The Cato Institute's latest report puts a number on what most bitcoin users quietly dread: buying a coffee with BTC every day can generate over 100 pages of tax filings a year. That's because the IRS treats every spend as a taxable asset sale — requiring cost basis calculations, gain or loss tracking, and Form 8949 entries for each transaction. The report urges Congress to create a de minimis exemption or eliminate capital gains taxes on bitcoin payments entirely, with the 2026 1099-DA rollout adding fresh urgency to the issue.
Charles Hoskinson argues that BIP-361, Bitcoin's proposed quantum defense, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would functionally require a hard fork — something Bitcoin's culture has always rejected. Worse, he says the proposal's zero-knowledge recovery mechanism only works for wallets built on BIP-39 seed phrases introduced in 2013, leaving roughly 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoin — including an estimated 1.1 million attributed to Satoshi — permanently unrecoverable if the proposal passes.
Drift Protocol, the Solana-based perpetuals exchange drained of $285M in a North Korean exploit on April 1, is relaunching with Tether's backing. Tether is committing up to $127.5M, with partners adding another $20M, in a revenue-linked structure designed to cover roughly $295M in user losses over time. As part of the deal, Drift is ditching Circle's USDC as its settlement layer in favor of USDT — a pointed rebuke given that Circle's refusal to freeze stolen funds during the hack drew fierce criticism from the crypto community.
