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This was not a coincidence or the result of a lucky accident. This can be traced entirely back to the pro-entrepreneurial culture that America has long established through its rule of law and thoughtful regulation. These choices that we made gave rise to sophisticated capital and credit markets that provided nourishment to start-ups and solidified America as both the cradle and hotbed of innovation. Entrepreneurs came to America to build because they could do so with a clarity and pace that was impossible to match in any other country in the world. And once this ecosystem was established, it became both self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.
But while the race for the Internet is more than three decades underway and America's leadership position is firmly entrenched, another one has begun—the race for the Internet of Money. It's still early, but unlike the race for the Internet, the United States is not the leader. To date, the biggest crypto companies are being built offshore. In many cases, they are being built by US citizens who have left America because the regulatory environment is too slow, opaque, or draconian to keep up with the global pace of innovation. And for perhaps the first time ever, US customers are flocking to offshore financial platforms because they simply can't get what they want here, at home.
This sad irony is painful to admit. America is not where the majority of crypto entrepreneurs go to build. The land of the free and the home of the brave, the bastion of democracy and free markets, now, all of a sudden, has an uncertain future as the host country for the greatest technology revolution of the last quarter century. America has been operating under the false pretense that a global, decentralized, permissionless technology movement that transcends borders is going to wait around for America's permission. It won't. America has gotten complacent. It has confused the Internet boom with the crypto boom, assuming that because we won one, we will win the other. Our past success will not be an indicator or causation of our future success.
But alas, all is not lost. It is still early, and our fate rests entirely in our own hands. Our country has leaders like Chris Giancarlo who understand the vast promise of cryptocurrencies. Under his tenure as chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Giancarlo championed crypto throughout the halls of government and left behind a pro-crypto legacy at the CFTC that lives on to this day. His dedication to our country becoming a leader in crypto, as we have been in the Internet, earned him the nickname “CryptoDad” on Twitter and legions of Internet followers. And his sense of duty and patriotism that led him to serve in our government for five years similarly motivates him to make sure America is not left behind. Giancarlo is a true American.
Our sincere hope is that many will read this book and begin to better understand not only the enormity of the opportunity that stands before us, but also that our ability to prosper from it is not guaranteed. Our hope is that this book will give you an insider's view into where we are as a country with respect to our regulatory approach to crypto and where we need to be. Armed with this knowledge, we can then start working together toward a solution. We can build an ecosystem with the proper ingredients and nutrients that will allow crypto to flourish here, on our shores. Together, we can ensure that America becomes the undisputed best place for entrepreneurs to build in crypto. That America remains the land of opportunity where you go to make your dreams come to life.
We hope you will join us and CryptoDad as we fight for this future. We won the space race, we won the Internet. Now, let's go win the fight for the future of money.
Onward and upward,
Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss
July 16, 2021
Preface
July 14, 2021
En route to Big Moose Lake, New York
I wrote this book to tell a story. A story of a five-year journey around the globe through the centers of financial power. A true story from my eyes and ears. Of what I saw and what I experienced, what was said and who said it. Much of it is serious, some of it funny, a bit of it is revealing about the way decisions are made at the highest levels that affect the lives of each one of us.
It is a story of real events that took place during the later portion of the twenty-teens: 2014–2019. It is a story of real people, many of whom are wonderful, some are dear to me, a few disingenuous, most of them important in more or less obvious ways to how the US and global economy are run.
I am telling this story to interest readers who may wonder what it is like to be in the setting of political power over financial affairs in Washington and, occasionally in London, Brussels, Basel, and Hong Kong.
I trust readers will enjoy the ride. I hope so, because along the way I have a more important message to impart. The message is that something big is going on all around us. Something bigger than one person's accidental and quixotic experience through the halls of power. It is a change that comes not once in a generation, but perhaps once every few centuries.
This change is being driven by a new wave of the Internet—the Internet of Value—that permits the instant transfer of things of value over the worldwide Web directly from person to person without the need for intermediaries.
The revolutionary change that I am talking about is in the way society experiences holding and sharing things of value, including the most valuable thing of all: money. Soon, moving money will be as simple, immediate, and cost-free as sending a text message, whether across a supermarket counter or around the globe.
Why is this revolutionary? Because up to now money has been limited in space and time. The ability to move money far from home is somewhat slow and costly and limited to banking hours by those who can afford it. Now, for the first time in human history, the use of money will transcend space, time and, importantly, social class.
Here is the deeper story that I will tell: how money is changing right before our eyes. And, that you, the reader, must take hold of that change. You and your fellow citizens must speak up and effect that change.
Money is as much a social construct as it is a government one. Together, we must make sure that the values that are enshrined today in the US dollar and the currencies of other democracies—values like individual liberty, freedom of speech, personal privacy, free enterprise, and the rule of law—are encoded in the digital money of the future.
Money is too important to be left to central bankers. You and I must assert a voice in the rapidly coming change in money. We must make sure that our financial privacy and economic liberty are safe and secure. If we do not, the people I tell you about in this book will make those decisions for us. We can't let the promise of the convenience of digital money blind us to the threat of the loss of our liberty to unelected technocratic and government elites, however noble their intentions.
Without inviolable protections for such civil liberties as freedom of speech, free enterprise, and individual economic privacy, digital Dollars, digital Euros, or other forms of digital currency would be no more worthy of a democratic people than the currency of authoritarian ones. Free societies have everything to gain by encoding into sovereign and non-sovereign digital currency stout protections for individual liberty and privacy. Free people have everything to lose by neglecting it. The choice is essential to the future of civil society.
This book is not a technical book about the complexities of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies or their underlying distributed ledgers, although it does try to explain those things in simple terms. It is not a guide to Bitcoin trading strategies. This book will not tell you whether crypto is a good or bad investment. It is not even an appeal for the creation of a digital dollar, although it does explain what is at stake in doing so. No, this book is more basic than that.
This book is written to take a stand for the future of economic privacy and financial liberty. We must harness this unstoppable wave of digital money—the Internet of Value—to advance greater economic inclusion, financial and economic freedom, and human aspiration for generations to come. We must be bold, not timid. Ultimately, we must insure that the future of money is determined by a free society of fearless people, philosophers and farmers, teachers and musicians, fast-food cashiers and hotel cleaners, doctors and dreamers,