As he is sworn in as President of the United States for a second time, Donald Trump and his nascent administration have begun laying groundwork to fulfill one of his key campaign promises: to make the U.S. a ”bitcoin superpower” and “the crypto capital of the planet.”
In the sixteen years since Bitcoin ushered in the modern era of digital assets, crypto has evolved to become as much a political lightening rod as an alternative bank. Its fans see it as not just expeditious but gatebreaking, a way to access financial products without the interference of centralized banking systems. In the aspirational world of decentralized finance, banks don’t get to play gatekeeper. Even now, crypto is the fastest and cheapest way to send money around the globe, its proponents say.
