the atomic bomb.
In fact, while bitcoin holders can do whatever they want with it, including buying conventional weapons and funding war, the Bitcoin financial system itself cannot be used to fund war in the same way as Central bank fiat money has been used by governments throughout recorded history.
The question is, which US state will lead the union to adapt to the inevitable disruption of Bitcoin’s ascendancy on the world stage?
The Huge Opportunity Cost of Waiting to Adopt Bitcoin
For the past two decades, Microsoft has rested on its laurels and just watched Google build the software for mobile and reap a huge amount of profit from it. Bill Gates says losing to Android was his biggest mistake.
Standing by and watching El Salvador, Mexico, and other nations do the same with Bitcoin could be a mistake with far many more zeroes on it for the United States and the interests of its citizens. But more and more US policymakers are getting savvy about the importance of Bitcoin.
The first state to take the initiative and make a major effort for the rapid adoption of Bitcoin, as Nayib Bukele is doing in El Salvador, will reap huge financial benefits and make its people richer very suddenly.
US corporations that have made that bet have profited handsomely in a short amount of time:
“If I had chosen gold instead when I bought bitcoin, we would probably have around $250 million in gold. And our shareholders would have missed out on $4 or $5 billion.” – Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy (during the Bloomberg Intelligence event at Bitcoin Conference 2022)
What state will be the one to go first?
Which One Will Be First?
It’s unlikely those like New York and other mid-Atlantic states will, because they are so invested in the federal reserve financial system. California is a mixed bag of openness to tech innovation and establishmentarian interests. The residents and businesses there are more likely to adopt than the government.
Florida could be, aiming to overtake its big peers in financial preeminence. The mayor of Miami certainly would. Other smaller southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, or Tennessee would have much more distance to travel from their current economic situation, and therefore perhaps a greater incentive to join the Bitcoin race. with enthusiasm.
Their historical distrust and distaste for the centralization of political power in the federal government, on the basis of regionalism and a doctrine of state sovereignty as old as the union itself, would make them likely candidates for official Bitcoin adoption as well.
Bluer states with an independent streak and a penchant for social innovation, such as New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon, are also places where it would make sense to seek policy measures to facilitate and encourage Bitcoin adoption.
Nevada would particularly find many use cases for cryptocurrency beneficial for its unique economy. Colorado’s pro-crypto governor (and former US congressman), Jared Polis, has already successfully led his state to take measures to encourage the flow of bitcoin to the Centennial State.
