Bitcoin and Ethereum have evolved by leaps and bounds since inception. Their refining use cases have managed to attract more new users into the crypto arena. In fact, countries like El Salvador fostering the growth and adoption of crypto has helped this case further. Throwing the stone a bit further, Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, recently said in an interview on the Impact Theory podcast,
“Bitcoin and Ethereum are bigger than most national currencies. Social networks are bigger in scale than most countries. Tech founders are wealthier than most politicians and so on, […] there’s already been a significant transfer of sovereignty.”
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G7 Nations and Crypto Seizure
Adding G7 nations to the equation, Srinivasan said that this bloc is “actually running out of money.” In effect, they could attempt asset seizure in the future.” That could either be done via inflation or actual seizure, he clarified. Further elaborating on the same, he said,
“G7 countries are going to have a real problem, and they’re going to be harder for money. And then, a lot of the world hinges on whether or not the G7 countries and China can seize digital assets. If they can, that’s like one branch point in history. It means that you have total states into CBDCs, and so on, and so forth. “
On the other hand, if they cannot seize assets like crypto, then we’ll have “a different branch point in history” where communities will basically have digital gold or crypto. In effect, they’d crowdfund “bits of territory” where they can have their own startup societies or “network states,” in Balaji’s words. At this stage, it seems like one of the most important questions in the future would revolve around, “Does the government have enough crypto to finance its operations?” However, according to Srinivasan, that still seems “unrealistic” and “distant.” Elaborating on whether asset seizure will actually be possible in the digital world, Srinivasan said,
“The biggest risk factor for that is actually Apple, Google, and Microsoft because they have operating system access. That’s actually what I’m most concerned about: it is the fact that Apple has software updates and Google can get into your Google Drive and Microsoft has Windows, and if ordered by the state, in theory, they could scan your hard drive for private keys and then pull your digital assets.”
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