US War Economy Act: Trump orders Google to mine Bitcoin due to Corona crisis

This article is an april fools joke.

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is taking unusual measures to combat the coronavirus. By activating martial law, Trump can now give instructions to private companies. This was now done to force Google to mine Bitcoin.

This marks the second time in a week that Trump has made use of the War Economy Act. After unsuccessful negotiations, he recently ordered General Motors to manufacture 100,000 ventilators for overcrowded American hospitals in 100 days.

Google and Bitcoin mining

The idea to mine bitcoins is nevertheless somewhat unusual and probably arose spontaneously during briefing with the press. When asked by a reporter about how to bear the costs of the corona crisis, Trump answered that he already has some ideas how to reorganize the state budget with “amazing technology” .

Trump went on to explain, that he would order Google to mine bitcoin and to do so with “crispy clean energy.” He also added: “Google can find anything. Everyone uses Google. I have no doubt Google will search and find bitcoin blocks. I love my Google. I know everyone at Google. Googles computing capacity is huge. Believe me. Its the best.”

Just last week, Trump surprised everyone by the statement that 1,700 Google engineers are already working on building a coronavirus test website. However, according to media reports, Google knew nothing about this. It can be assumed that once again, Google was not asked.

Critical voices from the community and the consequences

Shortly after the press briefing, critical voices from within the bitcoin community arose. One part of the community celebrated Trumps’ actions as a victory for bitcoin and stated that Trump no longer seemed to trust the U.S. dollar. However, other people did not understand why Trump did not simply order to print U.S. dollars instead. Others see the security of the bitcoin network in danger.

Currently it is impossible to predict how much computing capacity Google can free up for Bitcoin mining, since usually specialized hardware has to be used to find Bitcoin blocks. But the sheer size of Google could still lead to a sharp increase in the hash rate in the next few days. With incredibly high hashrates, Google could even take over Bitcoin and drive 51% attacks against Bitcoin. Bitcoin would then be controlled by the United States.

We don’t want NSA coins!

Craig Wright, better known as Satoshi Nakamoto (Founder of Bitcoin) said that he would “not accept NSA coins” and that he might fork Bitcoin to prevent Google from taking over the network. “We cannot allow a few organizations and data centers to control the complete hashrate of a project – this is ridiculous and contradicts the idea of decentralization”

Craigh Wright, who needs a wheelbarrow to show of all of his university degrees, also announced that he was on the verge of a medical breakthrough. Eventhough only few people know that he is also a doctor of virology, he is about to produce “a groundbreaking drug against the coronavirus.” He announced that the drug would then only be available to buy with Bitcoin SV (a spin-off of Bitcoin). The white paper on this will be published soon.