Bitcoin is anti-colonial

The dollar is currently weaponised against developing nations, for the benefit of rich ones. It's the modern day continuation of colonialism, and Bitcoin can disrupt it.

The United States (with the help of the rich, western world) set up a series of institutions that made the US dollar the center of the world's economy, and western ideals for economics and politics globally.

In theory this is great: more democracy and more prosperous economies = freer and more financially secure humans.

In practice it's often used to keep countries from exiting the system or trying something else that works better for them.

IMF and World Bank

The stated goal of the IMF, from their own explainer video on their own Youtube Channel, is to be the lender of last resort to help prop up countires in their time of need. The expressed examples are during times of natural disaster or financial misfortune.

They do give loans to help countries continue operating through a trying time while other banks wouldn't take the risk. This would make sense if the IMF charged an interest rate commensurate with the risk they're taking on, otherwise they'd be operating at a loss, giving loans countries that may not pay them back.

This isn't the case, the IMF loans impose conditions on the loans to "reduce the risk." These are often austerity measures, or changes to policies on foreign investment, and other financial sounding jargon. They generally boil down to coercing countries to become more capitalist, and to selling their natural resources to foreign investors to pay for their mounting debt. (Source)

This has led to many smaller countries being pillaged of their natural wealth. They now have even less means to build the prosperous loop of taxes paying for infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Those investments leading to more human capital to create more productive companies, to pay more taxes and so on.

Trade balances and the US Dollar

Countries are forced to buy dollars because international trade (especially oil) have to be settled in dollars (source).

But the value of their currency (in dollars) is dependent on the prosperity of the country. In cases of financial crisis (self inflicted, or completely out of their control), countries can get into a feedback loop where their entire economy will collapse. These are called "balance of payment" crises.

Sri-Lanka is a recent example (source), but the TL;DR is that a country's currency becomes less valuable due to a crisis which means their money can buy fewer dollars. They need the same or more dollars because they still need to import items to keep their economy going (and feed people usually). But because dollars are more expensive than before, there are more disruptions to the economy meaning there's less ability to buy the dollars needed to import good.

This spiral is hard to exit without loans from the IMF or the world bank (see the first section to see why that's a trap).

US monetary policy is only good for the US

Even though every country needs US dollars to function, they have no control over the policies that change it's availability and price. That privilege is reserved for the US.

The US uses monetary policy to benefit the US economy, without much regard for what those policies will do to other countries.

Many small countries are buffeted around by US monetary policy with no ability to affect the future of that policy. This leads to more financial crises and balance of payments issues which feeds this uphill battle.

A $2 trillion per year racket

Roughly $2 Trillion per year is funnelled from the Global South (poorer countries) to the Global North (richer countries). (source) Facilitated by the systems set up by the US post-WWII to supposedly "decrease poverty."

An alternative system

In a better system there'd be something (like the gold standard) where no one country can weaponize the world's currency to control other countries. In this kinf os system, wealth is accumulated and transferred and measured based on reserves of some decentralized store of value; and because that asset is decentralized it cannot be abused in the same way by a central issuer.

Every other currency can be issued against this asset. If a country wants to dilute their currency against this asset, they are free to; but trade will still be settled in the underlying asset.

This asset would probably have a high stock to flow ratio. It would need to be easily transferable, easily divisible, easy to prove ownership, physically dense, etc. And ideally it would be decentralized enough to be outside the control of any particular group of people.

The Bitcoin Standard

Bitcoin could fill this role.

It could even start small. Countries could use Bitcoin as the settlement layer for international trade between countries that opt in. Maybe that doesn't include oil at first, but countries could use Bitcoin with their direct trading partners that want the same. Countries could start opting out of the existing the US Dollar-based system slowly.

The countries that are most motivated to do this would be countries that don't want to be bullied by US, but don't want to have their own dominant currency (like Russia and China are working toward). That list of countries would look a lot like the list of countries in the "Alliance of the unaligned" from the cold war (source).

As these countries lean into a Bitcoin-based system, they'll want to hold more reserves of Bitcoin (like they do dollars, and used to hold gold). This may cause a reverse run on Bitcoin, because the first to buy reserves will get them the cheapest. At a certain point every country will buy Bitcoin in anticipation that they'll need it to settle future payments.

All the early buyers will benefit from the buying pressure of all later entrants. It's not going to be the US, Russia, China, or Europe that'll be the early entrants, they'll hold on to their own currencies for as long as possible. It'll be the currently poor countries that'll get wealthy on the backs of the rich countries buying late in the game.

The existence of an alternative to the US Dollar system will force the US Dollar system to compete head-to-head. When competition has its day, the better, faster, cheaper system will win.

Bitcoin as a force to decolonize

There is a very real chance that Bitcoin can collapse the US Dollar-based, US-centric systems and that would benefit of the Global South. If you care about being anti-colonial you should care about this.