US govt will not let private enterprises challenge the dollar, says Pantera Capital founder

• Dr. Steven Waterhouse, the founder of Patera Capital, believes the US govt will not let “random startups” challenge the dollar. 
• According to Waterhouse, the US govt perceives crypto issued by companies with millions of users as a threat. 
• He negatively reacted to the Telegram founder discouraging entrepreneurs from starting businesses in Silicon Valley. 

Dr. Steven Waterhouse, a founding partner of Pantera Capital and the CEO of Orchid (OXT), has said that the US government will not allow a private enterprise to challenge the dollar. According to him, the government perceives crypto issued by firms with millions of users as a threat.

In an interview that took place before Telegram announced that it had given up on its blockchain project, Waterhouse said: 

The idea that some random startups are going to build their own stablecoins, perhaps with hundreds of millions of installs of a messenger client, whether it’s Facebook or Telegram or someone else, potentially challenge the sort of central bank digital currency or existing central bank currencies? […] That’s got to be triggering for regulators. So I think that’s why we’ve seen such a strong reaction to both Facebook Libra and also Telegram.

Several governments across the world have taken a two-sided approach where they hamper the issuance of stablecoins that could challenge fiat, while also exploring the issuance of their own digital currencies.

Earlier, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, called the US a “police state” and discouraged entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe from basing their tech businesses in Silicon Valley. Responding to this, Waterhouse said that this was the first time in 20 years he’d heard someone stating this opinion.

The only time in 20 odd years of living in San Francisco and being based and having a strong network in Silicon Valley. That’s [the first time]that anyone’s ever said to me that this is not the best place to start a company or build a company.