Expect many more national bans on American tech companies in the weeks and months to come.
Market caps will crater when deprived of markets. And we will see a complete inversion as states gradually begin favoring crypto protocols over American companies. theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…
The Regulatory Flippening
In the 1990s, the US government fought encryption. Now it mandates it.
Similarly, once regulators realize that crypto protocols exercise *less power* over their countries than foreign corporations, they’ll adopt a protocol-first approach.
Many governments already encourage the use of open source over proprietary code when available.
They will eventually prefer crypto APIs over corporate APIs for the same reason. Crypto is what comes after open source: it’s also open state & open execution. brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…
This is the rapprochement between crypto and compliance.
In countries around the world, a tech company will have to present and execute on a crypto decentralization plan *in order to be compliant*.
Otherwise they’ll just be considered foreign pawns, and kept in a sandbox.
Many factions will support crypto decentralization as a check on corporate power:
- startups with concerns over for-profit deplatforming (eg Meerkat, Little Things, etc)
- governments with national security & surveillance concerns
- citizens with deplatforming & privacy concerns
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There's dark talent around the world, from the Midwest to the Middle East. Backing this talent is the right thing to do morally and the smart thing to do economically.
To be clear: I'm not talking about sending more tech talent to the US. Instead, I'm talking about backing dark talent around the world.
That includes the many white kids from places like the Midwest who've been unfairly quota'd out of Harvard. But it also includes those outside America whose societies were ravaged by war, socialism, or communism...and who are just now starting to become productive again.
The goal is global equality of opportunity. The Internet actually now provides the basis for uniform rule-of-law via rule-of-code, starting with Bitcoin and smart contracts. We just need to execute from here.
Yes. That's what the blockchain is: everyone worldwide gets access to their ideal monetary policy, payments, smart contracts, and entity formation. Enforced by incorruptible & transparent computer-based judges. And opted into on a purely voluntary basis.
Fifteen years ago the far left still controlled almost one third of India.
The Modi government fixed the issue by using force against actual terrorists while addressing the underlying discontent with economic development. It worked. indiatoday.in/amp/india-toda…x.com/iyervval/statu…
Both America and China were invested in the illusion that China wasn't already the world's strongest economy.
Psychologically, it suited the incumbent to appear strong. So America downplayed China's numbers.
Strategically, it suited the disruptor to appear weak. So China also sandbagged its own numbers.
But the illusion is becoming harder to maintain.
In retrospect, all the China cope over the last decade or so was really just the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber.
Hide your strength and bide your time was Deng's strategy. Amazingly, denying China's strength somehow also became America's strategy.
For example, all the cope on China's demographics somehow being uniquely bad...when they have 1.4B+ people that crush every international science competition with minimal drug addiction, crime, or fatherlessness...and when their demographic problems have obvious robotic solutions.
Or, for another example, how MAGA sought to mimic China's manufacturing buildout and industrial policy without deeply understanding China's strengths in this area, which is like competing with Google by setting up a website. Vague references to 1945 substituted for understanding the year 2025.
One consequence of the cope is that China knows far more about America's strengths than vice versa. Surprisingly few Americans interested in re-industrialization have ever set foot in Shenzhen. Those who have, like @Molson_Hart, understand what modern China actually is.
Anyway, what @DoggyDog1208 calls the "skull chart" is the same phenomenon @yishan and I commented on months ago. Once China truly enters a vertical, like electric cars or solar, their pace of ascent[1] is so rapid that incumbents often don't even have time to react.
Now apply this at country level. China has flipped America so quickly on so many axes[2], particularly military ones like hypersonics or military-adjacent ones like power, that it can no longer be contained.
A major contributing factor was the dollar illusion. All that money printing made America think it was richer than China. And China was happy to let America persist in the illusion. But an illusion it was. Yet another way in which Keynesianism becomes the epitaph of empire.