Bankless - Crypto Advocacy Panel

Starting point is 00:00:06 All right, welcome everyone to the crypto advocacy dual panel. We are super excited to launch off this Gitcoin Round 12 with a brand new round for crypto advocacy. And I'm joined here by Scott Moore from Gitcoin and Connor Spellise from the Dow Research Collective. And we are talking all about advocacy for crypto with our regulator body, regulation bodies, our lobbyists, our governmental agencies. And also, like I said, kicking off this brand new. round for Gitcoin grants. I believe everyone knows about Gitcoin grants, but for those that don't, I'll throw it over to Scott to talk about what Gitcoin is, why we're doing this, and what is new in Gitcoin Round 12. Thank you so much, David. So Gitcoin grants is one of many experiments.

Starting point is 00:00:53 The Bitcoin is running around digital public goods. The goal of Bitcoin grants in particular is to leverage this tool called quadratic funding to find ways to basically get the community to signal their preferences for various types of public goods within Web 3. So the idea of the idea of that, is essentially that you have a pool of matching funds, in this case, donated generously by the A3N Foundation and others, and you have a series of individual donations during the round, which happens for two weeks starting today. And that round will basically, your donations will be deciding where that matching pool goes. So the idea is essentially to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, leverage the community's sort of support for these initiatives to help us decide in the future what other public is we should see in the world. And the reason this is so important is that, like, you know, historically, we've relied on a lot of different mechanisms for funding public goods at a local, kind of, like, national level.

Starting point is 00:01:43 It's very hard to figure out ways to fund these things at a global level. Now that we have global networks, we can sort of find better ways to hopefully do that. We are also joined with Connor Spellsey of the Dow Research Collective. Connor has been a key member in moving this regulatory conversation forward and has also been a key member in organizing this particular panel. So, Connor, thank you. for helping move the needle forward. Can you also just talk about why now? Crypto seems to be really up in the front of the regulatory conversation.

Starting point is 00:02:12 So why is this conversation so important? And what are we trying to do here on today's panel? I think in part, why now is because we're lucky enough to get a little more interested in advocacy. We've certainly been working at this kind of stuff for a long time with the blockchain association, I think, is about three and a half years old at this stage. But luckily or unlikely in some ways for us, the infrastructure bill happened. And when that fight happened, drew a total. kind of attention on crypto Twitter, got a lot of people mobilized and help them to understand

Starting point is 00:02:38 that we're going to have to work with regulators and policymakers if we want to really make this an ecosystem that allows for the kind of innovation that we want to see in the States and really around the world. Yeah. So to kick this dual panel off, we will have our first panel, which will be moderated by myself. We're bringing on Kristen Smith from the Blockchain Association. Also, Brian Quintez, former CFTC chair, who we've also had on the bankless podcast and also Tomica Tillman. Sorry, Kristen, I'm going to mute your video because we're not actually coming on yet, but we will get there soon. And so that will be my first panel. And that is all about really the basics of lobbying. Why does lobbying exist as a thing? It's not going to be

Starting point is 00:03:20 unique to crypto. Many industries have started lobbying before crypto. And so we need to learn about what have other industries learned about the lobbying efforts and what can we apply to the world of crypto. And what do we have to lose if we don't do this? And then Connor will be taking over for panel two. Connor, do you want to intro your panel and your guest as well? Yeah. So for panel two, we're going to have Jerry Brito. I think everyone knows and loves from Coin Center. Same deal. Jake Trevinsky, formerly of Compound, and now the Blockchain Association, luckily, joined very recently and an amazing addition to that team. And then Sarah Rothcodette from Fight for the Future. And I think a lot of people know Fight for the Future from the Infrastructure Bill Battle, all that they did,

Starting point is 00:04:01 to help folks, you know, get in touch with their senators. They helped on a number of other fronts. And so we're going to hear more about specifically how they did it. Because to your point, there's a lot of associations that people in crypto and people not in crypto have about lobbying. But in many ways, it's a critical part of the legislative process in the states. And I know that our panelists and your panel can also speak very effectively to that. But what we're going to be hearing from them is what they do on the ground,

Starting point is 00:04:24 how this actually works. Because so many of us who aren't in D.C. And who aren't in capitals around the world don't understand what the rules, rulemaking process is, but it's going to be really critical for the success of the industry. And while the listeners are listening to these panelists into these conversations, I ask them that they go check out Gitcoin round 12, the crypto advocacy panel for Gitcoin. There is a link right in the YouTube description. There are a number of crypto advocacy efforts that you can donate towards.

Starting point is 00:04:55 And these donations will be matched by this 800,000 matching pool donated by the Ethereum Foundation, and a number of other efforts. Connor, excuse me, Scott, can you just give us a little bit more color of who's in the crypto advocacy round and just a little bit of the dynamics about like where should people consider donating their money to? Absolutely. It's actually $900,000 as of about two hours ago.

Starting point is 00:05:20 So we're almost at the million dollar mark, which is the most people have ever had for a single pool. So we actually had a million dollars in total for the matching pool last time. Now one individual round, which there are many in the current sort of like two periods. is actually a million dollars as well. So that's a pretty amazing, just like side note.

Starting point is 00:05:36 But in terms of who's actually in the round, it's a lot of organizations that I think people know on the one hand. So coin centers with blockchain association, folks that have been doing this and are very much embedded in the space. But to your point, David, I think there's also a lot of organizations that people don't really have an understanding of, such as Fight for the Future and such as, for example, you know, Freedom of the Press Foundation,

Starting point is 00:05:56 who have been doing a lot of work in this area and he's been, like, really fighting for rights around these sorts of initiatives for the last, you know, several years. And so I think that it's a, it's a kind of interesting group to, you know, experiment and explore this space with because we're going to get to see sort of how people interact both with traditional crypto advocates organizations and then also with a broader pool of, like, groups that historically have been sort of on the, from the Web3, like kind of a core perspective, fringes with the conversation that now can be more central. I can also definitely take a quick moment to screen share and walk through some of the grantees that are up there.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Let me just find that here just to make sure that I have the right set up, ready to go. But the major piece of the round that I think is actually really important is that every donation that's made ends up giving a signal to the matching funding donors were really, you know, the largest organizations that are part of this round at the moment. Maybe I'll pass it back to the David. And then, you know, as we get this up and running here, once I actually get my screen tour going, you can continue on from there. Yeah, I think everyone who is listening, everyone in crypto should, the topic of crypto lobbying is, is, lobbying is a topic as old as time. As long as there's been governments, there's been lobbying.

Starting point is 00:07:17 But crypto is very, very unique in that we are in industry about money. Crypto is inherently about money. And so is lobbying. And that combination has never really been seen before. First, we have this industry that needs to have lobbying advocacy efforts, but it's also got its own money systems behind it. And so while lobbying is as old as time, we've yet to see a lobbying industry that has the combination of being about money and also is full of an industry of really, really

Starting point is 00:07:48 passionate people. I do expect the crypto industry has probably going to be one of the largest single issue voting industries that's out there. And that industry is also about money. And so lobbying is nothing new, but lobbying with like the amount of just energy that crypto has with the money that crypto has behind it is going to be something I think that's going to be really, really powerful. But I don't want listeners to think that this is just going to build itself. Like this isn't just going to magically unfold in the way that. Bitcoin has where it just works. We're actually going to have to try. We're actually going to have to put efforts and boots on the ground. And so that is what some of the lobbying efforts is going to

Starting point is 00:08:29 have to do here this week with Bitcoin round 12. Scott, you're ready to show us some of the crypto advocacy efforts that people can fund with a Bitcoin. Yes. Absolutely. Can you see my screen of pay right now? Yes. Yeah, we can. Perfect. So I would just note, by the way, this is the first around that we're doing this. We want this to be the first of many. Right now we have approximately, I think it's 10 or so grantees, including Electroint Frontier Foundation, Open Privacy, Civic's Unplug, which is actually a new entry into the Web 3 space at large, but it's been doing a lot of work in terms of grassroots, Gen Z sort of advocacy for technology, the Pacific Northwest, World Broadband Alliance, excuse me, freedom of the press foundation, the Caribbean

Starting point is 00:09:11 and Blockchain Association reboot, which has been doing a lot of work, kind of having this technical optimist balance between, you know, what we're talking about in the regulatory space and what we're talking about with, again, like, kind of the new generation of folks coming in and, like, experiencing this technology for the first time. Fight for the future who are, I can't, you know, say enough good things about just as an organization that's being maybe underrepresented in their work in a space for a long time. Coincencer, which I think people are very familiar with, and I am a huge fan of personally, similar with the Blockchain Association, and then the Tor project, which has been doing a lot of just,

Starting point is 00:09:45 you know, technical work in terms of how we actually progress this technology for the last 10-plus years. So it's a really great starting route. If you think there should be other organizations in this round and have not, you know, had a chance to reach out, please do, not Scott Moore on Twitter or anywhere else. Just let me know and I can try and add them to the round if they pass the sort of checks and balances of the committee that's approving them for this particular pool. and yeah, David, I'll pass it back to you. Yeah, so we are about to get into our first panel,

Starting point is 00:10:15 but before we do, you can go ahead and put away your checkbooks, but you can open up your MetaMask and your ledger and open up Gitcoin Round 12. Again, there is a link in the YouTube descriptions. If I had a visual counter of, you know, a number of donations on the screen, I totally would put it there, but we are not that tech-enabled yet.

Starting point is 00:10:33 But, again, like this event is all about channeling money into effort that fund and for advocating for crypto, advocating for our industries. And again, there are, there are monies behind our industry. And so when we can pay people to advocate for them, the money has become more valuable. So at the end of the day, the money gets returned back to you guys. Scott, Connor, thank you so much for joining me on this intro. Connor, we will be seeing you later for the second panel of the day. And Scott, we will be seeing you again at the close of this whole entire event. Thank you for joining me. Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure.

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Starting point is 00:13:23 permissionless protocol. So if you want to stake your ETH, Terra, or Sol, and get liquidity on your stake, go to Lido.fIto.Fi to get started. Panelists, please come and turn your cameras on so we can get the first panel on the road. We are joined by Brian Quintenz, the first one to turn on his camera. You guys might remember him from our bankless podcast that we did with him. The other panelists are probably frustrated because I turned their cameras off and they need permission to turn it on.

Starting point is 00:13:50 So there is that and there is that. We are also joined by Kristen Smith from the Blockchain Association and Tomica Tillman from A16Z. I just introduced all three of you, but I also want to give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves a little bit of your backgrounds. And we will go in the order that cameras turned on. So, Brian, if you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do, what you have done and what you are doing now with regards to crypto, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, David. It's great to be with you.

Starting point is 00:14:18 I really appreciate the invitation to join this incredible event through Gitcoin and the EF's contribution to advocacy efforts for crypto. So I'm Brian Quintenz. I was a former CFTC commissioner from 2017 through just this last August of 2021. Before that, I was in the financial markets working at an investment firm and forming my own investment firm, in particular focusing on investing in the banking sector during the middle of financial crisis, which was a fascinating experience. And prior to that, I was working on Capitol Hill as a policy aid for a member of Congress from 2001 through 2007. in particular, Deborah Price, a congresswoman from Ohio, who was at that point the fourth ranking number

Starting point is 00:15:02 in the House of Representatives. Fantastic, Brian. Kristen, let's turn to you. Kristen of the Blockchain Association, which is one of the Gitcoin grants that you just recently saw on the screen, so perhaps consider donating there. Kristen, tell us a little bit about yourself,

Starting point is 00:15:15 your background and what you are doing in this space. Yeah, so I am Kristen Smith and the executive director of the Blockchain Association, which is a trade association that's been around doing advocacy on behalf of the crypto industry for almost three and a half years now, as Connor said. Connor helped bring all this together back at that time. And my background is I've been in Washington, D.C. for almost 20 years.

Starting point is 00:15:38 I worked as a congressional staffer for two members of the Senate, one member of the House, and then since then have been working as a registered lobbyist and continue to be registered as a lobbyist in addition to the work of managing the trade association. So I know what it's like to be on both sides. I was up on Capitol Hill before a group of members of Congress this morning. And it's really been wonderful to see the crypto community and the crypto industry grow in this space. I still think we have a way to go, a ways to go before we can actually stop playing defense and start playing offense. But excited to have this conversation today and really excited about the growing interest in the crypto community

Starting point is 00:16:23 and being a part of the policymaking process here in Washington. Defense versus offense. I really like that. We're going to come back to that as a topic later. Last but not least, Tomica of A16Z. You want to give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are, your background, and what you are doing in the world of regulatory crypto advocacy. Absolutely. Pleasure to be with you. And thanks for all the great work that you, David, and your colleagues are engaged in around this conversation. I am Global Head of Policy at Andresen Horowitz for the crypto team.

Starting point is 00:16:54 I came to this space after a wild and circuitous journey many years ago in my youthful days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I was involved in a bunch of Senate and congressional campaigns. And then while I was finishing up my PhD, I went to work for a little known Delaware Senator named Joe Biden, ran a big chunk of the world for him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years, and then got a request to do. go over to the State Department from Hillary Clinton to be her speechwriter, did that job for a while and then let a team for her and Secretary Kerry that operated a little bit like DARPA for the

Starting point is 00:17:31 State Department and built out projects at the intersection of innovation and advocacy all over the world. I then went to an organization called New America, which is kind of a part think tank, part technology accelerator led a lot of projects with governments all over the world and in the US using distributed technology and decentralized systems to solve big problems that they care about and did a lot of policy work in that capacity as well. And then joined A16 Z this summer. Oh, congratulations on joining A16Z. I think I recognize a few of the names that you listed, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton. I think we listeners might know who those people are. And so guys, thank you again for coming and joining us on this panel.

Starting point is 00:18:15 You guys have a spanned a very wide sphere of different areas of the world of regulation and advocacy. And so I think the different perspectives that you guys all bring to the table are going to be supremely useful. But as we all know, crypto people tend to be a little bit anti-political, anti-government, and it's kind of in crypto's nature. But there's also a decent amount of crypto people who understand that this fight is about them no matter what. One of my favorite phrases is that you might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Kristen, I want to start with you. Since so many people in the crypto industry might need some education about this effort,

Starting point is 00:18:54 why do we lobby? Why do industries lobby? What do they have to gain and what do they have to lose? What are the very basics of this question? Yeah, no, I mean, listen, governments create and enact laws, they enact regulations that impact the the industry. And we've seen over the past several years many enforcement actions when different companies may or not have been out of compliance. So they're very real world consequences to the rules of the road. I think it's particularly important for the crypto ecosystem and the crypto

Starting point is 00:19:27 industry to engage with policymakers because what we are building in this community is really complex and just fundamentally different than anything anyone has seen before. And And what we've seen is the, if you look at kind of the crisis points over the past couple years, like this infrastructure bill that was very poorly crafted or the midnight rulemaking that Secretary Manusian was trying to push through last year, a lot of it was just driven by policymakers that just fundamentally didn't understand the basics of the technology or had misconceptions about the uses of it. And so getting in and doing the education, it takes time because these people are very busy. They have a lot on their plates. But having conversations over and over, putting faces to an industry, having a resource when new topics come up and engaging in the process, really is going to lead to better policy outcomes. And I think as much as many of us would like to pretend that that stuff doesn't matter, it does and their real world consequences. And so if we want to have a seat at the table, we got to show up at the table.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Brian, with your time at the CFTC, I'm curious to know if you were the subject, the object of lobbying efforts at the CFTC or if the CFTC is at large. And do you have any color to add about successful lobbying efforts versus unsuccessful lobbying efforts and, again, why people lobby at all in the first place? Absolutely. I mean, the derivative markets are highly complex. some of the corners of the Derrids markets are very bespoke. The trading methods, execution methods, reporting obligations, paperwork requirements. All of the regulatory suite can have different impacts on different business models, on different intermediaries, on different end users, and different risk managers.

Starting point is 00:21:26 And so, you know, I don't necessarily think of lobbying, you know, as a as a, as a, as a negative term. I view it as just a form of education as a policymaker to try to understand what people in the real world are dealing with and how my potential decisions could impact them and how prior decisions are affecting them or could be changed to have a beneficial or a more negative outcome. And you think about the derivatives markets as a whole. I mean, the CFTC oversees, you know, $400 to $500 trillion. in notional value of derivative instruments. And those are futures contracts on energy products, on precious metals, on agricultural

Starting point is 00:22:12 goods, on interest rates and financial products. And then there are swaps on credit and equities. You know, all aspects of the economy are touched by the derivatives markets and are touched to some extent by CFTC regulations. And, you know, people in these roles and in the role I will. was in and policymakers on Capitol Hill, they're very busy. They have to make a lot of decisions about a lot of different topics, and it's very hard to get educated on all of them. And so, you know, I view lobbying as an educational effort. Sometimes it's from a specific interest perspective,

Starting point is 00:22:51 and sometimes it's from a broader perspective. But all in all, it's about someone communicating to someone else their experience and what they know and what they think, you know, a right outcome could be. Tomiko, with your experiences at A16Z, what has it been like to work on just the education and policy and lobbying effort? Is it easy? Do politicians want to understand? What's that like?

Starting point is 00:23:19 Well, let me answer the question with a story, and this will sound at best tangentially related at first, but I promise you I'm getting there. A few years ago, I took my kids to Yellowstone. And when we went to Yellowstone, due to some questionable decisions by their parents, my kids had not spent time in a big national park in the West previously. And all they really knew is that there were bears and there were these scary thermal features. And they hadn't heard that much about it beyond the fact that it was scary and a little bit dangerous. And we got there and very early on encountered some amazing forest rangers that sat my kids down, told them what they needed to know, and got them to a point where, this amazing ecosystem that had previously been kind of terrifying to them,

Starting point is 00:24:04 all of a sudden opened up and became really exciting and something that they cared about and wanted to protect and wanted to experience. And our work with policymakers is kind of similar to that. You have a lot of folks who have, for lack of a better analogy, been stuck in the city for a long time. They've heard that there's this ecosystem out there, but all they really know about it is that they're occasional bear attacks. And our job is to take them into this.

Starting point is 00:24:30 this incredible, vibrant, dynamic new universe, help them to experience it, help them to understand why it's valuable, and ultimately to become champions and defenders of that ecosystem and the way that all of us are champions and defenders for the ecosystem. So that's the mission. And fortunately, we're finding that a lot of policymakers are open to this. They understand that the status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. They are tired of living in a web two world where their information and their personal data is manipulated and used against them on a daily basis and used against everyone. They're looking for an alternative. And we have a pretty good story to tell in that regard. Well, I'm a big fan of stories. And I think that story definitely exemplifies what hopefully this

Starting point is 00:25:19 progression looks like. Hopefully we can convince regulators of all the good merits about crypto, while also as an industry allowing regulators to regulate out the bad size of crypto, which we all know do exist. So I actually want to go again in reverse order, just because. So again, Tamika with you, the way that I view lobbying, the lobbying industry, at least with regards to specific industries, the lobbying industry is an industry within an industry, right? So we have the crypto industry, and then we have the crypto lobbyists, which are its own industry, but inside of the larger umbrella of crypto. And this smaller part, the lobbying side, it has its own story of maturation, development, progress, I'm guessing.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Where would you say we are as a crypto industry? Where are we on the spectrum of maturation of our lobbying efforts? Are we getting good yet? Do we still have a lot of improvement? Where are we in the grand spectrum of development? Well, the short answer is we're not where we need to be, but I think we're moving quickly in the right direction. We've had a lot of great work by Kristen and others who have been trying to encourage the industry to move toward more cohesion and coherence in the interactions that we're having with policymakers. But it's important for all of us to understand at the outset that we've been pretty delinquent as a community in engaging a lot of the constituencies that we should have been talking to over the last decade.

Starting point is 00:26:48 And by virtue of that, there's a pretty big gap in understanding and a pretty high degree of suspicion when it comes to working with the community. So we need to own that. We need to do everything we can to get over that. And we also, I think, need to recognize why we haven't been more effective to date. There's been a lot of fragmentation in the engagement that has occurred with policymakers. to the extent we have disagreements and lively debates within the community, that's great. But when we go up and talk with policymakers, for the most part, they're not very interested in that. And so we need to do a better job of having a high degree of coherence and cohesion in the messages that we're bringing to policymakers.

Starting point is 00:27:36 I think we're also seeing a very quick maturation process in the aftermath of the infrastructure bill this summer. That was really an inflection point, both for policymakers and for the industry as a whole. And there's an old saying in Washington, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And I think that finally we're seeing a lot of key actors within the crypto community, the Web 3 ecosystem, recognize that fact and start to come together to shape policy in a constructive manner going forward. Brian, how would you rate the crypto industry our skills at lobbying? And where are we in our development of our lobbying efforts as an industry?

Starting point is 00:28:22 Well, I think from a technical perspective and an expertise perspective, it's very good. I think, you know, the youthfulness of the sector as a whole means that there isn't yet a focus by the entire community and the industry that these efforts are critical to the success of the space. You know, you look at kind of what I would normally deal with in my prior role at the CFTC, large financial institutions, trade associations that have been around for decades, that have, you know, dedicated professional staff like, you know, Kristen is now, you know, developing and others are developing.

Starting point is 00:29:08 You know, they're used to having a process by which they can come together and try to speak with one voice. And I think to Tumika's point, you know, it's natural for any person, any institution or any specific sector to have different perspectives on what may be the most positive or the correct, you know, policy outcome to something. it's easier when there's a negative, you know, against which to fight that everyone doesn't like. So, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, you know, it's understandable that there are differences of opinion. But, you know, in my prior role, and I think in many, um, members of Congress's mind and from what I saw in Capitol Hill, there's also, you know, a desire to, to, to, to, to hear a consensus opinion. You know, what does the industry think, as opposed to what does one individual voice, And I think that's where we are all, you know, trying to work together to develop, you know, speaking with one voice or coordinating on some of those messages or those potential policy outcomes.

Starting point is 00:30:14 Kristen, as somebody who is right in the middle of this fight, right at the heart, what would you say are crypto's strengths when it comes to advocacy and lobbying? And what strengths should we really lean into? And what weaknesses do we really need to plug the holes of before we can really have effective lobbying? Yeah. So the strengths are not even necessarily the industry itself, but the ecosystem surrounding it. What happened with infrastructure that Fight for the Future was like hugely involved in making happen is we got 41,000 phone calls into the United States Senate like that. It happened over a course of five days.

Starting point is 00:30:53 Other industries would die for that kind of engagement and that kind of mobilization. And that wasn't because we'd had this, you know, big grassroots strategy. No, it was literally because this is a really communicative industry that knows how to get into forums on Reddit, get into, you know, crypto Twitter, like people communicate and they can mobilize really quickly. So that is a strength. Again, that's not necessarily an industry strength per se, but like the entire ecosystem of developers and participants that are out there. I think where we are on the things we need to work on, you know, are coming into play. Coordination, I agree, has been an issue in the past, but that is, I think, starting to shift. I mean, I think if we look just within like

Starting point is 00:31:41 the membership of the blockchain association, for example, last year at this time, we had about 25 member companies. This year we have 65 member companies. So we have more people coming together to try to work out the arguments on the front end before going to government. But then there's also just been a lack of resources. And just to kind of throw out a couple rough numbers, you know, I like to tell people I'm super upfront about the finances of the blockchain association. In 2020, last year, our budget was about $2 million. By comparison, the Valve Manufacturers Association of America spent more money than that in 2020, right? And, you know, they don't have the complexity of the issues that we have. It's pretty easy to explain what evolve is. If you compare that to

Starting point is 00:32:31 other sort of established mature trade associations, the American Bankers Association spends about $200 million a year on their trade association. Kind of more, maybe what I would think, where we should be trade associations, like the Entertainment Software Association or the Modern Markets Initiative, those fall somewhere between like $20 and $40 million a year of operating budget for those associations. So this year has been wonderful. The Blockchain Association, we're closer to about $10 million now. So we're on our way to being a mature organization. But you need boots on the ground to do multiple functions, right?

Starting point is 00:33:13 So just so you know sort of how a trade association is structured, which is, again, I should back up. Trade associations are just one piece of the puzzle, right? You need to have individual companies. You need to have advocates that are not related to industry. But in terms of trade associations, we are very focused on federal public policy. So we have a wonderful policy team led by Jake Chavinsky, who's going to be up here next, that they develop the positions and we work with all of our industry members to figure out where we want to be. And then we have a government relations team and consultants that work with the government relations team that have the relationships with

Starting point is 00:33:51 government that can take the positions that the policy team have and go push those out. But you need other things too, right? You need basic operating expenses. You need a communications department. You need to deal with member services and bring new members in. And all of this, you know, it doesn't pay for itself. And when you don't have money going to those types of really, it's people at the end of the day, right? Because it's a very, politics is like a very personal thing. It's a lot of face to face. It's a lot of one-on-one conversations. And so unfortunately, we can't reinvent the lobbying playbook, like we're reinventing, you know, the internet and financial services playbook. But we can use those tools. And if we get money into place, you know, then we can be effective. And again,

Starting point is 00:34:41 go from being like I mentioned before defensive to being offensive. But all of those coming together. There's a lot of companies hiring, a lot of seizing professionals from Washington that are, you know, being put on the broader payroll. And so I'm the most optimistic I've ever been about our chances of getting good policy in Washington. And that, Kristen, is exactly why we are doing this, this live stream, this panel with a Gitcoin advocacy round. The more money that we can funnel into these organizations that are fighting the fight for us, the more resources they have to expand. And I'm going to try and say this at least three months. more times. Crypto, the industry is about the recreation of money. Therefore, our lobbyists should

Starting point is 00:35:22 have a lot of money behind them. There's a lot at stake here. And if we are an industry about money, we should be able to fund these things. And so, again, go to the Gitcoin round 12 advocacy page and see which of these grants that you want to donate towards. Chris, and I'm going to start this next question once again with you. Tamika was talking about how a lot of these a lot of these regulators, they do understand crypto. And once they are shown the light, they do seem to hopefully accept it. But not all regulators are like that. One name that comes to mind is Elizabeth Warren.

Starting point is 00:35:58 She seems to really have an anti-crypto bias. So what does it take to actually gain the trust of our regulators? Because when lobbying efforts come knocking on the door and say, hey, you should, you know, you should give our industry an olive branch and let's do us a favor. As a regulator, they're probably like, well, like, what are your real motivations here? So is it hard to establish trust with regulators and what strategies have we tried that we know work in order to actually establish trust with these people?

Starting point is 00:36:26 Yeah, well, there's a couple of different factors that I think that go into it. First is, and this would help us across the board, having more everyday people using crypto in beneficial ways is going to be our best weapon, right? If you look at Uber, Uber was successful because people were using Uber. As we get more and more applications being built on top of crypto networks and everyday people's lives are improved, it will be more obvious. Because when you start to get into proof of work, proof of stake, what are all these, you know, you'll lose people, right? Like what members of Congress know is like what's useful and what are their voters and their constituents utilizing and caring about? I think that's the biggest thing.

Starting point is 00:37:10 So everyone out there building, please keep building and do it fast because that will be most helpful. But there's a couple other pieces that I think are important. One, just having relationships where you can have a dialogue are important. And part of that is done via direct lobbying. Some of it is just from lifelong friendships policymakers have had with people. A big component is political giving and participating in fundraisers and letting people know that there is kind of a little upside. if they start to engage in this space. So building out the relationship is important.

Starting point is 00:37:46 And then sort of the third is messaging. And different members of Congress or different regulators respond to different messaging, right? Regulators care very much about the mission of their agency, and so it's figuring out how to work within that framework. Policymakers have a wide range of issues that they care about. And I think this is actually something that's challenging. We have so many different messages out there that resonate with different types of lawmakers in particular, that it's hard to just package it all up into one thing that lands with all of these different policymakers.

Starting point is 00:38:24 But you have some that will care about financial inclusion. You will have others that care about fighting big tech. You will have some that are worried about competitiveness with China, others that are trying to figure out how to create more jobs and spur innovation. here at home. And so there's a lot of different messages that are out there. And that's one of the reasons why that, you know, one-on-one communication is so important is because we can tailor our messages to the interests of that lawmaker. And so I do think there are some overarching themes that everybody cares about, but there are some that are specific and that, you know, can be used to turn someone from a skeptic into a champion.

Starting point is 00:39:09 or at the very least neutralize them. That's helpful to the process. At the end of the day, getting some of the people out of the way is half the fight. Tomica, with your experiences at A16Z, has it been difficult to gain trust of the regulators? Well, I think there are two sides of that. I like a lot of folks who have come into the space have pretty long relationships with a lot of the individuals that we are engaging. And those are pretty trusted relationships. And so they, I believe them. If they tell me something, they're going to believe me if I tell them something. So at an individual level, we're building on a pretty firm foundation. I will say there is longstanding skepticism of the industry and the ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:39:58 And that's something we need to work on. I think there hasn't been enough engagement to Kristen's excellent point. Policymakers need to see the technology being used to solve problems. that they care about. That's not happening enough right now. We need to do more when it comes to issues like financial inclusion. We need to do more to reach populations and constituencies that the policymakers are trying to represent. And that's something that we need to take on as an ecosystem and frankly make some investments to support those types of efforts going forward. As we do that, we will find it easier and easier to establish trust with the broad range of actors that we need to be engaging if we want to see policy evolve in an effective direction going forward.

Starting point is 00:40:47 This is a very surmountable challenge. To Kristen's point, we are in a much, much better position to do this than just about any new innovative technology in the last 50 years, because this is a technology that at its core is based on communities and political leaders and policymakers serve communities if they're doing their jobs right. So we are uniquely positioned to deliver and deliver some really good outcomes, but we need to do a better job of demonstrating how these tools can be used to address challenges that policymakers are focused on. Brian, and since you're on the receiving ends of things, What strategies have you seen lobbying efforts work when it comes to gaining trust and, you know, respectfully infiltrating the minds of the regulators?

Starting point is 00:41:42 Yeah, thanks. So I guess when I was in my prior role, and I think, you know, to Micah's spot on a lot of this, you know, if you're thinking about this as an educational initiative, you still want to trust the person that's, you know, providing you that education. And so having a trusted relationship with a counterpart who's coming in to, you know, discuss these issues, policy issues is critically important. And, you know, that's one thing to kind of pick up on as advocacy in this space expands as there are more boots on the ground. There is the opportunity to have more messengers that can be those trusted intermediaries for different members or different regulators so that the message is received. what you don't want to have happen is have the right message and the wrong messenger. You know, there are some members that will listen to some segments and won't listen to others on both sides of the aisle. And, you know, as more boots are on the ground, I think we have an opportunity to bring the right messengers with the message, you know, to those members to have more better results.

Starting point is 00:42:51 So, you know, in my world, you know, it was, it was broad in terms of the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, spectrum of the economy upon which it touched, but it was also narrow in terms of the number of people within kind of the financial system and the financial sector or in the end user community that knew enough of the details and could translate those into policy terms and engage, you know, with regulators and someone like me that has a market's background, but not a legal background and not an extraordinarily highly technical derivatives background, that I could, you know, that I could trust and get an honest assessment around the implications. of different policy outcomes and different policy solutions, whether or not something was working,

Starting point is 00:43:34 whether or not something, you know, could be improved upon. And at the end of the day, it was up to me to try to verify that if I thought I needed to, to get a diverse array of opinions to see whether or not there were others to consider and then make my own judgment, you know, according to my philosophical, you know, beliefs and the data that I had at hand, along with those arguments. And that's something we just have to, we have to be aware of, too,

Starting point is 00:44:04 that sometimes, you know, philosophical perspectives play as big of a role, you know, in advocacy and the results of this as anything else. Sometimes you just can't commit someone that, you know, they should move off of a typewriter. Kristen, earlier in the show, you talked about going on the offensive, rather than just being a defensive,

Starting point is 00:44:24 industry. Does the line, the best defense is a good offense, apply to regulation as well? And what does having a good offense actually look like and mean when it comes to lobbying efforts? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I sort of divide our advocacy efforts into two buckets. We have just the basic education, right? It's making sure people understand the trends in the industry, what's going on, how it works, so that they can make informed policy. decisions. But where we really want to be is coming up with ideas and figuring out what changes we need and going and advocating for those changes. The problem that we have had that's gotten in the way of both just our education work and going out and proactively pushing things is we'll have

Starting point is 00:45:13 these crises come up where someone in government starts moving and we have to drop everything that we're working on and turn and give our attention to that. So it happened last year. We with minutia's rulemaking. You know, we were starting a climate initiative and all these other things. And then it's like, all, team, drop your pencils. Like we're all focused on this problem right now because, again, there's not enough of us that can do all of the different things that are out there. I mean, thankfully, that's finally changed.

Starting point is 00:45:40 And we're getting a lot of wonderful experts in this space. But, you know, there are, if you look at, you know, the securities umbrella, there's multiple issues under their tax. Again, multiple tax issues. there's climate around Bitcoin mining, there's that issue, there's AML KYC, there's stable coins. Any single one of these could have a team of people that are dedicated and focused on that, right? You need somebody to come up with the materials. You need someone to think through the policy positions and work with the lawyers to examine the existing laws.

Starting point is 00:46:14 And then you need to do an education campaign. And it's actually not even just education of policymakers. is it's education of coalition allies in Washington, right? Other groups that might be interested in this. It's educating all of the new lobbyists that are being hired to work on this that don't actually know anything about crypto. You know, there's just so many pieces that need to be done. And you can have that for each individual issue.

Starting point is 00:46:40 And so I think the more funds that come in, I mean, we are spending a significant amount of our time at the Blockchain Association right now, just trying to play the role of coordinator because what's great is a lot of people are getting hired. But what's not great is if all of those same people go and talk to Tom Emmer. Tom Emmer is great. He knows our stuff. He's going to be a champion for life. He's a congressman from Minnesota who was very early, you know, in the crypto space. But like, we've got him. We need to go to an office of somebody who doesn't know anything about this and start to educate them and get them up to speed. And we can do that, but it requires a lot of coordination. The

Starting point is 00:47:21 good news is I think what we found out during like the infrastructure fight this summer is we're actually pretty good at coordinating across the industry. And it's not just companies within the blockchain association. You know, we were on calls with Coinbase and with Square and we were all in common Google Docs and we're on signal chats. And, you know, there's a lot of, because we're such, you know, I'm used to communicating, used to being working remotely. I'm telling you, other industries don't have that. They do not understand speed at which we can make decisions and think. And that's an advantage that we have.

Starting point is 00:47:55 But we just need to make sure, as we bring more people into this space, that we're doing it in a way that's value added and not just duplicating or complicating that efforts that are already in place. Kristen, I'm hearing you say the word education a number of times. Is education really the common denominator for this whole effort? Is it just education all the way down? Is that really what moves the needle the most? Education is definitely helpful.

Starting point is 00:48:22 To be, you know, maybe unpopular, political giving is a super powerful tool. If members of Congress know that, hey, if I do something positive for the crypto industry, the crypto industry is going to do something positive for me, i.e. the host of fundraiser, I mean, that honestly is super helpful. You know, I've seen a lot more of that going on in the past couple of months, which I think is great. But listen, at the end of the day, if you're dealing with members of Congress,

Starting point is 00:48:50 now, again, they're a little bit different than the regulators, but members of Congress and the most, you know, the core, the thing that keeps them up at night is, am I going to get reelected? How do you get reelected? You get votes.

Starting point is 00:49:05 How do you get votes? You do things that your constituents care about and you raise a bunch of money to tell them all the good things so that, you know, they can get reelected. So, listen, And this goes back to if we can get a bunch of people using this and loving it and being huge fans of the space and finding ways to reach them and get them politically active, you know, the policymakers will follow. It's, it's that's the best way to do it. But education is big, especially when preventing, you know, sort of these policies that have unintended consequences. It's, it's, you know, very complicated space to try to get up to speed on quickly. I think as all of us know, I mean, I'm still learning things.

Starting point is 00:49:44 every day and could you spend all day long reading about all the cool, cool stuff happening in this space. So yeah, we got boiling it down and making it easy to understand is a process, but it's a process that we can do. And I think we'll eventually, you know, kind of start to close that education gap. It's happened a little bit, but we've got, I think, a long way to go. Well, panelists, I want to thank you guys for carving out time in your very busy schedules to come on this show and help educate about advocacy. And so I want to, wrap up with this one last question for each of you. We are coming to a close on 2021, which was definitely the year that the crypto industry woke up to the fact that we actually do have to

Starting point is 00:50:25 participate in politics and in governmental discourse. So looking into 2022, what are some reasonable, some lofty but reasonable wins that you want to see from the crypto industry by the end of 2022? What should we really be focusing our attention on? And so we can really get some nice W's under the belt. Tamika, I'll start with you. I think we should approach the 22, 2022 elections as the Web 3 midterm. I think politicians on both sides of the aisle need to recognize that the margin of victory in virtually every tight race in the country will be determined by voters that care a lot about this issue. And that those that are committed to building a better internet, those that are committed to building a better financial system that works for more people,

Starting point is 00:51:13 going to get a lot of support. And those that are on the wrong side of those issues are going to face unhappy voters at the ballot box. I think that's going to take some work to get us there, but I'm cautiously optimistic. We can make it happen. 2022 as the Web 3 election year, I think that is a meme that I'm going to try and get me and Ryan to just meme into existence. So thank you for that one, Tomica. Brian, I want to turn to you. What wins does the crypto industry really need to get achieved in 2022? too. I think building off of Tamika's comment, you know, there's there's there's so much in crypto for everyone. And as we see, uh, and through my work with Tamika at A16Z, as we see

Starting point is 00:51:59 policymakers from across the political spectrum get educated, you know, they, they turn from skeptics to supporters. Um, I think we are going to see, and I would love to. to see, you know, bipartisan pieces of legislation be introduced that show the breadth of support, the different, the diversity of support that crypto can have politically. I think that's going to be a big wake up call for a lot of folks that view this, you know, through one particular lens, either philosophically or economically. And Kristen, what are you looking for wins? What wins are you looking for at the Blockchain Association in 2022?

Starting point is 00:52:38 And how can the industry help you? Yeah, no, I think what we need to do this year is build the machine to steal, sort of Fred Ersum's phrase, he talks about building a political machine. We need to build the machine that can allow us to go on the offensive. And I think the pieces are coming together. But if, you know, you're running a company and that valuation is a billion dollars or more, you should have a team of people in Washington that are coordinating with all of those other companies. You know, we're just now starting to see these large companies bring in internal teams, hire a head of policy or a head of government relations.

Starting point is 00:53:16 You know, up until a couple months ago, there really wasn't a whole lot of that happening in D.C. So we need more of those people coming in. So I think if we can, I mean, my personal goal is let's build the apparatus. And then we've got the winning arguments. We've got, you know, the playbook that we need to run. We just haven't had enough of an army to go do that. So if we can build the army this year, then I think that's going to tee us up for success. But I agree with Tamika, too.

Starting point is 00:53:42 If we can have this become a campaign issue in 2022, that is also going to be a game changer. Well, bankless listeners can look forward to that just being injected into their ears over and over and over again. Brian, Kristen, and Tamika, thank you so much for coming on for this first of two panels for this Gitcoin Round 12, Crypto Advocacy Summit. Thank you for your time. And again, thank you for your efforts with actually advocating for our industry and just bringing awareness to all the good that crypto can bring to the world. Thanks. Thank you, David. The AVE protocol is a decentralized liquidity protocol on Ethereum, which allows users to supply and borrow certain crypto assets. AVE version 2 has a ton of cool features that makes using the AVE protocol even more powerful.

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Starting point is 00:56:37 at Gemini.com slash go bankless. Connor, I'm going to welcome you back onto the stage so you can introduce our panelists. We have Jake Schrovinsky, Sarah Goddette, and Jerry Brito, who I'm bringing into Zoom right now. They might feel a little bit thrown into the weeds, but before I give the reins over to you, Connor, you want to introduce what is happening next

Starting point is 00:57:00 in our second panel of the day and also introduce who is going to be on the panel with you. Yes, thank you, David, and thanks for all the previous panelists who contributed there. That was an amazing conversation. So for our panel right now, we are going to have a discussion with Sarah, with Jake, and with Jerry about the scene in D.C., helping to demystify what's happening, getting a sense of trends politically, what we're seeing, kind of get in some ways, you know, I don't want to say the insider view, but the view that the average person

Starting point is 00:57:32 in crypto, the average crypto stakeholder doesn't get every day. So yeah, we can jump into it from there. All right. With that, with the panelists, the next panel come on the show. And while they do that, I just want to remind people to pull out not your checkbooks, but instead your ledger or your MetaMask and go to Gitcoin and peruse all of the various different grants that you can donate to. One of them is the Blockchain Association of which we just had, we are now actually also having Jake on as well. So, Connor, I will hand it off to you for panel number two. Thank you, David. We need one of those kind of old school rotary phones. Like, we need a phone bank behind you with just people, you know, answering the lines. That's step two. That's summit number

Starting point is 00:58:16 two. Absolutely. But thank you. So let's get into it. I'm going to start by briefly introducing everyone and then just having them introduce themselves. Sarah is the executive director at Fight for the Future. Jerry is the executive director at Coin Center. And Jake is at the Blockchain Association doing a ton of good work. I think head of policy is the title, but I'm sure that you wear many hats there. So maybe we could start by everyone introducing themselves and their organization. And this is a three-parter, themselves, their organization, and what your focus is on crypto advocacy.

Starting point is 00:58:49 So let's start with those who turn their camera on first. I'm going to go Sarah, Jerry, and then Jake. Sure, yeah, I can jump in. Hello, folks. Thanks, Connor and David, for organizing this panel today. Very honored to be here with Jake and Jerry, in particular. So, yeah, I'm executive director of Fight for the Future. We were founded in 2011, so just approaching our 10-year anniversary.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Our mission is to fight for technology to be a force for liberation and empowerment rather than exploitation and oppression. So we see decentralized peer-to-peer software, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects, having real potential to create alternatives to big tech monopolies in particular, their abusive practices. Going back, though, we're one of the organizers of the first Bitcoin Black Friday. We're one of the first nonprofits to accept crypto donations. We've long been enthusiastic about the potential of the technology.

Starting point is 00:59:46 More recently, we helped supporters file nearly 4,000 comments, I think, to FinCEN and the Treasury to oppose the proposed surveillance of crypto transactions. And this past August, when the infrastructure bill contained, as a I'm sure has already been discussed, deeply misguided provisions around cryptocurrency that would threaten the software developers, trying to create alternatives to big tech, and would also create harmful surveillance requirements

Starting point is 01:00:10 for the artists and creators. We helped direct a huge backlash in the form of over 40,000 calls, tweets that reached over 20 million people, and that resulted in lawmakers making an attempt last minute to fix the provision with an amendment that failed due to the obscure Senate rules, despite the bipartisan support. So now in addition to supporting, you know,

Starting point is 01:00:30 the legislation that's been introduced to fix most of the bad provisions in the bill, we're scaling up our work. I'm sure we can talk more about this, but our biggest priority at the moment is to build a broader community of human rights organizations who will fight with us. And that's off to a pretty good start. Great. Thanks, Sarah. And Jerry. Great. Well, thank you very much, Connor and Alden for having us here.

Starting point is 01:00:54 So I'm Jerry Bredo. I'm executive director of CoinCenter, and CoinCenter is an independent nonprofit. based in D.C. focused on public policy issues that affect cryptocurrencies and open permissionless blockchain networks, so things like Bitcoin Ethereum and the like. We've been around for just about seven years, a little bit over seven years now. And we exist because these open networks, very much like the internet, are unowned public goods. And so as a result of that, there's a bit of a collective action problem. You've got trade associations like Jakes, with which we work closely,

Starting point is 01:01:30 that look after the interest of companies in this space, but who looks out after the interest of the networks as networks and the rights of individuals and developers to build the networks and connect and assemble as networks and to use the networks and do so freely and privately. And so that's what we exist to do. And we do that basically in three ways, education, public policy research, and advocacy.

Starting point is 01:01:57 Education is where we spend a lot of our time, and it's focused on making sure the policymakers understand what the stuff is and how it works. So just plain English, just the facts information, so much of what can go wrong with regulation and policymaking is not out of balance, but out of ignorance. And so we want to make sure that if you want to pick up the phone and call Bitcoin, pick up the phone, you know,

Starting point is 01:02:18 and call a decentralized network, they can't. Hopefully they can call us, and we can give them just the facts about But as we have these conversations, though, inevitably we get questions we don't have the answers to, oftentimes because these are questions of law where the technology has outpaced the law. And there's a gap. And policymakers are probably going to want to fill those gaps. And so that's where we engage in the second thing that we do, which is public policy research, where we identify gaps, identify alternative ways one might fill those gaps. And we make a recommendation. And the criteria that we use for what we recommend is we want to help regulators meet their ends,

Starting point is 01:02:56 whether that's consumer protection, investment, protection, anti-money laundering, whatever it may be, while preserving as much as possible the freedom to innovate, and avoiding unattentic consequences, and certainly respecting constitutional rights. And the last thing we do is advocacy, right? So we lobby for our preferred solutions. And again, we're a non-trade association. We don't represent anybody. we don't have members.

Starting point is 01:03:19 We are basically just self-appointed champions for this technology. And folks who support us do so without any influence over what we see and do. And we hope that they like what that is. And then following here, they can support us again if they like it. So that's what we are. A lot of our work is, you know, in contrast to Sarah's work, which is very activist focus, which is awesome, and we partner with them and love the work that they do.

Starting point is 01:03:52 We're very much behind the scenes, working with policymakers sort of elbow to elbow, hey, how do we get to write policies in place to make sure it benefits everybody? Sometimes that goes off the rails, and we have to get into a fight, which is where we worked with Sarah and worked with Jake publicly. But oftentimes it's very much behind the scenes kind of work.

Starting point is 01:04:15 Thank you, Jerry. And thanks for making that distinction, too, because I think that's a question we get a lot is, what are organizations actually doing and why do we need more than one? And we certainly do need more than one. And one thing I didn't mention at the top is that all these organizations fight for the future, Coin Center and Blockchain Association are, of course, in Gitcoin Round 12. So there are organizations that you can donate to, and your donations will be matched through that very generous matching pool. With that, let's go to Jake.

Starting point is 01:04:44 Yeah, well, thank you. And first, let me apologize for my dog, who I think is barking. at a delivery that's coming right now. So sorry for that. I'm sure that'll stop in a second. But I'm Jake Chrivensky. I am head of policy for the Blockchain Association. We are the premier trade association in Washington, D.C. We have a membership now of about 65 members consisting of the largest and most successful U.S. crypto companies ranging from exchanges to custodians to software development companies focused on DFI to NFI to NFT projects. and everything in between.

Starting point is 01:05:20 I think Jerry actually did a really phenomenal job of describing sort of the difference between Coin Center and independent nonprofit think tank and the blockchain association and industry trade group. Our job is to represent the interests of the industry to policymakers. And I think by extension, the interests of the community of customers and users who are also using these decentralized networks. In terms of what we're focused on, and I also think Jerry sort of nailed the three main categories. We're engaged in all the same types of efforts around education, policy development, and advocacy.

Starting point is 01:05:59 I think I would add a fourth, which is we may also get involved in litigation. I think one thing we haven't mentioned so far is oftentimes we educate policymakers and regulators. We come up with policy initiatives and solutions that we think. are both good policy for the industry, for the users, and also for government. And sometimes we just can't reach an agreement among all the stakeholders. And when that happens, we sometimes have to vindicate our rights in court. So those listening may know me from my prior role as general counsel of compound labs, defy developer that originally created the compound protocol. I am a lawyer, and I think in addition to being head of policy, I may find myself as head of litigation at some

Starting point is 01:06:45 points. In terms of just what we're focused on now, you know, I think there's sort of two buckets in terms of how we think about our efforts in D.C. and also in the states, I think part of what we do is very reactive. We are hearing from policymakers who have ideas about what they think should happen with the industry or with regulation or legislation, and we are reacting to those those ideas either through education or advocacy. The other bucket is the proactive bucket, right? Us sort of figuring out what do we think good policy would look like? And I think that flows from an understanding that financial market regulations were not

Starting point is 01:07:28 designed with a decentralized financial system in mind. And that applies whether we're talking about decentralized money in the form of Bitcoin or decentralized protocols for other types of interactions. defy or other non-financial use cases of blockchains like nfts or social tokens or anything of that nature. And so what we really have to do, and I think something that requires more focus moving forward is coming up with what that public policy framework should look like and then advocating for an amendment to the current laws so that we can move forward here in the U.S. So I'll leave it there because I'm sure we have a lot more to cover. Thanks.

Starting point is 01:08:09 all exciting stuff and maybe even so now that we are more familiar with all your organizations to take a step back maybe starting with jerry here i'd love to go high level on the perception of crypto among policymakers and regulators today kind of trends you're seeing issues that are important to them you know whether they're actually important to them or not i think it was great in the first panel brian i believe and to micha maybe two flagged that a huge part of this and christin everyone is education, of course. And it seems like, you know, at times we're far ahead with certain members of Congress and senators and others, certain individuals are not there yet on the education front. So with that, we'd love to get kind of a high-level view of what you're seeing in D.C. Yeah. So I think something that is sometimes a challenge for those of us in this line of work, but at the same time pretty beautiful about our system is that it's not a monolith, right?

Starting point is 01:09:12 The federal governments, certainly, you know, you take all the governments in the U.S., they're not one thing. And so you can't say that there's one view from D.C. about crypto. So, you know, you've got the Congress, you've got the executive branch, and you've got the courts, and within the executive branch, you've got dozens of agencies that each probably have some say related to crypto. And each of these, within each of these, you have a multiplicity of views. So there isn't one, I would say. So, you know, the way I would describe it is that within the agencies that are most implicated by crypto and are going to be doing, you know,

Starting point is 01:09:59 that have already regulated or will be regulating, they tend to have pretty expert staff focused on crypto. And in general, it depends from agency to agency, but I would say that they have a very good understanding of cryptocurrency. I think they find it, typically they find it fascinating and there's enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. At the same time, they see the challenges that it poses for their missions. But you can have good conversations with people who are expert at those agencies. And it depends. It goes from agency to agency, right? So it's a little different. In Congress, I think what you have is a small minority of members who have strong views about cryptocurrency, either strongly positive or strongly negative, and then a long tail of members who,

Starting point is 01:10:51 you know, don't really have a view or have sort of a layperson's view where they've read about it and formed some inclination one way or the other but aren't, don't really have a strong view. And that's to be expected because, you know, crypto is the world. to us, but it's just one of thousands of issues the members of Congress face. And so they can't be expected to have a strong, you know, a well-formed opinion about every issue that they had that before them. And so part of the challenge for us there is educating folks as much as we can. But with the understanding that we're never going to get every member of Congress fully

Starting point is 01:11:30 as immersed into crypto as we all are, it's doing some triage and making sure that that the folks who are most negatively disposed, making sure that we have good counterbalance to those folks. So anyhow, I guess what I would say, you know, there's no one perspective on crypto from D.C., but if I could just sum it up in general, look, there is a lot of rhetoric that comes out of D.C. Because talk is cheap. And that tends to be negative.

Starting point is 01:12:12 So often what you're reading the press is a lot of the folks who are not positively inclined towards crypto saying things that is negative rhetoric. But if you look at the actions that the federal government has taken to date, look, there's some stuff I find pretty objectionable, starting with the infrastructure bill,

Starting point is 01:12:33 tax reporting provisions that just passed. including to just generally tax policy, some of what the SEC has done. But aside from that, in general, I would say that the U.S. has gotten it rights on crypto regulation, right? Certainly FinC, that Treasury has. CFTC, I think has. I think in the main, even the SEC has. I don't Jake and I might disagree on the margin. So I would say it's not monolithic and separate the rhetoric from what's actually happened.

Starting point is 01:13:13 And so I'd say I'm very optimistic about the future of crypto visa-vis regulation. And of course, we brought up the infrastructure bill already. I feel like that's very critical to the conversation about the history of crypto-regulation. And Jake, I mean, I know that you were all very integral in that process in BC. Jay, could you give us a little bit of context around that and where we're at today in that fight? I know it's a big question. I know that's an hour-long response, but. Yes.

Starting point is 01:13:44 And actually, I think Jerry had to record two podcasts just to cover the story of the infrastructure bill. So we'll try to keep it a little shorter than that. Long story short, the infrastructure bill was a promise of President Biden's campaign to, you know, build roads and bridges and bring other bipartisan efforts for. forward. And the only reason that crypto got tied up in this was in order to pay for all of the spending required by the infrastructure bill, Congress had to come up with pay for provisions that would raise as much money as the bill would create a new spending. And crypto was a target of that effort. There was a set of provisions that were designed, which were not shared with industry or I think any of the stakeholders on our side, until,

Starting point is 01:14:33 about a week before the infrastructure bill became public, that was alleged to raise about $28 billion. I can't remember the exact figure in new tax revenue. And in short, there were basically three major elements of these new tax provisions. First, the bill expanded the definition of a broker, which is the category of market participants or actors who are required to do tax reporting. In other words, They have to file reports with the IRS about transactions that they were a part of that they conducted on behalf of their customers. The infrastructure bill expanded the definition of a broker to capture all sorts of participants in crypto that don't have access to the information they would need to do that kind of

Starting point is 01:15:22 reporting. And non-intermediaries that ordinarily would never be subject to requirements like this. Second, it created a definition for the, you know, the term digital asset, which was wildly overbroad. It essentially captured every type of asset that moves around on a blockchain, whether it is monetary in nature or otherwise, meaning in theory, there could be a reporting required for almost any type of transaction that happened on a public blockchain. And third, the infamous section 60-50-I provision, the cash transaction reporting requirement, which basically said that individuals and businesses who conduct transactions

Starting point is 01:16:06 in trade or business must file reports for any transaction worth more than $10,000. So the example that I know Jerry has been giving for this is, let's imagine you go to an antique store and you want to buy an antique desk and it costs $11,000. If you buy that with Bitcoin or a stable coin or some other digital asset, well, now the antique dealer has to file a report to the IRS about that transaction. So, I mean, for a lot of reasons we can get into, but maybe to keep it a little bit shorter we won't, these provisions just don't make any sense. They don't match up with the nature of the technology that we are working with, and they don't match up with the position that crypto market participants have in relation to

Starting point is 01:16:52 these types of transactions, right? Miners who add blocks to a blockchain are very different from securities brokerages or banks or other brokers that are typically required to do this type of reporting. We worked very, very hard to try to fix this language in August. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in sort of an odd turn of events where it seemed like all of the senators agreed that there should be an amendment to these provisions, but because one senator couldn't get a different, totally unrelated amendment that he wanted, he decided if he couldn't get what he wanted, no one could get what they wanted. And as a result, the infrastructure bill was passed and signed by President Biden with those original provisions included. So we're now working very hard

Starting point is 01:17:39 with the Treasury Department to try to mold the implementation of those tax provisions in a way that will make sense for the industry. And that's sort of where I'll leave it for now. Thank you, Jake. I know that's a hard thing to summarize. And Sarah, anyone I talked to about the infrastructure bill and kind of what went on from advocacy perspective brings up fight for the future and the critical role you played. And yet I don't know that very many people in Crypto Candle are as familiar with your organization or at least as they would be with CoinCenter of the Blockchain Association. So I'd love to hear from your side of the story as to, I know you've been doing things for a while at Fight for the future related to blockchain, but how the

Starting point is 01:18:23 infrastructure bill fight played out for you and the way in which you were in the way in which you are interacting with these other organizations that we've been talking about and to the extent interacting with regulators and others too. Yeah, sure. I was thinking about this a bit. I mean, the timing was terrible in terms of just the amount of notice we all had, but good in the way that we had already been working some on, you know, specifically the FinCEN rules and the proposed FATIF rules and had been, you know, working some with,

Starting point is 01:18:58 Coin Center and blockchain association. And so we were already in pretty regular communication about what might be coming next. And we tested some different messages with our audiences and built sort of small audience of our around these issues as well. For us being able to take on financial surveillance was just, you know, that particular piece around the FinCEN rules was just, you know, we've been long focused on privacy and anti-surveillance, government surveillance, but also corporate surveillance as technology evolves. But so when this provision was added and we were alerted by folks at the Blockchain Association,

Starting point is 01:19:42 it was pretty easy for us to jump in. And it was also pretty easy for us to just to be able to quickly be able to say that no policy that impacts the future of the internet, you know, should be tacked on to some must-pass piece of legislation like the infrastructure bill, as Jake set up, as President Biden fulfilling his campaign promises. You know, they have to be carefully debated and considered. It's not the first time that we have fought a rider, you know, our last minute, in addition to a bill that would affect the future of the Internet. And so, you know, whether people understand the issues or not, they can surely understand

Starting point is 01:20:25 that that's just, you know, bad policymaking. So right out of the gates, that was fairly easy for an easy message for us to spread. Like, this makes no sense. It needs to be fixed. And then we were able to move quickly. We, you know, have a lot of customized tools that can easily connect a supporter to their member of Congress or automatically submit letters through their members, common submissions on their websites. And we use these tools all the time, so they're battle tested.

Starting point is 01:20:52 You know, we specialize in sort of building quick campaign sites. and tools that make the experience of, the goal is to make the experience of taking action and doing activism easy. So we were able to deploy one of these tools in just a few hours. And we were able to switch it from a focus on Senator Seneca, Senator Sinaima and Mention as chief negotiators

Starting point is 01:21:13 to, okay, this is really moving forward. So we need to turn the switch and facilitate calls to all of our senators. And we need to quickly focus on Senator Wyden's amendment because that that had been thankfully introduced. And so, you know, we are in the kind of ideologically small organizations so that we can, you know, we're 12, 12 staff people. And so we, you know, are able to move quickly.

Starting point is 01:21:40 And we really, you know, we live for these sort of big, big viral moments. We may talk a little bit more about sort of, you know, how the needle shifts on issues like technology and the Internet. you know, these are the moments where we can have the biggest possible impact. So as a small team, we are good at dropping everything else and sort of working around the clock to take to take full advantage. And, you know, the outpouring of support from the community was massive, you know, with the help of Coin Center and, you know, and folks like Jake who were able to sort of spread the word on Twitter, it, you know, spread incredibly quickly.

Starting point is 01:22:20 And we were able to sort of channel a lot of the energy around the issue towards Congress. And like I said, at the outset, you know, over 40,000 calls, very short period of time. You know, when the office is closed for the weekend, we changed the site to add everybody's Twitter handles. And so folks were, you know, tweeting. And I think over 20 million, you know, sort of folks were able to see one of these tweets. and so it really spread very quickly. And that was awesome. So while we lost over the obscure Senate rules

Starting point is 01:22:58 and the senator from Alabama, it felt like a pretty big victory for the community overall. And this is something that we certainly hear a lot in the context of the infrastructure bill was the limited notice that anyone in the industry had. And so when we think about the next fights, in DC and elsewhere. We're actually just focused in DC.

Starting point is 01:23:25 Like what are some of the things that the community should be aware of right now that might be the next infrastructure bill fight that they can start working working towards today, given that we have a little bit more time. And I'm going to put this one to Jerry first. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. I think part of the reason why this became so focal is because it had to be a public

Starting point is 01:23:53 fight because we got no notice, right? Because this was done out of regular order. And the same is true for the FinCEN fight that Sarah mentioned that happened in December, January of earlier this year, one year at garage you said, right? And the thing is, when things are done through regular order, that is through an agency, it is done through rulemaking or in Congress, a bill is a draft bills discussed that introduced and hearings are done. When things are done through regular order, You know, that's when I say that we work behind the scenes, that's what I mean. I mean that we, you know, when an agency is thinking about some regulation or some guidance, we'll talk to them before there's a draft that's put out.

Starting point is 01:24:35 And we'll have conversations and back and forth and they'll, you'll point out things. Hey, did you think about this? And they'll be like, oh, yeah, you're right. We didn't think about this. And in that way, we can improve things. Then it's put out for public comments or introduced as a bill. And then we get to, and the whole, all the public gets to, offer comments and the agency has to take comment and consider that. And then that way things are

Starting point is 01:24:57 improved. And so by the time we get through this whole process, usually we get a good result. But once in a while, for political reasons, you will have folks at an agency like Secretary Mnuchin last year at Treasury or this year, Mr. Portman with the infrastructure bill rammed something through where it's got to get done this week. And so it surprises everyone. They give it to us fully baked. We've had no input into it. First time we see it. And so we can't have this back this conversation, quote unquote, behind the synony, so there's this nice conversation. We have to have a public fight. And we need to, at that point, get everybody involved because at that point, the thing that they will understand is mass this approval of what's being put out there. And so

Starting point is 01:25:46 when you ask me, what's the next thing? I don't know. Because Usually when this happens, it's a complete surprise to us. That said, the kind of things that I would expect are, I would say there are a couple of buckets. One is, you know, at this moment we've got very good, especially because we were able to push back and defeat Secretary Mnuchin's self-hosted wallet rules. proposed self-help-posed those-wit-laws a year ago, the rules around anti-money laundering today are perfectly reasonable.

Starting point is 01:26:28 And I was very happy to see very recently Secretary Yellen say that, you know, she's happy with the rules that we have in place now. But at any moment, there can be some Black Swan events, some gas pipeline that gets ransomware that will cause

Starting point is 01:26:44 something at a very high political level. Maybe the president say, do something about this now. And I don't care, I don't want to hear anything else, right? And so something like that could trigger something related to self-hosting cryptocurrency. So I worry about that. And then the other thing is related to DFI. It's no secret that there are investigations at the SEC related to DFI.

Starting point is 01:27:13 Those could result in enforcement actions. If they do, it's going to be very interesting to see. under what theory of law will those enforcement actions happen? Certainly one that I hope won't come, but might, and one we have to be ready to engage in, is if they make a case that publishing code is in some way a violation of the security. And so I worry about that.

Starting point is 01:27:44 So those are two things that I'm sort of on the lookout for right now. And Jake, we hear like there is a decent amount of thud in the space. I mean, even as it relates to like the next thing that's going to come, talk of enforcement actions, et cetera, that's what we hear about the community over and over again. And a lot of people want to do something about it. They want to try to find a way to operate a business where they don't feel insecure about what they're doing. They want to be compliant.

Starting point is 01:28:17 They want to be on side, but they just don't know how to be. and they're not people who've necessarily lobbied or advocated for anything in their life. And you do a really good job of, I think, explaining for everyone what the meaning of some of the T.E.s in DC are. What do you say when that average stakeholder, be they, you know, an operator, a founder, a lawyer, whatever, comes to you or tweets at you and asks about how they can participate in the process? It's a tough question. And I think especially in the context of enforcement You know, unlike policy, where I completely agree with Jerry that, you know, this should be done well in advance. Stakeholders should be brought in. It should be discussed. It should be thoughtful.

Starting point is 01:29:03 You know, people should be brought into into the conversation early and often. The public should be able to weigh in. Enforcement is exactly the opposite. Enforcement by design should be kept confidential. And the reason for that is because the mere fact of an investigation could suggest that there has been some wrongdoing. but of course, here in the U.S., we have the presumption of innocence. Typically, that applies in the criminal context, but it's true equally in the civil context. We should assume that companies have not violated the law until and unless there is a finding that they have. And so the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the other enforcement agencies in D.C. and around the country in the states, the rules are that these enforcement actions should and must be conducted confidentially,

Starting point is 01:29:49 just because the mere implication that there has been a violation can do more damage to the company than the violation itself if indeed there is one. So it's really very hard for the public to get involved in any meaningful way on the enforcement side. I think, you know, specific to crypto, a lot of the enforcement that folks are concerned may come, I think stems from a misunderstanding on the part of many enforcement lawyers and other policymakers about how the technology works. So just as an example, you hear Chair Gensler often talking about defy protocols without understanding the difference between a decentralized set of smart contracts that run on a public blockchain autonomously and in a self-executing fashion as compared to a centralized institution

Starting point is 01:30:41 that is offering some proprietary financial service that happens to, use digital assets for blockchain technology in some way. And so I think really the best that the public can do is to get involved in these advocacy and education efforts, right, to try to spread the word, to try to get people to understand both how the technology works and also why they're interested in it. You know, I think going back to an earlier point, the reason that often the rhetoric in D.C. around crypto is so negative is because policymakers think that it's an easy target. it to score political points. And so it's not so much that they've thought through, you know, the policy or the issue or the reasoning behind the negative statement that they're going to make

Starting point is 01:31:25 to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or some other media outlet that's giving them an opportunity to communicate with the public and get their name in print. Rather, it's just because they think that there's very little cost to attacking the industry. And I think what's changing now is policymakers are starting to understand their constituents care very deep. about this technology and about having access to the next generation of financial tools and also non-financial tools. And so I think the more the public speaks up about that, the more they can influence sort of how policy is going to work out in the end. And Sarah, this one for you, taking it back to previous battles, the internet community has had in D.C. thinking about things like potentially the anti-Soba campaigns, net neutrality, I'm sure a number

Starting point is 01:32:20 of smaller campaigns that were run. I know by through the future has been involved in some of them. What, part of the reason I ask this question is that I think it's important that people in the community understand that this sort of campaign lobbying at times, et cetera, has happened several times as it relates to new innovations and crypto is no exception to that. what lessons would you draw from those campaigns and how would you explain their importance to where we are now with those technologies? I might have a visitor just, you know, at the exact right moment. Yeah, I was thinking of this as Jake was talking as well because it is, you know,

Starting point is 01:33:11 it's acceptable, it feels acceptable for, you know, for folks in Congress to use the kind of rhetoric that they're using right now because, although they are hearing more and more from their constituents in the infrastructure bill was a big breakthrough there. But yeah, you know, I think the, I think it's so important that we do have the inside game and the work that Coincet is doing is so critical for that. We need to, there needs to, there needs to, to be the behind the scenes work. I always feel hopeful when I hear Jerry talk about how there are really, you know, smart folks who are educating themselves in agencies and elsewhere.

Starting point is 01:33:52 And I'm sure there's there are more and more every day in, you know, amongst the staffers in Congress too. But that we, you know, if there's one thing I've learned from 25 plus years of doing kind of political strategy and activism, it's that when you're up against especially deeply entrenched powerful interests. There's no way to just win with the facts and the persuasive arguments. We need both. The folks in D.C. will listen and learn what they need to learn if we can successfully shift the focus off of some of the worst narratives for crypto outside of D.C. and begin to build more of a broad base of support. The folks in D.C. didn't really understand the internet or net

Starting point is 01:34:33 neutrality at the beginning. And frankly, they didn't care enough about getting more and more people online through broadband access. But when we were able to frame the issue for the public as one of the cable companies getting control of the internet, turning it from the beautiful open mess that it wasn't to cable TV, we started to see a difference

Starting point is 01:34:52 in how folks were responding. When we were able to get these messages to every corner of the web through sort of the big viral moments on the internet, the sort of inflection points that we have, things like the infrastructure bill, and partnering with companies

Starting point is 01:35:07 who had a stake in the outcome that could direct their users to take action, organizing subreddit mods and all the things that we have done over the years, we can channel a lot of that, that outrage into political action. We need the inside game, but we, you know, we also really need the outside work to help to shift the narrative over time and to kind of get the folks in in D.C. to pay attention. So it's about those kind of critical inflection points, making the most, most of them, and, you know, really channeling a lot of that, that energy into action at those big moments.

Starting point is 01:35:42 And we've seen it time and time again. So we are optimistic that we can do it again. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, everyone. And maybe we'll end it off with last question, an optimistic question and a quick response. But thinking about, you know, if you're waking up in the morning, whatever,

Starting point is 01:36:08 you go immediately on Twitter, of course, because we all do. And then you see a tweet about a new regulation, a new policy, a new occurrence on the crypto regulatory front. And it makes you as happy as possible. It's the best possible thing for you to see. What is that thing? And maybe I'll start with Jake. I'll go Jerry and then I'll go Sarah. Yeah. I'll give you a real life example, which is Secretary Yellen's statements recently about the FATIF guidance. So, you know, for quite a long time before and then especially during this fight we had with Secretary Mnuchin last December, I've always thought that the anti-money laundering laws are the biggest threat to a decentralized financial system. They are the way

Starting point is 01:36:49 that a government that wants to stop this technology in its tracks has the most leverage to do so. And especially with how the FAAD draft guidance looked in March of this year, which basically was designating almost every actor in crypto as a virtual asset service provider subject to know your customer regulations. That really sort of scared a lot of us. And to see Secretary Yellen come out and say, we're standing by our own guidance from May of 2019, which accurately captured how anti-money laundering laws apply to this sector, I think that was frankly the best thing that we could have asked for to end this year. I would love to see something similar next year from Chair Gensler or from the SEC giving us some clarity on how they

Starting point is 01:37:37 interpret the Howie test and its application to digital assets. I think that would be the next thing that would make me extremely happy. I am much less optimistic about actually seeing that. But yeah, that's my answer. Yeah. And I'll say that, you know, that was a question for the record. Senator Tumi asked Secretary Yellen, and I'm sure Secretary Yellen didn't actually write that answer herself. Folks who developed that answer is these smart people at Treasury who get crypto, right, and who are developing that policy. And so this is why I'm so optimistic that if we can get people really understanding the stuff and understanding where all of our interests in line, we're going to get more of those. And so if I could wake up tomorrow and see a tweet that

Starting point is 01:38:24 would make me happy, it would come also from Treasury, but in this case, from the IRS or Office of Tax Policy, just with new guidance that makes sense. The guidance that they put out in 2019 makes very, very little sense. It conflates an irdrop with a fork. I mean, really not good. And so I think that's the area that needs most improvements. And so that's where I would want to see better guidance. Well, I'd start by, you know, seeing what Jerry and Jake have tweeted that morning. But in it kind of totally, totally different. but I think the thing that would make me most happy would be to see AOC tweet something about,

Starting point is 01:39:14 something positive about decentralized tech or retweet our deputy director, Evan Greer's, tweet about the importance of crypto to marginalized communities fighting repressive governments. And we think that's possible. But I think that we're fiercely nonpartisan, but we do work with a lot of these offices on a lot of different issues. And so we, you know, we did for the infrastructure bill and we will going forward, continue to do outreach to them to try to break through there. But I think that would help to shift the political landscape. I think folks, you know, like Elizabeth, Senator Warren would sort of have to

Starting point is 01:39:49 reckon with that part of the party. I think we could, you know, we could give, we could kind of give them a way to fit it into their worldview that I think would make sense. I think with the midterms coming up. And I think with, you know, clearly all the all that's coming out about, you know, younger people, you know, adopting crypto and more and more people of color. Like I think the big D Democrats are going to, you know, they're going to see that this is important for them to get educated around and to sort of see beyond some of the, you know, worst of the narratives out there and to see how, you know, it could potentially be revolutionary. That would make me happy.

Starting point is 01:40:33 Yeah, me too. All those things that make me happy. So fingers crossed for 20. 22. But thank you all very much for taking the time to help us out. As I think all of our listeners know by now, each of these organizations, Coins that are by to the Future in Blockchain Association are in GICT-Coin round 12 as advocacy groups that need your support. So thanks everyone. I think we'll now add David and Scott back into the room and you guys feel free to just chill and turn off your videos. We'll do a little debrief. But thanks so much. Thank you.

Starting point is 01:41:08 Thank you. David, I think you're muted. Sorry, I have like 13 mute buttons. Welcome, Scott and myself back to the panelist. Connor, thank you for leading that second panel. Scott, I want to ask you, what were your thoughts on the last two panels that we just had on the show? Anything you want to add? Absolutely amazing.

Starting point is 01:41:36 Yeah, I liked a few particular points that, like, kind of I noted down, actually. The one that I think was particularly important even very early on was just like the Yellowstone analogy, because I really do think this is almost like a new landscape, like a physical landscape that people are navigating, you know, in the metaverse, I suppose, as people call it. That to me feels like, you know, there are these pitfalls. There are these risks, but like it's a very exciting space that we need to like help people navigate. Once people understand that space, they can be much more comfortable with it and they can really actually enjoy what's there. So that to me feels like a really powerful first piece. And then with the infrastructure bill, I thought it was super interesting was like a lot of these conversations about, or actually even just at the very end of the last panel,

Starting point is 01:42:17 like conflating an air drop with like a fork, for example, like that sort of thing is just like wild. And it's, that's to me the education that we really need to figure out. It's like how do you ensure that someone understands the terms that they're using in the context of these, you know, regulations? And so like the proof of state, proof of work concept in the regulatory wording of the infrastructure bill is another one that really stands out.

Starting point is 01:42:40 But overall, yeah, I thought the conversations were awesome. like everyone involved just like is doing fantastic work. And I hope that, you know, we can really get a lot of support to them in this round. I definitely think the stories that people tell to really frame listeners' heads are really, really useful. And the story that I want to put in listeners' heads at the time is that our industry is rooted before crypto, it was rooted in cryptography. And this industry really began before Bitcoin.

Starting point is 01:43:08 It started with the genesis of public-private key cryptography. and if you follow the story of the cypherpunks, the guys that really pioneered cryptography into the public domain, they fought this fight too. This is not the first time crypto has gone to bat with regulators. This is the first time cryptocurrency has, but not cryptography. And so this is not the first time we are doing this. We're just doing it in a little bit of a different shape.

Starting point is 01:43:33 But let it be known when the cryptographers went toe to toe with bad regulation, the cryptographers won. However, there's a lot more at stake here. Like I said in the beginning and in my panel, and I'll say it again now, the crypto industry is inherently about money. And that is what we are calling the listeners and the viewers to do here today. Again, there is a link in the YouTube description. There's a link in the podcast show notes for you to go and check out the crypto advocacy funds for Gitcoin Round 12.

Starting point is 01:44:03 This is becoming more and more important every single day. Because we have the power to mint and create money in the world of cryptocurrency, we should be able to direct that money towards the people that are advocating for positive, informed, and educated regulation that is happening in Washington, D.C. and abroad. Connor, I want to hear your thoughts about your panel and the event at large. Anything you want to add to the six fantastic panelists that we've had on the show today. Yeah, so appreciative that they all joined us because I learned a lot from each of them. But I would say that a thing that's really critical, too, is our support of ads,

Starting point is 01:44:41 to see today is really important so that they continue, can continue doing the great work that they're doing. But something that to Micah, well, actually, Tomica, Kristen, Sarah, all brought up was around the need to also do so many other things, right? Like engaging with certain communities that crypto has not engaged with so far, helping policymakers and regulators understand that this is something, this is an issue that affects their constituents and affects a diverse range of people. It's not just a singular kind of group that participates in crypto. And like Sarah said, seeing AOC tweet about it and appreciate the value that it could have

Starting point is 01:45:19 for financial inclusion, for privacy, for like digital inclusion, that would be an amazing feat. So today we're helping to contribute to those advocacy groups, but also appreciating that there are so many other branches and so many other approaches to this campaign. like advocacy and lobbying is one. Building is another, which Kristen mentioned. But there are also other sorts of grassroots campaigns. We've heard a lot about like a crypto, a crypto NRA equivalent that Ryan Salkis has mentioned. We've heard about different types of organizations, different research and advocacy

Starting point is 01:45:57 awards. And I think that we should keep in mind that when you're thinking about what you can do to contribute to this space, you can contribute in a lot of dynamic ways. And so stay alive to them. So I want to leave the viewers and the listeners with one last set of questions from us three here. So I'll ask it to you guys first. What makes you optimistic that crypto can achieve the regulatory goals that we need to achieve in order to promote our industry? Scott, let's start with you.

Starting point is 01:46:25 I think one of the things that we've learned from previous technological revolutions is that it's very difficult to stop technology. I think the idea that you can just pause the internet or pause, you know, cryptocurrency is, unfortunately for a lot of people that might want to, like not really true. And so the only alternative is really to engage actively with it and figure out what do you want this world to look like and how can this be something that's like, you know, actually beneficial for the, you know, communities that you serve. And ultimately that to me is the place that we're missing right now is that conversation about what does this look like, you know, within the context of your local communities, within the context of your state or within your like country.

Starting point is 01:47:06 that to me is the big piece that, you know, if we get people on the right track, we can sort of like, you know, start to get people to sign off on that vision. And I think that, you know, the real power of cryptocurrency, you mentioned money, that's one piece of it. But I really think it's about the ability to, like, have a kind of control over your destiny when it comes to the platforms being used, the way that you, you know, use the internet at large. And it actually goes back to Web 1, the semantic web vision, that Tim Berners Lee originally put forward was based on this idea that we had like complete access. And it was only in Web 2 that, you know, that started to be co-opted by the Facebook like,

Starting point is 01:47:45 which was like the only, you know, this digital part of the semantic web that we already had in Web 2. So that like, you know, to me, I'm very optimistic, obviously, about the technology, feels like a very natural evolution of what the web was meant to be at the beginning. And it feels like if we kind of help educate people about that, we can really, you know, make it meaningful for the communities, people are serving. I'm optimistic about the fact that there are so many great groups who are just spending their entire day working on this problem and helping to educate pulse makers and regulators. And we heard that over again and again, again, right? But that's the first stage.

Starting point is 01:48:22 And we appreciate that crypto is getting more champions because we all know that once you learn about its potential and you go down that rabbit hole, it's really hard to pull yourself out or to stop appreciating all of its value. So I'm optimistic and I'm also, you know, relatively confident that we will just get more and more champions as their staffers begin to get educated and help to educate those policymakers and regulators who are making some of these critical decisions. I think what makes me optimistic is that just like what you said, Scott, standing in the way of technology generally doesn't work. And I think it's even more and more clear people that bet against crypto tend to get absolutely wrecked by crypto. crypto has a fantastic way of humbling people that oppose it. At the end of the day, however, while that does give me some sort of faith that, you know, the crypto will emerge on the other side of these regulatory hurdles alive and successful, it does matter whether these regulatory hurdles help shape crypto positively or help give it or actually put up walls and give it friction.

Starting point is 01:49:26 I do believe no matter what crypto will manifest in its maximally successful form, no matter what. But it is really, really important. Does that happen in the year 2050 or does that happen in the year 2025? And the 25 years of difference between those two new results can have meaningful impacts upon many, many people's lives and have significant downstream consequences as to, you know, just how good crypto can actually positively impact the world. So while I am optimistic, I still want to enter this regulatory hurdle thinking that everything can go wrong because, you know, things can go wrong and they can cost things, they can cost our industry dearly in the short term and can actually lead to muted positive benefits from the crypto industry over the long term. So the window of

Starting point is 01:50:20 opportunity that we have to direct crypto for good is here right now and we don't really know how big it is. So we should assume that's really, really short. Scott, Connor, thank you so much for helping me organize this event. You guys have really championed this event. And all I did was help show up with the Zoom and in the live stream. So thank you so much for organizing this event. Any last words before we want to wrap this thing up? I'll just say thank you. I mean, this is being amazing. I think that if you want to get involved, I have to say it, you know, go to get coin grants, getcoin.com.com slash grants and give a few dollars to the organizations that you care about. Ultimately, this fight is, you know, dependent on you. Yeah, plus one to all that.

Starting point is 01:51:08 And thank you, David. And thank you to bankless, actually, as well, because I feel like you guys spend a lot of time highlighting these issues and interviewing regulators and lawyers and others that the crypto community has not necessarily always traditionally been interested in. So more of that. Cheers, guys. Thank you, everyone for tuning in. Thank you for Gitcoin and for the Dow research initiative for helping organize this event. And of course, thank you for our fantastic six fan, uh, fan, uh, not sponsors, panelists that came and showed up on on today's panel. Again, there is a link in the YouTube description. There is a link in the podcast show notes.

Starting point is 01:51:46 If you just donate one dollar, that dollar can be matched by up to 10, 50, sometimes a hundred dollars of matching funds from the, uh, get coin matching pool. This is how quadratic funding works. Your single donation is not only a donation. of money, but also a vote of where you think other people's money should go. So your beliefs have outsized impacts as to the resulting funds that get directed towards all these advocacy events. So as you are wrapping up this podcast, the next thing that should be happening is you going on to getcoin.co.co. Go towards the crypto matching fund page. Open up your metamask. Open up your ledger. Close your checkbooks because this is a bankless

Starting point is 01:52:26 funding initiative and get these crypto advocacy events funded. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this crypto advocacy panel. Cheers. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your bankless experience.

Starting point is 01:52:57 You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content. and even the bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly roll-ups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the bankless nation.

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