Technology and money are neither neutral nor apolitical. It is a grave mistake to assume that they can be artificially withdrawn from the overarching cage of power politics. The digital age of fintech, in which the two converge more than ever before as twin pillars of an emerging model, reflects this truth. As the testament of history teaches, both are subordinated to the ironclad dictates of systemic anarchy and zero-sum relational frames.
According to Martin Heidegger, the essence of technology is by no means technological. This cryptic aphorism means that the long-range impact of frontier technological innovations, far from being confined to their instrumental applications, goes further. Technology, as noted by Zbigniew Brzezinski, is a game-changing impersonal force that, by challenging the existing order of things and unlocking disruptive potentialities, brings new grammatical formulas of power relations and operational patterns of strategic behaviors. On the other hand, Oswald Spengler points out that money, in the current Faustian era, is the ultimate vector of dynamism. Money, as the lifeblood of modern civilizations, possesses the Mercurial-like capacity to mobilize all sorts of worldly forces. Once unleashed, the stream of its expansive power cannot be rolled back.
In this regard, the ongoing proliferation of digital currencies —along with their evolutionary divergence— is rewiring the circuits that underpin the political economy of money under complex interdependence and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In such a landscape, financial code is being reprogrammed as strategic code worth deploying for power politics. In this iteration, shaped by the exponential development of Promethean technologies and economic interconnectedness, the oldest of all games is no longer exclusively played by nation-states. In a context in which the creation of fintech breakthroughs is driven mainly by high-tech corporations, these nonstate actors are claiming a seat at the table of a polycentric world order. Their power does not come from mercantile monopolies, royal charters, crony capitalism, control of natural resources, lobbying, or a privileged access to high-ranking policymakers. Instead, their bids to level up as indispensable national champions or even nonstate great powers are fueled by their far-reaching transnational presence, unmatched technological capabilities, intensive data harvesting, engagement in strategic competition over global techno-industrial superiority, and sovereign-like corporate control in the digital world.
The political economy of private companies in the digital currency space has not been comprehensively deciphered. The prevalence of commonplace oversimplifications and “unknown unknowns” obscures this matter. The presence of these nonstate corporate actors in such a domain must not be framed in accordance with the commercial logic of profits, business, and retail transactions. Their involvement goes beyond start-up entrepreneurship, R&D projects, exchange platforms, unorthodox investments, speculative trading, or even white-collar crime.
The growing universe of data-driven money, once a digital “no man’s land,” is well-positioned to be repurposed as a chessboard of gray zone finance. Cybercurrencies are no longer the techno-utopian promised paradise of the so-called “crypto bros” or funny money for the Nietzschean “last man.” Together, high-tech capitalism, financialization, the upgrade of economic statecraft, and resurfacing geopolitical rivalries encourage innovative possibilities for politico-strategic interactions between private firms and digital currencies. The following analytical contents, based on both observable empirical trajectories and strategic foresight, intend to map and assess some of these possibilities.
FININT in Decentralized Blockchain-Based Ecosystems
In the spheres of national security and law enforcement, the effectiveness of state-led financial intelligence (FININT) requires a synergic collaboration between government agencies and the private sector.
Today, corporate AI-powered systems are being deployed, by states, as engines of real-time intelligence gathering through cross-referencing, network analysis, pattern recognition, and big data processing. The military layer of this phenomenon is visible in active high-intensity conflicts in both post-Soviet Eastern Europe and West Asia. And precedents from both China and countries of the so-called “collective West” foreshadow how cryptocurrency suppression and threats of de-banking will likely be increasingly brandished as weaponized instruments of high-tech financial deterrence and coercion.
The assistance of high-tech companies like Palantir and Anthropic may be enlisted, through ad-hoc public-private partnerships, to enhance state-led financial intelligence and forensics in blockchain-based environments. Former CIA officers have previously endorsed the idea of proactively harnessing AI-powered algorithms for this precise purpose. The resulting cooperation would increase the tactical threshold to detect, monitor, and disrupt the financial activities of antagonists —foreign powers, spies, terrorists, insurgents, criminal organizations, and maybe even dissidents— in the cryptocurrency landscape.
Despite the decentralized governance models and opacity of these coins, in the so-called techno-polar world, cutting-edge innovations designed by private companies have the power to connect the dots, pierce their critical chokepoints, and de-platform enemies.
Cryptocurrencies as Enablers of Corporate Espionage
In the post-Cold War era, the partial privatization of security services has encouraged the rise of corporate intelligence firms whose tradecraft relies on the advanced expertise of professional spooks. Companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Black Cube, Janes, and Oxford Analytica belong to this emerging constellation. It is not uncommon for former CIA, MI6 or Mossad personnel —or even retired military or diplomatic officials— to join for-profit intelligence outlets. Their know-how is transferable for tasks related to industrial espionage, due diligence, risk analysis, strategic consulting, VIP protection, business resilience models, compliance, and crisis management. Their services cater to the likes of hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, investment banks, major companies from strategic-grade industrial sectors, and billionaires. For these actors, spycraft is a tool to enhance their comparative advantages, leverage, and market power.
These firms may rely on discreet cryptocurrency rails to reward their sources (i.e. informants). This possibility, rather than being purely hypothetical, would represent the continuation of existing trends. When the shadow hacktivist group Anonymous exposed STRATFOR’s private emails through Wikileaks, details about this American private company’s role in tailor-made espionage operations for elite corporate clients were uncovered. STRATFOR’s services were demanded by heavyweight companies such as Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The dump unveiled various secrets of the so-called “intelligence-industrial complex,” including the payment laundering techniques used by STRATFOR’s global network of HUMINT assets (e.g. government officials, diplomatic staff, and even journalists). Back then, these off-the-books methods involved Swiss bank accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Today, untraceable cryptocurrencies such as Monero would be more convenient as vehicles of corporate espionage and insider trading. In such a netherworld, arcane cryptocurrencies are suitable coins of the realm.
Public-Private Partnerships in Digital Currency Statecraft
The neo-mercantilist art of economic statecraft requires the involvement of private corporations to further power, wealth, prestige, and relative gains. In the digital currency arena, this symbiosis is manifested in the development of public-private strategic partnerships focused on experimental projects.
Even though the corresponding track record shows ambivalent results, such a trend is visible in the cases of both great powers and smaller states. Former Facebook/Meta executive Morgan Beller claims that the design of Libra was engineered to serve, above all else, the necessities of American economic statecraft in the battlefield of US-China strategic competition. Both Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus promised full-spectrum compliance, alignment with the dollar’s hegemony, and collaboration in the enforcement of US-led coercive sanctions. As is known, the American ruling elite was unconvinced by Facebook/Meta’s campaign to sell the project by promoting itself as a reliable national champion. Still, the intent to make a case based on a national security rationale is telling in its own right.
The Chinese strategic community believes that the expansive international projection of Chinese private fintech platforms is worth leveraging so that the digital renminbi (e-RMB) can gather a critical mass to propagate its cross-border circulation. Beijing knows that the successful international take-off of this sovereign digital currency with Chinese characteristics requires its adoption by overseas private companies willing to do business with China through commerce and/or capital markets. Despite a vertical state-run monopoly of administrative privileges, the far-reaching CBDC aspirations of Chinese techno-nationalism cannot afford to overlook the interests of both the Chinese private sector and foreign firms.
In order to address the adversarial geoeconomic fallout of the Ukraine war, the Russian central bank officially authorized Sberbank —a hybrid public-private company— to issue, custody, and exchange digital assets. Such a shift is remarkable, especially considering Moscow’s previous reluctance to greenlight the circulation of nonstate crypto-assets.
El Salvador, rather than reversing intrepid cryptocurrency policies derived from the adoption of Bitcoin as full-fledged legal tender a few years back, is doubling down. Under the Caesarist leadership of President Nayib Bukele, who presents himself as a Latin American version of Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew, El Salvador now hosts the corporate headquarters of Tether, a dollar-backed private stablecoin. This development points towards a symbiotic synergy. Tether’s corporate masters are interested in a greater market share in emerging economies, legal predictability, and a flexible business ecosystem that fosters innovation. In turn, the Salvadoran state seeks the modernization of its fintech infrastructure, investments that can fuel industrial development, a higher hierarchical standing in the political economy of nonstate digital money, and the “soft power” that comes with being a prosperous crypto hub.
Corporate Crypto-Assets in an Era of Warring Currencies
The corporate developers of a major scalable stablecoin intended to reach systemic transnational proportions or influence the management of global exchange rates will face consequential security challenges.
The protection of the project’s infrastructure, facilities, data centers, boardrooms, programmable protocols, and digital interfaces will have to be addressed. In a context in which economic warfare is at the forefront of interstate hostilities, monetary and financial nerve centers are exposed to politico-strategic threats of espionage, infiltration, sabotage, economic coercion, and even kinetic attacks. Strategic literature, both Western and non-Western, prescribes attacks on enemy monetary and financial systems. As a vector of complex interdependence, a stablecoin with a strong-potential for cross-border circulation would be worth targeting because of its condition as a major center of gravity, particularly if its rollout is officially or de facto aligned with the interests of a great power or a geopolitical coalition.
The Facebook/Meta executives who masterminded Libra as a supranational corporate stablecoin plan failed to consider this possibility. In the field of security, their chief concerns gravitated around the prospect of profit-driven criminal cyberattacks. For ambitious corporate stablecoin execs, neglecting the baseline realities of high politics and hard power is akin to “strategic malpractice.”
“Digital Gold” as an Asset to Hedge Geopolitical Risks
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and its offshoots are unconventional assets that could be helpful as alternative stores of wealth to hedge the financial risks associated with war or heightened geopolitical turmoil, especially in a period of incremental monetary pluralism. As borderless “digital gold,” these crypto-assets mitigate exposure to the specter of geopolitical uncertainty. Interestingly, the value of Bitcoin was seemingly bolstered by phenomena such as Brexit, the intermittent confrontation between Iran and the US, and the so-called “trade war” between Washington and Beijing. In principle, this attribute makes them attractive for the private sector.
Decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are resilient enough to withstand both volatile market fluctuations and potentially hostile manipulations not motivated by economic interests. Their horizontal grids cannot be destroyed. Even though some of its material or digital nodes can be attacked, the dispersed architecture of their networks contains no center of gravity that can be targeted. These cybercurrencies also lack centralized systemic records kept in physical servers which could be hit. The ability of the Bitcoin environment to weather external pressure and to adapt was demonstrated when China launched a Draconian cryptocurrency crackdown. Even though the ‘Middle Kingdom’ concentrated 78% of global mining capacity before this coercive shock, the Bitcoin ecosystem was not disabled, and mining operations relocated to other countries with more flexible frameworks.
Yet despite their advantages, decentralized cryptocurrencies are hardly suitable replacements for hard assets with intrinsic worth like gold, commodities, or real estate. There are major noteworthy differences:
- Cryptocurrency markets are comparatively smaller and less structured;
- Their supply of circulating units is artificially limited by design;
- Due to their organic volatility, decentralized cybercurrencies are better suited for short-term speculative purposes rather than long-term stores of value;
- Whereas cryptocurrencies are novelty items, the traditional condition of gold as a stable store of value is supported by the weight of history since the dawn of civilization;
- The legal status of cryptocurrency is unclear in many jurisdictions.
In a nutshell, the potential of decentralized cryptocurrencies as assets worth stockpiling to hedge geopolitical risk is still modest. Yet, a systemic financial crisis or a major war that could sink the credibility of holdings kept in conventional fiat currencies may strengthen their utilitarian valence for diversified portfolios. On the other hand, corporate stablecoins whose underlying baskets are plugged into one or more hard currencies have a higher chance of being embraced as alternative reserve assets.
Stealth Payments for Private Military Companies
Private military companies (PMCs), either state-sponsored or not, may use fully anonymous nonstate cryptocurrencies like Monero to receive covert payments from clients that do not wish to be identified for PR reasons. The business model of these mercenary outfits integrates gray zone tactics, the armed protection of critical infrastructure and natural resources, clandestine tasks, irregular warfare, counterinsurgency, paramilitary training, and combat operations in faraway theaters of engagement. In a landscape shaped by geopolitical clashes, regional arcs of instability, failed states, and internal conflicts, their services are carried out under conditions of plausible denial, legal ambiguity, and minimal accountability. Contractors like Academi (once known as Blackwater), Spearhead Ltd. and the so-called Africa Corps (a new iteration of the Wagner Group) are vivid avatars of this phenomenon. Accordingly, dirty work can be readily delegated to modern-day condottieri as long as their services —and discretion— are handsomely remunerated. The fintech pipelines of decentralized cryptocurrency wallets are suitable to keep the money flowing to their pockets. Just like cash, stealth payments through such channels evade the prying eyes of regulators, parliaments, citizens, competitors, courts of law, foreign governments, and international organizations.
Lessons Learned
The presence of major companies as leading players in the political economy of money is not new. As a mercantilist “state-company” with massive power and wealth, the English East India Company acquired the legal authority to mint money in the 17th century.
For the private sector, the ongoing proliferation of data-driven coins —including decentralized cryptocurrencies, corporate stablecoins, and even state-backed CBDCs— is more than a passing trend worth profiting from. Contrary to what the uninitiated might think, the parameters of the fintech arena go beyond a quixotic pursuit of opulence. In the esoteric digital currency realm, there are unconventional politico-strategic opportunities for corporate cabals, high-tech merchant princelings, financial aristocracies, and gray zone firms. Their assets, capabilities, economic weapons, ammo, and diplomatic savoir-faire can buy them an active role at the forefront of power politics in digital currency ecosystems.
However, they are unlikely to act as antinomian challengers of state-led sovereign monetary authority or simple obedient upholders of the status quo. Instead, these companies are likelier to join forces with their states as partners through negotiated techno-nationalist formulas. In the irregular network geometry of e-money, they need each other to conquer relative advantages, build security guarantees, and rewrite the rules of a game that is simultaneously old and new. In such a brave new world in which greatness is up for grabs, fortune favors the bold.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com
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