Keep the On Ramps at Home
Why Crypto Infrastructure Is an American Strategic Asset
Keep the On Ramps at Home: Why Crypto Infrastructure Is an American Strategic Asset
As Congress begins its sprint to the end of the year, one item vying for attention is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, better known as the CLARITY Act. The bipartisan bill seeks to define how digital assets are traded, taxed, and supervised—an important step toward order in a chaotic regulatory landscape—and one that deserves support.
Yet amid the broader debate over who regulates crypto and how to protect consumers, a larger strategic question is being overlooked: where should the infrastructure that underpins the new digital economy live?
We believe the next century’s financial leverage won’t hinge simply on how we classify tokens—it will depend on who runs the rails. And if history is any guide, the nation that controls the infrastructure will be the one that sets the rules of the future.
America’s Quiet Superpower: The Payment Stack
America’s dominance in the 20th-century financial order didn’t come just from the dollar—it came from the rails that carried it. In particular, Visa, Mastercard, and the SWIFT network created a global architecture of trust built on U.S. soil and U.S. law.
These systems did more than move money. They exported American standards: transparency, compliance, and recourse. They gave regulators visibility into global capital flows and gave U.S. policymakers a uniquely powerful lever for sanctions, law enforcement, and influence.
That infrastructure turned payment networks into instruments of both prosperity and deterrence. When Washington needed to project soft power, it didn’t have to send troops—it could simply reach for the switchboard of finance.
Crypto exchanges, wallets, and stablecoin clearing systems are the next generation of that same infrastructure. They are the Visa and SWIFT of the 21st-century economy. Whoever builds and governs them will define the norms, data flows, and value systems that shape the digital age.
The Foreign Rails Problem
The uncomfortable truth is that many of the world’s largest crypto exchanges already sit offshore—operating under opaque and often Chinese-linked ownership, with weak compliance standards and political entanglements that would never pass muster in traditional finance. Look no further than recent reporting tying major exchange, OKX, to members of the Chinese Communist Party elite.
That’s not just a compliance concern—it’s a strategic one. These platforms handle trillions in global trading volume and control the gateways through which digital capital moves. When a foreign regime can shape who accesses liquidity or what transactions flow unseen, capital becomes an instrument of statecraft.
Take the October 11 flash crash as an example. A single bad price feed inside Binance triggered cascading liquidations across U.S.-facing markets, underscoring how technical failures on offshore, unregulated exchanges can instantly become systemic risks at home.
Beijing intuitively understands this, as evidenced by their creation of CIPS, a SWIFT alternative designed to insulate trade from Western sanctions. Crypto rails routed through unaligned jurisdictions—especially those under China’s shadow—can achieve the same result, only faster and with even less transparency. As the saying goes, “you can’t sanction what you can’t see.”
The United States’ dominance of the global payment stack has long given it a degree of visibility and leverage that no other country possesses. But as crypto infrastructure drifts offshore, that leverage erodes.
Put differently, if CFIUS would intervene to stop a Chinese entity from buying a semiconductor fab or AI model, why would we tolerate foreign control of the rails that move trillions in digital capital every day?
The Overlooked Policy Frontier
The CLARITY Act is an important start, but it focuses primarily on market definitions—what digital assets are and who supervises them. True clarity depends not only on taxonomy, but on topology—where the infrastructure resides.
If the U.S. wants markets that reflect democratic values—transparent, auditable, and compliant—the rails must remain under U.S. jurisdiction. Otherwise, enforcement becomes impossible, data visibility collapses, and sanctions lose force.
It’s time to treat crypto exchanges as strategic infrastructure, not speculative casinos. Just as we safeguard our ports, airways, and communications networks from foreign threats, we also must secure the digital finance rails that underpin them.
That means expanding the toolkit:
Establish a Digital Financial Infrastructure Review Board under the Treasury and Commerce Departments to screen foreign ownership and influence.
Expand CFIUS to explicitly cover exchanges, custody, and payment rails.
Require reciprocity: foreign exchanges seeking U.S. access must meet or exceed U.S. AML and sanctions standards.
Enforce automatic exclusion for repeat sanctions or BSA violators.
These are not anti-innovation measures—they are pro-sovereignty measures. They would make the United States the safest, most trusted home for digital value.
Just as policymakers have rightly focused on building an AI industrial base that reflects democratic values and technical excellence, the crypto stack deserves the same treatment. But where AI governs how knowledge moves, crypto governs how value moves. Failing to anchor either means surrendering not just market share, but the ability to set norms and enforce rules.
In the end, freedom requires infrastructure. Economic sovereignty is the new deterrence. And America can’t win the next century on borrowed rails.