Now that US elections are apparently over and the convicted felon became the next US president I'd like to raise some rhetorical questions since during this campaign and because of heightened emotions in the heavily polarized society of America, many people forgot that governments and generally speaking "centralization" is not a friend of "decentralization". In fact they are the exact opposite in a way that we can even call them enemies!
So here are some questions for all of us to have in mind and maybe gain some experience from all this...
- Will Ulbricht be released (as in be a free man not just have his sentence commuted) on January 20 or 21, 2025 (ie. the first day in office)?
- Will US government stop attacking Bitcoin?
- Will the US government stop forcing American miners to censor transactions which is a clear violation of one of the main principles of Bitcoin?
- Will the US government stop attacking anything remotely privacy related? For instance will shutting down mixing services including CoinJoin tools stop? Will arresting of such devs (like Samourai Wallet dev) stop?
- Will the US government tone down its surveillance and attempt to control everything and everyone specifically those who own cryptocurrencies?
- Will the unfair rules they keep enforcing on centralized services like exchanges stop? Rules like invasive and strict KYC and the nonsense with "taint" censorship?
- Will the OFAC stop its sanctions on Bitcoin?
- Will the tax laws become friendlier when it comes to cryptocurrencies or will they get worse as the budget deficit and government debt grow larger?
Feel free to add your own rhetorical questions below. Things you know are
unlikely to change just because some politician gave some promises while he needed votes...
I may not have answers to most of the questions raised here but few I would want to respond to just few.
- Will US government stop attacking Bitcoin?
The US government will not openly attack Bitcoin when it promises to acquire more Bitcoin and never sell them. However, these are promises, time will tell.
“If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” .
Source- Will the US government stop forcing American miners to censor transactions which is a clear violation of one of the main principles of Bitcoin?
This will likely stop as I believe the new administration will not toe that part. Trump would want the mining business to flourish as he has once hinted about desiring that all the Bitcoin mining be done in the US. So, anything that will be like a threat to mining may not be his choice of action.
- Will the US government stop attacking anything remotely privacy related? For instance will shutting down mixing services including CoinJoin tools stop? Will arresting of such devs (like Samourai Wallet dev) stop?
- Will the US government tone down its surveillance and attempt to control everything and everyone specifically those who own cryptocurrencies?
- Will the unfair rules they keep enforcing on centralized services like exchanges stop? Rules like invasive and strict KYC and the nonsense with "taint" censorship?
This is where the real problem will be, America will always want to control everything, know who gets what and how. Their stance on mixers, privacy, KYC and anything anonymous might not change and that will be the first major test of the new administration.
Feel free to add your own rhetorical questions below. Things you know are unlikely to change just because some politician gave some promises while he needed votes...
Will Bitcoin become US reserve currency? I would love to see what will be the response of the US should the BRICS decide to adopt Bitcoin.