TechFlow News, January 25: Pierre Rochard, a board member of Bitcoin financial firm Strive, stated that the greatest barrier to Bitcoin’s adoption as a payment method is not scalability technology—such as settlement speed or transaction costs—but rather tax policy.
He used an analogy to illustrate Bitcoin’s current underutilization in payments: “Even the strongest athlete, with a 100% win rate, sees that win rate drop to 0% if they never step onto the field.”
In December 2025, the nonprofit Bitcoin Policy Institute warned that the U.S. lacks a “de minimis tax exemption” for small Bitcoin transactions, meaning every use of BTC for payment triggers a taxable event—severely hindering its function as a medium of exchange.
Currently, U.S. lawmakers are considering limiting the de minimis exemption exclusively to over-collateralized, dollar-pegged stablecoins (backed by cash or short-term U.S. Treasury securities), a proposal that has drawn strong opposition from the Bitcoin community.
