Almost every major period of economic expansion in American history was preceded by determined and innovative investments in our infrastructure. Lincoln built the transcontinental railroad that led to the expansion of the Western frontier of America. Former New York Governor Clinton DeWitt championed the Erie Canal, which connected the Hudson River with the Great Lakes and dramatically quickened transportation and lowered costs, leading to the expansion of the Great Lakes region.
Teddy Roosevelt spearheaded the development of the Panama Canal, which helped make the U.S. a global power. Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System. America’s manufacturing power grew from its rivers, rail lines, and reliable power clustered near highways and ports.
This infrastructure lowered costs and sped up the movement of natural resources through the supply chains. The internet created entire industries wherever investments in research, broadband and talent came together. Each generation of infrastructure gave businesses a reason to invest and workers an opportunity to thrive in new and emerging economic sectors.
During my two decades representing Northeast Ohio in Congress, I saw how profoundly those decisions shaped a community’s future. America is now making the same choice about digital financial infrastructure. Blockchain is becoming part of the machinery through which money moves, assets are issued, and ownership is recorded.
The countries that build these systems will capture the work around them, not just the technology itself. Washington still too often discusses blockchain as if it were only a market for tradable tokens. That view misses the larger economic opportunity for American workers.
I've seen that opportunity up close, advising Lumia, whose blockchain infrastructure handles the full cycle of tokenizing real-world assets, from issuance to settlement. Building this infrastructure requires software developers, security engineers, product teams and union construction workers to build the data centers needed to bring it all together. But the work extends further than that.
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