Crypto

Four years of Trumpian crypto regulation: What might we see?

Published

1 year ago

November 30, 2024

Four years of Trumpian crypto regulation: What might we see?

Analysis The 2024 presidential election tipped the United States into a new era of uncertainty, but one thing’s for sure: The crypto industry was triumphant.

Hundreds of pro-crypto lawmakers were elected earlier this month, alongside Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race. The cryptocurrency industry reportedly spent millions of dollars (in fiat currency, ironically) supporting candidates and platforms advocating for policies that could expand the Bitcoin-driven cryptocurrency sector.

Shortly after Trump’s election victory, Bitcoin advocates from the non-profit Satoshi Action Fund sent out an email congratulating the industry, while CEO Dennis Porter talked up legislative priorities alongside the promise that “our team will have direct lines to senior government officials” in the coming years.

That naturally raises the question of what sort of policies the cryptocurrency world would like to see enacted in Trump’s second term behind the Resolute desk. We pinned Porter down to discuss the matter between events in his busy schedule.

Priorities in the crypto community aren’t unified, Porter told us in a phone interview.

“You have a lot of excitement around the strategic Bitcoin reserves, but I think it’s also important that the folks in Washington, DC get some of the more basic structures across the finish line,” Porter said, referring to legislation like FIT21, which is designed in theory to place some basic regulatory structures on the crypto world and assign government bodies to manage the rules.

Porter admitted that the Trump team hasn’t said anything about supporting market definition legislation or other basic structure rules for Bitcoin and its relatives – “but, I mean, they’ve got to be supportive of the market structural legislation,” he suggested.

One area that Trump has expressed support for publicly is the aforementioned “strategic Bitcoin reserve” – an idea that the US federal government should invest in Bitcoin as a store of value similar to the gold reserve or other commodities.

“There’s clear signaling from the Trump camp – which will soon be the Trump administration – that they’re very interested in this policy,” Porter observed. “Trump endorsed that type of legislation at the Bitcoin conference right after Senator [Cynthia] Lummis introduced her legislation, the Bitcoin Act of 2024.”

That Act, which hasn’t budged since being introduced in the Senate in late July, would establish a program to allow the Department of the Treasury to buy as much as one million Bitcoins over five years, with a minimum holding period of 20 years before any coins in reserve could be sold, swapped, auctioned “or otherwise disposed of for any purpose other than retiring outstanding Federal debt instruments.”

Bitcoin dreams vs Bitcoin realities

Crypto opponent Molly White – who recently wrote about what Trump’s win could mean for the crypto industry – isn’t so sure Porter’s hopes, or the industry’s plans, match up with the reality of crypto’s history.

“There’s this industry talking point that, you know, we just want clear, responsible regulation,” White told The Register. “That’s pretty much the line you’ll get from anyone who’s working on this stuff.

“When you actually look at what they have supported in the past and how they have reacted to various proposals that would add more clarity or define stuff, the crypto industry basically unilaterally opposes it,” White added.

White cited FIT21 as an exception to the crypto industry’s general opposition to regulation, but noted a significant caveat: the bill reduces the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) authority over cryptocurrencies. It does so by excluding “investment contract assets” from the definition of federal securities – effectively narrowing the SEC’s jurisdiction over digital assets.

No regulations have changed that would prevent another FTX from happening. And now the crypto industry is actually trying to reduce regulations.

“They want regulation inasmuch as they want their interpretation that crypto assets do not fall under the SEC and therefore are not regulated by the SEC,” White explained. “I don’t think most reasonable people would say that that’s regulation in any sort of normal sense.

“If you look at it, no regulations have changed that would prevent another FTX from happening,” White added. “And now the crypto industry is actually trying to reduce regulations.”

As for the strategic Bitcoin reserve, White said she doesn’t think the idea will get very far – especially Trump’s vision of it, which differs significantly from what most of the crypto community supports. There she’s referring to the policy espoused by Lummis and Trump’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who made his pitches shortly before Trump announced his idea at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, in July.

RFK Jr’s proposal would have led to the US buying as many as four million Bitcoins at the rate of 550 a day, while also pointing out that Trump previously called the digicoins a scam.

Trump, on the other hand, promised to use Bitcoin seized by the federal government as part of investigations into crimes involving stolen bitcoins, or those used for illegal purposes.

“[Trump’s idea] doesn’t even make sense. He’s talking about it as like, these are Bitcoins that were stolen from you, and so we’re gonna keep them,” White observed. “Once court cases are over and the assets are firmly forfeited, they’re usually sold and then returned to victims.”

That wouldn’t happen, presumably, under Trump’s plan. Though White acknowledged that return programs often end up with Bitcoin going unclaimed by people who wish to remain anonymous.

No matter how you swing it, White told us, “I don’t have much faith that either [BTC reserve proposal] will come to pass.”

But what about the environment?

Cryptocurrency mining using proof-of-work – the technique used by Bitcoin and many of its derivatives to verify transactions and create new coins – is incredibly energy and water intensive. Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption, run by data scientist Alex de Vries, estimates that a single Bitcoin transaction eats up the same amount of electricity as the average US household uses in almost a month.

When asked how the crypto community plans to address all that energy consumption and electronic waste generated – which will only grow if Bitcoin becomes more popular – Porter had two recommendations.

First, the Satoshi Action Fund is pushing for the use of orphaned oil and gas wells – of which there are more than 120,000 across the country – to generate energy for Bitcoin mining. Many of those wells are leaky, and many also lack a custodian to keep seals working properly and prevent the emission of methane and other greenhouse gasses. If we were to put mining operations at those abandoned wells we could eliminate some of that spillage, argued Porter.

“Ultimately, that’s really good for the environment in a number of different ways,” Porter told us. “You have the reduction of methane going into the atmosphere. Additionally methane can leak into the groundwater and cause contamination.

“The chance that the next EPA administrator could come in and actually do something about it would be, I think, a huge win for the environment,” Porter added. He’s confident that Satoshi Action will have a willing ear at the EPA – Porter’s cofounder, Mandy Gunasekara, spent several years at the EPA, part of it as chief of staff in the latter year of Trump’s first presidency.

Second, Porter advocates for attaching Bitcoin mining operations to renewable energy facilities to avoid curtailing energy from sources like wind and solar during periods of underutilization. When asked why we shouldn’t prioritize energy storage modules like batteries for times of excess need, Porter told us batteries are expensive, and also need additional infrastructure to support the distribution of power.

Much better to just slap a mining rig in there to eat up that excess juice, he argued.

“I guess that’s sort of an argument, that it’s better than literally nothing at all,” White explained when asked what she thought about burning leaking methane or using excess renewable energy on Bitcoin mining. “But it doesn’t actually change the fact that these gasses are being burned for this purpose.”

White doesn’t believe the argument for deploying cryptocurrency mining infrastructure at renewable or abandoned wells is a compelling one – especially given crypto miners already have thin margins and tend to try to mine as cheaply as possible.

That, and White believes Trump is unlikely to pay much attention to greening the Bitcoin mining process.

“Bitcoiners who are pro-Trump and also think that environmental causes will be followed under Trump just need to look at some of his appointments who are talking about basically reinvigorating the entire US oil industry,” White observed. “If any Bitcoin renewable projects do well in the next couple of years, I think it will be largely incidental.”

In the meantime, expect Bitcoin’s energy footprint to grow if, as Porter suggested, “Bitcoin is very undervalued” and could reach “upwards of $13 million per coin.”

“Roughly 60 percent of the price value will ultimately end up as electricity costs, so for a $100k Bitcoin that means the electricity cost per coin could be $60k, which comes down to 1,200,000 kWh per BTC at 5 cents per kWh,” Digiconimist’s de Vries told us in an email. “I should however warn against simply multiplying this with a factor ten to get the impact for a $1m Bitcoin. Such a steep increase would certainly massively boost energy consumption.”

Bitcoin’s value rallied in the wake of Trump’s election, but it hasn’t managed to hit $100k yet. And it’s falling again, losing nearly $7,000 in value in the past five days.

If Bitcoin wins, most of us stand to lose

Porter’s wishes for a Bitcoin-fueled future are, like much of the crypto industry’s projects, just that: wishes. Bitcoin strategic reserves are largely untested outside of countries like El Salvador, which has seen financial gains since Trump’s election on the price rally, but which saw its credit downgraded prior to BTC’s rally. Mining at abandoned wells is largely theoretical too, as is using curtailed renewable energy to mine.

In the meantime, all this Bitcoin advocacy is pushing the price – and the energy footprint – up.

The only blessing in the 2022 cryptocurrency wipeout was that people without crypto investments were pretty much entirely insulated from the carnage.

White is also concerned that a pro-crypto regime could weaken the barricade between the crypto industry and the rest of the economy if the Trump administration legitimizes it with new policies.

“The only blessing in the 2022 cryptocurrency wipeout was that people without crypto investments were pretty much entirely insulated from the carnage,” White wrote in her blog post shortly after the election. With Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary a big proponent of Bitcoin, that legitimization could mean that future crypto volatility will begin to affect the broader US economy. That shakiness has already shown itself as the price of Bitcoin fell this week.

“I fear we may soon wave goodbye to such a firewall as Trump’s crypto-enthusiastic administration and the new Congress allow crypto to enmesh itself within the broader financial and banking system,” White predicted.

Whether any of this comes to pass, of course, is just as easy to predict as Bitcoin’s day-to-day price. Like many things with the Trump administration, mercuriality is the only real rule. ®

Crypto

Op-Ed by Corbin Fraser, CEO of Bitcoin.com: The Bitcoin President Is Making Our Case for Us

Published

10 hours ago

April 8, 2026

Press Room

Op-Ed by Corbin Fraser, CEO of Bitcoin.com: The Bitcoin President Is Making Our Case for Us

What a difference eighteen months makes.

As I write this, a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran is hours old. Whether it holds is anyone’s guess. The war that the U.S. and Israel launched on February 28 has already killed American service members, destroyed universities and elementary schools, closed the Strait of Hormuz, and sent shockwaves through every market on the planet. The president who promised to end wars threatened, in his own words, that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Iran’s ambassador at the United Nations called it incitement to genocide. Experts are debating whether the targeting of bridges, railways, and power grids constitutes war crimes. Children in Tehran are dead.

This is not what we signed up for.

The Bitcoin community did not coalesce around a political candidate so that he could become the latest patron of the military-industrial complex. The very machine, by the way, that Bitcoin was conceptually designed to defund. Satoshi’s whitepaper was published in the wreckage of 2008, a year when the Federal Reserve printed billions to bail out banks while governments spent trillions waging wars most citizens never asked for. Bitcoin was, from its genesis block, a protest against exactly this: the unchecked power of states to debase currency in service of violence.

I want to be clear about something: the crypto community’s natural disgust for war is not a political posture. It is a foundational value. We believe that when governments can’t print money at will, they can’t wage wars at will. That is the entire point. What is happening in Iran is a humanitarian catastrophe. Reports of children killed in residential neighborhoods, a major university bombed, human chains of young people forming around power plants to shield them from American missiles. These are not abstractions. They are the human cost of the very system Bitcoin was built to opt out of.

The two-week ceasefire, brokered through Pakistan’s intervention, is a fragile reprieve. Iran has accepted negotiations in Islamabad beginning Friday. But we have already seen what happens when diplomacy is sabotaged. Iran’s IRGC intelligence chief was assassinated mid-conflict, negotiators have been targeted, and the pattern of setting deadlines only to extend them has made the entire process feel performative. Time will tell if this ceasefire holds.

What won’t change is the math. Wars cost money. Money comes from somewhere. And when governments run out of honest revenue, they print. Every dollar created to fund conflict is a dollar that steals purchasing power from the people who earn it. Every bomb dropped on Iranian bridges is paid for with dollars. Every aircraft carrier repositioned to the Persian Gulf runs on the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury. Every escalation widens the deficit, increases the pressure on the Fed, and further erodes the credibility of the dollar as a neutral global reserve currency.

Bitcoin fixes this. Not through slogans, but through mathematics. A hard cap of 21 million. No Federal Reserve. No emergency printing. No backdoor funding of wars the public never authorized.

To my fellow travelers in the Bitcoin and crypto space: I understand the disillusionment. Many of us believed that political engagement would accelerate adoption and protect our industry. But we should never have expected a politician, any politician, to embody the values of decentralization. That was always our job. Bitcoin doesn’t need a president. It needs users. It needs people who look at what’s unfolding on their screens right now and decide they’d rather hold an asset that no government can inflate to fund the next war.

If the intent of Trump as the de facto “ Bitcoin President” is to embolden our beliefs more in voting with our feet, in selling more USD for BTC, then he’s doing a hell of a job.

_________________________________________________________________________

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Crypto

Strategy Signals Bitcoin Supply Shock With 2.2x New BTC Supply Acquired and 24,675 BTC Gain

Published

22 hours ago

April 7, 2026

Press Room

Strategy Signals Bitcoin Supply Shock With 2.2x New BTC Supply Acquired and 24,675 BTC Gain

Key Takeaways:

Strategy Inc. reported acquiring 94,470 BTC in 2026, reaching 2.2x bitcoin supply absorption.
Bitcoin treasury metrics indicate 3.7% yield, generating 24,675 BTC worth about $1.7 billion.
Michael Saylor stated sub-$100K bitcoin window may close in 2026 amid rising demand.

Strategy Bitcoin Accumulation Outpaces Network Supply Growth

Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR) shared on social media platform X on April 7 that it accumulated bitcoin faster than new issuance. The firm emphasized supply absorption and yield performance. The update framed its activity against bitcoin’s fixed issuance schedule and tightening supply dynamics.

The update outlines year-to-date performance figures showing acquisition at 2.2 times the natural bitcoin supply alongside a BTC yield of 3.7% and a BTC gain of 24,675, valued at approximately $1.7 billion. The accompanying image breaks down how this performance developed across both quarterly and cumulative periods. In Q1 2026, Strategy reported acquiring 89,599 BTC while generating a BTC yield of 3.2% and a BTC gain of 21,329. The visual also presents a corresponding dollar gain of $1.4 billion for the quarter. Year-to-date totals extend these figures to 94,470 BTC acquired, reflecting continued accumulation and improved yield efficiency over time.

Bitcoin Supply Mechanics Highlight Strategy Market Impact

Bitcoin supply mechanics provide the baseline for measuring this activity. Following the 2024 halving, each mined block produces 3.125 BTC, while the network averages about 144 blocks per day. This results in roughly 450 BTC entering circulation daily, a figure observable through on-chain data. Over a period of roughly 90 to 100 days, issuance totals about 40,000 to 45,000 BTC. Against this level, Strategy’s reported acquisition of 94,470 BTC results in a ratio slightly above 2.0x, aligning with its stated 2.2x depending on timing and block production variability.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor framed this dynamic through the concept of supply absorption, describing how capital access allows entities to outpace bitcoin’s fixed issuance. He recently stated: “We can buy more bitcoin than they can sell.” With roughly 450 BTC produced daily, sustained buying can absorb both newly mined coins and available exchange liquidity. Saylor also described a reflexive flywheel, where capital raises fund additional bitcoin purchases, reducing available supply and increasing volatility. The approach emphasizes that bitcoin’s limited supply creates competition among market participants, framing the asset as digital property with constrained acreage. He added: “2026 will be known as the last year you could buy bitcoin at sub-$100K.”

Additional dashboard data expands on the company’s broader financial and market positioning alongside its bitcoin strategy. Strategy shows a share price of $123.63 with a daily decline of 3.18%, while reporting a market capitalization of $42.88 billion and an enterprise value of $59.17 billion. The dashboard lists trading volume at $724 million and a 30-day average trading volume of $2.62 billion. Volatility metrics include 76% implied volatility, 55% 30-day historical volatility, and 72% one-year historical volatility. The company also reports open interest of $29.97 billion, an mNAV ratio of 1.13, and an amplification figure of 36%, indicating how equity performance relates to underlying bitcoin exposure.

Crypto

Crypto Investment Scams Were the Most Costly Type of Fraud in the U.S. in 2025

Published

1 day ago

April 7, 2026

Press Room

Crypto Investment Scams Were the Most Costly Type of Fraud in the U.S. in 2025

Americans lost $7.2 billion to crypto investment scams in 2025, according to a new report from the FBI, making it the top source of financial losses from fraud reported to the agency last year. Many people don’t call the FBI after getting scammed, which means the real total is likely far larger.

The news comes from the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) annual report, released Monday, which tracks not just crypto investment fraud, but online scams targeting the elderly, and ranswomware attacks, among others. The agency received 1,008,597 total complaints in 2025, up from 859,532 complaints in 2024. The total amount lost was over $20 billion last year.

Investment fraud was the most common type of scam reported, accounting for 49% of all cyber-related complaints in 2025, with a majority of those related to crypto investment scams.

Crypto investment scammers make an effort to appear like legitimate operations, promising huge returns to unsuspecting marks. Victims are first contacted through a number of ways, including text messages, social media, Google ads, and dating apps. Scammers will sometimes set up websites made to look like investment platforms where victims can send crypto and watch as their profits tick up steadily.

What the victim doesn’t understand is that the number they’re seeing rise each day is fake. The crypto has been sent to the scammers and the number they’re seeing in their supposed account is not real. The website is a mirage that isn’t actually holding their crypto, whether it’s bitcoin, ether, or any number of shitcoins. But as that number rises, the scammers encourage the victims to “invest” even more.

What happens when you try to extract any of that money? That’s where the victim might start to get suspicious. Because there’s always an excuse. And more often than not, the scammers will tell a victim that there are fees for withdrawing money.

The FBI has released its IC3 report annually for 25 years and 2025 is the first year that features a section on artificial intelligence. The FBI received 22,364 complaints about AI-assisted crimes, totaling $893 million in lost money. But that’s likely a vast undercount of the problem, given the fact that many people don’t send a report to the FBI when they get scammed, and others likely have no idea they’re talking with people who uses AI tools for impersonation.

Scammers will often use AI audio, video deepfakes, or fake documents created with generative AI imaging tools to convince victims they’re legitimate. Elon Musk is one of the most popular figures that crypto scammers will impersonate, as Gizmodo has reported in recent years. Scammers will often try to convince potential victims that they’re talking to the real Tesla CEO and convince people to invest in his businesses with cryptocurrencies.

Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FTC in 2024 that revealed some of the stories from people who were scammed by Elon Musk impersonators or people who said they were associated with the billionaire. One of the complaints was from a victim in their 50s from Michigan who said they lost $700,000.

The story is exceptional for the amount of money lost, but the techniques are common enough that they’re worth quoting at length:

In the end of June, 2023 I responded to Elon Musk’s day trading commercial on Instagram. I got a phone call from a person and started online trading with XT-BestSolutions. I’m dealing with one person [redacted] over the Viber phone services. He said he’s based in Barcelona, Spain. He guided me through the trading process daily on the XT-BestSolutions trading platform.
He also guided me through the process of transferring my money from my US Huntington bank account through Crypto wallets to XT-BestSolutions trading platform. All transaction were made through different Sources to change US dollars to cryptocurrency.
Starting on June 30, 2023 to current date, I transferred $700,000 to my XT-BestSolutions account. Through the process of online trading, XT-BestSolutions company credited me $200,000. Even though I still have more than $700,000 in my XT-BestSolutions trading platform account, I cannot withdraw any money back until I add $200,000 more to my XT-BestSolutions account to cover this additional credit, and after this (accordingly to what he saying) I will be able to withdraw all $900,000.
Its become more suspicious to me because I am not able to get information about the company, such as an address, email address or any other contact information except the phone number and one person I communicating with. [redacted]
My accountant has advised me to contact the FBI before I make anymore money transactions.

Other crypto scams include celebrities like Johnny Depp or Donald Trump, but romance scams are another popular category of investment fraud. Sometimes referred to as pig butchering, scammers will often pose as attractive people who lure unsuspecting marks with promises of love but wind up giving “investment” advice.

Victims are encouraged to contact the FBI, but the public should be aware that there are also plenty of scammers posing as FBI agents, specifically employees of the IC3.