Research Fellow at the @CatoInstitute's @CatoCMFA and Fellow at the @HRF. Covering CBDCs, financial privacy, and cryptocurrency. Opinions are my own.
Joined August 2019
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Did I hold up the Constitution to Congress? Yes.
Did I reference the Grateful Dead? Also, Yes.
Nick Anthony retweeted
Opinion: Russians should be concerned about the power the Central Bank's new digital ruble would give the state over their finances, warns @EconWithNick.
themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/2…
Russians deserve to know what their own Central Bank is asking them to opt into.
See my latest in the @MoscowTimes as I discuss findings from the @HRF CBDC Tracker.
themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/2…
Even government officials have learned what their own central banks were working on by using the @HRF CBDC Tracker. That’s exactly why this kind of transparency matters. cbdctracker.hrf.org/
I will say... tracking taxes is the most frustrating part of spending bitcoin for me.
I've spent bitcoin on things large and small in countries far and wide. Every time has been seamless and keeps getting better. Yet, tracking and filing taxes has remained a constant headache.
It's time to change the law.
Despite years of policy advocacy, spending Bitcoin in the U.S. has triggered a taxable event, even if it’s on a cup of coffee.
“You could argue that the second-order effect of a de minimis tax exemption would be better create the conditions that have a virtuous cycle of adoption.”
Bitcoin faces several several payment-use-case adoption hurdles, but excluding small purchases from capital gains tax could support a real shift among merchants, according to David Zell (@DavidZell_), co-founder and president of the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
"Nick, how bad could it be"
This bad, anon.
xitter.cf/EconWithNick/status/20…
Spending Bitcoin is becoming easier every day. Yet Form 8949 alone can run to around 70 pages if you spend Bitcoin every day. xitter.cf/EconWithNick/status/20…
I sat down with the @CatoInstitute's Patrick Eddington to talk about all things financial surveillance. Check out the interview below.
cato.org/blog/financial-surv…
Nick Anthony retweeted
Cato Surveillance Week 2026 featured a panel that included Cato scholars Patrick Eddington and Nicholas Anthony. As usual, there were more questions than they had time to address.
Read below for Patrick Eddington & @EconWithNick's chat after the event: buff.ly/nPsUWRV
Nick Anthony retweeted
IRS agents seized over $450,000 from a small business in Arizona in February 2025.
The alleged crime? "Structuring" ... meaning engaging in cash transactions under $10,000.
Nearly 20 months later, the government has not filed a case, but still has the funds.
Nick Anthony retweeted
Read Nick's work here: cato.org/testimony/modernizi…
Nick Anthony retweeted
Lawmakers are well-intentioned. Offices of legislative counsel do great work. And...
we can & should do better.
Imagine, for example, all bills being assessed by AI systems for these kinds of common faults. There'd be no excuse for lawmakers saying they didn't know better.
Nick Anthony retweeted
Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in a surge in compliance costs and flagged transactions with little to show for in terms of actual investigations.
Nick Anthony retweeted
Americans deserve better laws.
Case in point, the Bank Secrecy Act does not account for inflation. As a result, a law intended only to reach "abnormally large" transactions now applies to far more conduct.
@EconWithNick (@CatoInstitute) documents this problematic drift:
The HRF CBDC Tracker now covers 150 jurisdictions, from Albania to Zimbabwe. Each one gets a status, a timeline, and a look at what a CBDC could mean for civil liberties there. Check it out. cbdctracker.hrf.org
"FinCEN never explained whether those individuals (or what percentage of them)
were doing anything suspicious in this context." - @MitchellScacchi and Luke Wake
pacificlegal.org/research/fi…
Nick Anthony retweeted
If you missed last week's @CatoInstitute Surveillance Week, you can check out the discussion on financial privacy w/ @EconWithNick and others here: buff.ly/nT3JfcB
Nick Anthony retweeted
Are banks systematically discriminating against conservatives and Christians? That’s what the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s new report on debanking has led many people to believe.
Yet, a careful read of the report shows something else. @EconWithNick buff.ly/OHWaFoT
Nick Anthony retweeted
Agree with @EconWithNick. The OCC's findings reinforce why government-imposed reputational risk was a problem in the first place.
Removing it from bank supervision was an important first step. Congress should make that reform permanent through the FIRM Act while also addressing the BSA/AML incentives that can drive unnecessary debanking.
My thoughts on the OCC's debanking report: The headlines sound definitive, but the evidence in the report leaves many questions unanswered.
Step 1: CBDC expanded
Step 2: Cryptocurrency restricted
Who could have guessed?
themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/1…
