The U.S. Is Very Worried About Bitcoin—And It’s Finally Doing Something About It

Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, decentralization, China’s digital yuan, Facebook’s libra—the U.S. is understandably worried about the dominance of the almighty dollar. Last year, U.S. president Donald Trump slammed bitcoin as based on “thin air,” while his Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin branded bitcoin a “national security threat.”

Now, the U.S. has admitted bitcoin and cryptocurrency could undermine the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency—and it wants to find out exactly how bad for the country, its economy, and security that could be. “Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts predict that either a global cryptocurrency or a national digital currency could undermine the U.S. dollar,” the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in a job listing earlier this month, calling for two researchers to evaluate the impact of the U.S. dollar losing its status as the world reserve currency.

Many have long expected governments to eventually try to undermine bitcoin’s network to halt its adoption—though bitcoin’s decentralized nature makes it remarkably resilient. “We can win a major battle [with governments] in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years,” bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in 2008. “Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure [peer-to-peer] networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”

Meanwhile, calls for the U.S. to begin development of a so-called digital dollar have been growing louder over recent months. Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recently set up the Digital Dollar Foundation to work on the design and potential framework of a digital dollar.