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- [00:01]
A
Hi all and welcome to Decks in the City where the wallets are cold and the takes are hot. We have a great show for you, but before we continue, here's a word from our sponsors.
- [00:10]
B
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- [01:41]
A
and we're back. Before we get going, remember, as always, we're lawyers, but we're not your lawyers. So nothing you hear on decks in the City is legal or financial advice and it doesn't create an attorney client relationship. For the fine print, check unchained crypto.com so first we have Jesse Web3, prosecutor turned Web3 protector at Ribbit Capital and V from the SEC to Web3. And I'm your host Katherine KK, fluent in TradFi and conversant in deep tech over at Starkware. We have a jam packed schedule today including a report on consensus vibes as V and I are down in very, very sweaty Miami loving every second of it of course. But we want to start with our AI topic of the day because it's a very, very important topic topic. We want to talk about open AI, AI generally and liability and how that liability meaning who's going to get sued? Who's responsible for a hot mess in AI? How is this all going to shake out? And how is that going to affect crypto? So, Jesse, why don't you kick us off?
- [02:44]
C
Well, I really missed you guys. And while y' all have been partying in the heat in Miami, I have been sort of glued to what's happening in AI and the Elon Musk Sam Altman trial, which has been really crazy and just giving us like, meme gold. But to me, the actual legal AI story that everyone should be paying attention to is something related to the seven complaints that were filed just down the street in California from this, like, hotshot trial that's going on in the news. And these seven other complaints, which I'm going to walk you all through a little bit, it's to me, shining this bright, like, pay attention to me lights at crypto. So I'm going to help you all pay attention to it. So what are the seven complaints about? So it's actually pretty sad. So in February this year, an 18 year old in British Columbia in a place called Tumblr Ridge. So you may have heard Tumblr Ridge cases killed eight people, six children. And the complaints say that the shooter, before the murders, had been brainstorming the attack with ChatGPT. And eight months before the shooting, OpenAI's own safety team actually flagged the shooter's conversations and urged OpenAI's leadership to call law enforcement. Did they call them? No. Instead, they deactivated the shooter's account. Okay, so the shooter allegedly made a second account after the deactivation and. And ChatGPT kept engaging with her. The complaints were are saying that they were talking about the shooting, the violence. They helped her plan how to commit and murder people. So I'm not going to sensationalize the rest. You can read about it or not, because it's pretty disgusting, but you understand where it goes. And so last week, the families of the victims of the shooting sued OpenAI and Sam Altman in federal court. The shooter has died associated with everything that she had done. And, and so they're like, we need to hold someone liable. And they're saying that you guys are liable. Sam Altman, OpenAI, because ChatGPT was a defective product. Right. So they're going after the product liability phase of it. And legally, this is different than a lot of the OpenAI and other AI cases that we've seen and that we've talked about here, because it's not. Chatbot said something bad. It's the plaintiffs are telling a much more dangerous story for OpenAI and software liability. Saying, you built the product, you operated the product in some way, you monitor it. Monitor it, monitor it. Hard word to say today, your own team saw the danger or vulnerability and they didn't do enough. And this is where the legal nerd dumb in me is making me pay attention to this case, even though at first glance it might be like, let's just sort of watch from the sideline. Because for years, tech companies have had a pretty powerful defense that courts leaned into, which essentially, like, it's just software, it's not a product. And that might sound a little bit odd in the world that we live in now, but software and products have been treated differently historically, although that's been coming together and coalescing. But when you say it's software, not a product, you're saying it's just code, it's just a tool. Don't blame the infrastructure for what users do with it. And there's good reasons for that. Right? For all the crypto reasons you can come up with in your head. But also, if someone takes Google Maps to. To go shoot someone, you shouldn't blame Google Maps. Right. Section 30, all the things we've talked about, but courts are now beginning to, like, stress test that a little bit. And it's building up to this crescenda. And there's been a number of courts building up this precedent, which, like, it could be an entire law school class, but essentially speech protections are being separated from defective product cases. Then there's an AI Chatbot case that's related to product liability theories. And then this one, you know, there's an airtag case going on right now where the court is allowing foreseeable misuse of a tech product to be the basis of a claim. Right. So courts are starting to look past the label and ask the practical question of, like, who designed the system? Who knew the risk when they designed it? Could they have designed it differently to prevent the harm? And that's the doctrinal crack that's touching our world. Right. So Defi is living behind this similar seal for so long. It's just the protocol. But, like, at what point is the developer responsible for the risks that could have been preventable?
- [07:06]
D
Yeah, this is. I mean, we'll touch on this later in the episode when we talk about the latest developments with the Clarity Act. But, like, this issue also comes up with the Blockchain Regulatory Clarity Act. Right. The BRCA part of Clarity and, like, how exactly that language is going to end up, like, if you're developing like a protocol, like, say, like a privacy tool or something. Right. Like, is it enough to know that that tool could be used by illicit actors at the time that you develop it and launch it? Or does the law require. Should the law require more than that? But like, the precedent that you're seeing develop is, I think, very dangerous potentially, you know, in the humorous.
- [07:53]
C
And it's also on the flip side, it's an avenue for victims to recover cover under products liability claims. Right. And maybe that's the path forward in order to make software a safer place for people to transact and. Or engage in any way. Because I don't. I think it's a really important question of taking it out of crypto for a second. Like, do we want to let AI be built in any sort of way with no accountability? Because people could just sort of use it to, you know, build weapons or build, you know, 3D gun printing, you know, things like that, which we've seen sort of come up in the, like, software as code. Where is national security playing in here? But maybe there's something to this product liability concept, and I don't know if it's a good one or a bad one, because, you know, product liability cases are very state level and. And I don't know if it maps perfectly to software, but we're seeing it happen in the AI space a lot faster in some ways, but it's inevitably going to come. And I think some of the activity of some of the most recent hacks is showing us that plaintiffs lawyers are aware of this.
- [09:05]
A
It's really interesting because I'm very torn about this. I know what you mean on the accountability point. You don't want people to build things that are dangerous.
- [09:13]
C
Right?
- [09:13]
D
Right.
- [09:14]
A
But then it's a really terrifying slippery slope to hold software accountable for any of this. And then you also wonder about the implications this has on all other areas of the law. Like products liability is a massive, massive area for lawyers. Lawyers have been kept busy for years and years in certain classes of products liability. And, you know, kind of a related category is what they call toxic tort, where people sue manufacturers of products that ultimately harm people. And a lot of this hinges on the question of did they know it was going to harm people? Like the baby powder cases that turned out to be, you know, cancerous or cigarettes or firearms or I guess cigarettes and firearms are actually a bad example because there's obvious issues there. But there's also a whole category of things that people built or made these things, not knowing that harm was going to be the direct or indirect result of the creation of those things. And I think. Yeah, and I think liability there because you also have to determine whether the person knew that harm was going to result from the creation of that. And the scary thing to me about when we're talking AI tech is a lot of these builders do not know and could not arguably know that it was going to be used or misused or it could grow and evolve. I mean, that's a generalization, but there's definitely cases like that.
- [10:42]
D
Yeah.
- [10:43]
C
And there's this interesting incentive layer which, you know, we've talked about when it comes to clarity before on, like, if a DeFi project or protocol decides to incorporate blockchain analytics or decides to like blacklist addresses, does that make them less decentralized? It's similar here. Right. Like the OpenAI example isn't perfect when you compare it to DeFi because they had a safety team and they had, you know, like notifications to help sort of ensure that things like this didn't, like, promulgate throughout the space. But if we're asking DEFI protocols before they launch to do security audits at the very least, or make sure their smart contracts are safe, and let's say the audit comes back with like 90% of it's okay, but 10% of it needs a fix or whatever, something like that, and, and they decide not to do the fix because of a risk based analysis. And then something happens, then they, there's evidence they knew something was wrong, but they made a business decision. Right. So like, does that disincentivize them from doing anything at the beginning?
- [11:44]
D
Yeah, because then they have that knowledge.
- [11:46]
C
Right.
- [11:47]
D
Whatever the results are. Yeah.
- [11:48]
A
Plausible deniability is a, is a dangerous thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this topic, we could spend an entire episode talking about this. In many ways, it's very, very, you know, just dystopian on all of this. Like, what can AI do? How can it be misused? This is also the problem with any nascent space or emerging technology. It's going to be misused. Right. But speaking of safety and security, this leads us beautifully into another topic that we need to cover. Like, we need to talk about it, guys. Like, good segue.
- [12:21]
C
There's a problem.
- [12:23]
A
Okay, so April was now officially was. And thank goodness we're in May. Okay. Like fresh start, guys.
- [12:32]
C
Oh my God.
- [12:33]
A
April was now the, officially the most hacked month in crypto history. Okay, Defi llama mentioned that the damage is in excess of 600 million. In April. In April. And industry, other industry estimates have said there was roughly 28 to 30 separate exports. So about one every single day. And you know that, I mean, if you're monitoring crypto or in crypto, you knew in April it was like, hey guys, no hack today. Great. And so that means this is, this is a huge jump. A huge jump from, from January, let alone a year ago. I mean, effectively we're, we're looking at a siege. And the more disturbing part of all of this is that it is a siege from a known nation state sanctioned actor. Obviously, the vast majority of these attacks are linked to dprk, North Korea. And now North Korea has a huge pot of funds to power their efforts. The other thing I want to say
- [13:36]
C
about this, I don't mean to interrupt kk, I want to be explicit. Powering efforts means developing nuclear weapons.
- [13:43]
A
Correct.
- [13:44]
C
And that is like something that we should all pause and think about what that would mean. Sorry, I didn't interrupt, but just to give some more gravity to your great
- [13:53]
A
comments, I'm, I'm glad you interrupted to make that point because I think people sometimes forget that the money that, that North Korea is gaining doesn't go to just doing more hacks. Like, yeah, some of that. But there are serious threats to human life as a result of these endeavors, and that is obviously terrifying. We need to take this seriously. Okay. But here's the other troubling part. We could spend the entire episode talking about all of the tenants that Jesse and I have in our paper that we talk about all the time, the things that defi could do to increase security. But a lot of these hacks are social engineering and they're crazy sophisticated social engineering. We obviously do not have time to go through the 30 separate exploits, but just a few nuggets that I'm sure many people have read about. In one of these exploits, the hackers actually ended up investing in the protocol. And I think we all know that once you hit investor status, you hit a certain level of trust. There's relationship cultivation over a months long period in a lot of these scenarios. And V and I are at consensus right now. And my, my good friend Kathy Yoon made a really good point in a tweet where she was like, hey guys, you need to be conscious about not walking around and flashing your badge in your company everywhere. Obviously there's the tendency to do that that's necessary for business development. But at the same time, this is also how social engineering starts. You know, a wrongdoer knows your name, knows Your company knows your location, can use that as the basis for a. Hey, great to see you. Wait, don't you remember? Didn't we meet? Let's exchange telegrams. Oh, now you're a known contact. I mean, there's 72 different scenarios that we could explore on the basis of social engineering. And unlike underlying technical infrastructure that are known vulnerabilities, like single key admin setups, social engineering is a lot harder to navigate. So, you know, I want to touch on Defi United, which is the response this. But before I do, V, Jesse, like, any thoughts about this, like, what the hell is going on?
- [16:02]
D
Okay, so I think a lot of the incidents that we've been seeing happen, a lot of it could have been avoided with, like, by just implementing kind of common sense, like, operational security measures. It actually, to be honest, it blows my mind that Defi has been around for, I don't know, like, five to seven years now, and we still don't have, like, industry standards over something as simple as if you're a signer on a multisig, use a dedicated device just for that. Don't use it to do a ton of other work where you're, like, downloading malicious files that's on the same device as your key. Like something as basic as that. How are we not all doing that as an industry by now, right? And we find out about this stuff every time there's an attack. So I think a lot of this stuff is just like, basic common sense that was not followed. Basic, basic security measures that were not followed that could have prevented a lot of the stuff that you thought.
- [17:10]
C
A question I have especially for you guys. You know, you work at projects in the Defi space right now, Like, I agree with you, V. I couldn't have said it better myself. But we are here now, right? And so many things have been built. Many of them have been built correctly, but many have not. And we have seen over and over again the contagion that occurs when there's a problem or a vulnerability with one project or one bridge or whatever. And what do we do now? Like, is it blow everything up and start over, but not blow everything up? That's probably, like, too close to home. Or is it? We need to go in and fix things. Like, let's assume we can get everybody on the same page to do this, which is like the dream that I had last night while you guys were partying in Miami. But for me, it's like, what is next? Let's say everyone's like, okay, you're Right. It's freaking time. Is it rebuild? Is it going and fix old infrastructure like we wanted to avoid doing at banks or traditional finance? Like, where do we go from here?
- [18:17]
A
So that's actually. I'm so glad you asked that question, Jesse, because it brings me to Defi United. I feel incredibly mixed by this. So just for those who aren't familiar Defi United, obviously we saw major hacks with drift and kelp dao. And the thing that people keep forgetting is these hackers are stealing money from human beings, from people. They're not necessarily stealing money from crypto CEOs, they're stealing money from retail investors. Okay? Including and protocols and crypto whales. So Defi aave got hit really hard by in particular the kelp dao incident. So AAVE basically coordinated a relief effort by a multitude of ecosystem participants. And in some ways, it was pretty cool. I mean, this has now raised more than $300 million. And you have major places, players like Avalanche, a Consensus others, Ether Fi, Tron, Lido, and, you know, these are.
- [19:21]
D
Yeah, even Solana, Solana foundation even donated.
- [19:24]
A
It's amazing. Like, these protocols are competitors, but everyone came together to, you know, coordinate this shared financial response, you know, to effectively restore, you know, wrapped eth's backing to prop back to prop up the stolen funds and help the ecosystem. So part of me is like, this is a beautiful thing. Like, you know, it's beautiful to see everyone coming together to mitigate the damage, mitigate contagion, mitigate after effects. But I'm also like, is this a good idea? Meaning it's like someone on your street gets robbed and then all the neighbors get together and give the person money. Okay, good. But shouldn't we also talk about improving the security on the street and catching the robbers? So I'm not sure if it's the right message. And the last thing I'll say is, so when I heard about this, the first thing I thought about, and this shows me what it shows you what a history nerd I am, was the panic of 1907. Like, I'm a little bit of a Wall street historian historian nerd. And I don't know if everyone remembers this meaning, remembers this from history. So good old JP Morgan organized a massive syndicate of leading banks to give liquidity to struggling institutions. Like JP Morgan effectively acted as a central bank during this crisis because there was no central bank. So JP Morgan locked a bunch of senior executives from banks in a room in 1907 and said, you have to sign this pledge, like committing a certain Sum for this bailout and you know it was, it was voluntary. But again like the, the, the story is that he locked the doors of his famous Morgan Library, you can tour that today in New York and refused to let the bankers leave until they had all agreed. So this has happened historically. But why, why like does this fix anything? Does this really fix any anything?
- [21:27]
C
Let's start with some positives that there's something being done right, you know, instead of ranting into the abyss. So I'm torn about it as well because like okay, let's help people and I don't, I guess I wouldn't go so far back as the panic and like JP Morgan 119 years ago because like there's mutual insurance right now there's Lloyd syndicate model like Tradfi does similar things here. I guess the thing that concerns me is the whole point of all this system and defi was to take centralized, powerful intermediaries out of the mix, right? And with this coalition and perhaps the government one day could call it a cartel. It's an organized effort to choose who wins, right. And which protocols get to survive and which hack is worth compensating. Because as your numbers show, I don't think there's any way they could like compensate everybody. I mean you, we all talk about it all the time, but like I help a lot of victims whose money is stolen by crypto and try and just help them get their money back and they're not in a big hack news of the day, right? They, it wasn't associated with hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather they lost a few hundred thousand dollars and that to them is devastating and perhaps life altering. Right. And so why are those people not being helped? And so I think the analogy you gave KK of like the neighborhood is a good one, but it's also like three people get robbed and the neighborhood coalition decides who gets the money, right. And maybe there's a way to do it so that everything gets spread out and like the government right now has like a victims of terrorism fund that you can apply for. And so maybe there's a way to do it so that there are certain rules about how you apply for the money and, and how you can demonstrate evidence and then maybe there's something there. But I think like another way to tackle it is like if you talk to a binance and I'm not even picking on Binance, like any centralized exchange, just like many banks do, there are like millions frozen in assets right now based on suspicious activity and they just sit there for years until someone helps to claim it or finance realizes that the risk of releasing it is important or whatever. And so maybe there's some angle there to, like, get at all these frozen funds. Anyway, I'm just brainstorming out loud right now because to me, having an idea is always good, but this is just, like, centralized decision makers of who survives in the market.
- [24:11]
D
I do think that, like, the reason, like, this effort happened was one. Because it was aave. Right. And AAVE is so just, like, symbolically, like, it represents, like, DeFi. It's, you know, one of the oldest projects, the biggest, like, DEFI protocol out there. And I think the other thing, too, was, like, I think a lot of people were really sympathetic to AAVE because it wasn't actually AAVE that was hacked. Like, but they, you know, they're obviously suffering, like, the biggest impact of this. But I. I think, you know, that was unique to this situation. And, like, this probably wouldn't have happened if it was just some other, like, random protocol or.
- [24:49]
A
Which is disturbing because, like, again, that's a good and bad thing. Like, we want AAVE to succeed. Like, one of the things I've always loved about crypto is. I mean, the. The GC crypto bar, the general councils in crypto have always been incredibly collaborative and open and transparent.
- [25:06]
C
Yeah.
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A
Because for the longest time, and we've all been in crypto for years, this was like this from day one. It was like this through the Gensler administration. It's still like this. There is a sense of, like, we're all in this together. Like, you know, there are existential threats to this asset class. I don't ever want to see another L2 fail. Like, I don't care if they're a competitor. You know, the. You want others to succeed because it's a little bit of kind of lifting each other up, and you want the growth in and out of crypto. So the togetherness, again, is a beautiful thing. The collaboration is a beautiful thing. But I think this really raises the question of, like, how far does that go? And this can't just happen every time there's something.
- [25:50]
D
I mean, it's basically like a DEFI version of, like, a TRADFI bailout, like, the kind that we criticize all the time. And yes, there is a difference between, like, using taxpayer money to bail out, you know, like, financial institutions that F up and. And something like this. But, I mean, it is a bailout. Like, I was. I was having breakfast. Yes, exactly like that. I was having breakfast with the Defi Lead at like a non crypto fintech this morning. And he was like, his bosses have been following, like, this effort in the kelp dao thing and everything. And they came to him and they were like, what's going on here? Like, I thought this was defi. I thought, like, co is law. I didn't know this can.
- [26:34]
C
How precious. But I was like, it's a good question.
- [26:38]
D
I think, honestly, all of us are wondering that too.
- [26:41]
A
Oh, my God. Okay, so speaking of breakfasts, I have to say, so V and I are at consensus right now.
- [26:49]
C
Don't give me too much FOMO in this update.
- [26:52]
D
We miss you.
- [26:53]
A
We miss you, Jesse. It's not the same. I think one of the reasons a lot of lawyers go to consensus is there is a big legal and regulatory presence. But here I'll just say there's a big presence. This is a really, really, really well attended, buzzy conference. I didn't get here until late yesterday on. On Tuesday, but I literally heard from multiple people that the line to get to a check in yesterday was something like two hours. Like, that's just how well attended it is. There are more events than ever before, and there were already a lot of events at Consensus. There's also a sense that, you know, as many people might be aware of, the big conference token that was supposed to take place in Dubai was canceled. So my, you know, I'm speculating that a number of individuals and entities decided to take their budget from Token and put it into consensus. There's a lot of buzz, There's a lot of optimism. Despite the fact that we seem to be in a bit of a crypto winter. Like, there's a high degree of energy. Like, it feels a little bit like a bull market lately. And I think that's really interesting. And one of the reasons I'm curious about this vibe is I'm wondering if everybody's kind of excited that Clarity might get past all of a sudden. So I want to turn it over to V to give us the full Clarity report. As a reminder, Clarity is the comprehensive crypto market structure build and has been percolating for quite a while now. And I think all of us had been extraordinarily pessimistic about the passage of Clarity. I have consistently given it about a 20% of passage, but there were some pretty significant developments lately. V, fill us in.
- [28:31]
C
Yeah. Wait, so do you.
- [28:32]
D
Do you think that's responsible for, like, the vibes?
- [28:35]
A
Well, I don't think solely, but I think it's. Maybe there's something to that, I think it's contributing to it. And I mean, I, I'm sure you saw like a number of the crypto public companies like circle stock jumped 14% and it was attributed to the Clarity buzz. I think everyone is really terrified about this scenario in three years if the Democrats take control and we don't have market structure. So the people who are really in the know understand how important Clarity is.
- [29:02]
D
Yes, yes, I think that's right. That like a lot of people are coming to their senses on this. So. So yes, one of the biggest developments in the industry the past few days is that it looks like lawmakers may have like finally reached a compromise on the state stablecoin yield issue. That's been like one of the main things that's been holding up the Clarity act for the last few months. So the reported compromise between Senators Tillis and also Brooks, who are the two senators who are sort of leading the effort to like reach a compromise, would still, it would still prohibit stablecoin issuers from, from paying interest. That looks like a traditional bank deposit product. But it looks like the language does allow certain kinds of rewards that are tied to actual platform or network activity. And what's really interesting is that Coinbase has come out and basically signaled that they're okay to move forward with it. I think they just now want to get to America.
- [30:07]
B
Right.
- [30:07]
D
So that's really important because they had been one of the loudest opponents of a broad yield ban. But of course the banks are still unhappy. Right. So over the last few days, the banking lobby has come out like the aba, the Consumer Banking Bankers association, the Bank Policy Institute and others. They've all come out and argued that the bill still lives, leaves major loopholes that would let crypto firms basically offer deposit like products, but in an indirect way. Their concern is basically that, you know, maybe the issuer itself can't pay interest directly to customers. But what if Coinbase or another exchange creates like a membership program or a reward structure or a loyalty program or some sort of like, arrangement with an affiliate that has basically the same economic like function. Right. So I think this is where the entire yield debate is headed now.
- [31:06]
C
Right.
- [31:06]
D
So it's no longer like, can stablecoins pay yield? It's now like what counts as evasion, Right. So because once you start writing anti evasion language, which they'll have to do, I think things can get sort of blurry really fast. Right. Like the question then would be, well, what actually counts as yield? Right. Like what would be like evasion? So with Things like fee rebates or rewards points or trading incentives or staking rewards would like, would all of those things count? Right. And even like you know, the kinds of products that we do, which are these earn products where consumers deposit their funds into a vault that then deploys those funds into defi protocols. Could something like that be swept up right in, in this ban? So the, the banks are pushing the regulators to define all of this really broadly. Right. So you guys may have seen like a slew of comment letters being filed to treasury and the occasional, the last week where like a lot of crypto companies are saying like the anti evasion language shouldn't be written so broadly that it sweeps in all of this like real activity that generates yield but is not like a deposit like product. So yeah, I think the question now is how aggressive is the anti evasion framework going to become? It's something we're monitoring really closely and I think it's going to be interesting to see like how that debate plays out and what like treasury and OCC end up doing. Also in addition to where the Clarity act lands on this.
- [32:37]
A
It's funny because there's a lack of clarity with all of this. Like the funny thing is even if you settle on this compromise, I mean there's already a lot of discussion about loopholes like okay, can you go around? What can you do? These parameters are not going to be clear. Like even if we get clarity passed, there's going to be years of interpretive guidance, there's likely going to be years of litigation surrounding this issue. Like this is a big deal. I think this is a big deal for growth of stablecoins generally growth of alternatives to banking. So this is definitely like, I think this aspect has in many ways more bearing and more influence on kind of the, the macro blockchain as a disruptor to market structure than anything else right now. I also, stakes are very high.
- [33:27]
C
I also just want to remind everybody, not you guys, because I know you know this, but this is just one issue in clarity. And in my mind everyone has sort of like put blinders on for this issue because it was the thing that sort of, you know, took it off the rails last time. So I understand why. But like there are many other things that still need to be resolved. Decentralization, like we've talked about illicit finance, which you know, I've yelled into the abyss about and ethics. No one has figured out the ethics question yet. And that could put the kibosh on this whole thing. Right. And it's such a like High politicized, like, really difficult emotional issue for me even too, that I. I don't know if people are paying enough attention to that yet because they're sort of like, well, we don't want to deal with those things until we make sure that this is okay. And maybe that's, you know, how the sausage of is made. But I just want to remind everybody that, like, I love being hopeful and optimistic, but I'm also like, okay, we're talking about clarity again. Like, there's some progress, but how much is this progress?
- [34:35]
D
Do you think ethics is going to end up being the, like, blocker here? Like, I feel like we can get there on Defi and on Braca. I do think ethics is going to
- [34:46]
C
be like, I'm going to hope that everyone's morals and ethics come together and define good rules here. I don't think it's that hard to come up with what that should look like. But whether there'll be enough political will, I think is going to be the harder thing. Like, the exact language has been the really difficult thing here in making the coalitions happy. But this is much more of a political issue, which is, it depends on what's happening with the midterms. It depends on what's happening with the Iranian war, depends on what happens with gas prices. You know, so, like, it's. Who's going to stick their neck out on a political issue that might go against the current administration in this time? And what is. What do all the other wins say that have nothing to do with crypto?
- [35:33]
A
I'm still not super optimistic. Like these.
- [35:36]
D
I was going to ask you.
- [35:38]
A
No, I think these developments.
- [35:39]
D
I feel like with these latest developments, I went from maybe 20% a week ago to, like, now. I feel like I'm at like 60, that it all happened this year. Where are you guys at?
- [35:50]
A
20% to 40%.
- [35:52]
D
Yeah.
- [35:53]
A
So increased, maybe. But I still think there's a lot of issues yet to be worked out. There's a lot of questions is, does this have momentum? Does Congress care enough about this? Will Congress be distracted, appropriately so, by kind of geopolitical issues and considerations? So there's a. There's a lot of things that need to fall into place for this to happen. I mean, I hope I'm proved wrong, like, get me to be clear. I want clarity very badly.
- [36:20]
C
Yeah.
- [36:21]
D
What about you, Jesse? What are you at?
- [36:25]
C
I have been disappointed far too many times by politics and clarity this year. So I am always the optimist, and I have had that optimism plummeted I just haven't seen like real engagement on everything but stablecoin interest. And I. I see that when I do have conversations about illicit finance with people on the Hill. Yeah.
- [36:48]
D
Yep.
- [36:49]
A
Okay, so we only have a few minutes left. We have a shorter episode than usual today because, hey, we are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. If only we had unlimited time to criminal of the content and the craziness in crypto. But I have to say, we are ending on such a high note because this week's crypto good news makes me so happy. Okay, I'm not going to lie to everybody. Sometimes we struggle to find crypto good news.
- [37:15]
C
Can I make us do an AI one or something about puppies that's unrelated
- [37:19]
A
to robots are helping people in war. Okay, great, Jesse. That's good news. But this week, honestly props a round of applause to Dogecoin and Moonpay. So House of Doge, which is apparently the name of the of Dogecoin's Doge, the Dogecoin foundation, their corporate arm, which is kind of amazing. House of Doge, Moonpay and the Dogecoin foundation have collectively contributed 1 million doge to the American Kennel Club to help dogs, frankly. And the akc, specifically that AKC Humane Fund, which is a charitable affiliate of the American Kennel Club and a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of dogs across the country. And my favorite part of this was probably Keith Grossman's statement. He's president of Moonpay. He starts by saying, dogs have always brought out the best in us. Now, with a little help from the Doge community, they are bringing out the best in crypto too. Okay, you know what, Keith? You're right. Good for you. I love this. I love that we're seeing this interesting partnership to advance a charitable effort. We've said this before, we'll say it again. Like crypto, we're borderless, we're global. But we need to be important members of our community. To the degree that we are creating good with the technology, we are also causing complications here and then. So we need to be responsible and positive contributors to the world. So let's not lose sight of that. So amazing. Amazing job.
- [38:58]
C
Amazing.
- [38:59]
A
Yes.
- [38:59]
C
And for all of those who need a break from crypto, Twitter anytime. And we're. They are not sponsoring us. Just go to. We rate dogs and watch the videos of dogs being rated and maybe buy a sweatshirt that says, tell your dog I said hi and donate to some of these dogs with crypto. Perhaps yes.
- [39:19]
A
Jesse and I both have dogs. We are huge dog lovers. Bea is not a dog hater or anything. She's just not a dog mother, which is fine, but. So this is obviously as soon as we found a piece of crypto good news that also involved dogs, I think we were both a little overly excited. So cheers to that. Let's end on a high note next week. Hopefully we will have no hacks to talk about, but we'll see you next week on Decks in the City.