I agree with your friend to some extent as it is arguable that Trump is using 'crypto' as a means to build a financial structure which can preserve wealth as the US empire declines. I see it as analogous to how Britains elites built their network of tax havens and shadow banking as the British Empire accepted decline post WW2. The Spiders Web doco gives more detail on this. I may be wrong but imo Trump knows US hegemony is in decline and that it makes sense to do what you can to build off ramps and safe havens for wealth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8

Some of us of the left embraced Bitcoin as it provided an alternative to the corrupt financial system of bankers and corporate cronies who have captured western democracies. We protested in The Occupy Movement but that had little effect- then Bitcoin presented a way to escape the corrupt fiat USD based monetary system. Bitcoin has Occupied Wall st although imo, sadly, it has also been largely captured by Wall st too.

Bitcoin has become a harmless captured speculative commodity plaything marketed by bankers and tracked, traced and taxed by the government. They have made legal use as a MoE effectively impractical due to tax reporting obligations which leave it only practicable to use Bitcoin as a speculative commodity.

Who here complies with their respective tax reporting obligations when they zap or are zapped? My guess is probably nobody. That is how cleverly and slyly Bitcoin as a P2P MoE has been obstructed and captured and controlled as a harmless speculative commodity.