Imagine every swipe of your card turning into a tax form. That’s what happens when spending Bitcoin. If you buy a coffee with Bitcoin, the government makes you pay capital gains taxes on top of sales taxes. Spending Bitcoin daily can turn into 70 pages in tax filings. It's time to put an end to this mess.

What's the big expected result of the Bank of Korea testing its CBDC? Accelerating financial surveillance.

Never a dull moment at Pubkey

Excited to finally attend BTC Prague, and as a speaker no less!

Absolutely wild exchange. Rep Himes says, as lead Dem on intelligence oversight, that the NSA isn't surveilling Americans. Someone points out that Congress already confirmed the NSA is actively surveilling Americans. Rep. Himes says he didn't know.

In other news, I’m suing the government for covering up its plans to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC). https://www.cato.org/blog/why-im-suing-government

How do central bankers consistently get history wrong? Is it ignorance or lying? Fed governor Michael Barr tries to say failures in free banking justify being skeptical of stablecoins. The problem? Those failures were caused by overly restrictive laws and regulations.

I'm incredibly proud to announce the Activist Atlas. @Run with Bitcoin and I have noticed that connections between activists often fall apart in the chaos of this world. That means mistakes made get repeated and lessons learned go unheard. That Activist Atlas will change that. It will be a digital platform that allows changemakers to stay connected, discover one another’s work, and coordinate year-round while introducing freedom technologies like Bitcoin for donations and Nostr for censorship-resistant communication. A huge thank you goes to the @HRF for making this possible. Their grant will support the launch and help us grow a global network of activists using freedom tech. Stay tuned for more announcements soon.

In other news that reads like an April Fool's joke but isn't... The Federal Reserve has a closet with $1.4 million worth of laptops that were unaccounted for.

No, this is not an April Fool's Day joke. This list really is everything policymakers claim a CBDC will do. https://www.cato.org/blog/cbdcs-cant-give-you-everything-everywhere-all-once

What should be done about stablecoins? The Reserve Bank of India says governments need to promote CBDCs. He says CBDCs are superior... as long as you assume every other country also has a CBDC.

Well, I guess that settles that.

Am I the only one who finds the royal we frustrating? Every time I hear “we did this as a nation,” I find myself thinking “We? I had no part in that.”

Roses are red, Violets are blue. Love should be private, And money should too.

After hearing opposition to the digital euro, MEP Lukas Sieper suggests that cash is only for criminals so the EU needs a CBDC.

LIVE NOW: ECB President Christine Lagarde says cash can't be used online so Europe needs a CBDC.

Apparently this is a hot take, but no party should be using gerrymandering to artificially draw lines and cut off voices of the other party. Don’t say you value democracy if you support your party doing this.

Step 1: Campaign against CBDCs Step 2: Become President and issue an EO against CBDCs Step 3: Nominate the one pro-CBDC candidate, Kevin Warsh, for Federal Reserve Chair? Trump really is the president of contradictions.

The ECB isn't hiding it. Europeans will be forced to use the digital euro.

We've all seen Brian Armstrong set the record straight at the World Economic Forum when the Banque de France governor said he doesn't trust the company running bitcoin. But did you know that's not the only thing the governor got wrong? https://www.cato.org/blog/french-central-bank-wrong Villeroy de Galhau also tried to appeal to history by pointing to the experience of free banking in the United States. He described this era as suffering from “many crises of confidence.” He did so in an attempt to undermine trust in private money, but the only trust undermined here should be that in governments. What he didn’t say is that crises occurred during this period in large part because of the laws and regulations in place that made banks unstable. My colleague, George Selgin, has gone to great lengths to correct this record. The general public may be forgiven for not knowing this history, but central bankers have no excuse. Villeroy de Galhau then said gold was a “sovereign asset” governed by the state. However, this claim is similarly misleading. The use of gold as money predates legal tender laws. Villeroy de Galhau took this opportunity to also say that CBDCs are the next evolution of money. If CBDCs are an “evolution” of anything, they reflect the evolution of state control over monetary systems—not a natural progression arising from the market. Turning away from the forum, Villeroy de Galhau also mentioned his support for CBDCs in his “New Year’s address.” Curiously, he said, “2026 will see the first central bank digital currency.” Taken as written, this statement is wrong. The first CBDC was arguably created in 1992. That project died, but CBDCs have seen a resurgence. China, India, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia, The Bahamas, and others have all launched CBDCs in one form or another. So, in the first 21 days of 2026, the Banque de France governor managed to get it wrong on Bitcoin, US history, gold, and CBDCs. That track record is almost as bad as central banks managing inflation.