BitGo CEO Belshe: This is a War on Cash, Not Bitcoin
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe stated that the current situation is a war on cash, not on Bitcoin. He is a co-author of HTTP/2 and one of the early engineers of Chrome. He founded BitGo in 2013 and promoted multi-signature custody. The company has obtained a federal banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and is publicly listed, with reported digital asset custody exceeding $100 billion and involvement in stablecoin reserve infrastructure.
He has recently reiterated this argument. On Scott Melker's show, he claimed that the rise in Bitcoin prices is primarily due to the decline of the dollar, rather than Bitcoin needing to develop new features; the direction of U.S. debt and bond markets does not change with a change in administration. He described stablecoins as a better payment track than the dollar and characterized Bitcoin as a store of value that most people prefer to save rather than spend. He also noted that banks are reluctant to change their structure due to high profits but are adopting on-chain technology and stablecoins, while interest-bearing stablecoins would return more near-risk-free rates to holders, with banks lobbying against them due to competition.
The pressure on cash comes from two lines: fiscal and digitalization. U.S. government budget data shows that personal income tax and corporate income tax combined are about $3 trillion, with debt interest around $1.3 trillion. He previously connected these figures to the judgment of "the dollar heading to zero." Venture capitalist Tim Draper used the analogy of Confederate currency, calling for households to reserve about six months' worth of expenses in Bitcoin, companies to reserve about four weeks' worth of payroll, and governments to allocate a certain percentage in their treasury. Canadian regulators have just clarified that tokenized deposits are legally equivalent to traditional deposits, and technology does not change the nature of liabilities—cash is encouraged to become tokens on bank ledgers rather than paper currency.
The narrative of custody and reserve banks contrasts with his products. BitGo emphasizes a 1:1 ratio of cash to short-duration government bonds, liquidity within hours, not relying on deposit insurance but on full reserves, and writes the federally chartered digital asset bank as a different structure from commercial banks. Payments and value storage are separated: stablecoins compete for cash accounts and remittances, while Bitcoin competes for diluted savings.
The market mechanism is the splitting of monetary functions. The buy side consists of savers wanting to leave paper currency and depreciating demand deposits; the sell side portrays policies and digitalization as targeting cash rather than Bitcoin custodians. Funds are shifting from checking accounts and cash to tokenized assets supported by short-term debt and fixed supply assets. The beneficiaries are licensed custodians and stablecoin reserve banks; the pressured parties are commercial banks relying on low-interest deposits for lending and the treasury that must roll over debt. The event-driven aspect is qualitative, not a new bill number.
The target is cash that does not earn interest and can be taken away by inflation and digitalization together. If Bitcoin merely observes this incorporation, its price may still move with the decline of the dollar.
Source: Public Information
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Belshe has rewritten the enemy relationship. Regulation and bank digitalization target paper currency and demand deposits, as both do not pay market rates and occupy payment entry points. Bitcoin is not on the main battlefield of payments; he categorizes it as a store of value; stablecoins are the ones competing for cash. As an HTTP/2 author running a custody bank, he translates protocol layer experience into "whoever holds the private key collects the toll." The federal license allows this statement to be made in Washington: it is not a black market currency, but another side of the war on cash.
The capital path is moving within the dollar system. $3 trillion in taxes against $1.3 trillion in interest means the debt machine must keep running, and the gap between demand deposit rates and inflation turns cash into negative real returns. Tokenized deposits move the same bank liabilities onto the ledger, while stablecoins return the interest portion of short-term debt to holders, with Bitcoin absorbing the hedge against the dollar. BitGo earns custody fees and reserve structures without relying on lending out customer cash. Money is leaking from commercial banks' net interest margins to full reserves and fixed supply.
The analogy is the end of the gold standard where paper currency replaced gold coins, and money market funds replaced demand deposits. Canada has nailed down that tokenized deposits are still deposits, while U.S. bank profits hit new highs but start issuing on-chain dollars, indicating that cash is first being rewritten by its own banking system. The industry phase is controlling payment tracks. Whoever issues compliant dollar tokens will incorporate cash; whoever custodies Bitcoin will incorporate that portion of savings that hedges against cash.
The structural change is a transfer of pricing power. The mechanism is the separation of the payment function and store of value function of fiat currency for pricing: payments are left to regulated tokenized cash, while store of value is left to assets whose supply cannot be rewritten by meetings. The target of the war is cash, as it is the easiest to be replaced by inflation tax and digitalization. Bitcoin is not the defendant in this war; it is one of the receiving accounts when cash retreats.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
The first to be eliminated is non-interest-bearing cash, not fixed supply.
When payment tracks are incorporated, store of value will find another outlet.
Bank digitalization of its deposits equals declaring war on paper currency.