A new political era is set to end the regulatory war on Bitcoin, but a separate battle with the crypto industry is just beginning.
On Citadel Dispatch, Zach Shapiro of the Bitcoin Policy Institute outlined a rapid executive branch reversal. The Biden administration's coordinated pressure from the SEC, IRS, and Treasury will give way to a Trump cabinet filled with Bitcoin holders and advocates. Shapiro called the shift from an environment attacking developers to a president who paid for burgers over the Lightning Network a night-and-day change.
Yet the legislative path is more complex. According to David Zell on TFTC, the cryptocurrency lobby, led by firms like Coinbase, is spending its political capital elsewhere. They have successfully pushed lawmakers to prioritize market structure bills for token trading and stablecoin regulation over foundational Bitcoin reforms like the de minimis tax exemption, which would treat small transactions as spending money.
The industry's commercial incentives are misaligned with Bitcoin's use as currency. Zell noted that while executives voice support for tax reform, they deprioritize it in practice, forcing Bitcoin advocates to defend their interests actively.
Elsewhere, regulatory inconsistencies highlight a persistent double standard. On Bitcoin And, host David Bennett pointed to the SEC dropping its $257 million case against BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji 'with prejudice' while continuing to prosecute Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Bennett's reaction was blunt: Roman can rot in jail, but scammer man goes free.
Adoption faces its own entrenched friction. Despite Square enabling Lightning payments for millions of merchants, the Presidio Bitcoin Jam noted the rollout is passive and clunky, requiring grassroots evangelism. In Australia, banks are still blocking or delaying transfers to exchanges even as crypto payment usage doubled to 12%.
The incoming political shift offers Bitcoin a reprieve from hostile regulators, but the fight for its monetary future is moving to new fronts: a distracted Congress, a hypocritical enforcement regime, and a crypto lobby with different goals.
Zach Shapiro, Citadel Dispatch:
- If you look at the way that the Biden Administration looked at Bitcoin and crypto at large, multiple parts of the government seemed to be on all-out attack.
- Going from that to having a president that bought burgers over the Lightning Network at PubKey, that’s appointing not just pro-Bitcoin people but people that understand and hold Bitcoin into really key roles up to the cabinet level, that’s really night and day.
