Most U.S. regulators and legislators still continue to misunderstand cryptocurrency and the public blockchain networks that are the bedrock of the payment networks of the future. These payment rails will eventually replace SWIFT, which is vital to U.S. economic dominance on the world stage. Meanwhile, rogue adversaries such as Cuba, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela are already investing in and utilising these innovations in ways that benefit their illegal trading of weapons, embargoed materials, and exportation of illicit goods and services.

Today the communist regime of Cuba announced they will recognise cryptocurrency as legal tender and will implement a regulatory framework. These regulations will likely target dissenters and will likely enhance the Cuban government’s ability to surveil and seize digital assets belonging to regime adversaries and dissenters. This behaviour is yet another example of the ways in which oppressive regimes can successfully skirt sanctions and engage in multinational criminal enterprises, whether it be a cyber hacking group in Russia, opium from the mountains of Afghanistan, fentanyl from China, or mercenaries and advisors offered by the Cuban regime in countries such as Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Letting the dictatorships listed above get ahead of the United States in blockchain technology and the ongoing digital currency race based on our government’s complacency and lack of political will likely have national security implications in the years to come.

In addition to providing measured and positive regulatory clarity to innovators and investors, the U.S. federal government needs to utilise this technology and its robust industry to invest in much needed digital infrastructure such as a digital dollar, election accessibility and integrity, supply chain management, and more resilient technologies for critical infrastructure that have shown to be vulnerable at centralised point(s) of failure.

The U.S. should seek to advance a policy framework that embodies U.S. values and advances the U.S.’s blockchain industry and the country’s economy, not engaging in a dystopian and authoritarian experiment focusing on social credit scoring and financial surveillance. We must invest in blockchain-based solutions that accurately address the myriad of concerns posed by bad actors while being at the forefront of blockchain innovations in the endless potential use cases.