The US is Now Winning the Cryptocurrency War

Only a month ago, I would not have said the United States was a leader in the world of cryptocurrency. In fact, it’s been a quiet concern of mine for some time that the US would lose its economic dominance if we did not get our act together and provide leadership and clarity regarding cryptocurrency and their inevitable rise to global adoption. I would even go so far to say that China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and much of Asia had a leg up in this Digital Space Race.

But almost seemingly overnight the US has leaped to the front with likely never needing to look back again. Here’s how:

First and foremost, not only has American enterprise splashed in with the likes of Square, Paypal, Circle, Microstrategy, Mass Mutual, and beyond, but American investors at the highest level of Wall St have turned their eye to these crypto-assets and announced their support of them, as well. It was already beginning to feel like the taboo was waning off and at the least, individual American crypto investors were going to gain protection by American institutions against any radical action against crypto by the government.

But now, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which ensures a safe and sound national banking system for all Americans, has announced their support and encouragement for US banks to use public Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as Stablecoins for settlement and electronically stored value. They further instructed to treat these softwares for payments and processing with the same regulations already in existence for their antiquated payment processes in use today.

This regulatory clarity has essentially enabled the US to maintain its economic dominance in the 21st century. Not only did we just leapfrog China and the rest of the world in enabling the distribution of US Government approved digital dollars globally before any other country could get their digital currency up and running, which ensures the USD reserve status in the intermediate, but also, this continued normalization and approval from the government gives the average law-abiding citizen more and more confidence to invest some of their wealth into this new asset class which has promise to both gain adoption and value at an exponential rate.

There is much to gain financially as well as socially from this advancement and adoption in money technologies. It gives me great pleasure to see Wall St, Main St, and State St of America all come together to rise to the moment, embrace the new, and charge ahead into the next technological paradigm shift bigger than that of the internet itself. We will look back at this time in history and be glad we the people of America had the freedom and clarity to invest properly in our future and the future of the world.

The next step is for the government to operate its balance sheet entirely on a public blockchain, making it auditable in real-time for all. That will likely take at least a few more years time, but inevitably will be one of the final stages in this process towards a future where state and money are finally separated forever.