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BITCOIN

Bitcoin's political future splits between money and asset

Thursday, March 19, 2026 · from 5 podcasts, 8 episodes
Presidio Bitcoin JamBitcoin And | Bitcoin & E…Citadel DispatchBitcoin And | Bitcoin & E…TFTC: A Bitcoin PodcastBitcoin And | Bitcoin & E…Rabbit Hole RecapBitcoin And | Bitcoin & E…
  • A Trump victory shifts the executive branch from active hostility to potential cabinet-level Bitcoin support, ending the Biden-era regulatory assault.
  • The crypto industry lobby is deprioritizing Bitcoin tax reform in favor of stablecoin and token market structure bills, creating internal conflict.
  • Global governments are deploying financial surveillance and AI enforcement to monitor and tax crypto, eroding privacy despite policy shifts.

The regulatory war on Bitcoin from Washington is about to end, but the battle for its soul is just beginning.

Zach Shapiro of the Bitcoin Policy Institute expects a rapid transformation under a Trump administration. The executive branch will shift from an environment where the SEC, IRS, DOJ, and Treasury were on the attack to one with a president who bought burgers over Lightning. Key positions will be filled with pro-Bitcoin officials. The Overton window has moved.

Congress presents a more complex fight. Bitcoin now competes with other crypto priorities. Senator Lummis’s strategic reserve bill must vie for attention against stablecoin legislation for TradFi giants and market structure bills favored by venture capital.

The biggest obstacle may be Bitcoin’s own industry lobby. Across multiple podcasts, a consistent pattern emerged. According to David Zell on TFTC, lobbyists for firms like Coinbase reportedly asked lawmakers to reorder legislative priorities. They pushed tax reform for Bitcoin transactions to the back of the line, behind rules for token trading and stablecoins. The de minimis exemption, which would treat Bitcoin like money by removing capital gains reporting on small purchases, is being sidelined.

Matt Odell on Rabbit Hole Recap reported sources claiming Coinbase’s team is pushing for that exemption only for stablecoins. Coinbase denies this, but the strategic divide is real. Jack Dorsey’s Block is campaigning for Bitcoin as everyday money, while Coinbase’s commerce tool doesn’t support native Bitcoin. Miles Suter of Bitcoin Magazine argued the stakes are existential: if Bitcoin just becomes digital gold, the mission has failed.

This policy vacuum is being filled by surveillance. David Bennett on Bitcoin And detailed Paraguay’s new rules, which require reporting for any crypto transaction over $5,000, covering everything from mining to transfers between personal wallets. He called it authoritarian. South Korea is investing in AI-powered tax tracking. The push for oversight is global and relentless.

The peer-to-peer fight moves to the courts. Shapiro notes his litigation fund targets the judiciary, where lifetime-appointed judges will decide the rights of developers and individuals to transact freely.

The vision of Bitcoin as neutral, peer-to-peer money is caught between a friendlier White House, a divided industry, and a rising surveillance state. The political shift creates an opening, but internal misalignment could close it.

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.

BTC MarketsAdoptionRegulation

Entities Mentioned

A16ZCompany
BasecampProduct
Bitcoin Policy InstituteCompany
Cash AppProduct
CoinbaseCompany
KalshiCompany
Lightning NetworkProtocol
search_result blocksTool
SquareCompany
TetherCompany

Source Intelligence

What each podcast actually said

Presidio Bitcoin Jam
Presidio Bitcoin Jam

Bitcoin's Branding Problem, AI's Impact on Open Source, Can Spiral's Playbook Work for AI? • Mar 18

  • Square has enabled Bitcoin Lightning payments as a default option for a large portion of its 4 million merchants, moving from a manual to a passive opt-in model.
  • Steve from Presidio Bitcoin Jam argues the user experience remains clunky, as customers likely need to request a separate Lightning invoice QR instead of using the standard Cash App Pay code.
  • Steve notes the primary barrier to adoption is now merchant education and awareness, not just technical enablement, as most won't know they accept Bitcoin or can save on processing fees.
  • Merchants with the feature enabled will not be automatically listed on Bitcoin directory services like BTC Map, requiring advocates to inform them and manually add them.
  • The default settlement for merchants accepting Lightning payments through Square will almost certainly be in dollars, not Bitcoin.
  • The hosts argue that real adoption will still depend on a 'small, rabid community' of Bitcoiners evangelizing at the point of sale to build foundational usage.
  • The envisioned end-state is a single QR code where the customer chooses the Bitcoin payment rail unilaterally and the merchant receives dollars, a seamless flow that does not yet exist.
PaymentsAdoptionLightning
Bitcoin And | Bitcoin & Economic News
Bitcoin And | Bitcoin & Economic News

In A Bad Moody's | Economic News • Mar 18

  • A survey of 2,000 Australians shows crypto payment usage doubled from 6% to 12% in one year, but nearly 30% of investors report banks delaying or rejecting transfers to exchanges.
  • David Bennett argues that Australian banks are refining their crypto opposition by analyzing user behavior, not just transaction size, maintaining a decade-long restrictive posture due to unclear regulation.
  • Bennett suggests Australia's crypto adoption survey likely conflates Bitcoin with stablecoins, muddying the true picture of decentralized currency usage versus fiat-based payments.
  • Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays filed 20 misdemeanor criminal charges against prediction market Kalshi, calling it an illegal gambling operation that bets on elections.
  • David Bennett noted the Kalshi charges are misdemeanors, a surprisingly low severity for a firm valued at $11 billion and seeking a $20 billion valuation while facing lawsuits in multiple states.
  • The BETS OFF bill introduced by Rep. Greg Casar and Sen. Chris Murphy seeks to ban betting on sensitive government operations, with Murphy speculating bets on a U.S.-Israel war with Iran likely came from insiders.
  • David Bennett closed by questioning whether regulators' distinction between gambling and financial innovation is fair or simply serves to block a new form of market-driven information.

Also from this episode:

Politics (1)
  • Senator Chris Murphy argued the core fear is that national security decisions in the Situation Room could be driven by officials with hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on the outcome.
AdoptionPaymentsRegulation

Milei's Malaise | Bitcoin News • Mar 16

  • The SEC dropped its entire case with prejudice against BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji, who was accused of a $257 million scam, citing the evolving crypto regulatory landscape as the reason.
  • Bitcoin And host David Bennett calls the SEC's dismissal of Al-Naji's case a tactical retreat that spotlights selective enforcement, allowing an accused scammer to walk free while prosecuting privacy tool developers like Tornado Cash's Roman Storm.
  • The SEC cautioned that dropping the Al-Naji case does not set a precedent for other crypto enforcement actions, a move Bennett views as highlighting the regulator's inconsistent application of its own rules.
  • HIVE attributed its strategic pivot away from Sweden to the 'misapplication of existing tax rules' by local authorities, which made its ASIC mining business economically unviable.
  • The HIVE relocation highlights a pressure point where nations can squeeze Bitcoin mining through regulatory harassment while openly welcoming the more energy-intensive AI industry.

Also from this episode:

Mining (1)
  • Public Bitcoin miner HIVE is phasing down operations in Sweden and shifting that capacity to build AI data centers in Canada, citing hostile local tax enforcement and operational uncertainty.
Energy (1)
  • David Bennett points out the hypocrisy in environmental groups remaining silent on AI's massive power consumption after years of campaigning against Bitcoin's energy use.
RegulationMiningETFs

Basel's Basil | Bitcoin Regulation • Mar 13

  • Paraguay enacted a law requiring annual reporting for any cryptocurrency transaction exceeding $5,000, with platforms mandated to report wallet addresses, transaction hashes, and counterparty details. David Bennett called the move "absolutely over the top freaking ridiculous" and "authoritarian."
  • The new Paraguayan law's reporting scope is broad, covering purchases, sales, exchanges, mining, staking, yield farming, airdrops, and transfers between a person's own wallets.
  • David Bennett argues that Paraguay's invasive financial surveillance, while framed as anti-money laundering, is more likely to repel foreign investment than attract it.
  • Paraguay's regulatory push aligns with recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force, which has urged countries toward stringent crypto reporting since 2019.
  • South Korea's National Tax Service is developing an AI-powered platform to monitor digital asset transactions and identify tax evasion, with a 3 billion won budget.
  • The global regulatory shift is moving beyond legislation toward active, automated enforcement, using advanced technology for comprehensive crypto taxation and oversight.

Also from this episode:

Stablecoins (2)
  • A report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime claims stablecoins like Tether are gaining relevance as a payment method in the illicit Amazon gold trade, particularly in Venezuela for gold smuggled out of Guyana.
  • David Bennett labeled the report linking stablecoins to illicit gold trading as "bullshit," arguing the criminal enterprise has existed for centuries and the narrative aims to tarnish cryptocurrency by association.
BTC MarketsRegulationPrivacy

Wholly Unholy Matrimony | Bitcoin News • Mar 12

  • The fight for a Bitcoin de minimis tax exemption is exposing a strategic schism between companies building payment infrastructure, which need Bitcoin treated as money, and those content with its status as a taxable digital asset.
  • Podcaster Marty Bent, citing three sources, accused Coinbase of lobbying to limit the de minimis tax exemption to stablecoins only, an accusation echoed by the Bitcoin Policy Institute's Connor Brown.
  • Bitcoin Policy Institute's Connor Brown confirmed a strong political shift in Washington D.C. toward a stablecoin-only de minimis tax rule in recent months, creating headwinds for a broader Bitcoin exemption.
  • Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad called the lobbying accusation a total lie, but CEO Brian Armstrong has not made a definitive public statement, prompting public calls for clarity from Jack Dorsey's Block.
  • Jack Dorsey's Block is campaigning for Bitcoin as everyday money, building Lightning tools for merchants, and argues that a de minimis tax exemption is essential to validate its entire payment infrastructure business model.
  • Block's Miles Suter argues that Bitcoin payments are what validate Bitcoin as money, stating if Bitcoin just becomes digital gold, we failed the mission.
  • Lightning Network volume data from November 2025, showing $1.17 billion across over 5 million transactions, provides the strongest evidence against the political argument that no one is using Bitcoin as money.
  • Cash App processed one in four outbound Lightning Network payments in November 2025, demonstrating significant user adoption of Bitcoin for payments.
  • A powerful faction in Washington D.C. is moving to treat stablecoins as the only viable digital currency for payments, a policy outcome that would cement Bitcoin's status solely as a capital asset.
BTC MarketsAdoptionPaymentsRegulation
Citadel Dispatch
Citadel Dispatch

CD195: VEXL - P2P NO KYC BITCOIN • Mar 16

  • Zach Shapiro says the Trump administration is poised to rapidly replace key Biden-era, anti-Bitcoin officials at the SEC, IRS, DOJ, and Treasury with a pro-Bitcoin cabinet.
  • According to Shapiro, the executive branch shift will move from a posture of attacking developers and non-custodial tools to one led by a president who has used Bitcoin's Lightning Network.
  • Shapiro cites Gary Gensler's hostile ETF approval, SAB 121 blocking banks, and the IRS's expanded broker definition as hallmarks of the Biden administration's regulatory assault.
  • Shapiro argues the primary policy battlefield will shift from the executive branch to Congress, where Bitcoin legislation must now compete with stablecoin and market structure bills favored by traditional finance and crypto VCs.
  • Zach Shapiro claims Wall Street's embrace of Bitcoin via ETFs has reduced career risk for supporters and brought mainstream legitimacy, which can act as an on-ramp to the network and potentially to self-custody.
  • Shapiro contends that the enduring legal battles for peer-to-peer rights will be fought in the judiciary through his litigation fund, targeting lifetime-appointed judges insulated from political shifts.
ETFsRegulationNation-StateAdoption
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

#727: Orange Pilling The Deep State with David Zell • Mar 16

  • David Zell argues the cryptocurrency industry lobby, led by Coinbase and backed by Ripple and A16Z, is spending its political capital on regulatory frameworks for token trading rather than on Bitcoin-focused tax reforms.
  • Zell claims the lobby successfully reshuffled the legislative priorities of Bitcoin-friendly lawmakers like Senator Cynthia Lummis, pushing for token market structure and stablecoin regulation to take precedence over making Bitcoin usable as currency.
  • A key Bitcoin-specific policy being sidelined, according to Zell, is the de minimis tax exemption, which would treat small Bitcoin transactions as money and remove a barrier to its use as everyday currency.
  • Zell notes that while executives like Coinbase's Brian Armstrong speak in favor of such tax reform, there is little evidence of the crypto lobby spending political capital to advance it, with Coinbase having declined to sign an industry letter supporting the exemption last year.
  • The fundamental misalignment, per Zell, is between Bitcoin's monetary use case and the crypto industry's commercial focus on what he calls the 'token casino' and stablecoin yield.
  • Zell sees the incentive structure as clear, arguing that market structure regulation benefits crypto businesses more directly than removing transaction taxes for Bitcoin users.
  • The lesson for Bitcoin advocates from this episode, according to Zell, is that political influence for Bitcoin's monetary priorities must be actively defended and cannot be assumed, even from within the broader digital asset industry.
BTC MarketsRegulationETFsAdoptionPayments
Rabbit Hole Recap
Rabbit Hole Recap

RABBIT HOLE RECAP #400: COINBASE FIGHTS BITCOIN • Mar 12

  • According to Matt Odell, citing two sources, Coinbase lobbyists are pushing Washington to prioritize a de minimis tax exemption for stablecoins while sidelining a similar exemption for Bitcoin payments.
  • A de minimis tax exemption would remove a major barrier to Bitcoin as everyday money by eliminating capital gains reporting on small purchases like coffee.
  • Odell argues that seeking a de minimis exemption for stablecoins is redundant, as they are pegged to the dollar and any taxable gain is inherently minimal.
  • Coinbase's product focus, such as its commerce tool supporting only wrapped bitcoin on Ethereum or Base, not native Bitcoin, signals the firm's historical alignment with 'shitcoin land' over Bitcoin-as-money, according to the show.
  • In the broader crypto market structure bill FIT21, the only provision seen as favorable to Bitcoin core principles, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act protecting open-source developers, is reportedly intact due to Senator Lummis's efforts.
  • Odell contends the rest of the FIT21 Act is designed primarily to grease the wheels for token casinos and speculative crypto markets, not to support Bitcoin's foundational use cases.
  • The episode frames this lobbying report as part of a recurring pattern where the broader crypto industry sacrifices Bitcoin user interests, like developer protection and self-custody rights, to prioritize its own speculative agenda.
BTC MarketsPaymentsRegulation

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