Run Bitcoin Right Through South Carolina – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Dennis Fassuliotis, founder of South Carolina Blockchain Inc. and co-founder of the South Carolina Emerging Technology Association, Inc.
Why, you might ask? First, South Carolina is on the verge of a financial revolution, so to speak, in building a confluence of support for new blockchain technologies that could transform our state.
That’s important because although the industry was recognized in 2020 by Sen. Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) with a state Senate resolution, the pandemic forced the nascent state advocacy group to postpone its first major state conference. However, now armed with a four-year history of Wyoming-style legislation, SC Senate Resolution 1158, and funding from the General Assembly for the State Treasurer’s office to assess the role of digital currency literacy and emerging technologies to benefit the state, however, we have a clear direction and high-speed lane on access to the station via the member-driven South Carolina Emerging Tech Association (SCETA). The SCETA Bitcoin-centric education and policy initiative SCBlockchainWeek.com is scheduled for the first week of October, and State Treasurer Curtis Loftis will be one of several notable speakers to share his visions on how digital currency education, Bitcoin policy guidance and financial investment in Bitcoin can positively impact the Palmetto State.
Some might say it’s a lot of window dressing but not yet a first-class ticket, or just “cool”, but here’s the next crossroads. In a letter to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), our state treasurer and 21 other state finance officers opposed the proposed environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure rule. Loftis also supports West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore who is leading the charge against big banks pulling back on credit for new projects in West Virginia and other states where the state’s needs don’t quite align with the vigilante mentality of stakeholder capitalism whose interests and goals often conflict .
Taking on financial powerhouses like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan might sound foolhardy — but not if you’re a Bitcoiner. Wasn’t it Jack Mallers who said at Bitcoin 2022 that he can see a future where these dinosaurs will be extinct if they don’t wake up to the open source financial revolution? While the critics of this position may say that this will cost taxpayers more money, I say that principals are expensive. Protecting constitutional rights is not a dollars and cents or even bitcoin and rate issue. It’s all about the cost of freedom and freedoms lost today are gone forever tomorrow.
Since when did the cost of freedom outweigh the risk of maintaining the status quo or the mainstream movement? Tell that to the colonists who founded this nation and look back at the economic freedoms that created the vast banking industry that is at the heart of the decentralized finance movement. We can be critical of the past and how we got here, but redistribution of wealth in 2022 and beyond is about free markets, education and hard work, not handouts.
So for Bitcoiners, there is a clear way forward. Identify the states and their leadership that already support common causes and court them as allies in the fight against vigilante politics. Let’s synchronize our narrative with government finance officers who have taken up the gauntlet to fight the tyranny of stakeholder capitalism advocated by the WEF, the financial institutions aligned with them and fighting back together. This is not about proof of work versus proof of effort. Just look at the policy of regulatory enforcement pursued by the US Treasury against open source projects like Tornado Cash or the overreaction in securities enforcement by the SEC. As an industry, we are at a crossroads. This is about survival, not letting politicians or regulators pick winners and losers in technology, and about thriving when we insist on getting meaningful legislation passed, like Lummis-Gillibrand, so we can innovate and maintain our leadership in the world’s financial markets.
With that as a backdrop, let’s take a look at another SC favorite son, Sen. Tim Scott (RS.C.) and his Opportunity Agenda.
As a simple voter question, there aren’t many other sitting members of Congress that you might want to get to know from a policy standpoint that are already aligned with Bitcoin. They just don’t see it yet.
Sen. Scott’s Opportunity Agenda is a rural economic development initiative that focuses on 8,764 Opportunity Zones around this great country, focusing on financial inclusion, quality education, bridging the wealth gap, strengthening the innovation economy and balancing the scale of equity. Sounds familiar?
Let’s try Sen. Scott and educate leaders on how Bitcoiners are working tirelessly to do the exact same things, not only domestically, but globally. Let’s all learn from the experiment in El Zonte and Bitcoin Beach. We should educate ourselves on how Galoy has developed an open source wallet to create a community bank with Bitcoin and provide custody services for their trusted leadership to HODL their Bitcoin for the benefit of their communities and long term value creation. Show them how you can transfer any amount with Bitcoin, $10 in increments or just one satoshi, instantly, with no bank involved. You can’t do that with Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, Cashapp, or any other service today that isn’t Lightning Network. It’s huge!
In South Carolina, some of the areas where 135 Opportunity Zones are designated could look like developing states. In many rural areas of SC, residents still trade with cash and cannot get a bank account. In the upstate counties, infrastructure left behind by the offshore migration of the textile industry is stranded resources, otherwise unused or underutilized as part of the electricity infrastructure that powered that industry. Plants that once employed hundreds and even thousands are now, ironically, storing solar panels.
Let Bitcoin lead in the areas ripe for redevelopment with the mining industry at the forefront. They bring hard dollar investment and innovation to any location they are located. The growing number of state associations should be supported by Bitcoiners and can work with local businesses to educate them so that mining in these areas can pay local suppliers in Bitcoin and create a flow of new bitcoin into the community as local high schools open their STEM programs . up and develop #STEMFORALL curricula with MiPrimerBitcoin-type programs that teach anyone who wants to learn.
And let’s change the lexicon a bit. Mining requires explanation, but once you explain to a politician how transactions are generated through a “digital asset data center,” (DADCs), they immediately get it. We can share the nuances later. We are in a race with well-established lobby interests from banking to climate, and they don’t care about your personal liberties. DADCs form the basis for a Bitcoin circular economy to be developed in collaboration with local leaders to break the poverty chain.
Here’s a final thought. In both South and North Carolina, we have political leaders who jumped on board the centralized data center model. These are huge facilities built by Google, Apple and other household names that require even more natural resources and as much electricity as DADCs. In a push to get more, both states created tax incentives to bring in more. But that didn’t happen.
Manufacturing incentives continue to bring home the bacon with industry flocking to the Southeast. Economic developers know they can add more manufacturing jobs and give up less power instead of data centers, but when these laws were written, no one ever thought about manufacturing an intangible asset and the pursuit of that industry. Think about it.
So let’s get this train going. SCBlockchainweek is very pro-Bitcoin and just in time for the midterms, and right after that, presidential candidates will start arriving early for the primaries. There are photo ops, town hall meetings, BBQs, shrimp boils and established political strategists testing concepts in SC Why? Because it’s cheaper to lobby in South Carolina. About every whistle stop is an hour and a half from Columbia SC, the state capital, and we pick winners on both sides of the aisle in South Carolina. Let’s ride this Bitcoin political bullet train into the stations that align with Bitcoiner values and influence national politics the old fashioned way, like a hill of support that tells state legislators what matters to their federal counterparts and makes it happen through the power of the power. Take a small state with political muscle, add a coherent national dialogue that benefits the heartland as well as the inner city and let’s beat the banks and interest groups at their own game.
This is a guest post by Dennis Fassuliotis. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
