Loading summary
Transcript110 lines
- [00:00]
A
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. If you are not already, give a follow to cryptotown hall, the account that's hosting this, so that you never miss one of these spaces. As usual, there's no lack of topics to discuss with our esteemed panel. So we are going to get into all of that in a moment. But first, we do have an awesome sponsor today who we've been having every day for a while here. 0G AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what zero G is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at Zero G AI. That's the number. Zero G AI. So the topic of the day here. US Senate drops crypto draft rules incoming. It seems that we have a situation where potentially the industry, and Coinbase in particular may be pacified because they're offering enough. And we have this bipartisan offer basically coming out of the Senate Banking Committee amending the crypto market structure bill to allow effectively some stable coin rewards, you're not allowed to call it yield stablecoin rewards under certain conditions. So maybe it's enough for Coinbase to get behind it, enough that the banking lobby doesn't freak out on the other side and maybe we can push forward. Lummis says we're ready to go. Let's get this done. And the markup for this bill is on the 15th. There's a markup later coming from AG, I believe later in the month, but making some progress here. Listen, we got Ron on stage. Dave, I know you want to unpack this, but since we do have Ron and you're our go to policy guy, where are we at with this?
- [02:12]
B
Yeah, there's a lot going on. You know, I've been on several calls already this morning about it since the Biltex did drop around midnight last night. So it's been a lot of folks reviewing it and got plenty more calls here. So I do apologize if I do drop halfway through because we're still trying to kind of parse through Everything going on. But to your point, this is, at least right now, it seems like the yield issue is going more in favor to the banks. Obviously, a lot of the centralized exchanges and crypto would not be happy, to your point, Coinbase, but that's largely the crypto industry as a whole, would be not too happy with that kind of middle deal struck. You know, we just had reports actually that the drafter of that center also Brooks from Maryland, says that she's not fully sold on the compromise text either. So we could see that changing as well. But overall, this, you know, when it comes to kind of a product that has a lot of input from a lot of stakeholders here, I mean, we saw everyone ranging from the banks to even the Indian tribes try to get in on this legislation. And that's on top of the backdrop of a lot of things that have happened over the weekend, especially the bank lobby. You know, they got this little small win here on the yield, but they have a lot of issues facing with the credit card cap that Trump was proposing on Friday, that's gonna be a huge vector. You know, we saw that element come into play in the genius act markup. So I'm very confident that we're gonna be seeing a lot of drama around credit card interest rates during this markup as well, and plenty of other issues that it seems that we come down the pipeline. So I'll pause there. But overall, nothing is set in stone. This is very, very fluid. But it seems like they're still powering through, at least on the bank committee right now with what they have.
- [03:51]
C
I mean, it's very. Sorry, I hit the wrong button. Sorry. It's very hard for the average person to look at what's going on and not get even more disgusted with how the sausage is made in D.C. i mean, it was a great tweet from Mike Novogratz who basically said, we gotta get it done. Everything's political, you know, basically, you know, it's up in the air. I mean, look, let's call a spade a spade. The banking lobby and today JP Morgan's, you know, earnings drop, the banking lobby is subsidized to the tune of over $100 billion a year in SS interest rates because of these oligopoly rules that protect them. They donate a lot of money, that is bribe a lot of politicians in order to keep those rules. This is all of that. At the same time, the fact that the politicians are holding hostage an industry is despicable. But the industry is essentially also knows something that these, that the Banks don't know which is. None of this is going to matter in five years. Let me repeat that because I want the listeners to understand what I mean right now. If you ban yield and ban rewards, the banks get a temporary reprieve. But once Coinbase, Kraken and every other fintech that gets banking licenses and gets the ability to be able to offer payment services can actually operate and offer automated sweeps using tokenization so that investors or savers can keep almost no money in their deposit payment account and have it sweep and convert automatically, either via defi or their own centralized exchange to from some investment that pays yield or has as appreciation, you know, potential like Bitcoin. At that point, the number, the amount of deposits instead of being $7 trillion or more, will go to half a billion, you know, half a trillion maybe, because it'll just be enough, you know, minimums that are there and the world will change. Right now we all have to keep money in our checking accounts or in savings accounts at deposit institutions that pay, pay basically nothing because it takes days to get money back and forth, even inside Citibank. For those who don't know this, if you have an investment account, and so let's say for the sake of argument, you have, you know, a high yield, something that's yielding in your investment account, you have to give yourself over a day for that to settle and then to transfer it to pay. So it, it takes time and it's hard so people don't do it. All of this is going to get automated in the next five years. You can take that to the bank. And so as a result, none of this is going to matter. So the industry kind of knows this and therefore as long as they get the infrastructure to allow tokenization and to allow what? The kind of services that I'm talking about, they don't really care. They're going to fight it, but they're going to take what they can get. Meanwhile, the senators are going to take their donations. I mean, bribes or. Well, maybe I meant donations, I don't know. But they're going to take that and pacify the banking industry. So they like Kodak can think that, you know, they're going to keep this forever. Well, they're not going to keep it forever, but the fact that they're keeping it for now is reprehensible. Okay, that's my rant this morning, Scott. Sorry.
- [07:18]
A
It's a good one. I guess the next question, Ron, specifically, what's our timeline now and how do you handicap the odds of us actually Seeing the Clarity act approved.
- [07:30]
B
Yeah. So what's going to happen now is again, there's two versions or two half this bill. So the first half, the banking version, is going to vote this Thursday. It's in the Senate Agriculture version. The second half, that's going to be coming out hopefully next week or later this week and then get to vote probably in two weeks in the Senate Agriculture Committee. Then they'll combine those two bills together and then it's off to the Senate floor.
- [07:55]
C
So, hey, Ron, the other issue that you didn't mention, but I'm curious, in this draft, are there prohibitions on politicians issuing meme coins or did they table that?
- [08:08]
B
I believe some of those ethics provisions are in there. I need to re look at the latest draft, but I do believe they added some of those provisions on politicians holding meme coins and such. Again, more going after the Trump family, probably into the piece of Democrats here, but that's likely included in this draft.
- [08:25]
C
I've been checking. Let me, let me make this interesting. I would say that find someone in the crypto industry who thinks that a sitting politician or a politician running for office should be able to issue meme coins. And that would be, you know, other than the people who run Pump Fun or whatever platform is being used, I think that pretty much overwhelmingly people would say no, that's probably a bad idea. So, you know, yes, they're going after the Trump families. That's what they did. But do we want to see an Ilan Omar coin or an AOC coin also? The answer is no. So I think that, you know, while Trump may not like it, the truth is, is it should be about the issuance, the holding of it, you know, whatever the water under the bridge. You know, I'm just curious what people in D.C. are thinking because this sounds like it should be contentious but probably shouldn't be. Right.
- [09:15]
A
We had another one yesterday, right. Eric Adams, who I interviewed and had a rug pull. So I don't even understand the mechanics of this if we want to dig into it, but he's the ex mayor of New York, but somehow, I mean, one tweet. So let me, let me start here. My assumption is that much like Milei and a lot of these others, somebody basically encouraged someone on his or his team to launch a token with promises and then rug pulled the token, unbeknownst to the celebrity who's doing it. But whether that's the case or not, basically launched a New York City token. It launched a New York City token to stop homelessness or to Stop anti Semitism and anti Americanism. Last I checked, he's no longer the mayor of New York. So I don't know how ex mayor can launch a token. But let me just finish. For people who didn't see ran up to 580 million or something like we haven't seen meme coins running that high at all. And then rug pulled the liquidity for 2.1 million, something like that. But people were like. And then he rug pulled the liquidity. Dude, I wouldn't know how to rug pull like liquidity. There's no way Eric Adams was like in the back end like looking at the LP and managing this right. But it was a straight up rug pull. All the liquidity was pulled. They made a couple million bucks and here we are.
- [10:37]
C
Well there's two things here. So let's unpack it into two bits. Bit number one is should sitting politicians be allowed to monetize their fame via meme coins? That is the ethics provision that the Democrats have been championing. But I think that most people, most, most reasonable people would agree, as long as it's not overtly targeting anyone in particular, that it's a bad idea. Just like I think most reasonable people who aren't in Congress believe that Congress, you know, congressional members and senators and staffers shouldn't be able to insider trade. Of course. Why nobody is suggesting on that that they have the same sort of rules that Wall street has which are, are well trodden. I don't understand. I'll never understand that. It's not about blocking it, it's about reporting it and know and you know, putting conditions on it. But that's number one. Number two is going to be in the meat of the Ag Committee because the cftc, which has never had authority to regulate anything other than derivatives once they have the ability to regulate actual tokens are going to need rules. And one of the rules they're going to want, some of the rules are going to be about anti manipulation which should go straight at rug pulling. And if people criminally should pump the price of a token and then and, and extract value from it and don't disclose how it's working to individuals, they're probably going to have rules to block that. But that's going to be at the agency level. I mean for those, I mean Ron, you, you know this but probably a lot of people don't that Congress will pass these seemingly long rules like Dodd Frank. I think there's things in Dodd Frank from over a decades or decades ago that never got implemented or are still pending. So a lot of the way the sausage is made in D.C. and for, for those who are listening, you should understand this is Congress will pass a rule that directs the agencies to create rules. That's what they do. They don't actually write the rules. They, they direct the agencies and they put conditions upon them and they limit their jurisdiction or give grant them jurisdiction. Then the agencies get to work and write rules. So within that process there's yet another round of lobbying, another round of and public comments and all sorts of other stuff. So what you're talking about with rug pulls, that will 100% be something that the CFTC will be addressing. And by the way, the SEC has a lot of rules there, some of which don't work anymore because they're outdated, but they're also going to be addressing it. So expect the agencies to do that. I'm sorry for, for getting into the sausage, Scott, but it is important for people to understand what the timelines are. As you asked about timelines, the you won't see a rule that actually impacts the market probably for 12 to 18 months even if it passes and gets signed by the President at the end of, of February. Am I getting that right or wrong, Ron? I'm pretty confident no.
- [13:22]
B
100 you're right. This is like the starting gun. And we kind of seen that with the Genius act where like we're going through the rule makings now of the Genius act and that's obviously huge for the banks. It's huge circle, it's huge the issuers. And so there's a lot of lobbying focus on just that piece alone. And so that's why, you know, in many people's minds, you know, you want to have a more favorable administration potentially to be the ones having those rules crafted. And again those rules can take two to five years. And in your case, Dodd Frank, it's been like 10 years for some of these rules. You know, some folks are trying to delay and stuff. So there's a lot of lobbying tactics that happen behind the scenes after they'll sign the law here. And that's why a lot of folks are saying, hey, we want, you know, clear regulation, we don't want rulemaking, we want like clear outline positions because the rule being can happen underneath Gensler 2.0 because it can happen in four years from now.
- [14:09]
C
Yeah, that's true. But, but, but two things that do mitigate against that first, Trump Atkins and, and, and Sillig. You know, basically the agencies, they have three years, the midterms don't. Won't matter. It wouldn't matter if Trump got impeached. They're still there, right? So, you know, they do have three years to get rules done. The second thing is the, with the Loper Bright case, which ended chevron deference, Gensler 2.0 would find it dramatically harder in, in this case. Which is why Paul Atkins this morning said passing bipartisan market structure legislation will help us future proof against rogue regulators. I mean, to me it's hysterical. I mean, I agree with Paul completely, of course, but it's hysterical that the sitting head of the SEC is warning about future rogue regulators, but that there we are, that's the world we live in. Which is your point. Right. So the other, the point is though, before people get despondent of what I'm saying, understand that investment in the industry and entrepreneurship will start. The day that there's legislation signed is when all the big companies are willing to start putting their chips on the table in terms of entrepreneurship and moving in directions. Yes, some of the things they may want to do, they may need to wait. But a lot of banks, there's a lot of capital on the sidelines that is saying, well, without legislation, we're not going to risk it, but once the legislation drops, we kind of know within it's going to be nuanced. It's going to be the difference. So there is a wall of money from traditional financial institutions that will go from a trickle to a flood once in fact, the legislation passes. So it's by far. It's not at all insignificant. It's quite significant. It just. You need to temper your expectations of what it's going to mean. Okay, that's way too much talking about rules. Can we talk about the Fed now, Scott, or you want to talk about something?
- [16:07]
A
I have at it. I think we covered that one. Yeah, Fed's fine.
- [16:14]
C
So yesterday I made the point that, because the reaction was perfect. Sorry. That Powell going out and attacking the President by, you know, with his, with his video was politically astute. And, and it was in the sense of he got exactly the reaction that he wanted, which is turn the debate into Fed independence, yada, yada, yada. The truth is, now that we actually know what happened, I think he has completely his legacy because, yeah, half the country will ignore it, but half the country won't, which is. This didn't come from the White House. This was.
- [16:54]
A
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You believe that the White House saying this didn't come from the White House is confirmation that it didn't come from.
- [16:59]
D
No, no.
- [17:00]
C
I mean, the white, the process is the process. We, I am not saying that someone in the DOJ didn't ask Trump, hey, do you want us to proceed? And him saying, yeah, go get that guy. I'm not saying that he didn't. But there was a very big difference between the White House signing off on a process and instigating that process. It is very clear because Annapolina Luna basically said it. I mean, she, she took responsibility. She said, listen, we asked the DOJ, we referred this to the DOJ in July of 2025. And the DOJ from July of 25 until two days ago or three days ago said, you know, we're, we're sending information requests to the Federal Reserve and got ungots. And so that's nothing for the people who don't know, you know, whatever. And so the DOJ is like, okay, well, what's the next process? What would you do? 100% of the time, 100% of the time when you're sending information requests that are ignored, you look for a subpoena. Anybody who's ever done discovery in any, in any legal or action or arbitration knows that's the next thing you do. Now, in this case, did they go and ask the president or the, or his staffers, should we proceed? I'm sure they did, and I'm sure the answer was yes. But there's no question that this is not an indictment, which is what, what Powell said. So he basically lied that this is a, a subpoena to get information they've been previously asked for. That is very, very clear. Now, should they have been conducting an investigation? Well, you can just, you could debate that, but that's not the way it was portrayed yesterday. And I think that that is very important because a lot of people reacted and just took, just assume Powell wouldn't lie about it, and he did. And you know, if you're the head of the, you are literally the most powerful person in the United States who is never elected, literally the most powerful person without. It's not been. That was unelected. And you lie in a video because of a political food fight, I think you tarnished your legacy. I think that's why markets basically are shrugging it off saying, yeah, no done, no big deal. It's just politics. I don't know what you think about that, but I think that it's, it's, it's important because, look, I'm not defending anybody. I'm just saying you shouldn't. This Is this is the kind of thing that should never have happened. And I don't, when I mean never have happened. I mean they should just give the information and then were the administration to pursue an indictment. Yeah. Then I think you get to some very interesting issues.
- [19:23]
A
Yeah, I think, I think it was. Go around the panel, give everybody a chance.
- [19:28]
C
I can't believe not one hand on this. Come on, guys. Okay, David, go.
- [19:34]
E
Hey.
- [19:36]
A
Yeah.
- [19:37]
E
I mean Powell is what Powell is. My big question is about today's print around cpi. You know, BLS was shut down. So there's some questions as to this data and to what extent. It's really realistic. But I think the more interesting thing to look at in terms of CPI is basically the cost of groceries as well as also beef. I think food at home was up something like about 7%. Beef was up like 8. This goes back to the affordability issue and my big question here is about inflation and what point in time do we think Bitcoin actually turns into an inflation hedge?
- [20:15]
C
Well, I have a question and I'm curious what other people are seeing. I literally bought steaks to eat, last to eat tonight yesterday and paid 12.99 for T bone steaks at public. I mean that's lower than Costco's price. And so I, everyone keeps saying how beef is going up and you know, I like to cook. So I cook. I have a barbecue in my condo roof. So I'm sensitive to beef prices. They are not up, at least I don't seem to be paying it. And I, you know, and I'm probably one of the least price sensitive consumers you're going to find in a supermarket.
- [20:49]
E
I don't know, Dave, maybe you get your beef off the back of truck. I don't know.
- [20:53]
C
I don't know. I mean, I'm just surprised by that. But whatever, anyway, but you're right, I mean, look, the data, I mean the data was good data. There's no, no way around it. Right. You know, it's, you get basically anything that's below consensus these days is going to get. You generally get people a little bit happy. But you know, whatever. I'm curious what people are thinking.
- [21:17]
F
Look, the problem with the, the CPI data is that it does, it doesn't necessarily reflect what the average American spends. And a lot of it has to do with things like, you know, rising and lowering of oil, gasoline, housing for the most part, you know, if you just talk, you know, if you think about your average American, they either have a mortgage locked in or they have rent locked in and they have other things that are locked, locked in as well. And despite the volatility of prices for a lot of these large items that, that have a, an outsized effect on cpi, you, you don't see it. Right. So even though right now in a lot of regions housing has come down quite a bit, whether it's cost of apartment or, or the cost of a home, you know, sale price of a home. So, so your average American isn't really seeing it. And if you also think about the other side of it, what are they seeing? They're seeing things like, you know, groceries, that's, that, that is, you know, groceries and gas are the two things that are, that are going to affect most Americans. And when you can't afford your, your, your, your groceries and at this point more, more groceries, you know, the cost of food has gone up quite a bit over the last four or five years and now it's anchored at a spot. People are struggling to pay their credit card bills, which is what they're using to buy groceries. Right. And now you've got increasing debt, increasing debt service. And now we're at a point to where delinquencies are at highs not seen since the financial crisis, as well as complete defaults on things like autos, credit card even, even mortgages. So we're starting to see that really creep up, which is, which is why the Trump administration is attempting to put a 10% cap on, on credit cards. It's really interesting because that would very much be a Democrat policy and the Democrat and Donald Trump is coming out, but the minute he does it, all the Democrats that, you know, would previously support something like that, all of a sudden, you know, hating on it. Same thing with, with, with attempting to restrict corporations and hedge funds from buying single family homes. I do love that Gavin Newsom jumped on board alongside Trump on that one to try to prevent that in California. But the reality is that is where the crisis is right now. And the steps that the Fed could make to actually tamper that would be to lower short term rates, which governs things like auto and credit card loans. But instead they're keeping the Fed rates artificially high. If you look at a yield curve, it's obvious that the fed funds rate should be 25 or 50% lower. But they're also increasing their balance sheet to be able to relay repo facility to the bank. So they're helping the banks. And right now what we're seeing, and this is kind of going way back to a conversation earlier, earlier in this is I mean, the banks are fighting back right now that the banks and their minions, which are, I mean anybody that's speaking up right now to support POW is, is bought and owned by the bank lobbyist. I mean, you can tell both sides, Republican, Democrat, doesn't matter. The ones that are, that are speaking up are the ones that are the most owned by the banks. And they're fighting back on credit cards, they're fighting back on the homes, they're fighting back on the attacks on the Fed and they're now fighting back on the Clarity Act. Now, by the way, I'm probably the opposite of everybody else on this call where I don't believe that you should be able to distribute yield from, you know, from stable coins.
- [25:33]
C
This space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today.
- [25:38]
F
Because, you know, distributing yield would make it a security because the underlying is a security and there are securities rules. You know, I mean that these are essentially, if you, you were distribute a yield, you would be a money market mutual fund. And if everybody else is having to play by the rules, so should, so should the stable.
- [25:56]
C
Can I pull on that string a bit, Steven? Because I, I think.
- [25:59]
F
Well, let me keep going and then.
- [26:00]
C
We'Ll go back to that. Let's pick a pin in that.
- [26:02]
F
But, but, but my main point I want to make is, is like, I mean there is, you know, we're seeing a, you know, full scale attack right now from, from, from the bank lobbies and, and it's on several different fronts. And what Trump is trying to do is tamper it down. He's doing it in his own way, which is never, you know, never very popular, but he is, he is, he is doing it and they're fighting back. And the swampiest of the swamps is the Fed and that's the organization that funds all the things that the swamp's doing. And the minute you start attacking the Fed, that's when the swamp goes up in arms. So anyway, I'll pause.
- [26:47]
C
No, I think that's completely right and I think that, but your point about security is really important here, remember? And that's why I made the statement that I did in the beginning. You know, securities rules were designed and the banks managed. There was a huge fight about money market funds not too long ago. You have to be old enough to remember it. I'm pretty sure you and I both do. Which is that's why the reason savings accounts even exist today, given the state of technology they shouldn't, is because they were able to have money market Funds, and they use the notion of breaking the buck, you know, for those who remember that, as part of this. But the whole reason savings accounts even exist is because the securities laws create unnecessary friction in moving money from savings to checking and back and forth.
- [27:35]
F
Well, there's, there's two things here. You're, you're. So you're talking about money market funds that are administered by the bank. I'm talking about money market mutual funds.
- [27:43]
C
Well, same. I mean. Well, same in a sense. I mean, they have been people. The banking lobby has managed to pour sand into the gears of progress many times over the last 20 years and on many, many, many issues. I mean, I could talk about stock loan is another great example, but there's lots of them. The fact that a new technology that is somewhat sand resistant is coming to the fore is a very big deal. So what they're trying to do is fight a rear guard action to stop it and slow it down. That's what they're doing. And, and you're right. I mean, the, the. There are plenty of Republicans bought and paid for by the banks. There's plenty of Republicans bought and paid for by all the NGOs and all the other crap. All this, the fraud that's coming out, that, that's being there. There, there's a reason why Nothing happens in D.C. because all the, There's a reason. It's totally tied to the fact that the Beltway and the environments in, you know, in Bethesda and Northern Virginia are among the most profitable or richest counties in America. That shouldn't make sense that that's the case in any rational sense, but it is, because proximity to government equals wealth. And so they fight it. And the banks are not the only ones. But you're right, they're the swampiest of the swamp. And so that's what's going on. But the technology will win in the end. The question is here we're trying to figure out what in the technology will win, how long will it take? And, you know, people fight. I mean, I have memory, Steven. I'm writing a book. I've told people this a few, few times. They just wrote that. One of the chapters where, you know, we were all talking in 1990, believe it or not, about when markets will go fully electronic. And most of the people there are technologists in the room. And I was head of electronic trading for Morgan Stanley at the time. Most of the people in the room said it would be two or three years, you know, maybe five at the outside. And I said it would take 15. And they all thought I was nuts. And I said, well, it's because people are going to fight like hell to keep things inefficient. Well, there's no difference in what's happening now. The banks are going to fight like hell to keep markets inefficient because inefficiency is where they're making. That's why JP Morgan made $25 billion in interest differential profit that they reported this morning. So that's what's going on. I mean, let's just call it. It's money. Just follow the money. Right?
- [29:59]
A
I think we're asking Steve.
- [30:01]
C
Yeah, yeah, Steve, I think we're saying it's, it's, it's.
- [30:04]
F
Yeah, we're, we're, we're basically saying the same thing. But, but, you know, there are some nuances, but I do agree with most of what you said. But, yeah, I mean, the banks did make an exception for themselves in the way that money market funds or money markets are regulated. And stablecoins should be, if they're, if they're managed in the same way, which they very easily can be, should be, should be allowed to distribute interest at those levels if it's, if it's not, which is basically what they're trying to do. They're trying to make an exception to a money market mutual fund, which is a security. But the smarter path is to compete directly with the money market funds at the banks.
- [30:55]
A
We tie this into Clarity and stablecoins and crypto, since we're not in banking town hall, unfortunately.
- [31:03]
F
Yeah.
- [31:03]
C
Jeff park just tweeted something which I thought was funny. Post posted a hot take. I'm curious what people think. He said that if Clarity does not get passed because of all this infighting, that that's probably the most bullish thing for bitcoin, you know, mostly because it stands in opposition to all the corruption and everything that's going on in D.C.
- [31:22]
A
Maybe for Bitcoin, but certainly not for the rest of the market.
- [31:24]
C
No, no, definitely not for the rest of the market. But that's for bitcoin. I'm curious. You know, Ron, you're throwing up the 100%. You agree?
- [31:31]
B
I mean, kind of similar how we saw with the Genius act and the proliferation of stablecoin activity. The moment was signed the law, even though the rulemaking is ongoing. To your point earlier, I, I think it'd be a huge boon for the markets if we, you know, got Clarity Pass. You know, obviously it depends. The devil's in the details here. But yeah, I would Say, you know, at least if there's one asset that's me, fine. Seems like it's going to be bitcoin if it doesn't happen. But also, you know, to flag, too, the SEC is going through Project Crypto, and we should be seeing an innovation exemption, allegedly sometime in January. The details are still pretty thin. But, you know, when it comes to things like tokenization, like, that's what a large amount of speculation is in regards to that exemption. So we could be seeing a lot, you know, positive activities even without legislation that affects assets other than Bitcoin. So I think, you know, keep an eye on that, too.
- [32:16]
D
It feels like the, you know, the market and all of the coins that are out there, altcoins or, you know, coins that have foundations or are slightly offshored. I mean, these people have spent the last five, six years with the current landscape and regulation that is there getting set up. So if anything, if this doesn't pass, it benefits the things that are kind of already out there and just slightly stifles potentially new projects that are being launched that might want a little innovation around a cap table. But I still don't see, looking through this, how it really changes too much, I would say, for the proliferation of tokens as a tool or asset that's being used. I don't know, I'm just not seeing, like, too much in here. You know, like, maybe a little bit around custody, I would say would be important, some clarity for, you know, holding different assets and yield. So it's like tiny things, but, like, you know, per usual, they have stuffed so much crap in here that makes absolutely no sense, and it doesn't even look like it's been written by someone that really understands too much about what's going on. You know, with regards to the meme coins being launched, there was already a rule out there that you. You couldn't launch something like that. And this just reinforces it. I mean, it's why Trump launched his token before he got in the office.
- [33:38]
A
So it's maybe Eric Adams after.
- [33:41]
D
Yeah, it's like it's already. It's already been set up. But to me, it's like, you know, what, like, they try to say things like, what is a mature blockchain system? It's like, you know, and at the same time, if people want to launch things, like, if you wanted to launch an Eric Adams token, and you can do it from the border of Myanmar and Thailand, and then you get a half a tweet or something saying, even you get an AI slop Tweet from someone that looks like Eric Adams that says that this is his token and have fun, guys. It's still going to run. And so I don't know a lot of this activity. I think it's almost like the ship has sailed in a way. It's like it's now so decentralized. Like, Scott, you were saying you wouldn't even know how to rug pull. It's like Uniswap's pretty easy. Now you have two tokens in your wallet. Add liquidity. Done. One button, remove liquidity. Anyone could do it. So I just feel like we've gone.
- [34:44]
A
I didn't realize they'd made rug pulling so mainstream.
- [34:47]
D
Hey, you guys asked for UX and you got it. So it's, it's so easy. Everything is so easy and it's so decentralized to a point where it's just. I don't know how this affects too much outside of potential institution things, but I really think on the periphery, all the activity is just going to continue.
- [35:07]
C
Well, here's the thing, Joe, the, the, except for the institution thing, that's like, I, I can't think of a good analogy right now. But you are talking about billions upon billions of dollars of profits made on Wall street because the entire process of raising capital for companies is unbelievably intermediated. There is huge rent seeking that goes on because of the stuff that was done in the 30s and 40s after the Great Depression. And so here we are with a new technology that allows for things that didn't exist that arguably are partially securities, et cetera. I mean, you think about the capital stack of a company. If a company wants to sell a revenue stream in the future revenue stream, not stock, but sell a future revenue stream, crypto enables that. And it could be very, very clear and open, et cetera. But if you try to do that in the United States. Anyone who thought about trying to do that in the United States was stopped by Gensler. Right? So they came up with this notion of governance tokens, which are complete nonsense. Right, because there's, it doesn't necessarily give you anything in terms of economic rights. The thing that Clarity will do one way or another is create a path for companies, not foundations or other bullshit, but companies to create assets that have value that could be passed on to investors. And that is very different than meme coins. So, you know, we always focus in the crypto. In fact, we've. All we've talked about here so far are meme coins. But there's an Entire notion whether it's layer level, layer ones that get utility or other tokens that have utility. All utility tokens in some shape could be either securities or non securities. But at the time and the date that it doesn't matter that there that we don't care whether it's security or non security. But there's a, well, a well understood path to be able to raise money and get instant liquidity. Companies are going to use it and you'll see an enormous flood of, of of innovation in terms of capital raising. And Wall street is definitely not happy about this because it will take out a lot of the, a lot of the intermediation. But when you take out the intermediation, what does that mean? That means that both investors and entrepreneurs do better. And so that that's what's really at stake here. I mean we always miss the forest for the trees, but that's the real, real big deal here. Here. Does that make sense to you?
- [37:31]
D
Couldn't you already today just. You're talking about having a security token like you said, that securitizes a future cash flow or something, right? You could already technically do that today badly.
- [37:43]
C
I mean, yeah, the rules have, there's seasoning, there are so many rules. And that's why when Ron said, and it's a very important point that Ron made when Ron said that project crypto is going to have all these exemptions etc eventually when they come out with that companies will have the ability, a path. But if you look at reg A and Reg A plus, I mean there's a reason why they failed. You know, all these people say well in the jobs that green it is really hard. If you're an entrepreneur and you have to spend half a million dollars on legal fees to raise money as a fixed cost, you're not doing it as a small entrepreneur. You're going to go, you're going to raise private angel funding and you're going to go through VCs because it just doesn't make sense.
- [38:26]
D
Yeah, that's what I mean. I think those things are disruptive, right? Like being able to tokenize your, your raise. Right. Have transparency. There's interesting tools that can be built around that. You can help entrepreneurs. You know, if you've got kind of a, you know, if you're a young kid and you've got a good company at the start, you know, you're not liquid. Maybe there's a way to easily do secondaries. You know, it's like oh, I gotta, you know, I started something, I bust my ass for two years. This thing's worth, you know, on paper, $12 million and I have 50% of it. I, you know, want to start a family and get out of my mom's basement. You know, maybe I can sell a little bit of this, you know, and it not, you know, cost lawyer fees and actually not get discounted 38% because no one, there's no transparency there. I think a lot of this is like accredited investor rules, right? How come like, you know, it's, they're great, but like, how come like Gary Tan gets to put 25k into know Coinbase and make $400 million, right? Couldn't a bunch of people just put like $8 in and everyone get a brand new house? So there's, I think there's things that are there, but again, it's like those aren't tokenization, you know, rules. It's like crypto just wanted to help disrupt these things and that technology and it just so happens to be the best technology for it. But it's not crypto doing it in per se. It's these old rules that are in place that are breaking everything. So I, I get some of that stuff, but there's, it just seems like there's so much in here that's missing the point.
- [39:49]
C
Oh, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. But I think your point is there's a nuance here. Crypto by its nature can be significantly more transparent than the previous method of doing of trading securities and issuance and all this other stuff. I mean, you have to, we can't ignore that. You know, real disclosures and you know, among how things work as well as open. There's, there's so many different parts of the technology that you can have much more transparent capital raising. It might finally be the fulcrum issue that can make the accredited investor rule go boom. Because it's one of the worst rules. It's a rule that's literally at this point only a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich or from the average to the rich. And so, yeah, and there are people, the sec, who kind of know that, but you need to, they're focusing on the technology to be able to use that. And I think they're going to use it as a lever to try to move that, but that's a totally different case. I mean it's, we're really down the rabbit hole here. But the point that I was trying to make is there are lots and lots of tokens in the crypto ecosystem that stand to benefit from clarity. And that's where people are placing their bets or starting to. And I think, you know, we'll see that and we'll talk about that as we get closer. But you're right, the devil's in the details, man. You know, and the details are evidently, you know, pretty obscure.
- [41:13]
D
Yeah, I just don't, you know, I don't see this making a huge difference. I see it taking a lot more time than people probably want. And you know, again, things can change from administration to administration.
- [41:26]
C
Right.
- [41:26]
D
And we have this like, I guess, small window potentially here where things are a little bit more loose, I would say, from a regulatory standpoint. But I actually think it's just like a next generation age out thing. Right. And then millennials get the keys to the kingdom. You're going to see just a lot changing, but it's just going to take a little bit longer than people want.
- [41:50]
C
It could be. Scott, any other topics?
- [41:53]
A
There's nothing super pressing on the docket that I see. I mean, it's basically regulation. The Fed, I mean, it's sad that we have to be macro and politics bone every day.
- [42:04]
D
But yeah, you could just make, you could make, you know how much money you can make right now. You just short bitcoin at 94 and you long it at 88. 7 and use this infinite money glitch.
- [42:13]
A
If I do that, it will finally be infinite. It will finally be the breakout or the breakdown or I'll get or to go to 96. Stop me out. And that's when it'll go back to 84 and stop me out, please.
- [42:28]
C
Dear God, every time we hear the word infinite money glitch, it breaks. So please start tweeting that and get it viral because that's when bitcoin will go back to all time highs.
- [42:38]
D
Exactly.
- [42:40]
C
I mean, all kidding aside, I mean, it's like I still keep seeing, and I posted a somewhat longer form post this morning, people who keep thinking that bitcoin is, you know, collapsed because BlackRock manipulated it and all this other stuff. I mean, it's really, I mean, if you, if you sat down and actually look back at the anatomy of what happened in 2025, with hindsight, it's pretty clear, right? You know, you have distribution from older holders, you got turbocharging distribution from older holders where they could, on a tax advantage basis, swap their bitcoin for bitcoin treasury companies. So you had a huge amount of supply. Then you had the bitcoin treasury companies effectively Collapse causing, you know, in a way and go to discounts even, which is a eerie historical rhyme I guess, you know, to GBTC. And then you had October 10th and then when the market is now down, you have all the four year cycle people saying ah, well okay, this is time to take our bats and balls and toys and leave the playground and selling. And so the question is, is was all that selling exhausted in December? And I personally think yes, we'll see. You know, the market certainly feels like that but you know, we'll see where it goes. I mean I think there's a coiled spring in bitcoin. I don't know about the rest of crypto. I think some, I think it, there are some tokens already showing it. I mean things like bit Tensor which are way off the lows, you know, Solana has been, you know, basing around here, you know, etc. Etc. Ethereum for sure is is around here. So you know, if it does it wouldn't take a whole lot of positive price action. And I and it's weird to say this, it sounds backwards, but it wouldn't take a whole lot of positive price action to change sentiment and cause fomo. I mean you always say it, Scott, the best advertisement for any of this stuff is number go up. But part of number go up. The first part of number go up is it doesn't really go down as easily anymore. And I think we're in the it doesn't go down as easily anymore stage. I mean what do you think?
- [44:45]
A
100 agree here we are at 93, 457. So I'm not saying it publicly.
- [44:55]
C
Go for it.
- [44:59]
D
If you, if you guys have the juju around when you shorted it goes up. I over my lifetime. That is like maximum juju. So I could take a hit for the team here because it is a hundred percent guaranteed that if I short it here it is going to 100.
- [45:14]
C
The last time I did that Joe.
- [45:15]
D
Was venmo me $5 was I was.
- [45:18]
C
On a space with Danish who was talking about zcash and I said okay, I'll take some of my coins and I'll train and I'll put it into into which have gone down. And by the way, zcash is probably slightly even as bad as it's been since then outperformed those other coins. So whatever. So I took some small coins, I switched it to zcash and I said the rally's over, I'm in. And of course it dropped 50 from that point. Well, exactly 50, 35 40, but whatever. I mean it always tends to happen that way if you're not really paying attention. But, but bitcoin does feel the supply demand dynamics on bitcoin are very, are very different than people think they are.
- [45:58]
D
And I guess there could be, there could be some, you know, it's a new year. Like there could be some tax harvesting. Harvesting that was done by a lot of people last year just based on, you know, we did hit all time highs and you know, maybe people kind of took that hit. So you know, you could just see kind of like a little bit less pressure to the downside right now. We, you know, who knows what happens with the, the Fed chair in May. Right. And Money Printer and now with what Jay Powell has kind of decided to do. I mean, it just seems like he seemed a little ragged, you know, and tired Sunday night dropping videos. I, I don't know, maybe he doesn't feel like he has the power if he moves out of that position. But he seems distracted.
- [46:39]
C
I think he, I think he's pissed. And he took the opportunity to go after to, to express his, his anger.
- [46:44]
D
Yeah.
- [46:44]
C
My father used to have an expression, mad is bad, right?
- [46:48]
D
It's like the Lincoln hot letters, man. You write the hot letter and then eventually it just, you know, you, you negotiate and that's always the smarter term. You think someone like that would learn that? But 8 trillion in money markets out there that could flow into the economy. You know, I don't want to say it but you know, if Dems squeak out the midterms, like the banks will rejoice. So we could be in a more Money Printer ish type scenario by the end of the year. So that's all good things for bitcoin. So it definitely feels different, you know, than it did two months ago with regards to like you guys were saying, downside. So I think it pops here at some point, but it's going to take me shorting it to make that happen.
- [47:29]
C
So could be, I mean, you know.
- [47:31]
A
What, you know what if we all get together and short. If it gets to 94 right now and we all get together and short it, I guarantee that could be. We can talk about clarity and the Fed. That will be, that will be the catalyst that sends this thing.
- [47:43]
D
I could see the, the article now. It's like crypto. Twitter space Drives Bitcoin to 100k with you know, their $2,500 shorts can, yeah, we could.
- [47:56]
A
You know, we would be viewed as the saviors of crypto.
- [48:00]
C
Thank you.
- [48:01]
A
Probably worth it.
- [48:02]
D
I want 1% of all Ethereum gas fees in perpetuity.
- [48:07]
C
Yeah, I mean I think the bigger story though just to get back to the market str. I'm just reading more tweets and, and I haven't had a chance to read the draft but evidently the there's a an entire section title three on Defi that is potentially ridiculous. I mean I saw someone commenting it seems a lot like what Sam Bankman Fried was trying to push back before he fell from grace which we all know how ridiculous that was. So I don't know, I haven't read it yet. So that might be hyperbolic nonsense but I think tomorrow that's probably going to be a lot of what people are talking about because defi is extremely important to the ethos of crypto and to the disintermediation and it will always seem like the entrenched incumbents will try to squash it by regulating it and pushing it to where you have to go through intermediaries and I think that's going to be the big issue. But having not read it unless someone on the panel has, I mean lawyer. Have you looked at it yet?
- [49:05]
A
No, not really. Nothing to add here, sorry.
- [49:08]
C
Yeah, no, I don't have anything to add either. I just think it's going to be a big topic. If that's in fact true and that's where the battle lines really are going to be drawn, then this whole thing may just die.
- [49:19]
D
And it looks like what it does is it gives the SEC power over what they're calling an alternative trading system and treats them like regulated securities platforms. So under the current usage many Dexes would be would have what they call like this alternative trading system like activity. So it's like treating Uniswap like nasdaq.
- [49:48]
C
Well not like nasdaq like I mean speaking of someone who's built and run how many 3, 4 ATS. ATS are much lower touch regulatorily than exchanges. That isn't necessarily the worst thing. The biggest deal by the way for those who care is what will the CFTC do? Because most of the defi. The I mean uniswap is is obviously you know them being an alternative trading system and is not wouldn't be that big of a deal if depending on how the rules were written. But the per Dexes that's a far bigger deal. Right. You know hyper liquid and and modified models where non custodial, you know non custodial exchanges or you know or call them whatever the hell you want how that gets regulated, that's going to be a very big deal because really, at the end of the day, the, the thing that people, that they're going to care about is kyc, which for the record, so before people think that I'm defending it, I don't. I think the current KYC AML processes are counterproductive and suck. But what I think doesn't matter. The government thinks that that's really important. And so that's going to be where that, that meets the road. But I guess we'll see how all this, this breaks down.
- [51:00]
B
Well, I realize causation and correlation are not the same, but it seems to.
- [51:03]
F
Me like every time you speak, bitcoin keeps pumping. So I wouldn't stop.
- [51:06]
C
But you know, I don't know.
- [51:08]
B
I'll keep watching the chart.
- [51:09]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've noticed that, that too. I don't know about me speak. I mean, look, I think that the trading pattern, all kidding Aside, the, the 945, you know, Bitcoin gets smacked is which, which was happening literally it was like 20 out of 20. It was like some huge percentage like over 95% of days for, you know, over a month that seems to have broken now. I, I don't know why. I mean there's a lot of possible reasons for that, by the way. There could have been. There are trades or derivatives that are often set by time period V webs, that's volume weighted average price over a particular time period. And it could very well be that there was a derivative in size that was being set from 945 to 10. I, I don't know that that's true or not. Obviously. I'm telling you, I'm ignorant. What I'm telling you is, is that it was something noticeable that was going on that seems to have ended. And that does matter. So I mean we'll, we'll see. But no, I don't believe I have that power. Sorry. If I did, I'd be a lot richer.
- [52:07]
B
Yeah, I don't know. I'll keep watching.
- [52:09]
F
I think so. I think I'm right, but you know, I can't confirm.
- [52:12]
C
Okay, well then, then I'll have to join Fred Krueger's marathon, you know, 24 hour Bitcoin space one of these days. But I think I'm going to pass.
- [52:20]
F
Yeah, filibuster us to the moon.
- [52:22]
C
Yeah. Well, if there's one thing that I do think the zombie Philip, the, the, the lazy filibuster should go away. And certainly I know I'm capable of, of doing a filibuster. But I prefer not to have to make you guys all listen to me. Even if it did make bitcoin go higher anyway. I mean, I. I don't think there's anything more to cover today, Scott.
- [52:44]
A
I think we're good.
- [52:45]
C
Wait and see. I think 11.
- [52:47]
A
11. You make a wish.
- [52:48]
C
It's perfect.
- [52:49]
A
Time to end.
- [52:50]
C
Yep. There you go.
- [52:53]
A
All right, well, I think we'll wrap and come back tomorrow. Another great conversation. Looking forward to what's on the docket tomorrow. Never. Never a dull moment in this space. Especially when you can talk macro and politics on top of crypto. Maybe we'll get a breakout. Maybe we'll get a breakout. Joe. I'm just telling you all publicly, Joe is shorting heavy at 94.
- [53:14]
C
Awesome. I. I forgot.
- [53:16]
A
Go hunt him.
- [53:18]
C
Scott. I forgot to mention, since we're smelter town hall now, should we mention that that silver is trading towards 80 over 88. Closing in on 89 right now.
- [53:27]
A
Yes. Melting town hall. We're gonna have to do that. If crypto keeps remaining this boring. Have to become like a metal show and have Peter Schiff host it with us.
- [53:38]
C
Oh, please, dear God, no.
- [53:41]
A
Least people would show up. All right. You can't go out on a better note than that. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Thank you, everyone. Bye.