Bitcoin Should Be Legal, Allowed to Compete with the Dollar: Conservative Icon Ron Paul

Former U.S. presidential candidate and Libertarian icon Ron Paul has stated that Bitcoin should be allowed to function as a currency in the USA and compete against the Dollar. The 90-year-old retired politician is known for his Libertarian credentials and his efforts to support free-market trade in the country, a concept that has been overshadowed by the era of massive corporations and governments subsidizing their success.

Why Libertarians Like Ron Paul Love Crypto?

The former 12-time US Congressman famously ran against the neoconservative Mitt Romney during the 2012 US Presidential election’s Republican primary, but couldn’t win the nomination. His seemingly radical ideas of Federal Reserve audits, borderless trade, and decentralization were ahead of their time and aligned with the ethos promoted by the cryptocurrency revolution.

The cryptocurrency revolution began in 2008, during the height of the financial crisis, and proposed an open-source monetary transfer mechanism that offered a vision of a borderless future. Many of the early adopters of Bitcoin included online privacy advocates, cypherpunks, and Libertarians. For the latter, crypto was a way to challenge the supremacy of the central banks and their hegemony. 

Rand Paul Continues Father’s Stance

Many with Libertarian tendencies look at the 2012 presidential election as a major missed opportunity to bring the USA back to its constitutional roots, instead of overstretched global roles. His son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), has also continued his line on a number of political positions, including that on crypto. The senator said back in a 2021 Axios interview:

“Here is what I have started to believe now: that the government currencies have become so unreliable. They are also fiat currencies, backed by nothing. The dollar has been the most stable among currencies, which is why it is the reserve currency. I’ve now actually started to question whether or not cryptocurrency could actually become the world’s reserve currency as more and more people lose confidence in the government”.

However, Rand Paul and other Libertarian-leaning politicians don’t see eye-to-eye with the current US government setup and its efforts to promote crypto in the country. Senator Paul recently voted down a Trump-led proposal to allow stablecoin transactions in the country, calling them counterproductive to the cause.

Libertarian tendencies are on the rise in the USA, with even President Donald Trump famously delivering a speech through the platform before his re-election in 2024. However, the monetary status quo is likely to engage in some backlash against crypto in the future, and Libertarians are once again predicted to take crypto’s side.