Welcome to Axis Proerata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Pramak. On today's show, Elon Musk pulls the plug on Tesla's buyout, and the last unicorn holdout gives up.

But first, Bitcoin, boom or bust.

That's the title of a new CNBC documentary, premiering tonight, hosted by Melissa Lee, who will chat within a couple minutes.

And I hate to spoil things, but here's one big takeaway.

The most consequential battle of Bitcoin isn't between hackers and cybersecurity engineers or advocates of old money and new

money or between Bitcoin and alt coins. No, it's probably between regulators and themselves.

The real novelty of Bitcoin and blockchain in general is this idea of decentralization or

that there's not an organization or government that controls everything, like a Federal Reserve

for money or a

Google for web searches. And there are still plenty of crypto anarchists out there who believe this is a

worthy end in itself and that crypto markets can, by design, self-regulate. But it feels like a

larger group recognizes that at least some government oversight is required, or at least inevitable.

Probably because self-regulation hasn't always

worked out, particularly when you look at some thefts of crypto assets or that whole rash of scummy

ICOs, initial coin offerings, that were basically just digital snake oil. So the big question now is

what regulators will do and when. Remember, Bitcoin turns 10 years old next year, but the SEC still hasn't even officially decided if it's a security or a currency or something else, which is a pretty fundamental decision to make.

The SEC's chairman recently said he thinks it's a currency, but that was just a TV interview, not an official statement.

And we've seen the same in other federal agencies.

It is impossible for this industry or any really to properly

mature with such uncertainty hanging over its head. And the bottom line is, it's been long enough.

Tech always goes faster than regulation, but this has been kind of like watching a cheetah race a snail.

...