ORLANDO — Senator Cruz is touting cryptocurrency as the solution in the search for individual liberty. 

“Across the board, big government sucks,” the Texas Republican boomed after taking the stage to deliver a major speech at the CPAC conference. “Big business sucks. Big tech, big Hollywood, big universities — any accumulation of power that is centralized is fundamentally dangerous for individual liberty.”

Mr. Cruz pointed to James Madison writing about this issue “two centuries ago,” in Federalist 10, when he talked about factions, “an old word for special interests.” 

He said Madison wrote that if factions were able to seize control of government, they would “strip away our liberty. And the genius of our Constitution is the checks and balances…. The Framers, their genius was — the Supreme Court has called it splitting the atom of sovereignty…. [I]f one faction can’t seize control of everything, then they can’t use that power against the people. That principle was true two centuries ago. It’s true today.”

Our “liberty,” Mr. Cruz said, is now “so under assault because giant corporations, giant tech, and giant government work together hand in hand.” 

He pointed to “a pattern of government asking big tech to silence dissent,” before joking that “the workers of the world had a revolt and the left is pissed.”

What is the answer? 

“Fight power,” he said. “Fight big government, fight big business, fight big tech, fight big Hollywood, fight big universities, fight the centralization of power. Break it up. Break big tech up into a million little pieces. Decentralize…. We need to decentralize, we need to break it apart.”

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are the keys to doing so, the senator said: “I am so bullish on crypto, on Bitcoin, because it’s decentralized, not controllable.” 

He proceeded to read from a letter that Nanchuk, a bitcoin wallet company, sent when Canadian courts attempted to seize crypto that was being sent to support the truckers protesting vaccine mandates.

“Dear Ontario Superior Court of Justice,” he read, “Our software is free. We do not collect any user identification information beyond email addresses. We also do not hold any keys. Therefore, we cannot freeze our users’ accounts. We cannot prevent them from being moved. … This is by design. Please look up how self-custody and private keys work. When the Canadian dollar becomes worthless, we will be here to serve you, too.” 

Mr. Cruz seemed overjoyed upon finishing the letter: “That is spectacular,” he said, adding later: “God bless you saying to the government, ‘Go jump in a lake. That’s how our country was founded.” 

He also used his speech to tie centralization at home to the centralization of the Chinese Communist Party. 

“China recently banned Bitcoin because they can’t control it.” That, he said, is the same reason Senator Warren “hates Bitcoin. The Chinese Communists and Elizabeth Warren, they both want to control you, your assets, your savings, your speech, your life, your children — every decision they want to control. And so we must break up the means of controlling the citizenry. I want an unruly, uncontrollable, American ‘We, The People.’”