The following is a guest post from Kadan Stadelmann, the CTO of Komodo Blockchain.
The United States has seen an immense consolidation of wealth and power in recent years. Americans everywhere are suffering while modern-day robber barons get fatter thanks to the 21st century Gilded Age or Roaring Twenties.
However, unlike the Gilded Age and the 1920s, the 2020s offer respite. Bitcoin provides a timely solution for individuals and families to ensure they enjoy their share of the American dream.
Americans living in a silent depression
In the United States, millions of people are life in a “silent depression”. For example, 35% of Americans are no longer earn enough money to meet their basic needs. A few put this figure is closer to 50% of households.
Additionally, U.S. credit card debt has hit a new record like credit card rates are skyrocketing. For the first time in history, credit card debt has exceeds 1 trillion dollars. And people are paid an average of almost 28% interest.
The situation is worse for black and Hispanic families, more than 50% of whom cannot allow The basics. And more than two-thirds of full-time, low-income workers with children cannot earn enough to make ends meet. And severe financial difficulties strain parents' health, increasing the likelihood that children's needs will not be met.
Land belonging to the kleptocracy
Meanwhile, house prices have doubled and tripled over the past ten years, and interest rates have increased significantly. First-time home buyers are being priced out, stuck in high rents, and unable to build equity in housing. Meanwhile, eighty percent of rented agricultural land is not possesses by farmers but rather by investors.
The American territory is owned by a corporate kleptocracy that uses its control to deprive the public of wealth. If Americans can't hold equity in the form of housing, they can't get liquidity through a second mortgage to, say, start a business. And when that happens, the American dream is dead.
Robber barons exert undue influence as shareholders
BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard have played an important role in consolidating extraordinary wealth in the United States. The so-called “Big Three” became the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 companies, exercising “hidden power” through private engagements with management and potentially other means.
How to repair the damage?
The United States was once the land of jeans, automobiles, and transistor radios because its founders championed minimal government and the power of millions of free individuals to engage in social and economic life. In short, they believed in decentralization.
Unfortunately, this vision did not last forever, and today we see around us the consequences of its failure. Not only on the streets of the United States, but also abroad due to their forever war policy. Rather than the decentralized model proposed by the founders, the United States is moving toward a feudal model in which groups like the Big Three purchase all land owned.
Bitcoin offers protection against the consolidation of these great powers and allows ordinary people to build equity, not through a house but through the only finite asset in the world. Bitcoin preserves financial freedom, as demonstrated by the trucker protests in Ottawa, Canada, where the organizers' bank accounts were closed at the request of the government without due process.
Bitcoin poses a threat to central bankers and offers hope to citizens. It is a beacon of human liberty and personal liberty. This is the logical competition to central bank digital currencies (CBDC). The United States should support the US dollar with a basket of assets, including Bitcoin (and possibly gold, silver and platinum), rather than pushing for a fiat digital currency of the central bank (CBDC).
For these reasons, Bitcoin is under attack. Regulators are looking for ways to neutralize the technology, and its mining complex has long been transformed into an environmental boogie.
Adopting pro-Bitcoin policies in a divided house will not be easy.
What should be done ? To begin, Bitcoiners around the world must be politically organized and show up at local, state, and national meetings to preserve people's right to transact in an increasingly consolidated world. What’s more, it must be an enterprise involving all stakeholders. No matter how much or little you can save, it will take the entire Bitcoin community to fend off the modern-day robber barons.