What Trump Is Actually Arguing
When President Trump explains his support for crypto, the reasoning isn't really about the technology itself. It's competitive nationalism. In his own words: "If we don't have it, China is going to have it, and they would like to have it." He's pointed to China's mBridge digital currency program as the strategic threat, and framed U.S. crypto dominance as a way to stay ahead of it.
This is worth being precise about: it's a sovereignty argument, not a technology argument. Trump isn't making a philosophical case for decentralization. He's making a geopolitical case about which nation-state ends up controlling the rails of the future financial system.
The Contradiction Hiding in That Logic
Here's the interesting part. If the underlying fear is "whoever controls critical infrastructure controls the future," that fear doesn't stop at money. It applies at least as much — arguably more — to naming and DNS.
Whoever controls the root zone of the internet controls who can be found online, who can be de-platformed at the infrastructure level rather than just the app level, and — as explored in the case for free speech as a foundation of human freedom — who gets to exist on the network at all. Right now, that root sits inside a US-centric institutional hierarchy. Not controlled by China, true — but also not controlled by "no one." Trump's own logic, "don't let a single power dominate critical infrastructure," is actually an argument against concentrated control of naming systems, regardless of which government or company holds the concentration.
Where This Logic Actually Leads
Handshake proposes a root zone that no single party owns — not the U.S., not China, not any corporation. Applied consistently, "don't let one power control critical infrastructure" points toward permissionless, decentralized root naming as the structural answer. Not a nationalized bitcoin reserve. Not a Trump-family-linked token. A root nobody can unilaterally control.
The Takeaway
Sovereignty arguments that stop at money and don't extend to naming are incomplete. If foreign or corporate control of digital infrastructure is genuinely the concern, that concern doesn't end at currency — it extends to the systems that decide who is reachable on the internet in the first place. Handshake is, in that sense, more consistent with the stated fear than the policies currently being proposed to address it.
NIHON — Handshake Infrastructure & Web3 Identity