[lowkey]

Without having to defend the USD as the global reserve currency, the US military would still have to exist, yes, but not nearly on the scale it does today.

Here is a US general Wesley Clarke explaining in his own words in 2000, before 9/11, how the US was already planning to invade 7 countries, all of whom had the nerve to act outside USD hegemony and some of which had the audacity to run their own central banks outside the approved system.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Knt3rKTqCk

[danShumway]

> and some of which had the audacity to run their own central banks outside the approved system

The US was not pushing to invade those countries in order to prop up the USD, it was pushing to invade them because of aid they were sending to other countries and to assert control over those areas. Where are you getting from that Wesley Clarke video that this was primarily about currency or that aid/funding going over Bitcoin would remove those motivations?

I mentioned elsewhere that you can buy and sell oil with Bitcoin, but it bears repeating: Bitcoin doesn't make exploitation, theft, or manipulation impossible. The United States does a lot of unethical stuff in order to secure value and control, and moving from USD to Bitcoin doesn't get rid of the concept of value. It doesn't mean that the United States would magically stop wanting to control the financial infrastructure around currency exchanges, it doesn't mean it would stop caring about raw materials and economic agreements with other countries.

There's nothing in the Bitcoin protocol that prevents it from being spent on guns, oil, or bribes. There's nothing in the Bitcoin protocol that prevents it from being funneled to dictators, or used to fund coups or tear down governments. The US didn't sabotage a bunch of countries after the Cold War because they had a different currency than us, it sabotaged them because they were Communist and the US didn't like the form of government they had chosen.

Of course, there would be benefits to a decentralized currency, and if Bitcoin was good at being a decentralized currency then there would be benefits to moving to Bitcoin. But even if Bitcoin was a good decentralized currency, moving to it would not magically get rid of any of the underlying motivations countries have for wielding geopolitical power in unethical ways. It's not that having more ways to move money around or make payments wouldn't probably be good for the world. But it wouldn't solve every problem, or even most problems.

Even with tariffs: a lot of the mechanisms the US uses for tariffs target shipping, currency exchanges, raw materials, and market access. If Bitcoin could help circumvent anything it would be tariffs, but in practice it's not even particularly amazing at circumventing them on a large scale. And I don't see much evidence that Bitcoin actually does get rid of motivations to prop up governments or artificially shape geopolitical environments around market access. That's not to say that the USD doesn't matter at all, just... not as much as you're characterizing. Cars don't run on Bitcoin, they run on cheap oil.

[lowkey]

Please read up on the petrodollar and then take note that each of the countries General Clarke warned we would invade before 9/11 either had their own central bank not linked to the Bank of International settlements or they had the audacity to sell oil for something other than USD. The fact that the US military invaded these countries short after is not a coincidence.

[danShumway]

> or they had the audacity to sell oil for something other than USD

This is unbelievably silly, you might as well say that they were targeted because they had the audacity to use different languages than English when they were selling oil. Their use of a currency other than USD was not the actual fundamental reason the US got mad at them, it was just a way that those countries moved their oil markets outside of US control.

The reason the US opposed those countries was because of who they were selling the oil to and to assert control over the oil market in general. Countries used other currencies other than USD in order to avoid US control. But the avoidance of US control was the part that the US was primarily mad about, not the specific currency involved. If USD went away, the US would not suddenly say, "we never cared about control in the first place, just the USD, so now you can sell oil to whoever you want and we won't pay attention to it."

The US would still oppose the countries selling oil to Bitcoin addresses that they didn't like. They would still want to target exchanges, they would still mark coins as dirty or get mad at countries who accepted coins from banned addresses or allowed dirty coins to transact, and they would still threaten countries that used techniques to try and anonymize who they were selling oil to or launder coins.

It's not about the USD, it's about the market. The USD just happens to be what the market uses right now, but the US government would still be "protective" of its market even if it used a different currency.

----

I'm trying to come up with an analogy here that makes it more obvious what the error is that you're making... it's like saying that the USD is responsible for all bank heists because criminals in the US mostly target banks that are carrying primarily USD money, and if all banks switched to Bitcoin then criminals would stop trying to steal from any banks. It's like saying that most website fingerprinting happens in Javascript, and that can't be a coincidence, so if browsers used C++ for site scripting instead of Javascript then fingerprinting would go away.

But of course that would be ridiculous. Bank robbers want money, and they won't stop wanting money just because the money is in a different form. They're not targeting banks because they love USD specifically and uniquely, they're targeting banks because they want spendable money, and they would still want spendable money even if that money was Bitcoin.

And similarly, the US wants control over the oil market itself, and it will not stop wanting control over the oil market just because the oil is all being sold for a different currency. If the US switches to Bitcoin, it is still going to get mad at countries that are participating in markets outside of its control, because the USD is just a way that the US exerts control over markets, not the primary reason why it exerts control over markets.

[lowkey]

Again, please look into the details of petrodollar hegemony before responding. It is the primary purpose of the USD as a global reserve currency.

[danShumway]

Again, please understand that a mechanism for exerting control over a market is not the same thing as the primary reason for exerting control over a market.

USD is in part a method to exert control over the oil industry. You are asking me to believe that if it went away, the US would throw up its arms, get rid of a substantial portion of its military, and stop trying to control the oil market. That's not a reasonable claim to make, there is no possible world where this would play out the way you're describing.

Do not confuse a mechanism with a motivation.