I'm a skeptic but am open to changing my opinion here.
Where is the arbitrage?
The underlying tech, blockchain, has a lot of potential. That doesn't mean that BTC will live on.
The govt let this get away from them. Once the current admin figured out the severity of their problem, it was too late to make one big move to kill it. Now they have to kill it off slowly or risk pissing off a lot of voters.
I owned a lot of eth but exited my position as I couldn't see a future for it. It's safer for me to speculate with land.
The arbitrage is the volatility (priced in fiat) since it's inception. But that volatility is decreasing. In 2030, we won't be seeing big swings in bitcoin's price, it will become very boring, and you won't be able to make anything from buying and selling.
Today, you can still make money from the cycles bitcoin goes through, due to it's mining and then halvening process. In the future, those mechanics will have less of an effect on it's price.
I think you will see btc become the base asset that things will be backed by. I don't know which other chains or technologies will win out, but other countries are moving forward with crypto.
As to the US govt, they are not being smart about this.
As an American, more and more we find ourselves not being able to participate in the new financial system. More and more exchanges won't let you on their platform if you're from or reside in the US. If you flip that thinking upside down, it looks more like the rest of the world is actually free, and the US is the restrictive country.
Personally, I don't care what the US govt does.. because it is losing control over the new financial system.
I have a theory that the US Dollar will remain the reserve currency for now, however the federal reserve and the US will lose control over it's issuance.
Right now, only the US has the control to issue USD Fiat.. that won't change.
But USD based stable coins can be minted and backed by btc, or other baskets of assets, which is what is happening on other chains.
So the US govt can try to ban or classify x, y or z token (i.e. Tron, BSC, etc) as a security, but the reality is, in the new financial world, others can and will mint USD stable coins and the free market will determine if they succeed or fail..
in effect, the US Govt is losing control over the currency's issuance.
I haven't heard anyone talk about this theory yet, it's just something I have been thinking about.. but I have zero concerns about crypto and the US govt.. it has indeed gotten away from them, and they aren't putting it back in any bottle.