Socialist governments like to keep control of the entire economy in their hands by controlling the means of production, but Bernie doesn’t simply call himself a socialist, he is a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist”. When compared to his socialist peers from other countries, Bernie seems very center-left.
As per Sanders, democratic socialism is not tied to any Marxist belief or the abolition of capitalism. Speaking at Georgetown University, he said:
“I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal”
Sanders says he wants to implement modest socialist reforms like free tuition at public universities, campaign finance reform, and single-payer healthcare.
Good for Main Street, Good for Bitcoin
Patrick Dugan from Omni Foundation spoke to Cointelegraph about how this will be good for Bitcoin:
“Bernie's plans, more directly than others, will require the monetization of more US debt in order to monetize the Quantitative Easing (QE) for the people in the form of expensive subsidies for healthcare and education. So as the centrist, Wall St. friendly QE would cause that new money to flow into Wall St. assets, the Main St. QE would flow into business revenue as people necessarily spend it, and those who don't need to spend it, will be able to try and protect the value by buying physical gold, hoarding cash (expecting negative rates to follow), or if they want the full range of financial services that banking provided with the sovereignty of fungible hard money, they will get their money on an open blockchain such as Bitcoin.”
Bitcoin’s value always rises dramatically when large economies are in turmoil and national fiat currencies inflate. People are more drawn towards alternative currencies when governments implement strict capital controls to regain financial stability.
Best Hedge
On January 29th 2016, Ashton Kutcher, the famed actor who has also invested in BitPay, made this tweet that became very popular:
Why do I get the feeling that the best hedge against a Sanders or Trump nomination may be buying bitcoin?
— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) January 29, 2016
Both Sanders and Trump are from the extreme ends of the left and right political spectrum. While Trump wants to ban Muslims and immigrants, Sanders is calling for a ‘political revolution’ against the ‘billionaire class’ that is controlling an overwhelming majority of the wealth.
It is difficult to say at this point whether Bernie Sanders’ election to presidency will have any implications on Bitcoin whatsoever, especially since he hasn’t made his views on Bitcoin public, and politicians don’t always implement/succeed in implementing what they promised before election.
Tone Vays, the head of research at BraveNewCoin, believes that a President Sanders would be phenomenal for Bitcoin. He noted:
"Bernie Sanders becoming the next US President will be amazing for Bitcoin. Many feel that with his attempts to legalize drugs that Bitcoin may use a lot of utility. However, with his borderline communist views on taxes, Bitcoin will thrive as a way of protecting your money from the extortionists and should become the conduit to transferring wealth cross borders. Once this realization is made by those with value to protect, I expect the Bitcoin price to leave the 2013 high in the dust. I am actually considering going against everything I believe and voting for Sanders just for this very reason and then look to live somewhere in Asia where they actually understand capitalism."
Strict Regulation Will Fail
What if Bernie tries to strictly regulate Bitcoin? Tone Vays welcomes the challenge:
"If there is an attempt by the incoming administration of Sanders, Trump, or Hilary, I welcome the challenge. The Bitcoin ecosystem should only get stronger and more valuable with every failed attempt to regulate it by Government in a similar way to how they are fighting the Drug War. Otherwise, I would consider Satoshi's Blockchain experiment a failure."
Patrick Dugan said:
“Any attempt to ban crypto, if coupled with an oppressive environment of either negative rates and incremental cash bans or more classically negative real rates due to inflation will just put a premium on hard money.”