This Time is Different

“This time’s different, ” said every Bitcoin maximalist during every bull market cycle, a phrase so overused through the years the memes began writing themselves. Bitcoiners are known (and sometimes infamous) for their unrelenting optimism, insanely bullish predictions, and unwavering confidence in the world’s only absolutely scarce asset. And I stand before you today ready to follow in the steps of many before me and make the exact same assertion: This time is different. For real.

Through the years, the world has seen Bitcoin spontaneously emerge at the hands of an anonymous creator, steadily gaining traction as a niche collectible among a small group of cypherpunks and computer nerds, earn real-world monetary status as both a currency and tradable asset, surpass a one-trillion dollar market cap, surpass a two-trillion dollar market cap, and become one of the top 10 most valuable assets in the world.

Bitcoin’s journey as an emergent monetary network has been fraught with widespread skepticism and attack. Between CEOs of the world’s largest banks, economists, politicians and policymakers, gargantuan media outlets, and national governments, there has been no shortage of detractors and no punches pulled. Despite a historically adversarial environment, Bitcoin has continued to thrive — all without a marketing team, CEO, or central group leading the charge.

In 2025, we find ourselves amidst a rebalancing of power that is rapidly and dramatically resetting the environment in Bitcoin’s favor—this time at the upper echelons of US politics. This would have been completely unfathomable just a year or two back.

Throughout this writing, we’ll examine the significance of events that have unfolded over the past few months alone, all of which I believe point towards Bitcoin undertaking its role as the next global reserve currency. In the coming years, Bitcoin will flourish well beyond the realm of retail trading, which has largely confined it so far. It will go on to root itself into nation-state debt management, global trade, the banking system, corporate earnings, and every nook and cranny of the financial system. The recent developments highlighted here are the first of many catalysts with major political firepower behind them.

So yeah, maybe “unrelenting optimism” holds up.

Bitcoin Escapes the Lab

Before we get into recent events, let’s set the stage with a quick look back to 2024, a year that saw significant leaps forward in Bitcoin’s development as a serious asset class, along with fresh all-time-high prices, thanks to the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETFs. 

Arriving in early January, these products very quickly became the best-performing ETFs in history, cementing the fact that Bitcoin could no longer be dismissed as an unserious retail-level plaything. Wall Street’s arrival brought institutional titans such as BlackRock recommending portfolio allocations (a response, no doubt, to the wild success of their own spot ETF, IBIT), financial advisors dipping their toes in, and Bitcoin creeping its way into retirement accounts.

Come summertime, during the run-up to the 2024 election, two of the three major presidential candidates were attending Bitcoin conferences and throwing around promises of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and/or “stockpile”, which they claimed could be used to help offset the national debt and bring prosperity to the US. 

After years of attack and gross overregulation in the US, these ideas almost seemed hard to take seriously. There’s no way the US Government would start stacking Bitcoin, and there’s no way the President of the United States is going to make this a priority. 

They are, and he did.

New Players On Board

Following his election victory, Trump began making key cabinet picks who were integral to his pro-Bitcoin narrative and future policy creation. 

Paul Atkins, a previous SEC Commissioner and staunch supporter of Bitcoin, was tapped to replace Gary Gensler, a notoriously harsh critic of digital assets, as SEC Chair. Just like that, the SEC’s previously hostile and constraining stance on crypto was out the window, and a shift into promoting the industry’s growth was underway. 

Next up, Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, both supporters of Bitcoin, were appointed to become the new respective Secretaries of the US Treasury and Commerce. A few months from now, they may be the masterminds behind the first purchases of Bitcoin made by the United States of America.

Former PayPal executive and longtime crypto-proponent David Sacks was given the role of “AI and Crypto Czar”, and tasked with developing the fair regulatory/legal framework that the industry had been starved of throughout its history. The mere fact that this role was created at all speaks volumes of the new administration’s intentions. Sacks would also go on to lead the President‘s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, an cryptocurrency-focused executive committee that would include Atkins, Bessent, Lutnick, and many others.

It’s noteworthy that most of these cabinet picks are not only Bitcoin supporters, but actually own the asset themselves. Lutnick, in particular, has been vocal about holding hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, which he has famously said will be “worth billions soon.” As a general rule of thumb, if you’re counting on policymakers to deliver a specific outcome, it helps when they themselves benefit from that same outcome. These guys have skin in the game.

While not Trump’s only pro-Bitcoin cabinet picks (there is now a long list of names), these four represent the beginning of an enormous shift in the Government’s approach to Bitcoin. Gone are the days of hostility, demonization, and overregulation.

A Sea Change Begins

Following Trump’s inauguration, things quickly began to materialize. On the second day of the new administration, Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road marketplace, was granted a full pardon and freed from prison, where he was serving consecutive life sentences. This was the first of many promises Trump had made to the Bitcoin community during the campaign trail, and while it may have been relatively easy for him to execute, its signal was meaningful to many. 

Just a few days later, Executive Order 14178 was signed, establishing the US as a leader in the digital assets and financial space. The new EO revoked Biden-era Executive Order 14067, which had focused on the risk assessment of digital assets. This action traded the previous administration’s “regulation by enforcement” approach for one aimed at fostering growth and innovation.

A few of the key takeaways from the Order include: the formation of an executive-level “Working Group on Digital Assets Markets”, a vow against the creation of a CBDC (central bank digital currency), support for integrating USD-backed stablecoins into the traditional financial system, fair and predictable regulation, and the assessment of a digital assets reserve/stockpile to be carried out by the Working Group. Despite being met with initial skepticism, with critics underwhelmed by the lack of specifics and immediate action, nearly all of these things have since materialized.

Stop and reflect on this for a moment. 

Never before had Bitcoiners seen such open levels of support (or any support) coming from the Executive Branch. And now, seemingly overnight, some of the world’s most powerful people were throwing their full weight behind this. The message rang loud and clear: The US was ready to fully embrace Bitcoin — before anyone else beat them to it.

And things were just heating up.

SAB 121 Rescinded

Alongside the fresh Executive Order came the rescinding of SAB 121, which had forced institutions and banks holding custody of Bitcoin to list the asset as a liability on their balance sheets. This intentional complexity deterred banks from offering any kind of Bitcoin custodial services to their customers due to the burdensome financial accounting that it brought. 

With SAB 121 being scrapped, banks are now able to offer clients such services without cumbersome accounting constraints. This is a huge leap forward for Bitcoin adoption for two reasons: 

1) Many new and future entrants to Bitcoin will feel far more comfortable having the same bank they’ve used for a decade plus hold/insure their coins. 

I know, I know… “not your keys, not your coins.” While the age-old mantra among Bitcoin maxis is not without its merits, it is also a healthy assumption that the need to learn self-custody, private key management, wallet types, etc., is intimidating to the broader population and a high bar to entry for most. If Bitcoin custody is going to scale en masse, banks will need to provide easy/trusted custodial solutions. The repeal of SAB 121 opens that door, along with the possibility of Bitcoin lending services which asset holders have long desired.

2) The number of entities that can provide reliable custodial services is currently very, very limited, posing a significant centralization risk. Enabling more players to enter the game leads to healthy competition and natural decentralization.

These changes alone are certain to allow thousands, if not millions, of new people onboard to and use Bitcoin in various ways.

FASB Rules Change

Another key development was the FASB accounting rule change regarding Bitcoin held on corporate balance sheets. Though this change technically happened mid-December last year, its effects will begin in 2025. 

Under the “impairment model” of accounting (the old way), a company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet could only record the asset’s loss in value — not its gains. Not only did this heavily discourage businesses from developing Bitcoin treasury strategies, it also offered a completely inaccurate picture of the financial health of companies that did choose to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets.

Following the changes, businesses are not only able but required to report the fair market value of their Bitcoin holdings—meaning gains and losses are taken into account. This offers a much clearer picture of the asset’s value in real time and allows companies to benefit directly from the asset’s price appreciation.

Through this accounting change, corporations become far more incentivized to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets — either through purchasing spot BTC itself or the spot BTC ETF products discussed earlier. With Michael Saylor and Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) as the poster child for the Bitcoin treasury playbook, many other companies have already started taking note and implementing their blueprint. In fact, recent 13-F filings show that nearly 1,600 US companies have some kind of long position in Bitcoin.

This move, in tandem with SAB 121’s repeal, was a major double-whammy for large, non-retail Bitcoin buyers. Now, financial institutions and corporations are entering the fray.

The winning didn’t stop there, and this next one is big…

Red, White, and Bitcoin

March 6, 2025, made history, both for Bitcoin and for the United States, as President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Establishment Of The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve And United States Digital Asset Stockpile”. The text can be broken down into three main parts:

Before any policy specifics are laid out, the EO provides a brief and educational explanation of Bitcoin’s value —  citing its fixed supply of 21 million coins, pristine security protocol (“never been hacked”), unique store of value properties (calling it “digital gold”), and the strategic advantage of being one of the first nations to hold a reserve. 

The significance of this really can’t be overstated. The White House had taken the orange pill. They got it. Even more importantly, they communicated it to the world. 

Bitcoin’s unique value proposition — the same value proposition that Bitcoin evangelists had preached to annoyed family members at every Thanksgiving dinner, the same value proposition that mainstream economists had dismissed as nothing more than a “Ponzi scheme, ” the same value proposition that had been relentlessly boiled down to “Bitcoin is a solution in search of a problem” by the legacy media — had successfully rooted itself within the highest levels of the Executive Branch. 

The policy itself even further demonstrates this level of understanding, as it created two “buckets” of digital assets: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the US Digital Asset Stockpile, which are to be treated notably differently from one another. 

First, we have the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which will contain Bitcoin and only Bitcoin. This will comprise the US Government’s existing holdings (currently ~200,000 BTC), and these holdings are not to be sold, as they have been during prior administrations. As if this itself wasn’t some amazing signal, the Order goes on to state that the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce (Bessent and Lutnick) shall find “budget neutral” ways to acquire more Bitcoin in a way that bears no cost to taxpayers. The word “shall” bears significance — this is something that is going to happen. It’s a matter of when not if.

By contrast, the Digital Asset Stockpile would contain all non-Bitcoin digital assets, such as alt-coins, currently in the US Government’s possession. The big kicker here is that the Treasury will explicitly not acquire more of these assets and is also authorized to strategically sell them. 

Let’s take a moment to step back and truly appreciate this for what it is: The White House has just stated, clear as day, that they want the US to stack as much Bitcoin as possible before other nations beat us to it. No more selling what we’ve already got, plus concerted efforts to get more. The fact that future purchases are to be carried out in a “budget neutral” way that won’t cost taxpayers a dime guts the easiest argument of those opposing the reserve strategy.

Additionally, all non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency has been deemed unworthy of future acquisition. and possibly unworthy of even being held long-term at all. In fact, as many have pointed out, one of many available “budget neutral” methods of acquiring more Bitcoin would be to simply sell the other crypto to fund the purchases, and I’d have to say, I don’t hate the idea!

Boom. Just like that, the White House went full tilt into Bitcoin maximalism. For those who had been rooting for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to materialize since it was first brought up at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July, this was a near-perfect outcome. One must consider the many different ways this could have gone. The decision could have been to hold the top 10 cryptos in the reserve, weighted by market cap. They could have planned to purchase not only Bitcoin but also Ethereum, XRP, and Solana. They could have, but they very explicitly didn’t. 

Just two days later, the White House’s official X account posted a post depicting the Executive Order alongside the caption, “America will be the Bitcoin superpower of the world, ” a truly surreal thing to see. I’ll reiterate—for those who have been around for a few years, this type of thing was previously so unimaginable that it honestly still feels like an alternate reality. That is truly the gravity of change we’re undertaking here.

So… What Now?

Let’s review and piece together the recent events and developments we’ve visited throughout this writing, which can be best understood as great leaps of progress individually, but synergistically lay the groundwork for a global monetary revolution.

We’ve learned that we have transitioned to a completely different regulatory environment, one that was previously very hostile towards Bitcoin. We’ve seen some of the most powerful political adversaries swapped out for strong proponents who want to see Bitcoin flourish, and who stand to directly benefit from such an outcome. 

We’ve observed legislative changes that will now encourage corporations and institutions to buy and custody Bitcoin, helping the asset transcend the relatively small retail investor ecosystem it has been bound to. 

We’ve seen the US Executive Branch treat the formation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as a top priority—one that embodies a long-term buy-and-hold strategy. We’ve watched the White House communicate the vast benefits of Bitcoin’s fundamentals to the world, drawing a bold line between it and all other digital assets.

This writing is not a political endorsement of any kind — not for any politician, political party, or administration. The purpose of this writing is to document and, in a way, timestamp a historic moment in time – the beginning of a global monetary shift.

If you’ve been in Bitcoin for a while, one of the oldest and most familiar objections you’ve heard or otherwise run into is the idea that the government (s) will shut it down, ban it, criminalize it, and do anything possible to stifle its success. This has been the narrative throughout the better part of Bitcoin’s life. Today, as I write this, that narrative dies. 

Even more deeply satiating is the realization that the US Government’s adoption of Bitcoin is not an extension of its greed but rather a full-on capitulation. The most powerful and wealthy country on the planet has openly admitted and embraced a need for Bitcoin to maximize its prosperity. Read that twice: Bitcoin does not need the US Government. The US Government needs Bitcoin. 

The thing is, the US buying Bitcoin is really just the spark that will ignite a slew of sovereign purchasing activity. If/when we buy $20 billion worth, we can expect our geopolitical rivals and allies alike to take note and, before long, take similar action.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin has an inelastic and finite supply. There are only 21 million coins in play, and they can only be mined so fast. When you hear the words “game theory” tossed around in Bitcoin-centered discussions (Bitcoiners love using these words), they are referencing the reality that, once large buyers begin accumulating, it will be a race akin to a gold rush, but without the ability to produce more “gold” faster. 

Supply will become very scarce quickly, prices will soar to astronomical levels, and the name of the game will be who can get the most Bitcoin at the lowest cost. All it takes is a world superpower to kick off the process, and we are going to be that superpower.

Alongside this, Bitcoin-related services will become ubiquitous. You’ll see them around every corner. They’ll be advertised in airport terminals and flashed on interstate billboards. Big banks, whose CEOs spent years going on air to predict Bitcoin’s impending doom, will be pushing custodial and lending services at a dizzying pace. They, too, will have gloriously capitulated. 

Corporate earnings reports and stock performance will benefit directly from Bitcoin’s price appreciation for forward-thinking companies that adopt a treasury strategy. This strategy will bring wealth and prosperity to millions of investors—even those who do not own Bitcoin directly. These companies will be agents of Bitcoin’s integration into the rails of the traditional financial system.

Bitcoin’s evolution has been and will continue to be a long and winding journey, along which there will be many, many types of participants. Right now, at this moment in time, the participants helping to advance our beloved magic internet money happen to include the leader (s) of the free world, large financial institutions, and corporations. We are observing the transition from “gradually” to “suddenly” in real-time.

So, what now? 

If you’re a longtime Bitcoiner, revel in what can only be understood as a monumental victory — a once-in-a-century technological and monetary breakthrough blossoming into maturity. If you’re newer to Bitcoin, welcome, and keep learning! Bitcoin is soon to play a very significant role in all levels of society, and we have the gift of knowing this just before it happens. We all have the opportunity to participate in this great technological revolution — and the wealth and prosperity it will bring.

This time is different, and it is my sincere hope you’ll enjoy the ride as much as I am.