Six years ago, Kyle Bass provided a crucial context for the debt-laden world of ever-increasing sovereign debt:

“Buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It’s That Simple”

And now, as interest in Bitcoin surges, Arthur Hayes, a former CitiGroup trader who runs BitMEX – a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange – asks an interesting question – In the coming war between digital currencies, which side will your money be on?

As CoinDesk reports, Hayes thinks blockchain is lighting a fuse that will ignite open combat between “true cryptocurrencies” (like bitcoin) and a new “digital fiat” controlled by central banks.

These two parallel currency systems are the inevitable outcome of his core investing thesis:

“A digital society needs digital cash.”

In other words, bitcoin has brought the world cryptocurrency and institutions of all kinds will use the technology to their advantage.

Here’s what Hayes sees shaking out as a result: Governments will respond to the proliferation of cryptocurrency by withdrawing banknotes from circulation, and governments will issue digital fiat that functions similarly to cryptocurrency.

But don’t be fooled, according to Hayes, the similarities here are all on the surface.

Government-controlled digital fiat will be the antithesis of absolutely everything true cryptocurrency stands for. Central bank’s issuance of digital money will lead to a brave new world where governments are able to monitor and control every single transaction in an economy.

And countering that overreach is the reason Hayes believes bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have a value proposition not just today, but for years to come.

When Hayes talks about digital money, he sees the scope of battle on a truly global scale, not just within the U.S., but all across Europe, in China and in India.