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If you only look at the Bitcoin the governments hold, El Salvador is now roughly on par with the USA in terms of Bitcoin per capita: El Salvador: 3000 Bitcoin

If you only look at the Bitcoin the governments hold, El Salvador is now roughly on par with the USA in terms of Bitcoin per capita: El Salvador: 3000 Bitcoin / 6M people = 0.0005 Bitcoin per person USA: 200K Bitcoin / 300M people = 0.0007 Bitcoin per person But if you also look at the private sector, the US is probably way ahead. Microstrategy alone holds over 150K Bitcoin. Coinbase is said to hold over 2M Bitcoin. Same for mining. The USA has by far the most capable Bitcoin mining infrastructure. For now, it looks like the USA manages the same feat in regards to crypto as it did with the internet: Be the main player in a huge landgrab with no other country able to even come close. And we see the same story play out in AI too. With the main players being OpenAI, Microsoft and Google who are all in the US. I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I have not seen one yet. It seems like the US is unstoppable when it comes to being the brain of the world. I don't live in the US. But me and everyone around me is connected to each other via US technology. US phones, US software, US services. And it looks like this will only continue to increase with self driving cars and other robots being the basis of all our everyday tasks.

tutfbhuf 3y ago
I believe it has to do with the fact that the US possesses a vast amount of land, abundant natural resources, a long-standing democracy, no wars on its territory for an extended period, and a relatively large population size. If you compare that with other wealthy countries such as Germany, then you'll see that they have less land, fewer natural resources, haven't had democracy for as long, were divided until the late '80s, and do not have as large a population size. Therefore, just by sheer numbers, it makes sense that everything in the US is bigger. Moreover, Germany, for instance, has a culture where wealth is accumulated across a large number of medium-sized companies, whereas in the US, wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top (for example, the ones you mentioned). These are, of course, the entities everyone knows and talks about.
- Axsuul 3y ago
  It's beyond that – culture. Being ambitious in US is rewarded and celebrated. Plus having the most powerful military in the world makes others want to invest more into the US due to the likelihood it will still be around.
  - cosmotic 3y ago
    There's no reward for being JUST ambitious in the US, there's a lot more involved. Luck and willingness to exploit the work of others is a big part of what's required to earn the reward.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    Adding on to the culture - 1. Even if your idea seems crappy, investors will give you millions to bootstrap it. Uber, Twitter, Doordash, AirBnB, Coinbase, Instacart - all sounded funny before they became billion dollar behemoths. 2. Social norm of hire fast, fire fast - allow startups to quickly scale if they sense some opportunity and quickly ramp down in case that doesn't pan out. Again, different countries have different trade-offs around this. But the American tradeoff makes it much easier to build and grow a startup.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    Are you under the impression that being ambitious is looked down upon in Germany or anywhere else outside of a bunch of dictatorships?
ahofmann 3y ago
I don't think there is a simple answer, but I'm sure that quite a few three letter agencies are part of it. And the dollar as the defacto currency of the world since decades. Dollars have a lot of leverage about a lot of important stuff.
BenoitP 3y ago
> I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I'll take a try from the geographical determinism viewpoint, which I believe in 100%: * Have natural resources in vast quantities: temperate arable land (cold enough to have winter 'resetting the fields', hot enough for high yields), oil. Cheap oil means cheap mining, cheap cost of transformation, cheap transports. Cheap everything. * Unify the country from natural border to natural border, yielding very little need for domestic defense * Be somewhat big, so that you can bootstrap any innovative company to a massive market and economies of scale quickly. Big also yields resiliency * Give relative freedom to compete, and give it early in history These 4 item are IMHO the base of many others which reinforce this strength (WW2 winner with no destructions at home, petrodollar enforcement, Hollywood machine, tech first-mover advantage) ---- Comparatively: * Middle-East, Africa, India, Central America, SE Asia, don't have the 'winter reset'. Nor do they a need to develop a culture that had to plan and organize for a whole year; one part being food-rich, the other quite not * Russia has huge unsafe borders (mandatory defense spending), elongated country (need for very creepy/scary internal security services, freedoms are quite limited) * Europe has depleted its natural resources (but benefited from the industrial revolution then!), was divided for a long time (no big market), has no oil * China has little oil, had a population matching its food production with very little to spare, had low freedom to compete * Other parts are not big (Oceania), nor were populated early (South America, Australia) ---- For the future, the main changes will be fossil fuels depletion, and climate change. Here is what could happen: * De(petro)dollarisation, as oil depletes and is less used in the industry * World going a tad multipolar. This means less pax americana, more wars * Resource wars shifting from oil to key materials for electrification like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt * Efficiency going down, massive simplification of lifestyles * Lots of countries going bankrupt like Lebanon. Can't feed without importing? Don't have industry that can export? Enjoy your worthless money * Fertilizers going more expensive with gas depletion. Lower amounts of higher priced food. Extensive world food programs * All this right when we need resources to adapt to climate change
indigo0086 3y ago
The US is also the sink for which brain drains around the wold siphon into. Overall opportunity and in some cases literal freedom to take such opportunity causes more innovation and invites people willing to contribute their talents to the US rather than their own country.

tutfbhuf 3y ago

I believe it has to do with the fact that the US possesses a vast amount of land, abundant natural resources, a long-standing democracy, no wars on its territory for an extended period, and a relatively large population size. If you compare that with other wealthy countries such as Germany, then you'll see that they have less land, fewer natural resources, haven't had democracy for as long, were divided until the late '80s, and do not have as large a population size. Therefore, just by sheer numbers, it makes sense that everything in the US is bigger. Moreover, Germany, for instance, has a culture where wealth is accumulated across a large number of medium-sized companies, whereas in the US, wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top (for example, the ones you mentioned). These are, of course, the entities everyone knows and talks about.

Axsuul 3y ago
It's beyond that – culture. Being ambitious in US is rewarded and celebrated. Plus having the most powerful military in the world makes others want to invest more into the US due to the likelihood it will still be around.
- cosmotic 3y ago
  There's no reward for being JUST ambitious in the US, there's a lot more involved. Luck and willingness to exploit the work of others is a big part of what's required to earn the reward.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  Adding on to the culture - 1. Even if your idea seems crappy, investors will give you millions to bootstrap it. Uber, Twitter, Doordash, AirBnB, Coinbase, Instacart - all sounded funny before they became billion dollar behemoths. 2. Social norm of hire fast, fire fast - allow startups to quickly scale if they sense some opportunity and quickly ramp down in case that doesn't pan out. Again, different countries have different trade-offs around this. But the American tradeoff makes it much easier to build and grow a startup.
- sofixa 3y ago
  Are you under the impression that being ambitious is looked down upon in Germany or anywhere else outside of a bunch of dictatorships?

ahofmann 3y ago

I don't think there is a simple answer, but I'm sure that quite a few three letter agencies are part of it. And the dollar as the defacto currency of the world since decades. Dollars have a lot of leverage about a lot of important stuff.

BenoitP 3y ago

> I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I'll take a try from the geographical determinism viewpoint, which I believe in 100%: * Have natural resources in vast quantities: temperate arable land (cold enough to have winter 'resetting the fields', hot enough for high yields), oil. Cheap oil means cheap mining, cheap cost of transformation, cheap transports. Cheap everything. * Unify the country from natural border to natural border, yielding very little need for domestic defense * Be somewhat big, so that you can bootstrap any innovative company to a massive market and economies of scale quickly. Big also yields resiliency * Give relative freedom to compete, and give it early in history These 4 item are IMHO the base of many others which reinforce this strength (WW2 winner with no destructions at home, petrodollar enforcement, Hollywood machine, tech first-mover advantage) ---- Comparatively: * Middle-East, Africa, India, Central America, SE Asia, don't have the 'winter reset'. Nor do they a need to develop a culture that had to plan and organize for a whole year; one part being food-rich, the other quite not * Russia has huge unsafe borders (mandatory defense spending), elongated country (need for very creepy/scary internal security services, freedoms are quite limited) * Europe has depleted its natural resources (but benefited from the industrial revolution then!), was divided for a long time (no big market), has no oil * China has little oil, had a population matching its food production with very little to spare, had low freedom to compete * Other parts are not big (Oceania), nor were populated early (South America, Australia) ---- For the future, the main changes will be fossil fuels depletion, and climate change. Here is what could happen: * De(petro)dollarisation, as oil depletes and is less used in the industry * World going a tad multipolar. This means less pax americana, more wars * Resource wars shifting from oil to key materials for electrification like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt * Efficiency going down, massive simplification of lifestyles * Lots of countries going bankrupt like Lebanon. Can't feed without importing? Don't have industry that can export? Enjoy your worthless money * Fertilizers going more expensive with gas depletion. Lower amounts of higher priced food. Extensive world food programs * All this right when we need resources to adapt to climate change

indigo0086 3y ago

The US is also the sink for which brain drains around the wold siphon into. Overall opportunity and in some cases literal freedom to take such opportunity causes more innovation and invites people willing to contribute their talents to the US rather than their own country.