I almost thought Trump misspoke
Of course he misspeaks all the time, but I specifically mean this quote from his recent 60 minutes interview:
In bitcoin it's a kind of money where basically you're going to have number one and you're not gonna have a number two. And right now we're [read: the US is] number one by a long shot. I wanna keep it that way.
But apparently I fell into the pit of conflating bitcoin and crypto yet again.
In fact, he said:
In crypto it's a kind of industry where basically you're going to have number one and you're not gonna have a number two. And right now we're [read: the US is] number one by a long shot. I wanna keep it that way.
Now I see. Well, that's...um...spiffy...I suppose.
He certainly would have been WAY off the reservation describing bitcoin that way though. In fact, bitcoin is one of many areas in which my current temporary residence, South Africa, absolutely dominates the United States...and depending how you look at it, everybody! I'll come back to this, but first, just for fun, let's dissect Trump's quote as if he were describing bitcoin.
"You're not gonna have a number two"
No. Number two is Thailand. Number three is Zambia. Number four is the Dominican Republic.
"We're number one by a long shot"
This quote would be wrong by a long shot. As of this writing, the US is actually number 28 in bitcoin adoption according to the most extensive listing of bitcoin merchants in the world. Number one is South Africa, and it dwarfs the closest competition. Its number of verified locations is over twice that of the US despite having five and a half times less population.
Anyone that's tried to use btcmap.org in the US recently also can testify that it's hard to find a place that's not Steak 'n Shake. If you take out the 397 locations of just that one chain, the total in the US drops IMMENSELY.
"I wanna keep it that way."
Well, as we'll see below, there's an obvious and easily addressable reason why we're so far behind. If we look at this single issue, I think it will be the best way to assess a civil servant's attitude toward bitcoin.
Where else does South Africa shine?
Mostly...in a lack of enforcement1. Yeah, apparently being close to being a failed state has some benefits. The government can regulate the crap out of stuff, but no one cares. We only have one such thing in the US, speed limits. In South Africa though, there are tons of things that I thought were the result of liberal governance but, as it turns out, are in fact the result of incompetent governance.
Playgrounds
Playgrounds here are awesome. If you're an American reading this, imagine everything you loved from the playgrounds in the 80s. They're still here!
- Jungle Gyms
- Tire Swings
- Merry-Go-Rounds
- Teeter-Totters
- Playgrounds in Restaurants
They're all here! And they're everywhere. My kids all finally have scrapes and bruises and all the good, fun kid stuff. And they're in every restaurant.
Toyota Hilux
This video is hilarious and if you don't finish my post because you get sucked in, you're probably better off for it.
There are so many cool cars here. There are old cars here. There are affordable cars here. I have multiple friends here who drive the Toyota Hilux. I don't know what the regulations on vehicles are here, but if there are any, they're not enforced as harshly as in the US.
Fire
Everywhere smells great. Everyone cooks over fire: not gas; not charcoal; real wood fire. People can smoke in places that make their own decisions about it. I even got to experience a wood-fired hot tub here! It just makes the world literally and figuratively more warm.
For transparency's sake, there are more fire related deaths. However, these deaths are almost exclusively caused by poverty, which ironically is the result of more regulation. They are usually shacks in the township which burn down as people try dangerous ways to keep warm on cold nights. The lack of enforcement of weird fire regulations has nothing to do with it.
So yes, I'd much rather live somewhere in which basic technologies like fire are still allowed than an Orwellian nightmare like the UK in which I heard they may be regulating the incline plain out of existence later this week.
Shoes
People go barefoot everywhere here.
- the beach
- the streets
- the bar
- the grocery store
- formal conferences
- fancy restaurants
I'm not actually thrilled about this personally, but it is a free way to live. It's not a money thing either. People who are clearly quite wealthy will go barefoot everywhere. Like I said, not exactly my thing, and not happy that it's caught on with my kids, but happy that people get to live their life as sovereign individuals.
Touchless Payments
My credit card has an NFC chip, but I never use it back home. Here, it's everywhere and it's FAST. Also, you can use NFC to pay with bitcoin. You can do it from your phone. You can do it from a card. Touchless payment is huge here. Not just NFC too. There are multiple companies that let you pay all sorts of bills with a QR code from your phone. As we'll see below, this advanced tech has provided additional opportunities to bitcoiners.
I was given an opportunity to help with this guide that the Bitcoin Ekasi guys are using to onboard kids as young as six in townships all over the country. So yeah, little children are using radio waves to buy things with magic internet money. So yeah, to be number one in bitcoin, our country's youngest children need to at least be able to use radio waves to buy candy over the lightning network...
Which leads us back to bitcoin
I love the US. I don't love our government, but I really love the people and culture of the USA. And it's people and culture that move those bitcoin stats, not the government. With that said, we're so far behind in real bitcoin metrics, beyond just merchant adoption and touchless payment systems.
Beyond the number of merchants is the type of merchants. I remember thinking it was really cool when I bought my first canned soda with bitcoin in Nashville a few years back. It was like a cute novelty. However, it is pretty awesome though buying everyday crap knowing that 2-3% of your transaction fee isn't leaving the local community to pay some fatcat at the credit card company. I've paid in bitcoin for lodging, toys, petrol (gas), hiking sticks, medication, booze, clothing, farm fresh eggs, bread milk, etc, etc, etc.
What I'm talking about above was all peer to peer. With Money Badger, you can also spend bitcoin with merchants who don't even take it. Because the use of touchless QR payments are everywhere, one can pay with bitcoin to tons of merchants that receive their payment in rand. You can live your whole life without touching government war tokens.
But are we REALLY 28?
So here's my point. I really doubt Trump is ever really going to understand bitcoin. If he does, we might be in more trouble rather than less. However, I'd argue that these are the metrics that matter most, and even if they're not super accurate, it's unequivocally true that we're a long way from being able to buy a simple ham sandwich2 with bitcoin in the US, and it's ultimately because it's so scary to offer legally. Am I right?!?
The really exciting Square stuff goes live in a few days now. I'm psyched! This kind of catches us up to what Money Badger has done to make bitcoin more ubiquitous here. But we need to focus on getting the government to stand down on something big.
From a policy standpoint, we need to get our government to back off on the capital gains thing. If they buy bitcoin, it only perpetuates the war machine a little longer. If they attract big corporate miners, it only adds to the risk of state capture. If they allow more investment tools, it just distracts us from saving. If they allow us to transact peer to peer though, we live in the future.
Footnotes
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Disclaimer: I'm in the Western Cape, which more than one person has described to me as "Africa lite." I personally still have a hard time believing the state should, or even could, be abolished completely. Clearly, people are suffering from weak and corrupt policing in other parts of South Africa. However, here all of the suffering is in the communities that have been impoverished by government overreach, both from the evils of the old Apartheid government and the continued corruption and incompetance of the ANC after that. ↩
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I recommend Bean Blessed for this. ↩