20 Million Mined. Bitcoin Held. Stocks Hit a 2026 Low. The Tax Fight for Bitcoin's Future.

The War Scoreboard: Two Weeks In

It's been two weeks since the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28. Here's how every major asset class has performed since the bombs dropped.

Oil is the massive outlier. The Strait of Hormuz, the passage for one-fifth of the world's oil, remains effectively disrupted. Brent peaked near $119 intraday before pulling back to $103. The IEA released 400 million barrels from emergency reserves. WTI settled near $99. This is a genuine supply shock, and equities are pricing in the stagflation risk that comes with it. The S&P 500 just posted its third consecutive losing week.

The surprise is Bitcoin. It has outperformed both equities and gold since the war started. Not because it surged, but because it absorbed the shock and recovered. Bitcoin was already beaten down before the conflict, having fallen from $96K to $66K through February. The war didn't break it further. It bounced.

Now, let's be honest about what this is and isn't. Gold is still winning the safe-haven narrative on the longer timeline, up roughly 40% in six months, already at all-time highs before the war. Bitcoin is still down 44% from its ATH. The Fear & Greed Index hit 8 on Monday, with the market logging 38 consecutive days in Extreme Fear, the longest streak since the Terra/Luna collapse in 2022. Bitcoin's 30-day correlation with the S&P 500 climbed to 0.74 earlier this month, its highest reading of 2026.

But by midweek, something shifted. As equities continued falling, Bitcoin decoupled and held firm. The S&P and Nasdaq dropped 2.4% and 3.1% on Wednesday and Thursday. Bitcoin didn't follow. It stayed above $70,000.

This isn't the March 2020 COVID crash, when Bitcoin lost 50% in days. Holding $70K during a war, with five red monthly candles behind it, after a 44% drawdown, is not victory. It's not defeat either. It's quiet strength. And since Feb 28, the scoreboard says Bitcoin has handled this better than most things on your screen.

The 20 Millionth Bitcoin

On March 9, the 20 millionth Bitcoin was mined at block height 939,999 by the Foundry USA pool. 95.24% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist is now in circulation. Only about 1 million BTC remains to be mined, and that will take approximately 114 years.

The math makes this milestone feel even more significant. Daily new issuance is roughly 450 BTC (3.125 BTC per block, about 144 blocks per day). Strategy alone bought more than 2,500 BTC per day this week. Demand from a single buyer is outpacing new supply by more than 5x.

And the real circulating supply is likely far less than 20 million. An estimated 3 to 4 million BTC are permanently lost, locked in wallets where the keys are gone forever. The effective supply is more like 16 to 17 million coins for 8 billion people.

There will never be a "21 millionth Bitcoin mined" event. The supply asymptotically approaches 21 million but never reaches it. This was the last round-number milestone Bitcoin's supply will ever produce. It happened on a Sunday, in the middle of a war, and most people didn't notice. That seems fitting for a protocol that was designed to work whether or not anyone is watching.

Strategy Is Loading Again

Last Monday's filing confirmed Strategy's 102nd Bitcoin purchase: 17,994 BTC for $1.28 billion between March 2 and 8 at an average price of $70,946. Their 11th consecutive weekly buy. Total holdings: 738,731 BTC acquired for roughly $56.04 billion at an average cost of $75,862 per coin.

The scale of 2026's accumulation is hard to overstate. Strategy has added 66,231 BTC in the first 68 days of the year, already surpassing their full-year net purchases in 2021, 2022, or 2023. That's roughly $4.7 billion deployed in just over two months.

But the signal this week isn't last week's filing. It's what STRC did. STRC, Strategy's perpetual preferred stock, broke its own trading volume record four times in five days.

Monday: $300 million. Tuesday: $409 million. Wednesday: another $409 million. Then Thursday blew them all away: $743 million in total volume, with 7.3 million shares traded at 471% above average.

An important distinction: not all of that volume represents new capital for Strategy. STRC total trading volume includes secondary market trades between investors, which don't generate proceeds. Only new shares sold via Strategy's at-the-market (ATM) program raise capital for Bitcoin purchases. STRC.live, which tracks ATM issuance estimates, attributes roughly 40% of total volume to new issuance when STRC trades at or near its $100 par value. After a 2.5% broker commission, Thursday's $743 million in volume translates to an estimated ~$283 million in net ATM proceeds, enough to fund roughly 4,038 BTC at current prices.

By Thursday, CoinDesk estimated STRC-funded purchases had reached roughly 7,000 BTC for the week. An amended sales agreement now allows multiple agents to sell STRC pre-market and after-hours, giving Strategy more flexibility to capture demand around the clock.

We won't know the exact purchase numbers until Monday's SEC filing. But the volume spike is unmistakable. Strategy is buying underwater on their $76K average cost basis, accelerating week over week, and showing no signs of slowing down. This is dollar-cost averaging at institutional scale. Watch Monday's filing.

ETF Flows Flip Positive

After the worst outflow streak since launch, $3.8 billion out over five weeks, spot Bitcoin ETF flows turned positive this week. Monday saw $167 million in net inflows. Tuesday brought $247 million. On Wednesday, IBIT pulled in $115 million, accounting for nearly all of the day's inflows. Three consecutive days of net buying after weeks of redemptions.

This is counter-trend accumulation. When long-only institutional mandates buy during extreme fear, that's structural demand, not speculation. These aren't basis traders arbitraging futures premiums. Institutions are deploying capital into an asset that's down 44% from its high, during a war, while the Fear & Greed Index reads single digits. That's conviction.

The Tax Fight That Could Define Bitcoin Payments

This is the most important policy story of the week, and it deserves your attention even if policy isn't your thing.

Under current US law, Bitcoin is classified as property. Every purchase made with BTC triggers a capital gains calculation. Buy a $4 coffee with Bitcoin and you owe the IRS a report on whether you gained or lost money on the sats you spent. This is the single biggest barrier to Bitcoin functioning as money in the United States.

Several proposals are working through Congress to fix this with a de minimis exemption, a threshold below which small transactions wouldn't trigger a taxable event. But the details differ dramatically.

Senator Cynthia Lummis proposed a $300 per-transaction exemption with a $5,000 annual cap, covering both Bitcoin and stablecoins. In the House, the Miller/Horsford PARITY Act limits relief to stablecoins only with a $200 threshold, explicitly excluding Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Policy Institute is pushing for a broader $600 per-transaction threshold with a $20,000 annual cap covering both stablecoins and major network tokens including Bitcoin. BPI has met with 19 congressional offices in three months pressing for the broader coverage.

Then came the controversy. On March 11, Marty Bent, podcaster and managing partner at Ten31, alleged that Coinbase lobbyists visited congressional offices and argued against including Bitcoin in the de minimis exemption, claiming Bitcoin isn't widely used as money and the exemption would amount to a "handout." Coinbase CPO Faryar Shirzad called it "a total lie" and said Coinbase has pushed for tax relief covering all digital assets since 2017. CEO Brian Armstrong called it "totally false." Jack Dorsey publicly pressed Armstrong for clarification on X.

We're not taking sides on the allegation. No independent documentation has surfaced supporting either claim. But the controversy highlights a real tension: stablecoin issuers and exchanges benefit from a stablecoin-only framework because it drives transaction volume through their platforms.

Pierre Rochard, board member at Strive, put it simply: "The number one impediment to Bitcoin payments adoption is tax policy, not scaling technology." The window for legislation is narrowing. Lummis leaves the Senate in January 2027. If this doesn't happen by August 2026, it may not happen for years.

Bitcoin as the Payment Rail for AI Agents

Here's something worth thinking about even if it sounds early. AI agents are becoming increasingly autonomous: booking flights, purchasing API calls, paying for compute. They need a payment method that's programmable, permissionless, instant, and works without a bank account or KYC verification.

Traditional payment rails don't work for this. Credit cards require human identity. ACH takes days. Wire transfers need bank accounts. An AI agent can't open a Chase checking account. But an AI agent can hold a Lightning Network wallet and pay another AI agent 50 sats for an API call in milliseconds, with no intermediary and no identity requirements.

This creates a potential future where millions of autonomous agents transact with each other using Bitcoin as the settlement layer. The reason Bitcoin fits here better than traditional payments isn't ideology. It's architecture. Lightning is the only payment network that's open, instant, and has no minimum transaction size. You can send one satoshi. Try sending one cent through Visa.

On that front, Ark Labs raised $5.2 million this week, backed by Tether and others, to build programmable finance on Bitcoin. Their goal is enabling USDT on Bitcoin rails, a bridge between stablecoin utility and Bitcoin's settlement guarantees.

This is early. This is speculative. But the structural fit between autonomous AI agents and a permissionless, programmable payment network is worth watching. The use case doesn't need ideology. It just needs architecture that works.

Looking Ahead

FOMC meeting, March 18. The Fed is expected to hold rates at 3.50-3.75% with over 92% probability on the CME FedWatch tool. Bitcoin has dropped after seven of its last eight FOMC meetings. Powell's tone on inflation versus growth will matter more than the decision itself. The updated dot plot and economic projections will signal how the Fed is weighing war-driven oil prices against weakening employment.

Strategy's next filing. At current pace, expect another multi-billion dollar purchase disclosed on Monday. STRC volume records suggest the capital is already raised.

Oil and the Strait of Hormuz. If tensions escalate further, expect more correlation pressure on all risk assets. The IEA's emergency reserve release bought time but not resolution.

Fear & Greed. Still in extreme fear territory. Historically, these readings have preceded recoveries. But timing is unknowable, and "historically" is not a trading strategy.

The data will tell you when things change. Your job is to still be here when it does.

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