Bankless - How Crypto Fixes U.S. Debt | Fmr Speaker Paul Ryan

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

It’s been a while since former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was in the public spotlight, but in this episode, we discover his surprising stance: he’s bullish on crypto! In fact, he believes that crypto could be crucial in staving off a U.S. debt crisis. We dive deep into his core argument and explore a range of related topics, such as:  - America’s debt crisis - The potential loss of the U.S. reserve currency status - How crypto could help the U.S. stay ahead of China - Why the left is anti-crypto - Crypto under a Trump vs. Kamala’s administration  This episode highlights how crypto is becoming an essential issue in Washington. Tune in for a comprehensive look at crypto’s growing influence on U.S. politics and beyond. ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    🌐 OBOL | STAKE ON DVs, SCALE ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/obol  🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT  https://bankless.cc/toku  ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/55   ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 5:11 Why Politics Are Messier 7:36 Being Speaker of the House 11:27 Paul’s WSJ Stablecoin Op-Ed 16:47 Paul’s Intro to Crypto 18:54 U.S. Debt Crisis 26:05 Losing Reserve Currency 28:29 CBDCs vs. Stablecoins  38:06 KYC Stablecoins & Legislation  43:27 Anti-Crypto Army 46:16 Is the Left Anti-Crypto?  51:03 Right vs. Left Crypto Adoption  55:50 Kamala vs. Trump 58:49 Advice to Bankless Listeners 1:01:18 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Paul Ryan  https://x.com/speakerryan   WSJ Article  https://www.wsj.com/articles/stablecoins-could-stave-off-a-us-debt-crisis-china-digital-currency-c491d717   ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures  ⁠  

Welcome to bankless, where today we explore how crypto can stave off a U.S. debt crisis. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Now, it's been a while since Paul Ryan has been in the public spotlight, let's say, but it turns out that this former Speaker of the House is bullish on crypto. In fact, he says in today's episode, crypto is necessary to stave off a U.S. debt crisis. We get into the core of that argument, and we also talk. about a few other things like America's debt crisis and why it matters, the loss of the U.S. reserve currency status and what that means, how crypto can help the U.S. win against China, why the left has been so anti-crypto and how we can make crypto bipartisan, and crypto in a Trump

White House versus a Kamala Harris White House. I think this episode is emblematic of how crypto is becoming such a big deal for almost anyone in Capitol Hill, anyone related to governance. Paul Ryan, I did not know that he was a crypto person. No one knew that he was a crypto person until he wrote this op-ed about the potential of alignment between the United States and stable coins back in June of this year. And I think this is slowly emblematic of how every single politician is going to ultimately have to have an opinion about crypto. And here today on the episode, you're going to hear about Paul Ryan's opinion about stable coins and what we can do with them in the United States.

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Easily on board to the extension using the Uniswop mobile wallet to begin managing your assets across platforms and take advantage of smooth, seamless synergies with the Uniswap web app. So go and download the Uniswap extension today by clicking the link in the show notes. Just another way Uniswap is helping you swap. smarter the obel collective is up and running and is maybe one of the most important collectives that you've never heard of oval is bringing distributed validators or dv's to the ethereum staking stack distributed validators allow multiple parties of people running multiple nodes to create a single virtual ethereum validator together this makes

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This is your opportunity to secure inclusion, one of the most. important projects working to scale Ethereum's foundation for future growth. Visit obel.org to get started. That's obel.org slash bankless. Bankless nation, very excited to introduce you to Paul Ryan. He served in Congress as the 54th Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019. So he got to see two presidents in office, first Obama and then Donald Trump. And more recently, and I think of interest to bankless listener today, he wrote this fantastic op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, talking about stable coins, talking about crypto, how these technologies could help stave off you as debt problems.

So we're obviously going to talk about that. We're also going to get his takes on crypto legislation. I think he knows a thing or two about how the legislative process works and the 2024 election. Paul, welcome to bankless. Hey, Ryan, David, thanks for having me. Great to be with you guys. Somehow, since you left, politics has just gotten even messier and more divisive. I don't even know how that's possible.

What's your take on why? at the highest level here? The internet. Easy, easy, easy answer. Desertization has changed the way we get information. It has brought people down rabbit holes where they are basically hanging out in their information biased, you know,

cul-de-sac where the algorithm is pumping back to you, your bias, your beliefs, and it's playing people off of each other. So polarization is an easier sell in the digital marketplace, you know, marketplace. And that's, and you basically take more relativism, which is alive and well in society, you add an accelerant, like, digitization to it, and therein lies, you know, polarized politics. I think that explains a lot of it,

not all of it, but a lot of it. Do you think, like, what's the solution to this? You think it works itself out over time? Do you believe in kind of free market solution? I think, you know, we're going, you know, we're in a new era where most of us, you know, I mean, I grew up without the internet. Yet I'm 54 years old. So we're just, it's a new era of human development. We'll find our sweet spot. We'll stabilize. But right now we're on the beginning. of this. And so I think the world and the country will become polarized, fatigued.

Hopefully they'll think that problems going unsolved are no longer, you know, good and that they'll demand, you know, political leaders that get stuff done, that solve problems. And I think people get sick of hating each other and they'll find new ways. And I think reviving civil society, the space between ourselves and our government where we actually live our lives

in reality can be revised. And I think that can help as an antidote against sort of this digital polarization that we have. I think it will get better. I think, you know, it will because it has to. And I think, I think, again, stuff not getting done. The debt is a big issue of mine, spent my whole career on it. That issue is going to have to get solved. Hopefully we do it ahead of schedule and ahead of an ugliness, but it could get ugly as well. That's one of the reasons why I talk about stable coins. Yeah, maybe some of this ugliness, like, we'll be with us for this election cycle. But hopefully it does get better. And you mentioned your age, which might actually be a relevant factor here, because you mentioned yourself being sort of, you're like older, but actually it's super young with respect, like, you know, relative to U.S. politicians.

And maybe that factors into your sentiment on crypto and why you're bullish. But before we get there, too, I just want to ask you about sort of being inside the belly of the beast. Like, what's it like to be Speaker of the House? Is that, I mean, it seems like a really hard job. And I think that comes into play as we're trying to understand. understand in the crypto community how legislation gets done actually. And that seems like one of the toughest jobs that exists in government. It is. It's, I mean, after the president's, I think it's the hardest job. The president's harder because just the weight of responsibility solely russing

your shoulders for your branch of government. The speaker is the head of the legislative branch of government. Another separate co-eagle branch of the government. What's the job like? You basically, I came into the job as a policy person, very different. There's two. tracks in Congress, a policy track or a leadership track. People who want to be in elected leadership run for, you know, conference chair, deputy whip, whip, majority leader speaker. That wasn't my bit. I was chair of the Budget Committee. Then I was chair of the Ways and Means Committee. Economics is my background. When we had a speaker turmoil, I was drafted into the job because I was the consensus candidate. And so I took the job, a job I wasn't looking for. So I got this

job very, very differently than most people get the job. As a result, I looked at the job a little differently, which was I wanted to decentralize power in Congress. I like empowering committees and committee chairs who are experts in their committee jurisdiction to write the policy in those areas. That's fairly non-typical for leadership, who typically, not necessarily today with Mike Johnson, but typically want to consolidate power. Long story short, the job of the Speaker of the House is to identify political objectives. What are your objectives in law writing? What are your objectives, you know, politically winning elections? And then you move the entire institution to reach those objectives. What really the Speaker's job is do is there's laws you've got to pass because

of deadlines. There's laws you want to pass because of your policy priorities. You had to marshal the institution to work toward those ends. So with Web 3, with crypto, with stable coins, market structures, all these bills, I would say, and I don't want to get too out of your questions, it's going to happen because it has to happen because Web 3 is here. The question for Americans is, are we going to do it here or is it going to just be done overseas? And given that we're the world's, you know, reserve currency kind of makes sense we got to have a law governing all of this stuff. It just drives me nuts that you've got U.S. dollar denominated stable coin laws in place. not in this country, the country that issues the U.S. dollars. So there's an example of a speaker needs to

move toward that end, get this stuff done. There's an effort of foot. I think it will eventually get done. But that's an example just for your audience of what you do is speaker. You have an objective. You've got to move the entire institution toward it. And it's very, very, very different than a parliamentary system, which are like Europe, you know, are parliamentary systems. They're already done with their law. Those are faster. In a parliamentary system, you pass one bill and it's done. You know, the prime minister is the head of the party, just like the speaker is in the House, and it's one and done, not so in our country. You pass the House, then you pass the Senate, then you reconcile those differences. Then hopefully the president will be willing to sign it. So three stops along that

legislative path, much different, much slower. I would argue it's better because we don't do big things unless we have a lot of consensus in this country. And as a result, we have stayed more tethered to our Constitution and its founding principles than say other parliamentary democracies. So it's a little frustrating. It's kind of agonizingly slow, but it's really good compared to the other systems, in my opinion. Paul, not terribly long ago, last June, you wrote this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, Crypto could save off a U.S. debt crisis. And it was a focus on stable coins. And it touched on a lot of different talking points about stable coins that us in the industry have been like beating the drum for a good number of years now, mainly just the expansion of dollar

dominance, competitiveness with China. And inside of the crypto industry, whenever somebody outside of the crypto industry, especially as somebody with influence starts saying like our words, starts chanting our chant. And we always kind of like perk up and saying, oh, like they've, they've been paying attention. These are nuanced points that you are making about stable coins. I'm wondering just about like the motivation behind writing the op-ed and how long you have been like tapped into the world of stable coins and the crypto industry. So I spent most of my life in, of my adult life in Congress. I got elected to most 28. I was always before that I was a staff, economic policy analyst, like an economist.

I'm not a PhD economist, but I spent my early days in economics working at think tanks and a guy named Jack Kemp, who was one of the original supply. side economists. So I believe in supply side free market economics. I come from the Austrian sort of Chicago School of Thought, Hayek, Mises, Milton Friedman, the rest. And so that economic school of thought is very pro-crypto from a philosophical ideological standpoint. So that's one point. Second point is in my time in Congress, I was chair of the Budget Committee. I wrote a bunch of budgets back in those days when I'd shared the Budget Committee to balance the budget, pay off the debt, to get us off of the path of a debt crisis where we are now. And when I was waste means chair, I advanced those goals.

The big public policy goal I had I did not reach, which was get a debt consolidation plan underway because I'm very worried about a debt crisis. It's what I spent most of my time on. And so I do spend my time now that I'm in academia, the think tanks, and the private markets, looking at our bond markets, looking at our debt markets, looking at the dollar as reserve currency. It is an enormous privilege that we, the dollar, had the reserve currency status. It gives huge advantages to Americans. And so when I look at this situation, I'm very concerned that, A, we can lose dollar dominance because of a lot of things. China, Embridge, digitization,

we're slow on the reforms and because of our debt. And so when I take a look at, at what a debt crisis could look like. You don't have to go far to talk to bond traders and bond market vigilantes. We used to exist as vigilantes who probably will come back. And the long story about it, and that's why I wanted to write this op, it is we need to find more demand for our bills, bonds, or notes for our treasuries because other sovereigns are reducing their appetite for our treasuries. That is reducing the dollars reaching to the war. world. And not only is digitization good for getting the dollar more embedded into the global economy as it digitizes, that's first point. Second point is stable coins produce a natural new

source of demand for our debt that needs to replace decreasing demand by other sovereigns. I just brought the chart up this morning. If stable coins were a country, you take out the Lachembourg and the Cayman's out of here, it'd be the 13th largest purchaser of our debt. if it were a sovereign. And that's without having a law. So my point in writing this op-ed was stable coins are a perfect supplement for demand of U.S. treasuries. Imagine if we go from $139 billion today to trillions, if we actually have a law governing stable coins, that would help defer a failed treasury auction. When people look at a deck like me that think about it, I could see a situation when when the Fed has done cutting interest

rates, let's just say after 2026 or whatever that's going to happen, it's not inconceivable that we could have some bond auction failures. That's when the Federal Reserve would then step in, fulfill that auction, and then we're monetizing debt, not for monetary policy mechanisms, but we're monetizing debt simply for the sake of monetizing debt. That is when you could have the bond market vigilantes, reconstit themselves, have run of the dollar, and you could have a debt crisis it's on your hands. And so not wanting to see that happen because innocent citizens will get hurt under a debt crisis. That's very bad for the dollar and for our country. Creating new sources of demand for our debt would be a good thing to do. Stablecoins does that. In addition, I think having

stable coins, having a law that govern stable coins so that they're more deployed around the world, further deeply embeds the dollar in the global architecture as it's digitizing. There's a whole free versus tyranny argument here, we probably should get into that, us versus China and the rest, that I think is a big issue that a lot of policymakers just aren't giving enough thought to.

That's why we wanted to write sort of an op-ed, sort of poking policymakers to get moving on this issue. Do you remember what your first touch point was with like the topics of stable coins? Did it first come onto your radar as like legislation?

Maybe your kids are playing in crypto. Like, how did you first discover them? It was launched with Mark Andreessen. in 2019 so mark's an old friend of mine he's from wisconsin andrescent horowitz mark andresen you know i spent most of my time in fiscal policy uh i'm a free market supply side you know limited government advocate so mark and i went to lunch i want to say maybe a month after i left the speakership probably february 2019 i'm just guessing and he said look you know fiscal policy you're a free market guy but you probably don't know much about crypto

So while I've read about it, it's interesting. I read Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper. I thought that was pretty interesting. He said, you need to learn more about crypto because crypto doesn't know government and the people who are interested in crypto like me need people like you who are sympathetic to our school of thought and didn't know a lot about government. So I want you to read up on crypto. So he sent me a bunch of stuff to read and got me really intrigued and interested in crypto actually. So it was really from a conversation with Mark that got me into this. So I just read everything I could as a result. I spend some time in the space. I'm on the Policy Council paradigm. You know, Vizhul Garg over electric capital is a very dear friend. So in the Intreason of Horowitz, guys I know pretty well. So I spend a little bit of time in this area, Katie Hawn, I've known for many years.

And just I see it as a confluence of the future of money. The future, I think Web 3 is a wonderful thing for society. And I think it's one of the best things you do to preserve liberty and freedom in the 21st century when we're facing down tyranny, the likes of which China is presented to the world. So it sort of ticks every box in my mind, free markets, free people, self-determination, privacy, liberty, and economic development and disruption. That is a good thing that provides more prosperity. So that's why I spend a little bit of my time in this space because I think it's just really, really interesting. So, Paul, I think that was a great, you know, overview of the argument that

you made in the obed. And I want to take these things maybe one by one and dig into them at another level. So the first is this idea of an impending debt crisis that may come, right? And the idea being that a stable coin is more induced demand for treasuries, more induced demand for U.S. bonds, more induced demand for the dollar. And that is good for the U.S. position as the global reserve currency status. Let's dig into that argument a little bit more. The first is debt crisis. I mean, It's since you left Speaker of the House, U.S. debt has only, you know, like, piled on more. We haven't hit this crisis point. Is this, and we've been hearing about debt crisis for a very long time. Is this not kind of a chicken little type of, you know, debt is happening? Like, why are we in more crisis?

And why do you think like 2026 could be a year? Like, why can't we just ignore this? We've been sweeping up the rug. We've been doing it for 10 years at least. It's a really good question. And I don't, I hate sounding like Chicken Little. because I've been talking about this stuff for more than 10 years for, you know, 25 years. I think it's because there is going to be an end point in which the markets conclude the Americans don't have the political stuff that it takes to get their debt under control, and therefore they're just going to monetize their debt. If that moment ever comes, then our, we won't deserve to be the reserve currency. We won't be the reserve currency. and then that means our government will debase our currency.

What does that mean? That means we will wipe out the savings of people who live on our dollars. It means that the social safety net that we depend upon, I call it a social contract. The social contract is health and retirement security for all Americans and a safety net for the poor, in general speaking. And that's something that we agonized and debated over the 20th century. We've come to consensus in the 21st century that we want

these things. Nobody running for president is saying, I'm going to get rid of these things. Nobody is. No political party is saying we're going to shred the social contract. They're all saying we're going to preserve it. Now, we as Republicans have different ways of doing it than maybe Democrats, but we operate under this consensus. We want our social contract. Problem is that social contract was written in the 20th century in a way that proves unsustainable in the 21st century, and we're not the only country in the same boat. All the other first world countries have the same problem, which are demographically based pay-as-you-go programs

where current workers pay their taxes to finance the benefits of current retirees, and when these programs grow and cost far faster than your economy or revenues grow, you know, like 6 to 8% a year, and you're doubling the amount of consumers, retirees on these programs with the retirement of the baby boomers and our birth rates are lower, therein lies a compounding problem. And so America is leading on this problem,

but all the other sovereigns in the first world had the same problem. Japan, Europe, Australia, so on and so forth. So they all have aging baby boomers. They're all going to the debt markets, trying to finance the deficits to make good on this social contract. And because all of that is now starting to happen, and our boomers are retired for the most part, or retiring, this kind of brings it to a height, to a pivot point, to a, to a, to a day

and that is why I think this is different than, say, the last 10 years when we were pre-peak retirement. At the same time, we have all these debt projections that show our debt is going up like a hockey stick and never coming down because of what I just said. And so if there comes a moment where the markets conclude, we just aren't going to get our hands. We just aren't going to get our hands around this stuff, we're just going to monetize. That is when we debase. That is when we truly shake the confidence in the dollar as the world reserve currency. Okay, juxtapose, what I just said with the fact that China is on the rise and they're rapidly deploying their digital RMB, they don't like the Swiss system. They don't like the sanctions that come with it.

So they're teaming up. I mean, Enbridge is what, Hong Kong, China, Saudi Arabia, UAE and I think Thailand, and maybe, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but there are already experiments out there playing with digital money, digital payment rails, outside of the dollar-denominated system. And what danger that presents to us is two-fold. Number one, it means there are, there's digital architecture being designed to circumvent the dollar system, which removes our status as the rule of reserve currency or challenges it, I don't think anybody else can really replace it, frankly, but you see my point.

The second problem this presents the world is freedom and liberty versus tyranny in privacy. So if the Chinese are able to hook their client states in the one belt world up or other other countries up to a digital R&B, it's as if they're going around the world offering tyranny in a box to other countries and other dictators. Here's your digital currency with full surveillance power so you can surveil how your population is spending their money. You can control how they spend their money. And oh, by the way, here's your smart city system with a nice surveillance system and all these other things. It is up to us as the largest free country in the world, democracy, republics specifically, to offer the world something better, and to offer the world a digital

currency that is complete with our values, freedom, privacy, liberty, self-determination. So I think at an epistemological level, meaning philosophical level, and from just a plumbing of the global financial system and the ability for us to be able to borrow money at an affordable rate to finance our social safety net and our social contract, this is really, really important, and all of it is under duress because we're not showing the world that we're going to get our house in order, that we're going to get our fiscal house in order, that we're going to pay our bills, that we're going to pay all our bills bonds and notes back without monetizing our debt. I still think it's not too late to do that. We can do that. I regret nobody running for president

It's proposing that we do that. But I still do believe at the end of the day that we can get it together, that we will solve this problem, probably a fiscal commission or something like that, and to buy us more time to get our politics right to stop a debt crisis, it wouldn't it be nice as we digitize to have some more demand on our bonds to buy us a little more time? And that is why I think, among many, many reasons why stable coins is a good idea. Let's sharpen one other point of your argument here, which is like the point that having the position as the global reserve currency is actually like good for America. Because there are also those that would argue that it's actually not. You know, tripping dilemma stuff. We've actually our chief export is the dollar. And so this is also exported manufacture like to other markets.

And, you know, is attributed to that kind of the rise of populism. We've been on this this morphine drip for too long. And the healthiest thing for America at this point would actually be to lose the global reserve currency status. Granted, we don't want another nation to take over, particularly a nation that exports financial surveillance and controls, you know, something like an authoritarian China. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad for the U.S. to lose its position as the global currency reserve of the world and for the dollar to fall so much. So who cares? We can just monetize all of it. That's the end destination.

Right. I mean, so I'm familiar with the argument, which that just means we make. all over sells much poor. That means anybody living on fixed incomes just gets their living standards wiped out by that amount that which you debase, you reduce your purchasing power. So I agree we're not acting like a country that should be a reserve currency because we are running perpetual deficits with no end in sight. That doesn't mean we should just spite off, you know, bite off our nose to spite our face. That doesn't mean we should just basically debase our currency, make us live under, you know, more structure and more discipline.

I would rather get to that discipline voluntarily than debasing our currency. And, by the way, propping up some other currency that does not share our freedom values, our values of privacy, of liberty, of freedom, and subdetermination. So I think that idea, and I've heard that from libertarians tell me this. Like, let's just forget who cares. It's been, like you say, a morphine drip. We've been irresponsible, yes, but we still can get responsible. and if we all of a sudden say, let's just trade in the reserve currency for something better,

what is better than this? What is better than being able to be, you know, in charge of our own destiny? What is better than being able to, you know, basically finance our economy, all the things we want to buy at lower prices? That's a good thing. And by the way, don't forget the fact that at the end of the day, there are very critical principles involved here, tyranny versus freedom on top of them. And that point I want to touch on right now. You mentioned just the way that China has been making investments into the emerging markets with the digital RMB. There is a growing sphere of influence, which is the Chinese digital RMB, where a lot of emerging markets are using it as dominant payment rails. And it's becoming a very large payment network over in the east, very far away from our sphere of control. And it's really just like throwing in the face the power of the petro dollar. Meanwhile, on the United States front of things, conversations or investments around our digital CBDC have gone nowhere to the point where it's like kind of a joke about like any conversations or progress around the digital CBDC for United States. Yet nonetheless, basically every single stable coin, the stable coin market share of U.S. dollar stable coins is like 95 plus percent.

So when it comes to the world of like emerging markets and foreign investments and foreign relations, how would you say like stable coins, a role for our interests, our national security interests abroad. Yeah, so all these other countries are flirting with CBDCs. You know, everybody else is looking at doing their own central bank digital currency. What's great about us being in the catbird seat, meaning having the reserve currency means stable coins can be our answer to a CBDC and we don't have to go down the path of debating a CBDC. If I were king for life, I would have a CBDC that is a two-tiered.

system so that the Fed never is in the business of giving retail dollars. So that should, let's just say some, you know, progressive Elizabeth Warren becomes Treasury Secretary or Fed share. And then, and then, you know, our ESG scores aren't good enough. You would never want to go down the path of the government having the ability to micromanage our money. But that could happen. So we, because we're the dollar because CBDCs can be, I mean, because, excuse me, stable coins can be, they can be our substitute for a CBDC and no other country could do that like we can. So the entire good and legitimate debate about whether or not you have a central bank digital currency, you don't have to go down this pathway.

Because by the way, no one's king for life. You're king for a while. And that means today's two-tier system could be collapsed into a one-tier system theoretically. and you could lose your sovereignty. You could lose your privacy. You could lose your freedom. And this is a really good debate to have. We don't have to have it.

Because stable coins can be our answer toward a central bank digital currency because we're the rules of reserve currency. And by the way, there are a lot of CBDC experiments out there. Many countries are going to do that. But if we actually, I think we have a really good shot, by the way, of getting a stable coin law this session. probably not market structures, but stable coins this session, we can get into that.

I think we have a really good chance of that. I think that's going to help us a lot. And that to me is a better answer than having to go down this debate of whether or not to have a CBDC to compete with other countries because we don't have to. So we can have our cake and eat it too. We can have the dollar more deeply embedded in the digital system, helping further guarantee our status as world reserve currency in a digital system. and we don't have to grapple with these very legitimate, you know, libertarian privacy, liberty concerns that you inevitably have to grapple with if you're going to digitize your currency. Because Hayek, he had this idea in the 1950s, you know, private dollars. That's basically what this is. So I think we can have our cake you needed to digital dollars without any chance of the federal government meddling with our money like. you could have with a CBDC.

Is the Paul Ryan, so is your position basically when you say two tier versus one tier, like a one tier central bank digital currency would be something like what China is rolling out or what other Western countries are maybe considering? And your concern there is obviously in China, it's just like control, state control, authoritarian type tendencies. Then your concern for the U.S. adopting a one-tier system would be similar, basically. Yes. This would exert undue control over, you know, the podcast.

populace. And so there's been legislation, by the way, like, you know, you know this. I'm sure, you know, anti-C-cd-type legislation coming, I believe, on the Republican side. And so I don't know if you would support that. But make it very clear, what's the difference between CBDC and a stable coin in your world? Because I think to the person on the street, both are digital dollars. They had just, like, no idea what the distinction is. So right now we have a two-tier system. That's the way our money works right now. And that system works well. But this is not a very good. digital world we're in. You can see in a digital world if the issuer of that digital currency is your central government, there could be political temptations down the road to meddle with the way

money is being used or see how money is being used. That's exactly what China wants to do and is doing. And so if you are going to do a central bay digital currency and you want to guard yourself from that, you have a two-tier system where private banks are actually the retail providers of currencies, not your federal government, which is wholesale. The problem with that idea, and I'm sympathetic to it, the problem with that idea is you could get rid of it. And you could have your central government, your Federal Reserve, being the retail issuer of digital dollars. And therefore, it's not a stone's throw to go into meddling with the way we use our money.

like the Chinese want to do. So my point is, stable coins are different. Stable coins are issued by private enterprises on their own blockchains. And with a law, you would have, you know, you would have a stable coin law that governs how the stable coin system operates. What are the reserves, what are the cash and cash equivalent reserves that you must have in order to make sure that a dollar of a stable coin is redeemable for a dollar of cash. It's pretty much that simple. The point being, though, these are private issuers, PayPal, you name it, USDC, Coinbase, all these different groups would issue regulated stable coins, but they're private, and the government cannot meddle with that. So it gives you a greater wall of separation between your government and your money so that you

had that intermediating institution, that intermediary that is a private institution to further guarantee your civil liberties are always protected. That's the point. But here's the great thing for us. No other country really can do this, but for us, because we're the dollar, because we're the reserved currency. So we truly can have it both ways. And that is why I think whether you're, whether you're a progressive or a conservative, classical liberal conservative like myself, stable coins is an easiest answer for everybody because you do not have to make those awful choices like the other countries have to do if they want to have digital currencies. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week.

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And get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. a certain loss of control that stable coins, like, invoke into the world of our banking world. Mainly, like, with PayPal, previously to PayPal issuing a stable coin, if I wanted to send you money on PayPal, both of us would have to be KYC users of PayPal in order for me to send you payments. But with USDC, and even PayPal's USD, I can send you any of these stable coins, and you have no KYC information with these banks. And so there's actually a loss of influence, a loss of control over this banking system under the stable coin paradigm. How big of a problem do you think that is?

And do you think that the powers that be will want to see that whole covered? Like, do you think that there will be pressure to have a completely KYC stable coin paradigm? Or do you think they will let us have these cash-like properties? I don't know the answer to that question at the end of the thing. My question, it's a regulatory legislative question, which I'm not in the middle of it right now. I do believe that there are certain thresholds under which you should, you would not have that, that concern, that problem like you have right now. I think the Federal Reserve, this is where the whole state's rights kind of comes into this issue. The Federal Reserve is going to worry about

its conduct of monetary policy and its impact on money supply. That's understandable. I think the bill that McKinney negotiated works pretty well. Patrick McKinney is this close to getting a stable coin bill through. I think that's going to be a lot easier than market structures, which is a whole different issue. And to answer your question specifically, I think at the end of the day, there will be a compromise where you will have a federally regulated stable coin legislation with federally regulated stable coins. And I would argue you should give states all a regulatory entry into this market to in order to keep disruption alive, to not lock up incumbency, and to sort of have a regulatory sandbox out there. This probably matters a little bit

more for market structures, but I think the same goes for stable coins so that there is a marketplace for simplicity and making sure that you have many different product offerings in the stable coins. And what matters with stable coins at the end of the day from a regulator standpoint is, do you never break the buck is a dollar a dollar always a dollar and you can protect that with the right kinds of rules and then with respect to all the that this kyc issues there will be some kind of a compromise that looks like the present day in my opinion it looks like that but i'm not as well qualified or deeply into those those that area as i used to be why don't we have stable coin legislation today you said that kenry's bill is is close but like what are we missing i mean it seems like

the case you made is just like not necessary it seems bipartisan that's why i wrote the but I was a little frustrated with this because it's such a no-brainer. There really shouldn't be anybody opposed to this from the left or the right, in my opinion. It's just the typical national nations of legislation. I don't want to get into what Schumer's trying to get and what people are trying to get, other than I think this is, it's just like any good idea that it has bipartisan appeal. That means you want to add more to it to get it through. There aren't many vehicles leaving Congress these days that you can hinge your piece of legislation onto to get

threw into law. And my guess is it's becoming a victim of that. So, you know, I don't know if you're into this, but, you know, Chuck is trying to get his pot banking bill attached to something in this area. So my guess is this is becoming trade bait. That's a, it's a phrase we use in the legislature, which is everybody kind of agrees on stable coins. It's not as controversial as, I mean, look, I think Patrick's market structure bill got like 71 Democrats. Nancy Pelosi voted for it. So, so I think there's, I think it's going to get done. maybe not as early as I'd like. Stable coins should have a pass on its own,

but the problem with that that is is because it's popular, because it has the votes, other people are going to try and add their thing to it as well because there aren't many trains leaving the legislative station this year. Having said all of that, because I believe there's a sense of urgency, and we keep telling people in Congress there is a sense of urgency here, I think they're going to get that done this year.

It may be a lame duck. It may be on the CR. some of the must pass bill, but I do believe it's going to happen soon because I think policymakers are beginning to wake up to the fact that there is a sense of urgency in our hands. And I think it's just, it's a little ironic that other countries already have stable coin laws in place on the books issuing U.S. dollar standard in stable coins and we don't even have a stable coin law. Right.

So I think that that is, I think that issue is ripe. I think it's probably going to pass in some form this year. And the reason it hasn't happened yet is because just the sluggishness of our system. Again, unlike a parliamentary system, it's not pass it once and it's done. You got to pass it twice and then a president's got to sign it. So it just takes a long time to get stuff like this done. So you think something like this can be bipartisan? I think we've had more recent hopes of that, seeing how the fit bill went,

even though the White House did decide to veto. it. I will say, though, Paul, like for the last two years, at least from our vantage point in crypto, there's been an influential contingent, particularly in sort of the executive branch, and maybe call it the administrative state that has been anti-crypto. And obviously some legislators, too. I mean, Elizabeth Warren quite famously, but then you have the regulators like Gary Gensler and to like everything that that class operation choke point, this kind of choking off of the banking system from a number of, you know, administration officials. in charge of that.

Like, how do we get rid of that? Because it seems like that could throw a monkey wrench in the whole thing. You mentioned there's three passes for legislation to actually get passed. One of those is actually the White House and the executive branch. If the anti-crypto army is so influential, like, won't that just halt things? I wouldn't know if it totally will delay things. Look, this is probably the most anti-crypto administration you could think of with Gensler and the rest.

No two ways about it. I don't know where Kamala Harris is. on this. She's from California that speaks to her favor. California Democrats are a little since they're a little closer to it, they're a little more sympathetic to it. I have no idea where she is. I'm not, I'm not going to get into the political thing here other than to say it can't get any worse than it does right now with Gary Gensler and anti-crypto stuff. So elections have consequences. I know Senate, I mean, I think Chuck was going to try and get me, Debbie did mark up the CETC side of this bill, not Senate banking. She was supposed to do a mark. She was supposed to do a

up in June, I think, but she didn't do it. The point being is you have Senate Democrats trying to sound a little more pro-cryptial than the administration is. That's a good step of the right direction. That must be because of political pressure. So that's good. So what that tells me is, you know, obviously I'm not trying to be dismissed a Republican here, but we're more for liberty government and free markets. We passed our bill out of the House already with our majority. the Senate Democrats are saying things we want to hear in the crypto world, but they're not doing it. But at least they're saying it. And that's a whole lot better than you can say about the administration. So the good news is you're going to have different administration. The bad news is if it's, well, we already know Trump's pro-crypto.

We don't know where Harris is. It can't be worse than it is right now. And California Democrats historically have been better on this issue than other Democrats. So that's all I got for you there other than to say, I believe this is going to get done. Why? Because it's got to get done. Because it's going to be developed. The question is, is it overseas or is it in our country? Is Web 3, which is a beautiful idea, beautiful concept? It is this next generation internet. Is that here where the internet was created or is it overseas? I think cool heads will prevail. It will be here. The question is, how ugly and how long does it take? Okay. So I can't, like everything I learned about politics I learned via route of crypto, right? So it's just like, you know, David and I, I think a lot of people in the crypto space aren't political animals. So we're sort of observing this. We're trying to connect some dots. And here's one dot I can't seem to connect. As you mentioned, you know, Democrats like Chuck Schumer have been increasingly like pro crypto. In fact, he attended a, you know, industry call just last week, you know, like kind of reaching out to the crypto community and that was all great. Trump has come down on the pro crypto side as. well and the GOP political platform seems very much pro-crypto and supports many of the rights that we talk about on bankless. Kamala Harris, though, has not said anything on the subject. And I know it's like new and she's just kind of recently become a VP, but the longer it goes, the more it seems to those that are watching like David and myself, that it seems like de facto, if she doesn't say anything, it'll be a continuation of the previous administration, which has been purely anti-crypto. And the thing I can't understand is she has to get election, you know, like elected, doesn't she? And like there are votes on the table reports 18% plus of Democrats own cryptocurrencies are like crypto favorable.

You know, in other words, there's no votes on the table for being anti-crypto, but there are votes that you could lose for being anti-crypto. And there's certainly votes you could gain for being pro-crypto. And so isn't the logical position for somebody who's running for president to be pro-crypto? I don't understand why she's not commenting on this or weighing in. That's very practical argument, but it could collide with philosophical differences. So look, you're asking a conservative to tell you, you know, how bad progressivism is. Thank you. I'm just kidding.

My point is a progressive wants more control and triptop by its own definition. The entire Web 3DFI intellectual architecture is decentralization. privacy, liberty, and no centralized control. So that isn't keeping with a conservative philosophy, a classical liberal conservative philosophy. It is anathema to a progressive philosophy. That's not coincidental that Elizabeth Warren, probably the leading progressive voice in Congress, is anti-tripto for that very reason. So that's why there is a bit of a tug-of-war mentally on the left side of the aisle. And that is probably why what you said is exactly true. I don't want to get too deep in a politics other than the fact that I think we, my party, will win the Senate just because the way the map is.

So I believe where we now have a problem, which is nothing getting done in the Senate, I think we have a high likelihood of taking the majority of the Senate and therefore having a far more pro-crypto Senate than we have right now. If we keep the House, you have what we have right now. Crenchill, I think it's French Hill is going to replace Patrick McKenra. I could be wrong about that. but he's very pro. He, Tom, we have a lot of guys who are pro-crypto in the House. So I see Congress getting more pro-crypto. Then the question is, what does the administration look like?

Again, if you have the Senate, there's no more Gary Gensler's going to the SEC. There's no more Alina Kahn's going to the FTC. You have a handbrake because the Senate approves the cabinet. The Senate approves, you know, presidential appointees and along with the House approves legislation. So I see if my projection is correct that we do win the Senate, which I think it is, I see everything moving the direction and more pro-crypto. I think it's probably one of the reasons why Chuck is sounding pro-crypto because he wants to head that off.

He doesn't want what you just said to translate into a lot of support for Republicans. Sherry Brown, last I checked, is not very good on crypto. He's the head of the banking committee. You replace him with Tim Scott, very pro-cropo. you just have like a Patrick Beck-Henry over in the Senate in charge of the banking committee or a Pat Toomey who used to be out of the banking committee of the Senate. That's what happens here. So my point is it's going to get better because I think our election is going to be better on the congressional side.

I have no idea who's going to win the presidency. I don't think anybody has any idea. And again, to your point, where is Kamala on this? I have no clue. It can't be worse than it is right now. And if she has no opinion, then you have to just assume she's good with the current status quo. that's why for me get congress and you'll solve a problem there i don't know why that just what else yeah i like it there's like there's fireworks going on rivers going off on riverside right now

i didn't put that up on my on my ipad well fantastic it was it was very appropriate though it was a great time honestly uh paul like in the over the last like year or so there has been a big talking point out of like the bankless podcast and many others about how cool it is that crypto is so bipartisan. Both people down both aisles were trying to push crypto legislation forward over the last like, you know, 18 months a year. That has changed dramatically in the last two to three months or so, where many people are just saying like it's, I don't think anyone really would debate that the Republicans, the Donald Trump party is absolutely the pro-crypto party if you are a crypto single, issue voter. But also at the same time, there are people who are saying that I would agree with,

crypto, the technology is bipartisan. The internet is not a partisan technology. Crypto, therefore, is very, very similar. Yet, nonetheless, like, even you just now said some bits that would blew to the fact that, like, fundamentally crypto aligns with a more right-leaning ethos. I'm wondering just how do you think about this debate, where technology is inherently neutral, but nonetheless, like the right have truly adopted and promoted crypto far quicker and with, you know, a more wholeheartedness than the left has. But it's also technology. Like, how do you navigate this? Architecture matters so much. So how I navigate this is it is basically liberty enhancing. This kind of decentralized technology enhances liberty and preserves privacy and freedom,

which are the core cornerstone principles of the center-right movement. Now, there's different kinds of Republicans. There's populace. There's big government Republicans. I'm a classical liberal. I want to conserve the principles that made our country great. Liberty, freedom, privacy, self-determination, free enterprise, free markets. That's the kind of conservative I am.

That's not necessarily in vogue these days with the kind of populism we have these days. But this Web 3 blockchain technology is in perfect keeping with the philosophy and the principles that I want to conserve as a conservative. If you're a progressive, that is an affid to that because generally speak, now you're asking a conservative to tell you what liberals think or the left thinks. So just take it for a grain of salt. But a progressive is much more of a collectivist, less of an individualist. And they believe that it is good and right that you centralized decision making, use centralized government actions in the sake of harmonizing people's lives and making them for the better. go back and read hagel and vizmark and max vaber and all these guys in the last to turn in the last century and that is very much in keeping with that sort of progressive wilsonian doctrine that is what

i would describe as sort of the cornerstone philosophy of sort of an elizabeth warren progressivism or an aOC progressivism and web three and crypto are anathma to that philosophical or epistemological construct. That is why this is a problem. But if you take a look at, let's just say, more practical Democrats, more center-left Democrats, Richie Torres, Rogan, I'm just throwing names off top of my head, who are more embracing of this technology, who see that it actually does do good things for the people they want to help the unbanked, the third world, the people who don't get access to banking products, they can be helped with this kind of technology. It just means, though, you're decentralizing power.

It just means, though, you're not centralizing, collectivizing power, but people are helped nonetheless. So I think you can get left-of-center practical Democrats who are pro-technology to also see the benefits that this technology brings to society and appeal to them and build yourself a big right-and-center-left movement that is majority in this country that embraces Web3 technology. But that's not Gary Gensler. That's not Joe Biden.

That's not Lena Con. That's not Elizabeth Warren. But it is a lot. I'm just like I said, I'm trying to, I'm post-politics. It is a lot of people left to center. The question is, are they running their party? Are they running Congress or not? And they haven't been lately.

We'll see what the future provides. But if we have an election where you have a center-right axis, that I think you can get off the dime and get a lot of this stuff passed in advanced Web 3 blockchain technology so that crypto, so that, you know, blockchain and stable coins and all the rest are deployed in America with good regulatory footprints that allow for Sandbox's state experimentation and all this innovation to occur in America where all of this got started.

Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. And as we start to close this out, I'm going to ask maybe for some prognostication here, just like, you know, it's kind of a coin flip on who wins at this point, at least according polls, prediction markets, right? Trump versus Harris. Let's say the Congress swings, like it goes in the direction of Republican, right? You're expecting more crypto legislation progress there. Let's contrast that if you have a Republican Congress and then you have a Republican president. So Donald Trump wins, let's say. I'm assuming you believe he's just going to keep his election promises, not via. anything, be incredibly pro-crypto, and all of the stable coin legislation, the things that we've been talking about, that just passes in that case. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And then, okay, so let's say we have Republican Congress and then we have Kamala Harris as in the executive branch. I think from the episode that, like from the conversation thus far, you would say that it's still going to, we're still going to make progress on key legislation pieces. You don't expect Kamalares to just be default anti-crypto veto that will still make progress, but it'll be slower progress. But either way, over the next four years, we make progress. Yeah, I think that's right. Now, what's the game theory here, which people who are listening to a podcast aren't, you know, inside congressional people, is what happens in Lane Duck? What happens in Lane Duck? By the way, because you've got a market structure's bill that's out of the house. You've got, you know,

lip service being paid to it in the Senate. And then you've got Stablecoin legislation that is very close to being dislodged. Whoever wins the presidency in Congress will decide whether you have a productive or unproductive lame duck session of Congress. So from the second week of November till January 1st, there's going to be a legislative window there where maybe a lot gets done or maybe nothing gets done based upon who's coming into power from where we are. So you could see a situation where a lot of this stuff gets done right then and there because Donald Trump didn't win and Republicans don't have everything. So we want to get stuff done right now. But if we have better, you know, a better government around the corner, we're going to do nothing and wait until then.

So that point I'm trying to make is I see both of those scenarios, pro crypto scenarios, pro market structure scenarios, pro stable coin scenarios. It's whether they get done sooner rather than later is the question. So, again, because this administration is so bad, it can't get worse. And I think it's going to get better because I think enough Democrats are coming around to the fact that we need to do this and that they have enough support. And I think that along with the momentum that Republicans are bringing the issue gives me a more positive outlook. My point is, do it fast. Things are happening.

Embridge is up and running. The Europeans already passed a market structure and a stable coin business. let's get going because we're going to lose this market in America. So as we close this out, so do you have any thoughts for bankless listeners, basically, you know, they're crypto natives, they're people that hold crypto. How can they get involved in the political process? And what's your advice for industry leaders anyway in the crypto space? I mean, there was a time I will tell you, Paul, that your crypto people were a bit more

libertarian, the fact, like just disengage from the government, like how many of us even vote, that sort of thing. Now, we've seen what that disengagement can do. We let bad actors like Sam Begman-Fried kind of step in and, you know, control the lobbying process. And so we've been much more active over the last two years. Not sure yet that we're winning, but we are making some progress. Anyway, do you have general advice for the average crypto holder who cares about these issues? How should they engage politically? We have a republic. That means we elect people to conduct policy on our behalf in this democracy. That means members of Congress,

policymakers, listen to their constituents. They are, they can get informed by their institutions. So that means, number one, get involved. Number two, you have to bring information to policymakers because this is brand new stuff. You know, even, you know, 70-some-year-old members of Congress are really getting into this. I mean, Cynthia Loomis isn't 70 years old, but Cynthia Loomis, I've known Cynthia Loomis for 25 years. She is probably the leading crypto enthusiast in Congress. Why? Because she learned about the issue. She saw the benefits of all of it. It gives with her philosophy. So the point I'm trying to make is the more you get engaged, the more you can educate

policymakers so they can make good policy. And the more you show a volume of your voice, the more you can make sure that policy gets made in your direction. But absent that voice being heard, alternative voices will take your place. So that means you've got to get involved through speech. meaning donations is speech through donations to speech, but more importantly, educate your policymakers so that they understand what all of this is. Because frankly, I didn't know about it. I read about Bitcoin. I read the white paper. Thought it was interesting. I really didn't steep

myself into this until about five years ago, which by the way is not a lot, not a long time ago. And I love economics. So there's so many people in Congress in positions of power who who don't have a dog in this fight, who can still be shaped as far as their views on this issue help shape those views. It's all about those undecided voters. Paul Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been fantastic. We appreciate your time.

You bet. Ryan and David, nice to be with you. Thanks for having me. Guys, end with this, of course, an action item. We've got an op-ed that Paul Ryan wrote. We will include that in the show notes. Got to end with this, of course. None of this has been financial advice, not even political advice.

We've got standard disclaimers, though. You could lose what you put in. headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot