A new proposal submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) newly-established Crypto Task Force by a Maximilian Staudinger makes the case for XRP as a “strategic financial asset” for the United States (using some very questionable math and logic).

I’m here to tell you that XRP is not a strategic asset and that the logic in this proposal is dubious at best.

In the proposal, Staudinger states that $5 trillion is locked up in U.S. Nostro accounts (accounts that banks use for cross-border payments). And he claims that if certain regulatory conditions were created — including the SEC classifying XRP as a payment network, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) providing legal clearance for banks to use XRP, and the Federal Reserve mandating that banks use XRP as a liquidity solution — then 30% of this capital ($1.5 trillion) would be freed up for the U.S. government to buy 25 million bitcoin at $60,000 per bitcoin.

So, let’s break down why this makes little sense.

First, Nostro accounts are simply bank accounts that U.S. banks hold in foreign countries. I’m not sure what sort of logic includes these domestic banks turning over the U.S. dollars that XRP would theoretically replace to the Federal government so that these dollars could then be used to acquire bitcoin on behalf of the government.

Second, the proposal doesn’t offer details on how these domestic banks would obtain the XRP that would replace the dollars. It only seems logical that they’d have to purchase the XRP, leading to XRP absorbing this $1.5 trillion, not bitcoin. Even if Ripple, XRP’s issuer, wanted to simply give these banks XRP to use, this still wouldn’t work, as it only holds about $100 billion in XRP — far short of $1.5 trillion.

Third, even if bitcoin’s price were to dip to $60,000, the price would begin increasing immediately as the U.S. government began purchasing the 25 million bitcoin.

Lastly, there’s a hard cap of 21 million bitcoin (and approximately 4 million have been lost), which is a well-known fact in the Bitcoin or crypto space. Therefore, it’s quite silly to suggest that the U.S. government could buy 25 million bitcoin. If the author were even a half-serious person, he might have suggested that the government buy 15 million bitcoin at $100,000 per bitcoin (though the math still wouldn’t work out).

Given how faulty the logic behind this proposal is, it’s difficult to consider XRP a strategic asset. Plus, why would the U.S. government do so when two thirds of the supply is still in the hands of the organization that issued the asset? It doesn’t make much sense.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a globally distributed asset that many around the world use as both money and a store of value. Plus, the Bitcoin network is governed by tens of thousands of nodes and is virtually impenetrable, thanks to the approximately 0.4% of the world’s energy that protects it. (The XRP network is governed by 828 nodes and isn’t protected by any amount of energy.) Theses factors make bitcoin a logical reserve asset, which is how the U.S. government now officially classifies it.

So, hopefully, the SEC already understands what I’ve outlined in this piece and doesn’t spend much time even considering Mr. Staudinger’s proposal.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Imagine a world where your digital identity is truly your own, where every post, connection, and interaction isn’t locked within the walls of a corporate platform but exists as an extension of your personal autonomy. This isn’t a utopian vision, it’s the necessary evolution of social media in an era where digital sovereignty is a fundamental right.

For decades, we have unknowingly traded our digital independence for the convenience of centralized platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, these platforms have shaped our digital lives, yet they function more like gilded cages. Every post we create, every relationship we cultivate, every conversation we engage in is ultimately controlled by corporations that can modify, monetize, or erase our digital existence with a single policy change or algorithmic decision.

A New Future for TikTok

As TikTok decides on its ownership future, Project Liberty has teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a pioneer in online community building, and Kevin O’Leary, renowned investor and entrepreneur known for his role on Shark Tank, to take the platform on-chain. Why?

At its core, this is about more than just TikTok. It’s about who controls the digital spaces where billions connect, create, and consume information. For too long, the internet’s most vibrant communities have been shaped –and ultimately governed– by a handful of corporations. Project Liberty is leading the movement to change that, ensuring that social networks serve the people who power them, not just those who own them.

The key to this shift is Frequency, a public, permissionless blockchain developed by Project Liberty’s technology team and designed specifically for high-volume social networking, reinforces the foundation of a user-driven internet, prioritizing interoperability, data sovereignty, and resilience against centralized control. Together, these initiatives aim to move social media away from corporate ownership and toward an open, user-controlled model.

TikTok, for all its cultural impact, is no different. As the debate over its ownership and data practices continues, the larger issue remains unresolved: should a single entity, whether a government or a corporation, control the social fabric of a generation? What’s at stake isn’t just who owns TikTok but whether a platform of its scale can operate outside the confines of centralized control. If it is to be reimagined within a decentralized framework, it will require a foundation built on true interoperability, user-owned data, and open governance. This is where Frequency comes in.

From TikTok to Bluesky: Building a Decentralized Future

The question of TikTok’s future highlights a much larger shift in how we think about social media. The need for decentralization is no longer theoretical, it’s an urgent necessity. Bluesky, an open-source social media project, is one attempt to answer that call.

Bluesky is not just another platform, it represents an effort to redefine the relationship between users and their digital identities. But true digital liberation demands more than good intentions, it requires a structural commitment to full decentralization. It offers a glimpse into what a decentralized social web could look like, but key vulnerabilities remain.

Bluesky, for all its promise, still relies on structural choke points that pose a risk to its long-term decentralization. Storage nodes largely remain centralized under the control of Bluesky PBC or 3rd party providers, meaning user data is still housed in locations that could become points of control. Relay and Firehose systems, responsible for data distribution, remain concentrated in the hands of a few. And while it is positive that Bluesky has implemented the W3C standard for Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), the PLC (Public Ledger of Credentials) directory is also centralized. These may seem like small technical details at present, but history has repeatedly shown how seemingly minor technical decisions can become the very mechanisms through which power is consolidated and autonomy is eroded.

Frequency, the Backbone of a Decentralized Social Web

This is where Frequency enters the picture, not just as a blockchain, but as an entirely new framework for digital identity and social media governance. Frequency isn’t merely modifying the current model; it is rethinking how we interact online from the ground up. Instead of central authorities dictating terms, Frequency ensures that users — not platforms — hold the keys to their digital lives.

Decentralization is more than a technical shift, it’s about restoring fundamental rights. Users must have the ability to grant access to their data, but just as crucially, they must have the power to revoke it. The relationships they build online — followers, connections, conversations — must belong to them, not to a platform that can manipulate or erase them at will.

Decentralization With Purpose

Frequency operates on the principle of minimal, purposeful decentralization which makes long term sustainability of the ecosystem at population scale viable. The only data stored on-chain is what is essential to guarantee individual data rights. This design approach allows for efficient chain optimization focused on core social events, primarily activity related to account, graph, and communication primitives.This focus on core social allows for tokenized incentives to be designed around management of network capacity, with specific incentives for creators, consumers and other more specific actors left to higher levels of the technology stack.

The promise of a user-owned internet is incomplete without robust safeguards that protect personal data. Frequency ensures that users have cryptographic protection over their information, along with granular controls that dictate how their data is shared. At the same time, they should have the flexibility to impose platform-specific restrictions, ensuring that their content appears only in the digital spaces where they want it to be seen. Further, they must be able to delete their content at their discretion. They should also have the power to restrict content to specific platforms if they choose to do so.

This approach directly addresses the fundamental roadblocks that have prevented previous attempts at decentralization from scaling. Frequency ensures that no single entity — not even its own node operators—has the power to alter or censor user data. It provides a decentralized backup of Bluesky’s Firehose, ensuring that user-generated content remains accessible beyond the control of a single party. Its architecture is designed not just for ideological purity but for practical sustainability and scalability, offering minimal latency and cost-efficient operations to ensure the system remains viable for mass adoption.

Achieving Digital Self-Sovereignty

The internet was meant to be open, interconnected, and free. But today, we stand at a crossroads: either we continue to rely on corporate-controlled social media, or we take the necessary steps to create a more open, user-owned digital future.

Bluesky is a step forward, but without addressing its remaining points of centralization, it risks becoming just another walled garden, perhaps a slightly more open one, but still one where users lack true control. TikTok presents an even bigger challenge. The debate over its ownership is missing the point. The real question isn’t who should own TikTok, but whether any social media giant should be owned at all in the traditional sense. Decentralization offers a new way forward, one where platforms are built around user sovereignty, rather than corporate control.

With Frequency, we are moving one step closer to reclaiming the original promise of the internet. True digital liberation requires breaking free from the data monopolies that have defined the social media era. This isn’t just a technological upgrade, it’s a necessary shift in power.

There is more to SEC’s recent memecoin guidance than meets the eye. On Feb. 27, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance issued guidance explaining that memecoins — which the SEC described as digital assets “inspired by internet memes, characters, current events, or trends for which the promoter seeks to attract an enthusiastic online community” — are generally not sold as securities.

This is consistent with the SEC’s shift away from efforts under former Chair Gary Gensler to claim regulatory power over virtually the entire digital-asset industry, and it could have implications for the industry that go far beyond memecoins.

The SEC’s attempts to regulate digital assets during the Biden Administration largely hinged on the Supreme Court’s so-called “Howey test” for determining whether a transaction involves an “investment contract.” Howey requires an investment of money in a common enterprise, with an expectation of profits from the efforts of others.

In the SEC’s enforcement actions against digital-asset exchanges, the defendants argued that secondary-market resales of digital assets lack the necessary “investment of money in a common enterprise” because investors’ funds are not “pooled” by developers into a common fund and then used to further a business in which the investors share the profits. In the SEC’s case against Kraken, for example, the agency told a federal court that “pooling of resale proceeds” by a developer is not “required under Howey.”

The SEC’s new guidance confirms the opposite. It says that purchasers of memecoins make no investment in a common enterprise because their funds “are not pooled together to be deployed by promoters or other third parties for developing the coin or a related enterprise.” The guidance also explains that memecoin purchasers do not expect profits derived from the efforts of others, another Howey requirement. Rather, the value of memecoins comes from “speculative trading and the collective sentiment of the market, like a collectible.”

The SEC’s memecoin guidance is most obviously consequential for the sale and promotion of memecoins, which are the subject of recent private class-actions brought by individual plaintiffs. But it has broader implications for all secondary-market transactions in digital assets, including on exchanges. In secondary-market transactions on exchanges, purchasers’ funds likewise “are not pooled together to be deployed by promoters or other third parties for developing the coin or a related enterprise.” Thus, the SEC now seems to recognize that under a proper application of the Howey test, those transactions are beyond the agency’s reach, as defendants have consistently argued in the SEC’s prior enforcement cases.

This doctrinal reversal may be part of the impetus behind the SEC’s recent decisions to voluntarily dismiss several cases involving secondary-market transactions, and to stay further proceedings in others.

To be sure, the SEC’s new guidance includes statements that it “represents the views of [agency] staff,” not necessarily the SEC itself, and that the statement “has no legal force or effect.” The SEC also attempted to restrict the guidance to “the offer and sale of meme coins” under the specific circumstances described elsewhere in the release.

The agency could try to use those boilerplate recitals to wriggle out of the guidance at some point in the future. But constitutional principles of due process and fair notice may constrain the agency’s ability to impose retroactive liability based on any future flip-flop. Moreover, although the SEC’s guidance is not binding on courts, the SEC’s change in position on pooling will make it difficult for private plaintiffs to credibly argue that most digital assets are sold as securities.

The SEC’s guidance on memecoins is consistent with the agency’s other recent steps to pull back from the regulation-by-enforcement approach that plagued the industry under former Chair Gary Gensler. And the guidance offers welcome clarity from the agency in an area where the agency’s prior approach had significantly muddied the waters. It is, in short, a significant step in the right direction for crypto law and policy in the United States.