What the reserve currency allows is wanton investment: Invest $2 million in 10 startups each, and if even one succeeds, you make back your money 10x through an IPO or ICO. Bavaria has been slowly building up the same financial infrastructure, and profiting from it, but the economic downturn is making it harder because we can't effectively "print money", like California can. Only California can throw billions of dollars around, like it doesn't even matter, because they have so many companies whose shares are effectively "same as cash". Nvidia, Apple, Google, Kaiser Permanente, Disney, OpenAI, etc. etc. Even Microsoft and Tesla used to be from there. Damn near everything is from California. So, USA dominance is effectively Californian dominance. It's not Idaho or Kentucky dominance, after all. Even Texas and New York can't keep up.

But, I agree with you that the American advantage isn't merely financial. There's also the fact that start-ups there aren't burdened by onerous labor-protection laws that make it impossible to lay off expensive, high-tech workers, if the business doesn't work out. It's ridiculous that someone making six figures should receive the same legal protections as common laborers, as they should be expected to build up their own private savings. But that might soon change.