All shady business, like sanctions evasion, is done with USDT or A7A5 nowadays. No one likes value uncertainty when they pay to a business partner. The merchants I spoke with hated the idea of CGT accounting for every coffee cup. The only room for Bitcoin is off-the books retirement fund, but then again, few are motivated enough to learn self custody.

That too, but the tax policies have always been the same, and greater acceptance by merchants mean less worry about taxes, for the more ballsy types anyway.

Stablecoins are subject to taxation too. In practice there may not be any tax to pay, but they still need to be kept track of and declared.
And they don't protect from inflation, while bitcoin has been seen as promising to do that.

SpaceHodler

I think more than one factor is at play here. The strongest is the lack of retail adoption due to aggressive tax policies and the stablecoins placebo. Few have long enough investment horizon and balls to say "fuck you" to the surveilance state.