Strive, Inc. announced today that stockholders of Semler Scientific, Inc. approved its acquisition by Strive, marking a landmark deal in publicly traded Bitcoin-backed companies.

Strive has won shareholder approval to acquire Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal that adds more than 5,000 bitcoin to its balance sheet, lifting combined holdings to nearly 12,800 BTC.

The all-stock transaction includes Semler Scientific’s 5,048.1 Bitcoin, significantly expanding Strive’s digital asset holdings.

In addition, the company said they purchased 123 more Bitcoin for its corporate treasury at an average price of $91,561 per coin, for a total cost of approximately $11.26 million, inclusive of fees and expenses, the company said.

These purchases bring the company’s total Bitcoin holdings to 7,749.8. Following the Semler Scientific acquisition, the combined entity will hold 12,797.9 Bitcoin, surpassing corporate holders such as Tesla and Trump Media & Technology Group to become the 11th largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally, according to the company.

$ASST also disclosed plans to monetize Semler Scientific’s operating business within 12 months of the transaction’s close and explore opportunities to retire Semler’s $100 million convertible note and $20 million Coinbase loan, subject to market conditions.

Shares of Strive ($ASST) are down over 17% on the day, but are up over 15% on the month.

Strive as a bitcoin-focused company

These strategic moves reflect the company’s continued focus on Bitcoin operations and a simplified, preferred equity-focused corporate structure.

“I’m proud of the execution the Strive team has delivered for our shareholders, making history towards completing the first acquisition of a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company,” said Matt Cole, Chairman and CEO. “The Semler Scientific deal will continue Strive’s leading yield generation since the inception of our Bitcoin strategy, boosting our Q1 2026 Bitcoin yield to over 15%.”

The company also highlighted its successful November 2025 preferred equity IPO, SATA, which was upsized from $125 million to $200 million and received more than twice the subscription demand.

The company plans to issue additional SATA over the next 12 months to fund debt retirement and maintain amplification exclusively through preferred equity.

Jeff Walton, Strive’s Chief Risk Officer, emphasized the unique risk profile of SATA, noting that “the balance sheet is comprised of a transparent, digitally native asset, allowing risk to be observed and measured in real time, unlike traditional illiquid assets.”

As part of the merger, the board approved a 1-for-20 reverse split of Class A and Class B shares to align with institutional investment standards.

Semler Scientific Executive Chairman Eric Semler will join the Board of Directors post-closing.

Bitcoin experienced one of its worst months since January 2021, shedding approximately 17.5% of its value in November based on closing prices, which helped drag the entire crypto market below $3 trillion in 2025.1 Ethereum performed even worse, dropping more than 22% last month and approximately 38% below its all-time daily closing high, which occurred in August.2 That's not surprising. Ethereum tends to be more volatile than Bitcoin.3

Both assets tend to move in the same direction, rising and falling with each other, interest rate fears, and broader risk sentiment. So does Ethereum actually offer more upside potential than Bitcoin—or just more volatility in both directions?

During the 2020 to 2021 bull run, Ethereum outperformed BTC each year, gaining approximately 310% compared to Bitcoin's roughly 303% in 2020 and about 399% compared to Bitcoin's approximately 60% in 2021. During that period, Ethereum was gaining market share due to its use in decentralized finance (DeFi) and popular NFT projects, such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Ethereum’s Recent Performance vs. Bitcoin’s

During another high point for crypto in 2023, Ethereum gained approximately 91% compared to Bitcoin's 156%, as the Ethereum proof-of-stake upgrade and other changes made transactions cheaper on the platform.

And in the roughly six months since June 1, Ethereum has gained about 24% while Bitcoin slid nearly 12% despite a summer rally. Zoom out further, and it's clear that Ethereum largely tracks the ups and downs of Bitcoin, though with greater swings. Additionally, Ethereum has declined by almost 15% over the past year, compared to Bitcoin's 3.66% decline. And Ethereum has lost about 43% of its value since its all-time peak in 2021. Its relative value compared to Bitcoin has fallen by nearly two-thirds in that time.

What Ethereum Can Offer That Bitcoin Doesn't

Bitcoin's value proposition is supposed to be that of a digital gold. You buy it, hold it, and hope it gains in value—it has no other use and hasn't been widely adopted as a means of exchange.6 Ethereum does far more as a system; running apps, powering NFT marketplaces, backing DeFi lending, and allowing those who hold it to earn passive income just by holding and staking ETH.

Approximately one-third (30%) of all Ethereum in circulation is staked, meaning holders have locked up their coins to help secure the network in exchange for yields, which have historically ranged from around 3% to 5% annually, but have dipped below 3% in 2025.789 A yield between 4% and 5% is about what you'd get from 30-year Treasurys.10

Further, yield is something that Bitcoin doesn't provide. By contrast, you can stake Ethereum directly, or use platforms like Lido that give you a token you can still trade—so your money isn’t tied up if you need it.

Ethereum is also getting cheaper to use with so-called Layer 2 networks—basically, add-on grids that handle heavy traffic to cut costs.

The Extra Risks of Ethereum Over Bitcoin

The value of Ethereum's network comes with a catch. The sprawling ecosystem creates more avenues for hackers to attack. The DeFi platform Yearn Finance reported a $9 million hack that drained funds from its users.12

Forbes. "Bitcoin Slides More Than 5% As Crypto Selloff Resumes."

There are also additional regulatory risks with Ethereum. Bitcoin has broadly been accepted as a commodity, but Ethereum's status has been more of a moving target. During its 2014 initial coin offering, regulators at first considered Ethereum a security. The Securities and Exchange Commission later reversed that position, arguing that the network had become sufficiently decentralized. Still, without permanent guidelines, it could be reclassified, potentially shifting Ethereum's operations overnight.13

Finally, there's competition. Ethereum's average transaction fee has dipped below 30 cents in recent days, while rivals like Solana cost far less.141516

The Bottom Line

Ethereum has been more volatile than Bitcoin, which itself has swung dramatically over time. That means bigger rallies and bigger crashes, sometimes in the same year. If you're a short-term trader looking to capitalize on swings, Ethereum has offered more room to run in either direction recently. But volatility isn't the same as long-term outperformance. Since 2021, Ethereum has actually lost almost two-thirds of its value relative to Bitcoin, meaning patient holders would have been better off in BTC.

What Ethereum does offer is more options than just hoping the price goes up. You can stake it for yield, use it as collateral in DeFi, or bet on its ecosystem growing faster than Bitcoin's. Those are real advantages, but they come bundled with regulatory uncertainty, hacking risks, and competition from cheaper blockchain systems.

One of the obstacles to the mainstream adoption of digital currency has been hacking. Some high-profile thefts have occurred on various cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms, deterring investors from using them.

It has been argued that blockchain projects are secure, but attacks over the years have demonstrated that this is only partially true. An estimated $2.2 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen in 2024, a 21% increase from 2023, according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. The year with the most stolen crypto is 2022, with $3.7 billion in funds.1 Take a look at some of the largest crypto hacks to date.

Bybit: $1.5 Billion

The largest cryptocurrency hack to date was conducted in February 2025 and far surpasses previous heists. One of Bybit's cold wallets was hacked, and $1.5 billion in ether was stolen. The theft has been attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking collective that has previously stolen billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency industry for years. Bybit stabilized the breach and is offering a recovery bounty of up to 10% of the recovered amount to anyone who helps retrieve the stolen crypto.

Ronin Network: $625 Million

The second largest cryptocurrency occurred in March 2022 and targeted the network that supports the popular Axie Infinity blockchain gaming platform. Hackers breached the Ronin Network and made off with around $625 million worth of Ether and USDC (a stablecoin). Investigators said that a North Korean state-backed hacking collective, the Lazarus Group, was linked to the theft. Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity's developer) recovered $5.7 million of the stolen funds a month later, but it remains the largest cryptocurrency hack in history.

Poly Network: $611 Million

On August 10, 2021, a lone hacker pounced on a vulnerability in the Poly Network decentralized finance platform and made off with over $600 million. The project’s developers issued a formal letter to the hacker, appealing for the stolen funds, which included $33 million in Tether.

They also requested crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the hacker's addresses. Shortly thereafter, the hacker returned $260 million. The hacker stated they had targeted the network “for fun” or as a challenge.

The Poly Network then established several addresses for the funds to be returned to, and the unknown hacker began cooperating. After only two days, around $300 million had been recovered, and it emerged that the hacker had targeted the network “for fun.” By August 23, Poly Network regained all stolen assets.6

Binance BNB Bridge: $569 Million

In one of the most high-profile attacks in cryptocurrency history, the Binance exchange was hacked for about $570 million in October 2022. A cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, was exploited by hackers, who created and withdrew 2 million extra Binance Coins (BNB). A bug in a

smart contract enabled the hack, highlighting the need for tighter blockchain security.7
$2.2 billion

The amount of cryptocurrency stolen from exchanges and other platforms in 2024, up 21% from 2023's $1.7 billion.

Coincheck: $532 Million

In January 2018, the Japanese exchange Coincheck suffered a theft of $523 million in NEM coins valued at about $534 million. The vulnerability was created by a hot wallet, which is a live cryptocurrency wallet and not as safe as an offline cold storage wallet. At the time, the Coincheck hack was larger even than the notorious Mt. Gox hack; NEM Foundation president Lon Wong described it at the time as "the biggest theft in the history of the world."

Coincheck survived the hack and continued operating despite being bought out a few months later by the Japanese financial services company Monex Group.10

FTX: $477 Million

In November 2022, FTX, at one time an influential player in the crypto industry, declared bankruptcy. On the day it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, more than $477 million was stolen from its crypto wallets. Many FTX wallet holders reported $0 balances in their FTX.com and FTX US wallets.

The crypto exchange confirmed the hack on its Telegram channel, saying, ''FTX has been hacked. FTX apps are malware. Delete them. Chat is open. Don't go to the FTX site as it might download Trojans.''11

In 2024, reports emerged about the arrest of a SIM card-swapping ring that gained access to an FTX employee's accounts and siphoned off millions in crypto.

Mt. Gox: $473 Million

The first major crypto hack occurred in 2011 when the crypto exchange Mr.Gox lost 25,000 bitcoins worth approximately $400,000. At that time, the crypto exchange handled nearly 70% of all Bitcoin transactions.

The attacks didn't stop, and Mt. Gox was hit again in 2014. It lost almost 850,000 of its customers' bitcoins and about 100,000 of its own. The company later found 200,000 bitcoin in an old wallet, reducing the loss to about 650,000. At the time, that was 6% of all bitcoins and was worth approximately $473 million.1314 Initial reasons for the coins' disappearance were unclear, but later evidence showed that the coins were stolen from the company's hot wallets.

Wormhole: $325 Million

The decentralized finance platform Wormhole was targeted in February 2022, with $325 million taken by hackers. The attack had been made possible by an upgrade to the project's GitHub repository, which was not then deployed to the live project. The popular cryptocurrency bridge had to plug the hole in the project's finances after the funds were not recovered. This was also the largest theft that included Solana, one of the rivals to Ethereum's dominance in the worlds of DeFi and NFTs. Up to $47 million was taken in the blockchain's native SOL token

A new pilot program administered by GiveDirectly and funded by Coinbase is giving 160 low-income New Yorkers $12,000 in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.
The initiative is funded with about $2.6 million from Coinbase’s now-defunct GiveCrypto program.
The program takes inspiration from universal basic income (UBI) experiments that look at what impact unconditional payments have on those in poverty.

The Payments: $12,000 in a Stablecoin

Select New Yorkers are set to receive $12,000 worth of cryptocurrency payments thanks to a new program by GiveDirectly, a nonprofit focused on alleviating poverty by giving cash directly to people. The program is funded by Coinbase—a cryptocurrency exchange.1

According to a Bloomberg report, this pilot program provides 160 low-income New Yorkers with $12,000 worth of USDC, a type of stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, and will be paid out in one lump-sum of $8,000 and five smaller payments of $800 each.2

USDC is issued by Circle, a payments technology company.3 USDC is considered far less volatile than cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin because it's intended to closely track the price of the U.S. dollar.

Recipients will have a few options for how they can choose to spend or hold on to their money. They can either leave it in their Coinbase account, transfer it to a traditional bank account (instant transfers have a 1.75% fee), use a Coinbase debit card or withdraw it from an ATM as cash.

New Initiative Follows on the Heels of Other UBI Programs

While the program is administered by GiveDirectly, the new program comes about as a result of another initiative run by Coinbase that was shut down in 2023. The previous initiative, known as GiveCrypto, was founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

According to Bloomberg, about $2.6 million of the funds remaining from GiveCrypto were allocated towards this new program.2
Why This Matters

In recent years, the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has gained traction. Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate in 2020, proposed giving all U.S. adults a universal basic income of $12,000 a year ($1,000 per month).5

"Over the years, GiveCrypto distributed cryptocurrency to thousands of individuals in need, with measured short-term improvements in their outcomes," the press release announcing the program's shutdown states.4 "Unfortunately, we were unable to create a lasting impact with recipients, who returned to the same baseline after payment ceased."

The new program is meant to mirror universal basic income (UBI) projects, which study the impact that providing people with unconditional cash payments has on poverty.

So far the evidence for UBI has been mixed. Some research found that people worked less and spent more time on leisure after receiving UBI, while another study found that UBI resulted in recipients paying down debt and reducing their spending

U.S.-China trade tensions triggered a sell-off in bitcoin and altcoins on Friday. Now the industry is calling it the largest single-day purge in crypto history.

More than $19 billion in leveraged crypto bets were liquidated over a 24-hour period that ended Saturday evening, affecting some 1.6 million traders, according to research platform Coinglass, which called its estimate conservative and the real total "likely much higher."1

Bitcoin, which had been grinding higher on the so-called debasement trade, diverged from gold as Beijing placed new restrictions on rare-earth minerals exports and subsequently pushed President Donald Trump to threaten a 100% tariff on China.2 As the market digested the renewed trade spat, bitcoin stopped holding hands with gold and followed risk assets, like stocks, lower, pulling back from a recent record.

"The concerns over an increase in tariffs were undeniably the catalyst," Sean Farrell, Fundstrat's head of digital assets, said of the sell-off in a Monday report.

The crypto market's operational quirks fanned the flames. When traders rushed the exits at a time when there was less liquidity, the added selling pressure ripped through coin prices.

(Though crypto markets do not close, trading volumes tend to wax and wane alongside U.S. stock market hours.).4 Bitcoin (BTCUSD) fell below $110,000, while altcoins including ethereum (ETHUSD) and solana (SOLUSD) notched double-digit declines. Some lesser-known coins lost four-fifths of their value.

The chaos led to price dislocation in some coins across trading venues. For example, the price of solana was at one time roughly $20 lower on international exchange Binance than on Coinbase, according to Farrell.3 Coinglass data show that liquidations on Hyperliquid, Bybit, and Binance accounted for most of the $19 billion purge that transpired between Oct. 10 and Oct. 11.5

Some prices are starting to creep back up. Bitcoin was recently back above $112,000, for example. But crypto-linked stocks including Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), and Robinhood (HOOD) were all lower in recent trading.

BlackRock (BLK) chief Larry Fink defended bitcoin's role in investor portfolios in an interview with CBS on Sunday.6

60 Minutes. "More risk in your 401(k)?"
"There is a role for crypto in the same way there is a role for gold," he said.

As we stroll past January 3rd, the day Bitcoin was effectively born, an old tradition in the Bitcoin industry passed us by, the “not your keys, not your coins” day, which was celebrated widely for a few years in a row back in 2014. While the news cycle this year was dominated by geopolitics and many Bitcoiners are entering the industry via ETFs, Bitcoin self-custody nevertheless remains a core value proposition of Bitcoin and one that merits a deep dive into the best options available to users to date.

To that end, here’s the top mobile, desktop, hardware, seed backup, and multi-signature wallets for Bitcoin-specific users in the market today, as far as I am concerned.

Mobile Bitcoin Wallet Apps

The first self-custody wallet everyone should try is probably on a mobile device. The comfort and speed of sending Bitcoin from your phone across the world, be it to a relative abroad or to donate to a special cause, is unparalleled with Bitcoin. The first way people are likely to use the digital currency is also through a mobile wallet. Not all mobile wallets are made equal; however, most software wallets are closed source and contain a bunch of crypto coins, which means they don’t specialize in any of them, often a sign of mediocre user experiences to come. Below is a list of the best Bitcoin-only or Bitcoin-savvy wallets that a discerning user should consider.

Phoenix Wallet

Leading the charge of the Bitcoin-only mobile world is arguably Phoenix Wallet. At the top of their game from a UI and back-end perspective, Acinq continues to deliver the best optimized experience for Bitcoiners concerned with self-custody. On the on-chain front, they support full self-custody, with on-chain payments at a decent fee rate, letting users make payments to all standard Bitcoin address types. Users can also fund the wallet to an on-chain address, which will automagically load up that balance into a lightning channel.

While Phoenix is not the best on-chain wallet by any means, it is, for most purposes, good enough. Where Phoenix shines, however, is on the lightning payments side. It supports a wide range of standards and has one of the best integrated and funded nodes on the network, giving users maximum reliability. The lightning arrangement with Phoenix is one of mixed self-custody, where the user has all the relevant key material, with some dependency on Phoenix and minimum trust.

The wallet can be side-loaded into Android via an APK, for those so inclined, and its back end can be run using phoenixd for app developers and node runners.

Phoenix requires a minimum of about 10,000 satoshis to be spent the first time the wallet is set up, to cover on-chain fees for Lightning channels and to buy capacity on the Lightning Network. This friction point can be awkward when setting up new users with Lightning. Making it an advanced yet powerful and easy-to-use Bitcoin wallet. Phoenix has a variety of open source tools and software available online.

Blockstream Wallet

Blockstream Wallet, brought to you by Blockstream Corporation of Adam Back fame, is a reliable Bitcoin wallet with well-rounded support for Bitcoin on-chain transactions, as well as native support for the Liquid Network. Liquid has gained popularity in recent years for supporting a similar user experience as on-chain Bitcoin with comparable speeds to the Lightning Network, and a security model that is probably good enough, leveraging a multinational federation.

Blockstream Wallet can hold USDT on top of Liquid, though it does not include a built-in swap interface, introducing significant frictions and exposing users to third-party fees for swapping in and out of the networks and into more popular USDT base chains. Nevertheless, liquid provides users remarkable privacy, as it encrypts amounts at the base layer similar to some of the most popular privacy coins, giving users some of the best privacy available in Bitcoin in exchange for some of the other UI pain points we just discussed.

Blockstream Wallet is open source and remains one of the top choices for Bitcoin self-custody today.

Bull Bitcoin Wallet

A new entrant into the wallet space, Francis Pouliot’s Bull Bitcoin Mobile wallet has left a strong impression among self-custody advocates, with its purist yet pragmatic design philosophy. The wallet is fully open source and on an MIT license. It includes the Bull Bitcoin exchange as an optional service, available in Canada, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia, Puerto Rico (bitcoin jungle wallet), letting users buy bitcoin, automate purchases in dollar cost average format, sell bitcoin for local fiat, and even make payments to third parties. The user sends bitcoin, and the recipient gets the local fiat.

While the Bull Bitcoin Mobile wallet is designed for new users to have all the payment tools they need to use Bitcoin as money, the wallet also supports a variety of advanced features under the hood.

It’s one of the first to implement the async Payjoin protocol, which provides users with great privacy on-chain when using compatible wallets. This Payjoin feature is backwards compatible and invisible to the user, so it introduces no friction, just privacy benefits.

The wallet leverages the Liquid network to hold small amounts of bitcoin at rest, while natively supporting the Boltz protocol for swapping out into the Lightning Network, letting users make Lightning payments without issue, as well as receive Lightning payments with minimum trust, since Boltz uses non-custodial atomic swaps, delivering the value to users on a Liquid address.

The wallet also has full Bitcoin on-chain support, with NFC tap to pay for hardware wallets like the Coldcard Q, which are designed for deep self-custody, high-value transactions. All and all, Bull Bitcoin Mobile stands to be one of the most promising Bitcoin wallets for 2026, making design decisions that address the everyday needs of the active Bitcoin user.

Zeus Wallet

Zeus Wallet is a lightning payments app that has made incredible progress in taking Lightning Network self-custody to the limit. Bitcoin’s layer to payment network is very fast and has significant privacy benefits compared to the base on-chain payment rails of Bitcoin, but the downsides are seen when users attempt to take self-custody, as control over funds depends far more on running a lightning node. Zeus makes running a lightning node on a mobile phone easy and mostly automated.

Initially created as an interface for managing self-hosted home lightning nodes, it now supports a deep range of tools for advanced users alongside a full onboarding interface for new users, offering a superior onboarding experience to even Phoenix Wallet. The only downside is that it can be a bit slow to open and sync up, and eventually does start to demand users move up the learning curve, for the right person it might be a great choice. Zeus Wallet is also open source.

Cake Wallet

Cake Wallet has become an increasingly important player in the Bitcoin and crypto privacy space, as it has led the charge, bringing advanced privacy technologies to the mobile platform. They support a variety of privacy initiatives like the Payjoin foundation and were the first major wallet to integrate its protocol as well as the Silent Payments standard. Cake supports coins other than Bitcoin, such as Monero, Ethereum, and various other tokens, including stablecoins. Cake Wallet is also open source.

This security audit marks a milestone in the development history of Bitcoin Core, the most widely adopted and reference client of the Bitcoin network and protocol.

While Bitcoin Core security policies and practices have been steadily hardened and revised to be more thorough and comprehensive over the last few years, an external audit by a third party specialized in security review is a new bar to meet. It was met.

The audit involved manual code review, static and dynamic analysis with automated tools, and advanced fuzz testing, which takes automatically generated input and runs it through different code paths attempting to reveal unexpected or detrimental behavior.

No critical, high, or medium-severity bugs were discovered in the audit. Two low-severity issues were different, and thirteen other issues that are not classified as vulnerabilities under Bitcoin Core’s vulnerability classification criteria.

The entire process also resulted in improvements in Bitcoin Core’s testing infrastructure, including new fuzz testing infrastructure for block connection and chain reorganization scenarios, a new area to be covered by testing, file system improvements speeding up and improving fuzz testing in general, new utilities for testing back sliding code performance, and suggestions for improving code readability for reviewers and new developers.

Some of these improvements are already being worked on for eventual review and merging into the Bitcoin Core repository.

The results of this independent security audit have reinforced that Bitcoin Core’s improvements over recent years in security policy, testing, and overall quality review have had a meaningful impact on the project.

Rodriguez and Hill were arrested on April 24, 2024, on two charges: conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) accused the Samurai Wallet developers of facilitating over $2 billion in unlawful transactions through their cryptocurrency mixing service between 2015 and February 2024. Additionally, the DoJ alleges that the developers helped launder more than $100 million in criminal proceeds from illegal dark web markets, such as Silk Road and Hydra Market, as well as other hacking and fraud schemes.

The case of United States v. Rodriguez and Hill threatens the established precedents of code as speech on two major fronts.

The first regards the “$2 billion in unlawful transactions” accusation. The prosecution implies that software that aids or facilitates the movement of money in any way is indistinguishable from money transmission and that it requires a money transmitter license, even if that software never holds custody of user funds. This is entirely at odds with the dynamic that had previously been established by FinCEN’s 2019 guidance and other legacy financial regulations.

The second implication is that software that defends the privacy of communications or transfer of value is not protected speech under the United States’ First Amendment.

Code is Speech

The United States has a long and unique tradition of defending freedom of speech.

Over the years, many court cases have reinforced these values, creating precedents that let developers create great software and share it online. That kind of software has made the United States the technological epicenter of the world, from AI to cryptographic finance; the freedom to build software today is critical to the economic success of the nation.

Texas v. Johnson (1989), for example, established that burning the U.S. flag in protest was indeed protected speech even though the “speech” in this case was “functional”, i.e., expressed in the destruction of the flag.

In the 1990s, with the rise of the internet, landmark cases like Bernstein v. United States (1996-1999) established that discussions about cryptography — specifically the sharing of source code involving cryptographic algorithms — was not a “munition” governed and regulated by the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. On the contrary, the publication of source code explaining how cryptography worked was expressive speech and thus fully protected under the First Amendment.

The Bernstein case marked a critical victory for the Cypherpunks of the ’90s, whose contributions to open source software laid the foundations for Bitcoin: Many of the technologies that Satoshi Nakamoto used in its construction were indeed invented in the internet forums of the time. It was there that the Cypherpunks discussed the application of cryptography to the defense of freedom of speech, digital privacy, and civil rights.

In the Universal City Studios v. Corley (2001) case, however, something shifted slightly. Jon Lech Johansen, a Norwegian teenager, wrote software that jail-broke copyrighted movies from software locks placed there by Universal Studios, making movies playable in Linux systems. Eric Corley, a U.S. journalist, published the software online, which led to a massive lawsuit spearheaded by Universal Studios.

This landmark case turned on the question of whether something is speech or conduct in the realm of software. It established that when speech in the form of software gained “function”, such as the breaking of a DVD encryption lock, it suddenly became a tool and could become subject to regulation.

While Corley’s free speech protections were eventually reaffirmed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the distinction between source code publications as a form of expression and functional software as a tool that can be regulated was established.

Despite the rulings — Corley even removed the copy of the DeCSS piracy software from his website — the damage was done. Internet civil disobedience spread the software far and wide, and the piracy wars of the 2000s raged on for years. They demonstrated not just the limits of free speech protections but also the limits of trying to enforce digital censorship.

Information simply wants to be free.

The Samourai case could face a similar challenge, and it is unclear whether “code is speech” can be a sufficient defense for Rodriguez and Hill.

Chink in the Armor

A controversial project that created as many loyal superusers as it did haters and critics is now on the front lines of the Biden-era lawfare, and the principle that code is speech appears to be at stake once again.

As a result, it has forced critics — myself included — to rise to the defense of a wallet that, while quite successful in its adoption, made many design choices that were questionable and for which they may be judged harshly in the coming months.

One potential weak point in their defense is their alleged enabling of sanctioned parties to “launder money” through their coin-mixing service. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) went as far as to embed a screenshot of the Samourai wallet account welcoming sanctioned oligarchs:

Coin mixers are akin to the virtual private networks (VPNs) used by law-abiding citizens and criminals alike. For privacy to exist, one must be able to hide in a crowd, their choices and personal information shielded from prying eyes, and to be revealed or judged after due process.

With that, the Samourai Wallet founders did not make themselves a difficult target. If the allegations by the prosecution are true, and they knowingly helped dress up wolves in sheep’s clothing, then they likely will have to pay a price for violating sanctions doctrines. A deeply chilling legal precedent could then be set, shaping the future of digital finance and directly harming the proliferation of such technology in the United States.

However, there may be hope in the change to a more crypto-friendly administration under the leadership of President Trump.

“I Will Defend Your Right to Self Custody” – Trump

During his keynote speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in 2024, Trump made a promise, one that he still has the opportunity to keep.

He promised to “defend the right to self custody”.

Without financial privacy, self custody is dramatically weakened, as seen by the growing wave of physical attacks on Bitcoiners in recent years. The liberty previously enjoyed by software developers to build self-custodial Bitcoin tools like Samourai Wallet, is on trial.

The chilling effect

The U.S. government has, for the most part, learned not to attack an already hardened legal precedent like freedom of expression. However, by going after the developers and maintainers of Samourai Wallet directly, the DoJ had a net negative effect on financial privacy in the U.S., and it spread a chilling effect among Bitcoin software developers.

Immediately following the arrest of Rodriguez and Hill, Phoenix Wallet, arguably the best self-custodial Lightning wallet in the industry, exited the U.S. app stores — a decision made to protect their business from a U.S. government that appeared hostile to Bitcoin self-custody software. (As of April 2025, Phoenix is once more available in the U.S.) Wasabi Wallet, another financial privacy software company, stopped offering its noncustodial mixing services to the public. And wallets like Blink from El Salvador geofenced American users from their app entirely.

If Trump is going to really defend the right to self custody, and stop the eventual deployment of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States (another election promise), he will have to address the need for financial privacy in the digital era and reverse the injustices set in course by the Biden administration.

In one way or another, these cases will leave a mark on his presidential legacy.

MSCI Inc., a New York-based publicly traded company listed on the NYSE with a market capitalization of $43.76 billion and a stock price of $565.68 as of January 2, is a key player in the investment world. It curates over 246,000 equity indexes daily, with more than $18.3 trillion in assets under management benchmarked to them. These indices serve as blueprints for funds and portfolios, helping investors gain exposure to specific market segments.

Unlike the NASDAQ, which operates as both a stock exchange where companies list and trade and a composite index tracking those listings, MSCI focuses solely on index creation. The S&P 500, managed by S&P Dow Jones Indices, is similarly an index but targets the 500 largest U.S. companies by market cap. MSCI’s offerings, such as the MSCI World Index covering developed markets, provide broader global and thematic coverage, influencing trillions in investment decisions.

The issue began on October 10, 2025, when MSCI issued a consultation proposal to exclude companies with 50% or more of their assets in digital assets like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies from its Global Investable Market Indexes. The rationale: such firms operate more like funds than traditional businesses. The proposal named 39 companies, including Bitcoin holders like Strategy and Metaplanet. The announcement triggered an immediate market reaction, with Bitcoin experiencing a sharp intraday plunge of roughly $12,000 on the same day, marking the start of a broader price correction.

Broader awareness grew in late November 2025, when JPMorgan analysts highlighted the risks in a report, estimating $2.8 billion in outflows from Strategy alone and up to $8.8 billion if other index providers followed suit. This may have amplified selling pressure on affected stocks and contributed to Bitcoin’s ongoing pullback amid a broader market downturn. Estimates of total forced selling, if implemented, range from $10 billion to $15 billion over a year, per Bitcoin for Corporations (BFC) analysis.

The consultation period, open for stakeholder feedback, closed on December 31, 2025. BFC, a coalition accelerating corporate Bitcoin adoption, mobilized quickly. They launched a website detailing the proposal’s flaws, including a technical appendix outlining potential market impacts. BFC drafted a letter opposing the change, gathering over 1,500 signatures in two weeks and delivering it to MSCI on December 30. Eight of the 39 affected companies are BFC members.

After initial outreach, BFC held a call with MSCI’s head of research and leadership. “We had a very constructive conversation,” said George Mekhail, BFC’s executive director. “I think they were very much still in a listening and learning posture. I think a lot of this just really has to do with a lack of education and understanding of Bitcoin itself, as well as these Bitcoin treasury companies and the significance of their operating businesses.”

Mekhail noted the proposal appeared driven by genuine analytical concerns rather than malice, triggered by Metaplanet’s recent preferred share issuance, not Strategy’s larger holdings. A key gap: MSCI made no distinction between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, treating all digital assets alike. This has fostered temporary alignment between Bitcoin advocates and the broader crypto sector in opposition, highlighting an ongoing education gap between the Bitcoin industry and Wall Street institutions.

Next, MSCI announces its decision on January 15, 2026. If approved, exclusions take effect February 1. Mekhail outlined three scenarios: implementation (worst case, forcing sales), a delay for further review (most likely, per his assessment), or full withdrawal (best case). Polymarket bettors currently give a 77% chance of Strategy’s delisting from MSCI by March 31.

Most financial fallout would hit Strategy, which holds the vast majority of affected Bitcoin treasuries. Founder Michael Saylor’s firm has engaged MSCI directly, issuing its own letter and working behind the scenes. Other opposition includes letters from Strive Asset Management and investor Bill Miller.

Industry pushback has been robust and visible, with no major groups publicly supporting the proposal. This asymmetry underscores Bitcoin’s organized, motivated constituency versus dispersed critics, echoing dynamics in recent political shifts like the 2024 U.S. election.

A withdrawal would boost corporate Bitcoin strategies; implementation could deter treasuries. As Mekhail put it, “The most bullish outcome is that they take it to heart and they withdraw the proposal.” The decision tests Wall Street’s adaptation to Bitcoin’s role in balance sheets.

Technologies tend to have a natural ceiling built into their utility and popularity. Once they’ve solved all the problems they can solve, their growth is effectively capped. As soon as all potato fans own a potato peeler, the peeler market’s growth potential is largely tapped out. Indeed, the big question around AI at the moment is how many problems it will be able to solve. The market could already be overblown, or it could be practically limitless.

What about stablecoins? They’ve grown from practically nothing at the turn of the decade to a market cap in the mid-12 digits and monthly transaction volumes in excess of $1 trillion. Citigroup expects the aggregate stablecoin market cap to hit around $2 trillion by the end of the decade.

If we’re talking trillions, it sounds much more like AI than potato peelers.

But do stablecoins have a natural limit? Is their utility restricted to a certain range of problems? If so, where is it? How far can stablecoins grow, and what might stop them?

In order to find answers to these questions, let’s recall why stablecoins have come so far already, what will limit their future growth, and what that means for their overall utility, i.e. the range of problems they can solve.

Why Stablecoins Gained Market Traction

Three reasons for stablecoins’ current popularity stand out.

Stable Prices, Low Volatility

The first reason is price stability. Many cryptocurrencies are volatile, which makes them valuable for speculation but awkward to use as everyday currencies. The value of stablecoins is, well, stable. By definition. Price stability is their fundamental value proposition.

Price stability is also arguably an advantage relative to other cryptocurrencies whose value is perpetually expected to rise. If your coins’ value will double in five years, you might be reluctant to spend them now. But if your coins will be worth the same or even a little less in five years, you better spend them before they burn a hole in your pocket.

Greater Portability

The second is portability. Exchanging fiat for crypto can be arduous, but exchanging one crypto for another is usually much easier. So many users find it more efficient to convert fiat into stablecoins in bulk, then easily shift value between various cryptocurrencies as needed. USDT is the most traded coin overall because it works so well on the other side of any crypto trade.

In many markets, these first two factors reinforce each other. Many countries’ national currencies depreciate more rapidly than stablecoins’ pegged currencies, so stablecoins give people in those countries a way to protect their wealth from depreciation. And those same countries often use currency controls to prevent capital flight, but their citizens can often access stablecoins to circumvent those artificial barriers.

Tax Optimization

The third reason is simply taxes. Many jurisdictions — including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia — classify cryptocurrencies as commodities rather than currencies. As a result, capital gains taxes apply to cryptocurrency price appreciation, so each transaction can be a taxable event. But many users and businesses might want to use crypto for its portability, like payment rails, so stablecoins’ price stability helps them avoid taxable events during routine payments.

You Can’t Copy State Money without State Rules

Fiat currency is the modern state’s crown jewel. Beyond a national currency’s symbolic value, controlling the source of everyone’s money is a very advantageous position. For an impression of what a big deal this can be, rewatch Ridley Scott’s Black Rain (it’s a great rewatch for any reason, not least of which is Michael Douglas rockin’ a killer mullet).

If stablecoins are minting hundreds of billions of fiat equivalents and moving trillions in value each month, the state is going to take a very close interest in what they’re doing and how. You can’t open your own private mint moving that kind of liquidity and hope to stay under the regulatory radar.

Besides, history shows that states will regulate whatever they can. They have to. Any activity they cannot regulate implicitly threatens their claim to authority, and they don’t actually produce anything (besides perhaps regulation), so they need to acquire resources. In order to take their cut from an activity, states have to first quantify and control (i.e. regulate) that activity. This is the kind of argument that led Charles Tilly, one of the last century’s most respected historical sociologists, to call states “protection rackets” and “organized crime.”

Centralized activity is also why states preferred tariffs over taxes until pretty recently. Back when bureaucracies were small and populations were spread out, states found it very hard to tax income. They didn’t have the data to quantify it nor the technology to control it. So they preferred tariffs because there are far fewer ports and bridges than there are households and shops.

In other words, the more centralized an activity is, the easier it is to quantify and control (and skim of course). More concisely: centralization attracts regulation. And the more central an activity is to state power, the more incentive the state has to regulate it, and printing money is about as central as it gets.

Stablecoins are no exception. They are centralized both in terms of the source of their value and in their actual operations, which is why regulators have been busy churning out rules lately. While that regulation might even be necessary and wise, it does and will limit stablecoins’ utility.

Rules, Their Effects, and Extrapolating the Future

The supply of regulation has increased a lot recently, but maybe it’s just meeting demand. In fact, Tether and Circle, the two biggest stablecoin issuers, are getting involved in the regulatory process with different strategies. They’re aware of their position as private USD mints and companies that take large amounts of private deposits and reinvest them (i.e. banks). Mature stablecoin issuers seem to want regulation.

The regulators themselves argue that stablecoin regulation is a good thing because it protects users and gives issuers “more predictable regulatory environments.” Not surprisingly, this is the view of the SEC.

And this reasoning is not without merit. Companies managing hundreds of billions in liabilities should be able to meet those liabilities, and maybe someone should check. But the existing regulations have added some massive obstacles to where and how people can use stablecoins.

Let’s start with Europe, because regulatory legalese is the EU’s official language. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) is the key stablecoin regulatory measure in Europe. It became law in 2023, but the consequences only really struck in Q1 2025. Since MiCA requires stablecoin issuers to obtain an e-money license in at least one European state, major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase delisted nine leading stablecoins, including USDT, the biggest stablecoin of all. (Of course, a consortium of nine too-big-to-fail European banks is trying to launch their own euro-pegged stablecoin.)

MiCA was a regulatory nuke, practically banning leading stablecoins and seeking to replace them with astroturfed European alternatives.

Somewhat more friendly to experimentation and innovation, the USA has implemented the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. GENIUS is a little more permissive in that the Treasury Department can determine that foreign stablecoin issuers are subject to sufficient regulation at home, sparing them the need for a local US presence. It also prescribes a few particulars like reserve requirements and public disclosure.

While the GENIUS Act formally restricts issuers and protects users, it also makes issuers subject to the Bank Secrecy Act to prevent money laundering. As anyone knows who’s ever bought crypto on an exchange, AML and KYC are significant friction, and they effectively restrict how holders can use stablecoins. Eliminating exactly that friction was one of the features that made stablecoins attractive in the first place. Greater consumer protection might increase stablecoins’ utility in the long-term aggregate, but a user who wants to buy and trade USDT right now might disagree.

And while the EU and the USA are arguably the most important markets for stablecoins, many other markets either have regulations in place (e.g. Japan, Canada, Chile) or in the pipeline (e.g. the UK, China, Australia, Brazil, Turkey).

Imagine a giant Venn diagram of all these regulatory regimes, and stablecoins’ utility is in the space where they all overlap and the activity remains economical. How big is that space? And given that stablecoins are pegged to national currencies, which national administrations guard jealously, are these already diverse regulatory regimes likely to converge or diverge in the future?

The denser the jungle of regulations, the smaller and more isolated the clearings where stablecoins can flourish. They will still have a niche, but some niches are more niche than others. It’s unlikely that any stablecoin, based on a national or even regional fiat currency, will satisfy all the regulators in all the markets necessary to become a global currency. That’s probably why real-world stablecoin usage ends up being far more geographically constrained than the “global digital dollars” many hoped for. Even USDT, the most widely used stablecoin, operates at scale in only a few permissive jurisdictions. With roughly 40% of USDT’s market cap and an effectively identical product, USDC faces the same structural limits.