Bryan Solstin, an aerospace engineer and a developer, is running for the U.S. Senate on a platform of making Bitcoin legal tender. He insists that political resistance is going to fade away, and technology is going to win.
El Salvador was the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. Since then, the national project of Nayib Bukele has become the prototype for any other country that might be tempted to go in the same direction.
Speculation of new countries adopting bitcoin as legal tender has arisen, hinting it will occur once again in Latin America. Surprisingly, the United States has several politicians advocating for bitcoin at different levels. Recently a new candidate for the US Senate, Bryan Solstin, has a primary objective to make bitcoin a legal tender at the federal level.
An interesting candidate
Bryan Solstin, a privacy advocate, went viral on crypto Twitter when he introduced his candidacy for the US Senate, where he stated clearly that his main objective would be to make bitcoin legal tender throughout the United States.
BeInCrypto immediately got in contact with Solstin to get further details regarding his adventurous quest to fulfil his personal American dream. The first doubt is an obvious one…
BeInCrypto: If your candidacy was successful… Please explain step-by-step how you will try to make bitcoin a legal tender in the USA?
Because the United States is bigger than El Salvador, it makes it more challenging to make bitcoin a legal tender.
We can take baby steps to make it effective, with this I mean 0% tax for bitcoin. We can move the actual exempt levels of 200 to 600 dollars, getting rid of capital gains as this creates friction with the velocity of value, which has large benefits for the wealthy, the poor or the middle class, it’s beneficial for everyone.
This would mean if somebody wanted to purchase using bitcoin with for example the Lightning Network, it shouldn’t be a problem, at this moment it’s not a technical challenge, it’s a political one as it’s a taxable event as the IRS treats bitcoin as a property and not a currency.
We can’t do this overnight, we can slowly do this transition by moving the exemption quantity from 200, 600 or 1000 and beyond, we have political tools for this.
Bryan Solstin: Bitcoin and its conquest of the United States
The United States in comparison to El Salvador is a much more complex machine. In a way, enforcing the adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador was relatively easy. The president, Nayib Bukele, has total political control and the size of the country is small.
There is a new wave of politicians who advocate for Bitcoin in some way or another. But for now, operating at the municipality level is the most popular, with examples such as Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez or New York’s Mayor Eric Adams. For some people, these individual acts could be a publicity stunt or a marketing tool, especially from companies, to grab attention from the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies. Solstin denied following this approach when asked.
I’m not a politician, I’m an aerospace engineer and a developer. This is not something I really enjoy, I really enjoy technology.
I’m foremost for Bitcoin as I see it as important as the TCP protocol. Internet was about the velocity of communication and Bitcoin is about the velocity of value. Bringing those together will bring abundance and wealth to everyone, not just to the wealthy, everyone will win… we cannot comprehend how much abundance that is.
Recently, states such as Texas and Arizona have ongoing bills trying to make bitcoin legal tender. Each of the 50 states has political power to enforce or deny some laws. Solstin wants a total adoption, and feels he can achieve this at Senate level.
As a senator, I would have a huge amount of influence to create a law that could create this change. There are 100 senators, two for every state. Usually, you can’t create a bill and get it through, but if you align with other senators who are in favor of bitcoin, such as senator Cynthia Lummis, you may be able to move it on.
An inevitable future
Solstin expressed his certainty that Bitcoin is the inevitable future, and with the power of the bitcoin community he may be able to accomplish this feat:
Bitcoin addresses are growing 30% per year, this is the future. Don’t underestimate the bitcoin wave and community.
Solstin feels that making bitcoin legal tender in the United States would not be a rapid achievement. He is clear that it could take several years if elected.
You have 6 years as a senator. Could we have bitcoin as legal tender in that timeframe? I think that it’s very possible… it may take two terms… After that I would be done, that is 12 years of my life.
Solstin doesn’t see himself as a senator for a third term as he’s “in love of science, engineering technology… politics to me is simply the means, I’m a privacy advocate.” He then compared Bitcoin to the new leap forward in the communications industry. It is why he’s stepping into the unchartered territory of the political scene:
Bitcoin is one of the most exciting technologies that has happened since the TCP protocol, the internet. I think the Senate is the place where we can expand this technology.
In his opinion adoption will rise if the usage of bitcoin has no capital gain applied to it. “Once people begin doing transactions they’ll see how easy, fast, censor-proof it is… you don’t need a third party. The Lightning Network (LN) is so cheap, a transaction is a fraction of a penny.”
Bitcoin as legal tender: what about Ethereum, Monero or CBDCs?
Solstin clearly is an admirer of Satoshi Nakamoto’s project. But the crypto ecosystem has grown exponentially into a wide array of projects with radically different functions other than Bitcoin. Many candidates wish to introduce a better version of it.
The candidate for the US Senate embraces the efforts of many other projects such as Ethereum. But in his opinion Bitcoin is the perfect tool to use as a legal tender for a sovereign country.
Bryan Solstin: When you are talking about a broken monetary system, which is getting worse, it’s compounding, bitcoin is really designed to address the monetary issue.
There is a whole spectrum of crypto and there are many respectable projects out there tackling different issues. But only Bitcoin is focused on the monetary problem and also is the most decentralized.
On the other side of the spectrum you would have the CBDCs. These are 100% centralized, I called them surveillance coins, this is what the Beijing government loves.
I’m a privacy advocate, and as a senator, I will strongly oppose any kind of development of a CBDC in the United States.
BeInCrypto: So if crypto will be used as daily currency and cash eventually disappears into digital money, financial privacy may be in danger. Will it be necessary to have digital tools which could guarantee privacy such as Monero?
Bryan Solstin: I think Monero has a complementary function towards Bitcoin. It may not be as decentralized as Bitcoin but I like Monero.
The competition between L2 solutions as the Lightning Network (LN) will make this even better, it’s a technological issue to be solved. The political resistance is going to fade away, technology is going to win.
Geopolitics: The US dollar versus bitcoin and the Russian collateral effect
Many see bitcoin as a serious contender or a direct threat against the US dollar, which for now still remains the global currency reserve.
Solstin is American. If his proposal is successful, bitcoin would compete directly against the Dollar. Therefore it could possibly affect his nation’s economy.
El Salvador has such a weak national currency it had to adopt the US dollar to be more competitive. The adoption of bitcoin as a legal tender may provoke a situation whereby BTC becomes the national currency instead of USD.
Organizations such as JPMorgan or PlanB (bitcoin analysts) say that bitcoin could break down the hegemony of the dollar, a risk that the US wouldn’t like to take. As PlanB stated:
Bitcoin is the way out for those countries that see how the current financial system does not allow them to expand under perpetual asphyxiation which is advantageous for the United States.
Expansion of bitcoin
Then, why would the United States be interested in the expansion of bitcoin? It seems that it would definitely not benefit their national interest.
Bryan Solstin: I don’t think bitcoin is damaging the United States or the US dollar. Bitcoin is what it is, 21 million coins. What is really hurting the US dollar is the FED printing trillion of dollars, increasing the money supply, bleeding value… the fact there is competition is not a problem.
Traditionally, the US treasury has been honored as risk-free. But after the last G7, the Russian US reserves got frozen. It’s no longer risk-free. On top of that, the Senate even wants to take the gold reserves and freeze them. This can be done because the system is centralized. There are very few places where gold is used for transfers. Due to the Russian sanctions this trust is now disappearing.
Bitcoin is appreciated by its followers as sound money that could survive against inflation, due to its hard cap compared to the never-ending printing of fiat currencies. Gold has always been the selected asset to hold in uncertain moments, but the conflict of Russia has shown otherwise in Solstin’s opinion:
There is only one censorship-pristine asset out there. It used to be gold but now gold can be frozen. Bitcoin is the only asset with these properties, and the central banks are watching.
One of the forgotten properties of bitcoin has been highlighted due to geopolitical conflict. It is non-confiscatable. This could not only be interesting for the United States, but for any nation in the world.
Bryan Solstin: Bitcoin is the Great Reset, not the IMF
When the Covid-19 pandemic burst out throughout the earth, the global economy halted. The world seemed to have changed into a new era. For the IMF and the World Economic Forum it meant a unique circumstance for a so-called new economic order. They called it the ‘Great Reset.’
BeInCrypto: In your viral tweet, you mentioned bitcoin is the Great Reset. Why?
Bryan Solstin: The World Economic Forum and IMF can pretend they are the Great Reset. But it’s humorous. They are not going to be arbiters of debt forever. They print their fiat currencies to infinity. This will continue to displace the other currencies.
I think smaller fiats are going to suffer first, a good example would be the Turkish Lira. Maybe they will follow the steps of Lebanon or Venezuela. Liquidity will flow to US dollar, but in the long run, we are doomed. Within my calculations the organic growth of our debt is a little bit higher than 6%. It’s higher than our GDP so we already have entered the debt spiral, and we have passed the event horizon.
They are going to continue to print to get that under control… if they do that we will crash into a recession. We have 200 trillion worth of entitlements for our boomers. The US is in a tough spot, this is not the 1940s, it is a different demographic, we don’t have a young nation anymore.
I think the US dollar as a global reserve will suffer. I would say the Petrodollar, the OPEC deal maintains the US as a global reserve but that will change soon.
Bitcoin is the Great Reset.
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