This essay proposes a framework for understanding Bitcoin and the Lightning Network not merely as novel financial assets, but as a foundational public good for the American people and a critical strategic opportunity for the United States.
This essay is written to reflect my understanding of a presentation at Bitcoin Policy Institute by Jack Maller, which provided a new framework to evaluate Bitcoin as something as big as the internet, it can be calleed the internet for money. And this essay is meant to explain what that means. I have dedicated the last seven years to understanding and building on these technologies. My perspective is that Bitcoin represents a technological evolution as significant as the internet, and our nation must approach it from that perspective.
Moving Beyond a Flawed Framework
To have a productive conversation about Bitcoin, we must first acknowledge and set aside the prevailing, yet often misleading, narratives.
Many have heard that Bitcoin is poor technology—slow, expensive, and inferior to existing systems.
It has been labeled as a tool valued only by criminals, a pyramid scheme reliant on new participants, and something too volatile for practical payments.
Furthermore, critics claim it cannot fit within our regulatory frameworks, poses a threat to retail investors, and is an environmental catastrophe that "boils oceans."
While these points deserve discussion, they collectively form a flawed and unproductive framework for evaluating a transformative technology. These attacks prevent us from gaining a better understanding of this amazing technology. America has a proud history of embracing new technologies, from the printing press to the automobile and the internet. We need to stop attacking bitcoin and embrace it as a new technology. But to do that, we need a better way to think about Bitcoin.
A New Perspective: Bitcoin as Public Infrastructure
Jack Maller starts his talk by asking us to change the way we look at bitcoin.
He suggests that a helpful framework is to view Bitcoin as a superior technology that functions as a public utility. It is digital public infrastructure for money, much like the internet is digital public infrastructure for information.
This perspective reveals its true strengths. Paired with the Lightning Network—a technology that makes Bitcoin transactions significantly faster and cheaper—it enables internet-native payments on a global scale.
This bitcoin financial infrastructure is compared to our current finncial infrastructure:
Faster and Cheaper: It can transfer value far more efficiently than legacy systems.
Globally Interoperable: It operates on a single, open standard without walled gardens.
Accessible: Anyone with an internet connection can participate, leaving no one behind.
Resilient: With no central point of failure, it cannot be shut down by a single corporation, government, or regime.
Empowering: It eliminates intermediaries, which reduces costs and empowers individuals.
Secure: By transferring value directly rather than personal information, it dramatically reduces fraud and protects data integrity.
Competitive: It breaks up oligopolistic distortions in the financial industry, fostering a true free market that drives innovation and lowers prices for consumers and businesses.
These characteristics are not novel threats; they are the very qualities that made the internet a revolutionary force for progress.
The Failures of Modern Payments
The need for this new infrastructure becomes clear when we examine the reality of modern payments.
Our current system is built on decades-old technology, resulting in a complex and fragmented landscape.
It is defined by closed standards, rules set in corporate boardrooms, and a dizzying level of financial abstraction.
While we enjoy slick front-end experiences like mobile banking and payment apps—Cash App, Apple Pay, Shopify—the underlying infrastructure remains laughably frustrating and outdated.
These apps are merely a polished surface on a broken foundation.
At the base settlement layer, nothing has changed in over 50 years.
This is why even the most advanced apps cannot offer instant, low-cost global payments.
The current financial system is fundamentally:
- Not Interoperable: It is a patchwork of disconnected national and corporate systems.
- Always Intermediated: Transactions require multiple hops through banks and payment processors.
- Delayed: Settlement is never instant, creating risk and inefficiency.
- Dominated by Oligopolies: The market is controlled by a few large players, stifling competition and innovation.
Now compare this older technology to bitcoin and you will recognize why bitcoin is A Technological Leap Forward in Action
- Bitcoin and the Lightning Network solve these problems by re-engineering money from the ground up.
- Bitcoin acts as a digital bearer instrument, eliminating the layers of abstraction between a user and their money.
- For the first time since the creation of physical cash, a digital asset can be physically held and transferred directly.
- The Lightning Network builds on this foundation, eliminating closed ecosystems and intermediaries to enable seamless payments.
The impact is not theoretical.
- Today, a company exists which allows you to utilize all this technology today, not in the future and not in theory, it is in reality.
That company is called Strike.
- Strike uses this technology as a backend settlement rail to allow Americans to send U.S. dollars to the Philippines, where they are received as local currency.
- The results are transformative:
Speed: The average time from a user initiating a payment in our app to the funds landing in the recipient's Filipino bank account is one minute.
Cost: The internal cost to settle these payments over the Lightning Network is consistently less than 10 basis points (0.1%).
This is not a niche product for "crypto" users.
- According to Strile CEO Jack Maller, over 95% of STRIKE customers use this service to settle payments in foreign bank accounts, not other Bitcoin applications!!
- This proves its utility as public settlement infrastructure that dramatically improves how traditional currencies move around the world.
Bitcoin Represents Core Human RIghts
- Bitcoin and the internet are more than just technologies; they embody codify core human rights.
This open, decentralized infrastructure promotes:
Individual Freedom: It provides the freedom to transact and express oneself on an open network.
Equal Opportunity: The network treats all participants without discrimination, offering access to anyone.
Free Market Principles: It is driven purely by supply and demand, with no outside interference, fostering open competition.
Innovation and Progress: By enabling permissionless innovation, it ensures that progress is rapid and continuous.
A Strategic Imperative for the worlds nations
Embracing this technology is not just beneficial for individuals; it is a strategic imperative for the nation.
Bitcoin is distinct from the broader "crypto" space. It is public infrastructure that offers tangible strategic advantages, including the ability to stabilize our energy grid, provide a new source of national wealth through tax revenue on a burgeoning industry, and strengthen geopolitical influence.
Most importantly, we must recognize the national security implications.
This technology cannot be uninvented.
In the coming years, nations like China and Russia will leverage it.
The genie is out of the bottle.
No Country cannot afford to reject it or fall behind.
Everyone must seriously consider how this digital public utility can be harnessed to secure our national interests.
Last Words
As the leader of the free world, the United States is in the best position to demonstrate a commitment to exploring this new frontier.
It is our duty not only to our own citizens but to the world to lead.
Just as we championed the open internet, we must now champion this new public utility for money.
With the right framework, we can make immense progress and reaffirm our position as the best country in the world.
The End
@Shortsegments
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This post was written by Shortsegments, who has been writing about cryptocurrency, the blockchain, digital ledgers, bitcoin, ethereum, and decentralized finance for seven years. You will find his articles here on his blog Link to his blog.
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