This may be the opening skirmish in a global monetary war, fought not with tanks, but with code, ideology, and issuance rights.

Tether’s rejection of MiCA isn’t just about regulatory red tape, it’s a rejection of the central banking worldview: that money must be surveilled, intermediated, and controllable. MiCA is the ECB’s attempt to corral all digital value flows into a walled garden, one step closer to programmable CBDCs and monetary authoritarianism.

From an Austrian economics lens, this is textbook:

Fiat regimes always trend toward greater control as their paper systems unravel.

As confidence in centrally planned currencies erodes, the system doubles down, censoring alternatives, expanding surveillance, and criminalising self-custody.

Tether is playing defence.

Bitcoin is the counterattack.

Bitcoin doesn’t need a licence.

It doesn’t ask permission.

It’s not a stablecoin propped up by fractional reserves. it’s the final settlement layer, born of the hardest monetary principles ever encoded.

This isn’t just about MiCA.

It’s about a collapsing fiat order desperately trying to extend control, and the rise of a parallel system built on voluntary rules, fixed supply, and individual sovereignty.

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Discussion

Yes but couldn't it just be politics? Tether helps US treasuries and "orange man bad" kinda thinking

Absolutely, it is politics, but not in the superficial partisan sense. This is ideological geopolitics.

On the surface, the US appears to be planting a flag with Tether and Bitcoin, not just financially, but philosophically. Under Trump, there’s a pivot back to foundational societal pillars: individual liberty, national sovereignty, and hard money. Bitcoin becomes the monetary embodiment of freedom, and Tether acts as a tactical bridge, exporting dollar liquidity into digital rails.

Europe, on the other hand, is doubling down on control. MiCA isn’t regulatory housekeeping, it’s the scaffolding for a monetary panopticon. The ECB and EU technocrats, backed by deep state infrastructure, aren’t preparing for innovation, they’re preparing to retain control at all costs during monetary transition.

These aren’t compatible visions. One is open-source, decentralised, and voluntary. The other is walled-garden, surveilled, and programmable.

Eventually, these worldviews will clash, not just at the diplomatic level, but socially. If Europe continues toward programmable authoritarianism while a more appealing parallel system emerges abroad, the fracture won’t just be transatlantic, it’ll be internal. People will opt out. Some literally, some digitally. And at some point, that becomes revolution, not reform.

This is just my opinion, formed through ongoing observation of monetary, geopolitical, and technological shifts. I don’t claim certainty, only a pattern that seems to be revealing itself with increasing clarity.

Really well said, I agree.

I'm just glad there is an A and a B test going on in the world even if it isn't perfectly clean, since geopolitics are quite complicated and multi-factorial

I’ve had a sense this was coming for some time. Public messaging still pushes the “everything is fine” narrative, but behind the scenes, governments are scrambling to manage the slow collapse of the fiat empire.

We’re entering the transition phase, and the US seems to be playing a strong “freedom-first” card, not out of altruism, but because first-mover advantage in a monetary reset is a massive lever.

That said, I don’t trust them, the state never gives up power willingly. They’ll likely use Tether to maintain dollar dominance, leveraging it as a de facto digital dollar with hard-asset optics. But I do believe Bitcoin’s core principles, decentralisation, scarcity, sovereignty, are strong enough to eventually pull the system back onto a more honest track.

I’m in the UK, and the situation here is so dysfunctional it’s hard to see where things are headed long term. Institutions are flailing, public trust is collapsing, and the system seems to be improvising just to hold itself together. Out of desperation to retain control, I suspect we’ll end up following the EU’s path, doubling down on surveillance, censorship, and monetary centralisation.

My dream is to build a small, self-sufficient smallholding in Italy, to step outside the madness and live with intention. But watching the direction of the EU gives me shivers. There’s a very real risk that the entire bloc slides deeper into the authoritarian model in the name of “stability.”

On the surface, sure, it’s orange man bad politics. But beneath that? This is a monetary arms race at the end of a fourth turning, a battle between centralised collapse and decentralised emergence. Between coercion and voluntary systems. Between fear and freedom.

As Orwell put it: “If there is hope, it lies with the proles.”

But the proles must first understand the root cause, only then can they begin to identify real solutions.

Nice to chat with you and get my thoughts out of my tangled brain. 👊🏻🤣

I’m going for a run, touch some grass and do a little fiat mining ⛏️

100% If there is anywhere in the EU I'd want to be even if it went full draconian it'd probably be Italy or Portugal. I hope you can make that happen soon.

Also building the skills you'd need to live that life now is huge, and nobody is stopping us in that

Thanks for sharing all of those thoughts. I use nostr for that as well, as its more for me to clear my head than anyone else's consumption sometimes