Bitcoin: The Growing Divide Between the EU and the United States

As the United States embraces bitcoin, Europe is bogged down by continuing to highlight the dystopia of the digital euro.

Strategic Reserve of Bitcoins

The American president signed last week a decree finally favoring bitcoin.

The clear distinction from other digital assets has helped to appease the popular outrage from Donald Trump’s famous tweet suggesting the creation of a “crypto reserve” also including ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA.

The decree separates the strategic reserve of bitcoins from the holding of other digital assets acquired through confiscations in various criminal cases.

Note that the bitcoins put in reserve cannot be sold, unlike other digital assets such as ETH, SOL, etc. “The Secretary of the Treasury can determine strategies for responsible management, including potential sales of the stock of digital assets of the United States”, can be read in the decree.

As a cherry on top, the decree allows the accumulation of bitcoins, as long as it is done in a budget-neutral manner. The Secretary of the Treasury has stated his intention “to explore ways of augmenting the bitcoin reserve”.

Secretary Scott Bessent has also not hidden his intention to use stablecoins to ensure that “the dollar remains the dominant reserve currency”.

Let us remind that companies like Tether or Circle must hold one dollar in reserve for each stablecoin issued. Tether, for instance, invests about 80% of its 136 billion reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds. However, a significant part of its profits is also invested in bitcoin.

Buy the Rumor, Sell the News

This is the old stock market adage that is currently pushing bitcoin below $80,000. Indeed, while the presidential decree does create a strategic reserve of bitcoin, purchases will come later.

The 12 members of the presidential working group have until July 22 to make proposals that will certainly serve as the basis for drafting the “Bitcoin Act”. Cynthia Lummis has been working on it for over two years. The senator hopes to create a reserve of one million BTC by selling a portion of the country’s gold reserves.

Invited to the White House last Friday, Michael Saylor advised the president “to buy 25% of the bitcoins through daily purchases between 2025 and 2035”. Here is the document shared by Mr. Saylor on this occasion.

For the CEO of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), such a reserve could “generate $100 billion, which would allow for the repayment of national debt.” He also believes in selling gold.

Patience, then. That said, let us note that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has already given its green light to banks that would like to allow their clients to invest in bitcoin. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has stated that federally regulated U.S. banks can now hold bitcoins without prior authorization.

In short, Republicans have understood that bitcoin is a technological breakthrough that will inevitably impose itself worldwide. And in the meantime, in Europe…

Bitcoin vs CBDC

Two rooms, two atmospheres. While the United States has abandoned the CBDC project to embrace bitcoin, Europe is taking the opposite path. Christine Lagarde wants a digital euro that many believe is a prelude to the creation of a cashless society.

The President of the European Central Bank swears that this is not the goal, but is she sincere? One can doubt it when one knows that she has been predicting the total abandonment of cash within 10 or 20 years for years.

Moreover, she did declare this back in 2018 during a conference titled “Winds of Change: The Case for New Digital Currency”:

Imagine if people who buy beer and frozen pizzas generally have a higher rate of default than those who buy organic broccoli and spring water. What can you do if you crave beer and pizza but don’t want your social credit to decrease? Today, you pull out cash. And tomorrow? Would a private payment system push you toward the broccoli aisle? Could central banks come to the rescue by offering a totally anonymous digital currency? Certainly not. That would be a boon for criminals.

The former IMF president also assures us that the digital euro will not be programmable. In other words, spending your money in digital euros will not be conditioned. But again, many central bankers do not share the same opinion.

Bo Li, the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF and former Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China, stated for example in 2022:

“The CBDC would allow the conditioning of money paid in the form of social assistance. We could for example program the money so that it could not be spent on anything other than food.”

This statement illustrates the stakes and potential of central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Not to be the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs

Christine Lagarde may not intend to end cash or limit the way we can spend our money, but what about her successor? It would not be the first time that the EU adopts the salami technique to confiscate our freedoms…

Not building a gas factory with dystopian potential seems wiser. Especially since this project will cost billions of euros to taxpayers while the continent’s finances are increasingly drained.

It would be much smarter to promote the bitcoin industry in all European countries that deploy renewable energies. Mining bitcoins could, for example, allow Germany to:

• make its intermittent renewable energies profitable;
• restart its nuclear power plants;
• close coal plants;
• bring down the price of megawatt-hours which seriously threatens the country’s industry.

We have already seen this demonstrated in Texas. The ERCOT CEO recently canceled the construction of about ten gas power plants due to the 3 GW that bitcoin miners can provide back to the grid on demand as long as necessary.

Don’t miss our article on the subject: Bitcoin, France is going to ruin everything.

Speaking of Texas, its Parliament has just authorized the creation of a bitcoin reserve. Other countries are already ahead. This is the case for Bhutan, El Salvador, or the United Arab Emirates.

Many voices are also rising in Europe to avoid being the geese that lay the golden eggs. Notably in the Czech Republic where the governor of the central bank would like to add bitcoin to the country’s reserves. Lines are also moving in Poland, and even in Russia.

Don’t miss our article on this subject: Putin: “Who can stop Bitcoin? No one”