What the revised bill actually says
On April 13, US lawmakers released a revised draft of the Digital Asset Protection, Accountability, Regulation, Innovation, Taxation and Yields Act — the PARITY Act — sponsored by Representatives Steven Horsford (D-NV) and Max Miller (R-OH).
The quiet but important change: the de minimis exemption that would have spared small crypto transactions from capital gains reporting has been narrowed to cover only "regulated payment stablecoins."
Bitcoin is explicitly excluded.
Under the prior December 2025 draft, individual transactions under a $200 threshold were exempt from tax reporting — a provision that would have made day-to-day Bitcoin payments practical for the first time since the 2014 IRS ruling that classified crypto as property.
The March 2026 revision dropped the dollar threshold entirely and rewrote the section to exempt only stablecoin redemptions where the holder's basis is within 99% of the redemption value. Effectively, if you spend a tokenized dollar and get back roughly a dollar, no taxable event. If you spend Bitcoin — on anything, at any size — you still owe capital gains tax on the difference between your basis and the spot price.
Why this matters for payments
For years, Bitcoin advocates have lobbied for a de minimis rule to make small transactions viable. The current status quo requires holders to calculate cost basis and realized gain on every purchase — a cup of coffee, a Lightning tip, a $10 online payment.
That accounting burden is why most US-based Bitcoin use never left the "savings technology" category. Spending became a tax compliance project.
The original PARITY Act draft was seen as a meaningful fix. By limiting the exemption to stablecoins, the revised bill implicitly picks winners: it makes dollar-denominated payment rails easier to use while leaving Bitcoin payments in regulatory limbo.
Jerry Brito of Coin Center has argued for years that the property classification is the single biggest barrier to practical Bitcoin payments. The revised PARITY Act does not address that barrier — it reinforces it.
The political logic
This is not accidental. The shift tracks a broader US policy preference that has emerged over the last 12 months: stablecoins are being treated as extensions of dollar infrastructure, while Bitcoin is being treated as a commodity investment.
The GENIUS Act, passed last year, established the federal framework for stablecoin issuers. Treasury's recent AML guidance is building out the compliance layer. The PARITY Act tax treatment is the next logical step — regulatory clarity for tokenized dollars, tax friction for everything else.
From a policy standpoint, this is consistent. From a holder's standpoint, it means the US government is structurally encouraging you to hold Bitcoin, not spend it.
What it changes for long-term holders
For accumulators, almost nothing. Bitcoin's tax treatment for savers — buy, hold, maybe realize years later — is unchanged. The property classification arguably helps: you can harvest losses, track long-term capital gains rates, and avoid the kind of wash-sale rules that apply to securities.
For anyone hoping to use Bitcoin as medium of exchange in the US, the path just got narrower. The practical use cases left are:
- Self-custodied savings
- Cross-border transfers where the counterparty absorbs the tax math
- Lightning payments to non-US merchants
- Eventual sale and conversion to fiat
Circle, Tether, and other stablecoin issuers — not Bitcoin — get the payment-friendly tax treatment.
The CLARITY Act context
This is happening in parallel with the CLARITY Act markup, which the Senate Banking Committee is targeting for the final two weeks of April. CLARITY focuses on market structure — who regulates what, SEC versus CFTC jurisdiction, stablecoin issuer oversight.
Neither bill addresses the de minimis Bitcoin payment problem. Both treat Bitcoin as a commodity held for investment, not a currency used for spending.
For anyone expecting US regulation to eventually make Bitcoin "spendable," the legislative trajectory in 2026 points the other direction. Washington is building rails for dollar-denominated stablecoins, and Bitcoin is being gently but clearly placed outside that lane.
Bitcoin Gate Take
This is a subtle bill, but it reveals a clear preference: the US is standardizing tokenized dollars as the payment rail and keeping Bitcoin in the investment-asset bucket. For long-term holders, that is not a problem — arguably it reinforces the store-of-value thesis by removing the ambiguity about what Bitcoin is for inside the US financial system. The question to watch is whether any de minimis Bitcoin carve-out gets added back during markup. Without one, US Bitcoin payments remain a tax compliance exercise, not a usable feature.