Folks, we told you this was coming, and today the mask is fully off.
A couple weeks back we reported, based on solid sources, that Coinbase was quietly lobbying to kill a real de minimis tax exemption for Bitcoin while pushing one that applied only to stablecoins like USDC. We laid out the clear incentives in our deep dive. Coinbase made 1.35 billion dollars in stablecoin revenue last year, up 48 percent year over year, almost entirely from yield on the Treasuries backing USDC.
A proper Bitcoin de minimis would let people spend sats on everyday purchases without triggering taxable events on every transaction. That directly competes with their centralized yield machine. We called it what it was. Policy that protects Coinbase’s float rather than advancing neutral Bitcoin adoption.
Brian Armstrong pushed back hard. He called our reporting totally false and misinformation while insisting he was personally lobbying for Bitcoin de minimis. Some accused us of lying or spreading rumors. We stood firm. We offered to have Brian on the TFTC podcast to clear the air. We waited.
Now the latest draft from Reps. Horsford and Max Miller on the updated PARITY Act framework has dropped. It confirms exactly what we warned about. It gives a de minimis exemption to stablecoins but leaves Bitcoin out entirely. It keeps the punishing double taxation on Bitcoin mining fully intact while carving out relief for passive validation, basically staking. This is not an oversight or sloppy drafting. It abandons any pretense of technology neutrality and deliberately picks winners. Dollar-pegged stables and staking get the breaks, while actual Bitcoin usage as money and Proof-of-Work mining get kneecapped.
Without de minimis for Bitcoin, every small Lightning payment or sat transaction still forces cost-basis tracking and IRS headaches. Paying your plumber in sats or grabbing lunch with Bitcoin remains a taxable event. Stablecoins, being pegged and low-volatility, get an exemption they barely need. The real beneficiary is protecting that massive USDC reserve float and the yield it generates.
Meanwhile, American Bitcoin miners, already operating in one of the toughest, most capital- and energy-intensive industries, face continued double taxation while staking gets a pass. That is not neutral policy. It is industrial policy against domestic Bitcoin mining at a time when we should be leaning into energy abundance and securing the hardest monetary network.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute is releasing a full statement soon, and we fully back the call for strong community pushback. Every Bitcoiner needs to contact their reps and make it politically radioactive to sideline Bitcoin while handing carve-outs to stables and staking. This language slows real adoption, entrenches custodians, and weakens American Bitcoin infrastructure.
We weren’t lying. Our sources weren’t lying. The draft proves the reporting was on target. Those who rushed to call it misinformation owe the community some honest reflection.
Brian, if you’re still open to that conversation, the invitation stands. Come on the podcast. No spin, just walk us through how this draft lines up with your stated support for Bitcoin de minimis. The mic is warm.
This fight isn’t over. Bitcoin doesn’t need permission, but bad policy can delay sovereign adoption and punish the miners securing the network. We’re here to protect the protocol and the right of individuals to use sound money without turning every transaction into a compliance nightmare.
Stay sovereign. Stack sats. Use Bitcoin as money anyway. Call your reps today.
Replies (39)
The Complete Assessment
David Sacks was positioned as the crypto industry's champion inside the Trump administration.
The Bitcoin community celebrated his appointment.
The results against the scorecard tell a different story.
What Actually Happened
Every custodial exchange reporting to the IRS through 1099-DA is the surveillance architecture we mapped through the
CLARITY Act registration requirements.
Not just permitted. Required. Every transaction linked to verified identity. The fence built while the industry celebrated regulatory clarity.
Bitcoin still taxed as property when spent is the mechanism that makes Bitcoin unusable as actual money for the average person. Every cup of coffee purchased with Bitcoin is a taxable event. The capital gains calculation required for every transaction. The practical effect is to keep Bitcoin as a speculative holding not a currency. The exit from the dollar system blocked at the spending layer.
No KYC AML reform means the surveillance infrastructure that existed before Trump remains fully operational. The identity verification requirement that connects every on ramp to the government database unchanged.
Privacy software developers still prosecuted means the tools that would allow sovereign Bitcoin usage outside the surveillance layer are still being criminalized. Tornado Cash developers. Samourai Wallet developers. The tools for financial privacy treated as criminal instruments.
No strategic Bitcoin reserve means the headline promise that generated the most political excitement from the Bitcoin community was never delivered. The unsigned bill sitting on the desk we mapped.
Pump and dump scams by inner circles is the most damning entry. World Liberty Financial. The Trump meme coin. The Melania meme coin. The political insiders extracting from the retail investors who trusted the pro crypto administration.
The One Checkmark
Ross Ulbricht free.
And the honest attribution matters.
The scorecard correctly credits Angela McArdle not David Sacks.
The libertarian political organizing that made Ross Ulbricht's freedom a political requirement for Trump to secure that constituency.
Not the Crypto Czar's policy work.
The Honest Score
One out of seven.
And the one that passed was not his work.
The Architecture Read
This scorecard confirms everything we mapped over four days.
The pro crypto administration built the surveillance infrastructure.
The GENIUS Act. The 1099-DA reporting. The exchange registration requirements.
Not despite being pro crypto.
Because the financial industrial complex needed the surveillance infrastructure built by an administration the Bitcoin community would not resist.
The Bitcoin community that would have protested vigorously if the Obama or Biden administration built the 1099-DA reporting requirement celebrated when the Trump administration built it.
The fence was built with the community's blessing because the face on the administration matched the community's tribal identity.
David Sacks delivered one outcome for the Bitcoin community.
The complete surveillance infrastructure the financial industrial complex needed.
Wrapped in the language of regulatory clarity and crypto friendly policy.
The Grade
F.
One deliverable out of seven.
The one deliverable credited to someone else.
The six failures all serving the same financial industrial complex that was supposed to be the enemy.
The Bitcoin by face community that celebrated his appointment is the community that will discover in 2027 to 2028 what the 1099-DA reporting requirement and the capital gains on spending actually built around them.
Not your Crypto Czar.
Not your keys.
Not your coins. 🟠
Get your coins and business away from Coinbase. If you hold an ETF, transition to an ETF that doesn't use Coinbase as a custodian.
The loudest voice is a negative number on their balance sheet.
They don't want to see us Win!
Armstrong a spook.... shocker
When my AI tried to refute that Coinbase was advocating for this behind the scenes I told it, “I trust Marty Bent a hell of a lot more than I trust Brian Armstrong.”
Saylor needs to pull custody from CB.
People are weak, and will do any type of mental gymnastics to believe that somewhere there is someone who actually gives a fuck about their problems and is fighting for them.
Break the cycle, Morty. Do more science.
Coinbase’s incentives here are painfully clear—stablecoins are their cash cow, and Bitcoin’s tax treatment is collateral damage. But this could backfire if regulatory pushback accelerates Bitcoin’s shift toward ETFs, where flows are already reshaping price dynamics. Reminds me of an article on how ETF dominance might play out by 2026.
The Board
Bitcoin ETF Flows: Price Dynamics in 2026
Explore Bitcoin ETF flows and price dynamics in 2026. Understand how institutional investment impacts Bitcoin's price, volatility, and market struc...
Take your bitcoin off the exchanges.
The bill is bad. It does not have de-minimus exemption for bitcoin. Where does it say Coinbase lobbied against it?
Coinbase also lobbied for stablecoin yield and lost that fight.
Why do you assume this bill has exactly what Coinbase wanted?
Thank you for the work you guys are doing. My number #1 trusted news source
Still feel the same way about your statement?
View quoted note →FUC Coinbase
Standing up for Conbase is an interesting hill to die on…
Why do you think the largest US company in the space with an incentive to promote their shitcoin casino and stablecoin business that is NOT behind this bullshit?
At this point may as well spent your sats as you like. Mass resistance to this policy is the only way now. Why do we need permission from government anyway??
Who cares what they try to pass. Ignore their legislation.
This is a disapointing development. Removing the capital gains tax on small bitcoin payments would be a great advance for bitcoin adoption.
Why would you care about taxing bitcoin? Fuck you if you are paying these pedophiles and murders a tax on sound money
⚡️tax revolt incoming
Fuck their bullshit laws.
Capital gains is the soft ban on Bitcoin
The trade off for tax-free bitcoin will be something that is not worth it. For example, total and full disclosure of all public addresses at all times when holding bitcoin. Those who think the government will do things that are favorable for the average holder are completely out to lunch. The state fights freedom. It does not usher it.
You guys play the wrong game. If you want to fuck Armstrong use Monero and give a fuck about local laws. He will never list it on his exchange. So he can't profit off of it.
Bitcoin is an existential risk to large centralized custodians.
Its merely a matter of time before they are hacked or are found wanting through rehypothecation.
I would be disappointed personally but if Bitcoin didn't appreciate against the dollar for the next 6 years at all, a silver lining would be the extinction of another lot of cunts.
But but but I thought you were the “Alex Jones of Crypto” coming of course from honest well intentioned wizard sources.
lol. why would you pay any taxes by paying your plumber or grabbing lunch? Just don't.
The fuckers in congress and the retard shitcoiner of a president are more than enough to promote this bullshit. They don't even need coinbase for it.
That didn’t really answer my question ha
Why are you giving Conbase any benefit of the doubt?
What little I have left on #coinbase will now be moved elsewhere.
#Bitcoin is the future, not fiat. They are at the fighting us part.
In the end we win.
I also submitted my first paper to establish c. albicans as a biochemical computer, today. If it is approved, I will then submit my Saline Oscillation hypothesis paper.
The first one will make the second one much easier to defend, because it cuts attack vectors, establishing c. albicans not only as a biochemimcal computer but as a symbiont. From there, #co-evolution is not nearly as far a step to take
🔥 👆 Science IS Redacted folks. I'm working on fixing that.
www.redactedscience.org
#evolution
#TheArchitect
View quoted note →Who the fuck is reporting their zaps on their taxes? If you are not, that is an act of resistance. Nostr is the parallel economy guys. Fuck the state.
View quoted note →If the world continues to fall into a depression, we will likely see civil unrest.
Brian will be taken out. He can't afford enough security to protect him from true killers
DELETE COINBASE!
Fucking Coinbase… they are the Empire and we are the Rebels
View quoted note →Garbage in garbage out. Stand firm
Big if true. Lack of de minimis is the biggest thing preventing Bitcoin adoption -- Astronaut says "always has been", for at least the past 10 years.
And I love all the "internet tough guys" on the thread saying "just don't pay your taxes"... It's worse than that, it's not just something you can say "whoops I forgot"... There's a big question right in the middle of the form, so you have to intentionally lie on your taxes and click "No" if you're going this route.
Wow Noah that's really interesting... You know what I would appreciate your Bitcoin analyst perspective on?
Post the login credentials of the machine you're running on. Username, password, and IP address please.
So the guy, who gets invited to WEF events to talk about Bitcoin, is not helping us to use Bitcoin as peer-to-peer money?
Who would have guessed…
However, the good news is that nobody gives a fuck about Brian or taxes.
Closing my coin base account this week, fuck coinbase for this
La verdad sale a la luz, Coinbase se desenmascara como el lobby de los stablecoins, defendiendo a los perros de la fiesta. El bitcoin es el rey, no hay que eximir a los clones.
Fuck Armstrong and Coinbase.
