Why Trump = $1M BTC

Almost a year, wow - time's flying. Sorry for the break - I took some time a way to tinker on some use cases (Psynthia Media, an MVP that uses generative A.I. to extract unbias, actionable insights from news | Chaintix, a POC that leverages NFTs to represent event tickets) + prepare for the arrival of my first baby, with that said - let’s get back to our regularly scheduled program.

The year has been rather volatile, to put it lightly. From the massive revaluation of the crypto market to witnessing a former president of the United States being convicted of a state felony crime. Whichever side of the fence you happen to be on - I get it. I had the opportunity to visit DC a couple of months ago, and the greatest representation of our times is the Lincoln Memorial - a statue carved from marble that is crumbling, falling into the ground, destroying itself from its own weight. There is a solution, though - reinforcing, but perhaps even reconstructing the foundation on which it’s built.

What I see is all institutions suffering from this similar effect, our institutions built of marble but crumbling from the inside - the weight isn’t evenly dispersed amongst the foundation - causing the institutions to fail. Decentralized power or the decentralized enforcement of power is the foundation for the framework of our nation. The branches of government are all there to keep the others in line, along with the constitution. “A republic, if you can keep it” - Benjamin Franklin. What I believe this line represents is that the founding fathers understood that the democratic republic framework the nation was founded on is inherently flawed and has attack vectors that, over time, can be taken advantage of to inflict single-party rule. One-party states are considered “dictatorships,” but hey, North Korea calls themselves the “Democratic Republic of North Korea.” I stand for the freedom of the individual - we can build systems that incentivize the individual to do what’s in the best interest of society as a whole.

“Hank, what the f does this have to do with Trump = $1M BTC?”

I’m getting there, man, chill. Technology - specifically the internet - was once the savior for bringing freedom of speech and information to people, which ignited social changes throughout the world and even here at home - I witnessed a black President get elected to the White House (NIGGA, WE MADE IT). The same technology is now the scapegoat which is “giving rise to dangerous populist movements” - which is what I’m pretty sure the President of Tunisia said before fleeing the nation during the Arab Spring. The internet is a social technology, it connects people. Allowing people to share ideas, ideas like putting a black man in the White House - ideas like, putting a convicted felon in the White House. Ideas thought to be, by the incumbent establishment, outrageous - abhorrent or even dangerous, but the people disagree. The danger is you participate in the forces that cause the wind to blow and currents to flow, an idea once simply encapsulated by what it meant to be an American.

The word I now use to encapsulate this idea is “Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin allows the people to align resources behind the idea. Just like the idea can’t be stopped, neither can the Bitcoin transaction. Look at Canada and Justin Trudeau, shutting off people's access to “money” in bank accounts for a political disagreement. This crime against his own people meant that they could not align physical resources to politically combat the government’s hostility against political dissidents. The internet is what allowed ideas, once censored by the mainstream (state) media organizations, to penetrate the “digital dome” and allow the people to align against a hostile state regime. Bitcoin enables anyone in the world to contribute value to any cause they believe in, such as the Canadian Truckers movement, penetrating the “financial dome” of the hostile state regime. It’s not that hard to understand why Trump has already raised over $20 million in crypto donations since the conviction.

It’s not just the people starting to get involved via an idea. The tech industry is rallying behind Trump, and it’s not just because of the acceptance of cryptocurrencies - they have their own incentives ;). They are rallying due to the lighter regulatory approach and taxation levied against the industry, but particularly Artificial Intelligence. The regulatory approach being taken towards A.I. by the current admin, things such as attempting to define, regulate, and oversee the technical details and development in which startups can innovate, will dramatically increase the cost and slow the development and deployment of solutions that people want and need. Allowing this industry to flourish will more than likely produce an A.I.-based economy; an economy where menial tasks are completed by A.I. agents - for complete enablement, cryptocurrencies will be at the center - allowing A.I. agents to interact and transfer ownership of real-world assets and real-world value in real-time. Heck, even artists are incentivized to tokenize their work (ever hear of NFTs?) to enforce ownership rights and can be rewarded as their work is training A.I. models. As A.I. systems are further deployed in more mission-critical systems, I am confident a decentralized trust and verification mechanism will emerge that incorporates a public ledger.

Following the tech industry, comes the big bad wolf of Wall Street; BlackRock. Yep, I am talking about the $10.5 trillion AUM BlackRock. Larry Fink (CEO, BlackRock) is a member of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum and is in favor of his lighter regulatory approach, looking for true deregulation. Who would have thought? Incentives align again? Fink’s own greed (incentive) is leading him toward embracing Bitcoin and digital assets. BlackRock led Wall Street in launching a BTC ETF, which is an exchange-traded fund, essentially giving boomers access to a paper instrument that’s priced to Bitcoin. For every boomer that buys and holds this BTC ETF, Fink earns 0.25%. Fink wants not just that %, but is actively looking to grow the market - so bad he is now on a personal mission to tokenize everything, which he believes is “the next generation of markets” - his own words. So much so, he is starting TXSE, a Texas Stock Exchange, to compete with NYSE & NASDAQ. I wonder if they have plans to list/offer digital assets such as Bitcoin directly, rather than relying on the abstraction of the ETF. ;) (im not sure how to put emojis in here).

Bitcoin, like all cryptographic technology, is a defensive tool. Cryptography is used to secure information, and cryptographic protocols are used to verify information without ever revealing the details of said sensitive information. Bitcoin allows people to transact freely amongst themselves in a pseudo-anonymous manner, meaning private transactions. Why does this matter? Well, it's probably one of the biggest incentives for Donald Trump to personally be in favor of Bitcoin: personal privacy. Like any sane person who has suffered scrutiny over their financial dealings and holdings, Trump likely values the privacy that Bitcoin offers. More generally, in the United States, a person's financial details and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) are supposed to be protected in an encrypted (private) manner by law.

Trump will quickly see the value in private transactions before seeing the wealth protection and preservation that the protocol offers compared to, say, his New York real estate. One is at the whim of the New York Attorney General (NYAG) who says they will seize his assets to pay off a judgment, and the other (BTC) is impossible to gain control of without his consent. Another advantage is the global liquidity that the Bitcoin market offers due to the global nature of its network (the internet). This allows him to quickly tap into decentralized lending protocols for liquidity instead of relying on a bank, preventing a similar debacle where he somehow acquired a loan with “fraudulent asset values.”

So if you believe Trump is as self-interested and greedy as the most far-left Democrat, then we may be seeing eye to eye.

So why does Trump = $1M BTC?

It probably has to do more with Bitcoin itself. The economics, ethics, and engineering. If you believe in people, that people are inherently good, that people will do whatever is in their best interest, that people want to connect with each other and share ideas, then I think you also see why Trump = $1M BTC.

Ya know, after getting this far, I see it’s not really because of Trump at all, it’s because of all of us.

| I am one with the People. Power to the People. |

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INRI