The Dangerous Advance of America’s “Anti-Crypto Army”

The U.S. Needs to Choose—Lead or Follow on Crypto.

You’ve seen this guy…

The one who stands in front of a McDonald’s, or maybe a Walmart, preaching idiocy to everybody, anybody, and nobody all at once.

We pass and wonder to ourselves: What path did this dude take through life that led him to this point, screeching into the ether about this conspiracy and that?

Well, chances are… he’s from the government.

Yes, I say that facetiously. But the government’s actions these days remind me of that addle-brained, parking-lot preacher who hopes his delusional exhortations compel society to agree with him.

I am speaking specifically here of SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz.

All are addle-brained when it comes to the cryptocurrency market. Still, lots of people are listening to them, and others like them. And therein lies our problem.

This collection of politicians and regulators form America’s “Anti-Crypto Army.”

They are trying to send us back to a pre-crypto age by attacking crypto businesses and proposing legislation that would make it illegal for the U.S. to develop a central bank digital currency (a new version of the dollar based on crypto tech).

Now, I am not so blind to crypto’s failings that I cannot understand some of their concerns…

But Pandora’s box has been opened.

Trying to shove crypto back into the box now is like trying to ban the internet in 1999. It’s already too late. Yes, crypto is messy and chaotic and difficult… but so is every technological revolution. (After all, the internet crashed the stock market in the dotcom bust.)

The bottom line is that business and industry are adopting crypto at a speedy pace because the new tech does a bang-up job of lowering costs and making companies more efficient.

One example: With traditional banking, it takes days and costs tens or hundreds of dollars to send money around the world. With crypto and its blockchain ledger technology, it takes seconds and costs pennies. If you owned a business, which method would you choose?

Some country will lead this revolution in financial technology.

Alas, it likely won’t be America because of the Luddites rallying the Anti-Crypto Army.

A new report reveals that since 2017, America’s share of the world’s blockchain developers has shrunk markedly, down to 29% from 40%. Blockchain developers—devs, as they’re called—are the brainiacs building Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and literally thousands of other crypto projects and networks.

The report comes from tech investment firm Electric Capital, which analyzed a plethora of data, such as time zones where devs are logging in from. The numbers show that devs are leaving America and setting up shop in India, Asia, and various parts of Europe.

They’re doing so because America is increasingly seen as unfriendly to the blockchain and crypto industries.

Like an ill-tempered Chihuahua attacking and yapping at everyone who passes by, the SEC is going after everything crypto in such an unhinged, helter-skelter fashion that even one of its own members has criticized the agency’s approach.

Losing blockchain devs—and looking to lock Americans out of the crypto industry—is a far-bigger problem than most people probably assume.

The market we’re talking about is massive.

Electric Capital reports that the crypto employs 23,343 open-source software engineers (the devs) and has a total market value of more than $1 trillion. To give you some context, that’s more than 16% the size of the U.S. government’s annual budget.

Those are the people we’re losing to countries with friendlier, open-minded views on crypto.

Those are the high-paying jobs we’re losing at a time when America is awash in low-wage jobs.

Those are the opportunities America is losing to actually shape the crypto industry of tomorrow.

American bureaucrats and closed-minded lawmakers can work to prevent American banks and brokerage firms from offering crypto access to me and you. They can try to prevent the emergence of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), as Ted Cruz is (laughably) aiming for.

But such efforts harm America far more than they help.

Much of the rest of the world is mature enough to accept that crypto is the future for a million different reasons, and so they’re working to become crypto-friendly to attract the jobs and opportunities that crypto can create for the country and its citizens.

American agencies and lawmakers have a choice: Accept the reality taking shape around you and become the leader in a new technology you cannot stop… or try to deny that reality.

Just remember, though, that no government has ever been powerful enough to stop tidal changes in technology.

America won’t be an exception to that rule.

And again, I do understand some of the concerns these politicians have. A CBDC dollar, in particular, raises very real privacy issues, since blockchain technology would give the government the power to eavesdrop on every transaction we make using a digital currency.

But there are ways of dealing with that productively instead of acting like a belligerent father grounding a child for idiotic reasons.

If we try to ignore crypto, the financial industry of tomorrow will be dominated by Europe (which is developing a euro CBDC) and/or China (which has already developed a crypto version of the yuan) and the rest of Asia.

Personally, I’d rather live in a world where there’s a crypto dollar that has strict privacy controls, or one in which citizens are allowed to own privacy-focused digital assets… rather than a world where America’s financial life is dominated by foreign financial institutions, or where Americans are simply banned from pursuing legit technology that can protect our wealth.

Those are the choices we face.

And that’s why despite the Luddites in Congress, and despite the paternalists inside the SEC, I am loading up on crypto.

Aside from gold, energy and metals stocks, and some silver bullion I’ve bought recently, every investment I’ve made in the last 18 months has been crypto. In fact, I bought Ethereum and bitcoin just this past week.

I really don’t care what Uncle Sam’s minions say about crypto. In fact, I increasingly tune it out because it’s so far off the mark that at this point it’s actually harmful to the typical American investor.

I know where the financial world is headed. And I can 100% guarantee that destination is a world defined by crypto—with or without the blessings of that lunatic, parking-lot preacher.