Sen Rand Paul, as usual, is way ahead of the curve. In 2015, Paul started taking campaign donations in Bitcoin. Rand Paul obviously likes Bitcoin.
Is Cryptocurrency the Road to Economic Freedom?
Flashforward to 2025: President Trump appointed cryptocurrency champion Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins will oversee the agency tasked with regulating financial markets.
“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations. He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”
By “Greater than Ever Before,” Trump may mean more free than ever before. He is not a fan of regulations and cryptocurrency fits that bill. Trump's team may even be converting some of their treasury into Bitcoin.
Libertarians love freedom. Does Trump have libertarian leanings? Rand Paul does.
A Free Market Currency?
Kurt Wallace of the Rand Paul Review discusses the free market solutions that cryptocurrency provides with Anthem Hayek Blanchard of CryptoCurated.
Blanchard was named after Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem and the free-market economist Friedrich Hayek. Both Ayn Rand and Hayek would have welcomed cryptocurrency because it undermines the corruption inherent in administrative states.
In the interview, Wallace said, “Tyranny is corruption, the use of force against freedom. It's an obstruction of human interaction and natural rights.”
Administrative states–take the D.C. Swamp for example–necessarily obstruct human interactions and their natural rights.
That flies in the face of the Founding Fathers who insisted, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
Liberty, by definition, demands unimpeded human interactions so long as they are not trampling on others' rights. Happiness demands the same.
Cryptocurrency un-obstructs human interactions.
“I think that's why it's so interesting for people that really love freedom and want to have the most liberty-style world,” Wallace continued. Crypto is “a form of communication.”
“Anyone that likes free market capitalism may want to consider having a form of exchange, a form of communication, that's totally free and doesn't have the restrictions that a federal reserve system might have.”
That all sounds good, but what exactly is cryptocurrency? Is it a philosophical concept or an actual asset? As it turns out, it is a bit of both.
Utopian Pragmatics?
The interview goes into depth about what crypto is and what it can do. Blanchard characterizes crypto as the great leveler that frees people from the corrupting influences of the administrative state.
It is a great leveler because technology–the internet–is ubiquitous. Almost everyone in the slums of Mumbai has access to the internet just like tech elites in Seattle. That’s a game-changer.
Crypto has the capacity to defang the centralized power of bankers and their control of the economic future of individuals. Blanchard says as much in the interview.
With Trump on the crypto bandwagon, the sea change in the way the world does business might become a tsunami.
The Future of Crypto
“Could you give us an analysis of what's happened over the last year, including Trump's shift and his evolution toward cryptocurrency?” Wallace asked Blanchard. “Could you talk about what's going on here and where we're going after the 20th? That's a big question.”
“My understanding is that cryptocurrency lobbying donations this last election cycle outnumbered all other donations of all commercial industries combined,” Blanchard said. “We're talking defense spending, we're talking pharmaceuticals, we're talking banking.”
That’s huge. If you still think crypto is a fad, that should convince you otherwise.
“I think,” Blancard continued, “it's over 270 members of Congress who are now pro-crypto. This is massive.”
“And it could really be a crazy panacea for a lot of this quote-unquote perceived out-of-control debt, you know, maybe at the very least having a more soft landing or transition as our world is totally digital in terms of the way that we do commerce.”
A totally digital world. That sounds like either a utopia or a brave new dystopian world. Earlier in the interview, Blancard pointed out, “The problem with the internet is it encourages abuse.”
Virtual reality and reality are not the same. A “totally digital” world would, by Blancard's logic, continue to encourage abuse. It’s human nature and no amount of virtual reality can change that.
Maybe that’s why cryptocurrency is still considered risky.
According to Fidelity, “Crypto as an asset class is highly volatile, can become illiquid at any time, and is for investors with a high-risk tolerance. Crypto may also be more susceptible to market manipulation than securities.”
Risky or not, First Lady Melania Trump is getting in on the action. She launched her own cryptocurrency just ahead of her husband’s inauguration.
We live in interesting times.
“So yeah, it's exciting times,” Blanchard said. “So very, very exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw, you know, taxation changes, you know, during the administration. I wouldn't be surprised. The strategic reserve idea, I wouldn't be surprised if there was something that legally got enacted. I think those are all on the table.”
It looks like they are on the table and being played and will inevitably be regulated. There’s a thin line between regulation and obstruction of human interaction. It can be so thin as to be invisible.
The Closing or Opening of the Financial Frontier?
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented his thesis, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" to the American Historical Association.
"Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line," Turner said, quoting the Census of 1890.
Turner’s point was that it was the frontier that had made the United States unique. Frontier life was tough and the people who dared to live it were forced to become resourceful and self-reliant. They personified the "rugged individualism" which was central to the development of American democracy.
Cryptocurrency may be the twenty-first century’s frontier that will bring out the best in investors. Maybe. It's hard to tell what will happen on the edge of a frontier.
No matter what happens, it doesn't look like cryptocurrency is going away. In that sense, it may not be a frontier at all but the new sheriff who comes to tame the corruption inherent in the administrative state.
Hopefully it won't be a new boss who is just like the old boss.
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