If US Markets Go On-Chain, Which Chain Wins?

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said that all US markets will move onto blockchain within the next two years.

The obvious question is: which blockchain?

US markets process an enormous number of transactions. If every single one of them requires paying an on-chain fee, that would create massive demand for whichever token is used to pay those fees. That is where things get interesting.

So what kind of blockchain would the government choose?

• One where anyone can become a validator or miner.
• Or one where a limited set of validators is appointed by the team that governs the blockchain.

It seems pretty clear that the first option is a non-starter. The state is an institution of power. It needs control. And you cannot realistically control a huge distributed network of independent miners or validators.

That leaves managed blockchains. Which means looking back at the list of American cryptocurrencies that everyone started watching closely after Trump returned to office, and narrowing it down to those where the developers are actually able to control the validator set.

Honestly, there are still too many candidates. Picking the winner is basically impossible.

P.S. I checked the largest exchange to see which coins jumped the most after Atkins' statement. It looks like the market thinks that blockchain will be... Terra.