Bankless - The 2024 Presidential Election Breakdown With Alex Thorn

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, joins us to unpack the impact of last night’s sweeping Republican victory on the crypto landscape.  We dive into record-breaking price action, potential shifts in crypto legislation, and the role Polymarket played in election coverage. Tune in for insights on what lies ahead for crypto in this new political climate. Alex on X - https://x.com/intangiblecoins  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🐧 CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiSimple  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  🤖 dYdX | UNLIMITED LAUNCHING SOON https://bankless.cc/dYdXUnlimited ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/90?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Bankless Nation, last night the United States had an election. And last night, an election was concluded. Today, to unpack all of that with us is Alex Thorne, the head of research at Galaxy Digital. He's going to help us understand the impact of the election results last night and what it means for the crypto industry moving forward. Alex, thanks so much for, I know it was a long night last night and it's an early morning this morning. Thank you so much for coming on the show and unpacking all of this with us. Yeah, you're welcome, David. Hey, hey, Ryan.

Wow. I mean, wow. What a night, I think, better than certainly the mainstream media would have had anybody expect. I think that's right. I think that's right. That's definitely a big topic is the gap between the mainstream media and our more crypto-native news sources. Polymarket definitely having a front and center role here. But first, I want to just kick things off, Alex, with the Red Sweep.

Last night, the Republicans won the presidential race, the Senate, the House, and the cherry on top. It looks like the popular vote as well. Just first reaction. What does this mean for crypto? What does this mean for our industry? It's game changing. We are about to enter a golden era of crypto and Bitcoin in America. That sound that you're hearing, maybe you're hearing some static.

That's thousands of crypto entrepreneurs buying tickets to move back to the United States. This is an absolute game changer. You're going to have endless nonstop catalyst every week for 18 months. The headlines are going to knock your socks off. Just like the former president said in Nashville, we're going to be so. tired of winning, sir. We're going to be begging him, please, sir. No more winning. No more electricity, sir. I mean, no, it's truly game-changing. The former president has his own defy protocol. I mean, he's plenty, you know, he's, he sells NFTs. This is, um, obviously he's made tons of

pledges. He's adopted an entire pro-crypto agenda, but it's not just that. He's got Howard Lutnik said he owns shed loads of Bitcoin, said it's hundreds of men. Who's that? Howard. Who's Howard? He's the chair of his transition team. It's the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. the primary dealer bank that, um, Tether does all its banking. They deal with Tether too. They do. They do. And they're also, I mean, one of the biggest and most iconic American banks.

Um, and he's leading Trump's transition team. You've got Vivek Ramoswamy on the team who loves Bitcoin and crypto. J.D. Vance owns a bunch of Bitcoin at least we know. Um, and, and loves it, right? You got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I mean, this is a team of people around him. Not, not, not, you know, not to mention his entire family, right? Don Jr. and Eric and supposedly barren also all of crypto, right?

So I think there is a very, very strong chance that the next four years are just truly game-changing for the upside for crypto. I think the big surprise here, I think if you asked the average crypto participant who is going to win, they would say, you know, it's probably going to be Trump. The polls were giving us 50-50. Polymarket was giving a decent edge to Trump. Yeah. But I think the new thing, the surprise is.

the sweeping landslide. So can you like, what is, what is, why is that gap significant? So like, you know, the difference between a solid Trump victory and a completely sweeping landslide, what's the significance of that? Yeah, this is a shot across the bow, across a number of bows, right? I mean, start just maybe with the mainstream media. There was a significant divergence between even sort of major proprietary forecast models and the prediction markets and odds, right?

Yes. David like yeah Cal she um polymarket predicted interactive brokers uh Robinhood all these bookies they all had it for in Trump's favor the whole time at least since the summer like but in some cases 60 40 or higher right and um but like Nate Silver's model converged to 50 50 last you know on on Monday night like 538 was much closer now they they mostly slightly favored Trump so but these you know there's this joke about statisticians that like there's all these like you know like lines and charts on them thing and at the end they're like I don't know 50 50 coin flip right that way they can never be wrong yeah I mean he look he he was probably slightly

favored to win but I don't think that you know certainly even in his camp from republican friends of mine last week were concerned they were worried maybe it was slipping right you know a near victory let's say I mean their outcomes on both sides where it could have been 270 to 268 in the electoral college, that would have been a disaster for the country in general. Like, I think it's fair given what happened in 2020 Trump's grievances about the outcome of that election that we, no matter who won, you hoped it would be big so that there wouldn't be like weeks, months of litigation, right? That's worst case scenario, right?

Yeah, it really is. And so, I mean, look, I think he's going to win the popular vote. He's not just going to win the electoral college. It looks like he's going to win the popular vote. that hasn't happened in like, you know, five or eight elections for Republicans. That's a clear mandate. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, so the presidential is obviously confirmed, very confirmed Senate. House as well. Is the House now? The House is, it's leaning Republican. Yeah. It is Republican now, but only by two seats currently. Right.

Like, it's barely Republican today. We won't probably know even maybe for a couple weeks. There's just a lot of races and a lot of little places. and many will be very close and some will go down to recounts. That'll just take a little while. The Senate is confirmed. That was not unexpected. Even a big Harris.

Harris would have had to really landslide, I think, to carry to hold the Senate. And the map was just really bad for Democrats this cycle. The big, the big, big win for crypto here is Bernie Moreno unseeding Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Let's talk about that. Yeah, explain the significance of that. Who Sherrod Brown and why is unseeding so important for the crypto industry. Yeah, Sherrod Brown is the current chair of the Senate Banking Committee. In a Democrat, he is a big ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who's, you know, senior on the Senate Banking Committee.

He, I would say he has not been good for crypto. He hasn't been the most vocal, like, outspoken opponent. But Fair Shake spent the most money of any race in this race. Crypto money, I think when I looked yesterday, they had spent $20 million in this race. Wow. Sean Rod Brown in favor of Bernie Moreno. Sherrod Brown gets an F strongly against crypto. I mean, he even voted against things like Sab 121 repeal.

Yeah, I mean, even when, you know, Democratic senators voted for that, right? So he is a, and the Senate banking committee oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission, right? And so that committee is integral to financial regulation in America. And he is a major roadblock to getting anything done. Right. If you had like any, you know, even just a moderate on crypto in charge of that as a Democrat, we might have seen Fit 21 come up on the floor in the Senate or stable coins or something. For crypto to spend so much money and unseat a guy who it was so important in the Senate, like this is a shot across the bow against every anti-crypto member of Congress right now. This shows that the industry can flex muscle and deliver. This is Brian Armstrong. He said this in the aftermath.

Welcome to the new members of America's most pro-crypto Congress ever. 219 plus pro-crypto candidates and counting have now been elected to the House and Senate. Tonight, the crypto voter has spoken decisively across party lines and in key races across the country. Americans disproportionately care about crypto and want clear rules of the road for digital assets. I mean, I think this speaks very highly to cryptos. Let's talk from an industry perspective and kind of a campaign perspective, to its ability to organize this election. I mean, the stand with crypto website was, you know, like kind of genius.

And all of the funding and PAC money in directed races, like, also had a massive impact. I don't think the presence of crypto in any other race has, like, felt anything like this. But you really felt the presence of crypto. And not just like, you know, organizers and donors and groups like Coinbase and A16Z, but kind of in the grassroots with stand with crypto. I mean, there was really a push to overturn some of these anti-crypto army type candidates. And it seems to have worked. Like, it seems to have paid dividends.

I don't think we go back from that. I mean, like big winners coming in the election, obviously were crypto. I think the crypto industry and its ability to shape politics. Also, I would say polymarket. By the way, on polymarket, that's how I, you like, saw that Trump was. winning and I was watching kind of mainstream news as I usually do like calling elections going state by state and that's going so slow so slow so slow and while I was on my phone I was just seeing like this which I'd seen in many polyply this is what a market looks like when it's resolving okay so

if you can't see the screen what I'm what I'm showing is kind of like Donald Trump suddenly spiking up like volatility and then Kamala Harris odds suddenly spiking down I saw this in so many markets and Polly Market that are resolving. And when you saw it creep up beyond 75% to 80%, I was like, well, it's over. And that happened around like 8.30, 9 o'clock. Like Polly Market was a huge winner in this as well. And that's a crypto. It's a crypto project at the end of the day. So a lot of wins here. Yeah, big wins. And Polly was, you know, we were watching as you sort of go east to west, right, they come in in the East Coast states first. And then as you go across the country and polls close. Florida was something we were watching really closely, right? It, um, it's been

Republican for several elections, but Miami-Dade County where Miami the city is, and then Pinellas County right outside of Tampa, two that we were watching really closely. And you could see it react on polymarket. So Hillary won Miami-Dade by more than 30 points, okay? Biden only won it by seven. Trump won it by 13, 12 or 13. And so a massive shift. shift. I mean, we're talking almost a 20-point shift in his favor. Same thing, Pinellas has voted correctly in every presidential election for like the last 10, except for 2000. And as those results, and Trump, Trump won it last night. And as those results in even just those counties and in Florida, the margin of victory in Florida more than 10 points, it's going to end up being 10 or 11,

you saw Polly start reacting. And the same thing, it looked like Virginia was way closer for Trump than it was expected to be. And you just saw that Polly was creeping up, 72, you know, 28, then it's like... It felt like reading the future. As I was like looking at mainstream news kind of reporting on this and looking at like polymarket markets, it felt like, oh, I know this like six hours in advance. Yeah, exactly. It really was, it's a big deal too, right?

I mean, if Polly, like, if the election goes the other way, everyone's going to say, wow, prediction markets don't work, right? Oh, it's too thinly traded. Polly's offshore, you know, predicted is this crazy one. And you know, this Australian one where they have a consent decree with this. CFTC that allows them to exist as like an academic project, that they actually have a limit on the total number of trades and amount bet that can be done. So for like the last two weeks, it's been at like 55, 52, like unable to resolve properly as a market.

Has it constrained? Has it been here? Yeah, they're only letting like one out, one in at the end. So these, these could have looked. I mean, if Harris had won, polymarket would be, have a lot of, you know, reputational problems. It's not like their fault. It's a free market. But I mean, And this, you know, I mean, again, the margin of lead he's had for, frankly, months, like, I think is vindicated here. We know that Polly odds are not forecast models for how much he's going to win by, right? Their likelihood of victory.

And it turns out, I mean, he won bigger than he won in 16 or it looks like at least as much, right? I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be a big resounding win. And so those like 60, 40 odds, like that seems reasonable like now. And so I don't know, this is, especially again, if you get changed in regulation, obviously Cal she won that suit against the CFTC like a month or two ago that has basically made prediction markets on elections legal now in the U.S. These things may have a very bright future. I want to unpack a nuance between the difference between Polly Market and mainstream media.

The common talking point about the reaction to watching the election last night was Polly Market called it first. You could have guessed who was going to win by watching Polly Market. hours before had you been watching like mainstream media. This is like a big plus to polymarket to the prediction market model. But and then people are just like lamenting about mainstream media saying like, man, they're so biased. There are these swing states that they're saying are too close to call even though they're like 85% of the ballots have been counted.

And so people were saying like there's there's a bias in mainstream media because they're just refusing to call these things. I want to actually be doubles advocate for this. Mainstream media, when they call a state, you do not uncall a call. And so they have to be rock solid sure. They need to be like 98% sure that that state is going to go in that direction. So I'm kind of like pushing back against the mainstream media not calling states soon enough is biased idea. I'm actually just saying I'm going to present the idea.

It's not about the bias of mainstream media. It's about the better mechanism of prediction market. that can actually inform us at a sooner and less biased point in time than mainstream media. That's kind of like my take about pushing against the kind of the discourse about like the biased nature about states that are too close to call. Alex, do you have a reaction to that? Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, think about the way they they call the states like AP, NBC News, I forget there's a third

one that Polly needed in order to resolve. They look at the actual votes. They say, what is the margin of lead by one can? candidate and how many votes are outstanding. Until the votes outstanding can't possibly flip the election to the underdog, they don't call it. Right. So they're not predicting the outcome. They're saying, is it even possible?

When it's not possible for the leading candidate to then lose, that's when they call it. Let's get into some price action. Bitcoin touched $75,000 last night, which is an all-time high. Congrats to Bitcoin. Well done. Well done. Dogecoin, up 15%, likely due to Elon's. significance. And I can't help to notice that some classic SEC targeted coins like Uni are also,

uni is the number two big mover in the top 100 coins in the last 24 hours. Oh, we finally get the fee switch, huh? Yeah, we're getting the fee switch on. The boot is coming off a lot of these like invested, like investment tokens rather than meme coins. Alex, just any comments on like the price action? I mean, again, Bitcoin was moving well before like sort of in line with Polly. I mean, I looked at these, these markets looking, moving similarly. I think it's undeniably bullish for, I mean, like I was saying at the top, I don't get in more detail, but it is a Trump presidency alone, let alone a Senate that's also Republican

that can appoint his, confirm his appointees. It's undeniably bullish for the industry. I think, so I don't think it's unexpected. I think it's quite poetic that Bitcoin made an all-time high on election night. I mean, that's, yeah, you do like to see that. It was very exciting here at Galaxy. You know, pretty much the entire trading and research teams was here until like, you know, one in the morning. So we were watching this live.

And, you know, I don't know. I hope, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure that I'm ready just yet. I think mostly because of Solana's competition here. But you've got to think ETH BTC is an ad or near a bottom, I think if the regulatory regime is about to move in, you know, broad crypto's favor. Because, again, you mentioned Uniswap. The app layer, ether has been sort of three. It's made it through finally with the ETFs, but the app layer in crypto is under regulatory scrutiny, right? And Ethereum is the largest, you know, platform for crypto apps there is, particularly the biggest one and the one most subject of financial regulation, which is defy.

So I think you're going to see more gains in in defy tokens in broad crypto altcoin land. I think it's going to be, you know, we're really just getting started. I went right to bed, right as. the thing was being called by them. So, like, I, and then I only got up at like 8 a.m., right, and rushed here to get on this. even I'm still digesting this. I think the market is still digesting it, too.

And you're about to have trad-fi markets open in three minutes as well, so. Oh, yeah. I feel it so, so we'll see what coin price does. We'll see what Robin Hood does. Coin is up so big pre-market. Coin is up over 10% in pre-market. I mean, right? It's like these companies literally have Wells notices against them that are going to, like,

literally, you said at the top, evaporate. They're going to go away. They're gone. Okay, so, man, there's so many, so many, like, ways we could take this, right? F-P-500 is pre-market up to 2.1 percent. Like, well, the major indices are up, like, the crypto-linked equities are up. I think, I think, actually, I'm- Gold is down.

I'm a bit like you. I'm kind of like, I'm letting this sink in, but I'm surprised that markets haven't reacted even more favorably, like, particularly crypto markets, because I just want to paint this framing. Okay, so, like, for the first decade in the U.S., regulators largely kind of like ignored crypto, right? It was like the first they ignore you type of thing. Then we got into cut that they were laughing at crypto. It's just like Ponzi schemes, whatever, right? And then for the last four years or so, we've been in the then they fight you type phase.

Okay. So they have been fighting us. This is what Operation Choke Point is. This is what the embodiment of Gary Gensler sending seven Wells notices just this year. One, I'll note six days before the election. He sends a well. Wells notice to a mutable, a gaming platform. By the way, if this doesn't signify the hubris of the Democrats, in like the Kamla Harris campaign like letting this happen, the White House letting this happen, another Wells notice to crypto six days before the election, that's basically like crypto voters don't matter to us.

Okay. You know, the results show that they maybe should have thought that through a little bit more. Anyway, all of this, all of this reverses. We have never been in crypto at a time when we had U.S. regulatory tailwinds. They've always either been nothing, like completely ignoring us or laughing at us, or headwinds. Okay? And that's what we've had for the last four years, headwinds. All of these tokens here, they can only be like useless governance tokens because we can't

have a fee switch on top of them, even though they're generating so much cash, right? So all of our tokens are neutered. We have Operation Chokepoint. We have like stable coin legislation that can't move forward. We have Gary Gensler blocking all of our crypto entrepreneurs from like doing anything. I can't even, it's the U.S. And I can't even get like an air drop because I'm geo blocked. Yeah, free token.

Free money. And it's all because of like the regulatory headwinds that we've been facing. And all of that will completely reverse. I don't think I'm overstating this. I don't think you are. Okay, okay, like, can we go through methodically of like what exactly is going to reverse and be undone? All of these like bad spells that have been cast for the course of the last four years are going to like go away. So I know Gary Gensler is getting fired.

I know that's happening. I think let's start with the SEC, right? Because I think Gensler, we know that Trump, I mean, his biggest line of applause in Nashville was to fire Gary Gensel. He was taken aback. We had to say it twice. Yeah, he was like, yeah, he was like, wow, I didn't. know he was so unpopular. Like how did, by the way, how did the Democrats not see that clip and just be like,

oh, this is an unelected official and he's like sinking our party? Like that he seems unpopular. Why didn't they not throw him under the bus? Anyway, go ahead. It's a good, great question. And you can imagine the political capital that President Biden had to spend vetoing that SAB 121 overturn is ridiculous. Like they came out when the House passed the overturn and then the National Economic Council

released by the White House's statement of administration policy, which is their position where they said they would veto it if it came to his desk. They described the SAP 121 overturn as basically an apocalyptic financial terms, which is like ridiculous. It's an arcane like tax issue and banks are the most heavily regulated industry in America. So like, you know, they can do stuff and the regulators. They have prudential regulation, okay? That means that the regulator can come in and tell the bank what to do.

It's not like, oh, I'm not sure. They can be like, take this off your balance sheet and sell it right now, whatever, something bad, right? So it was never that big a deal. And the fact that then in face of that veto threat, a bunch of Democrats voted to overturn it anyway and Biden had to veto it. Do you think Biden wanted to waste political capital on this ridiculous minor thing from the SEC? The worst return on investment. I mean, that is literally investing in a political shit coin right there.

So Gensler, though, firing Gensler, I think most constitutional scholars agree that the president cannot actually fire a duly termed and appointed. independent commission member. Alternatively, most agree that the president can appoint a different acting commissioner, almost, acting chair almost immediately. So whether Gensler is fired, I think remains to be seen whether the Trump administration even tries to fire Gensler. We don't know. But he is very likely upon taking office to appoint one of the existing Republican commissioners,

Hester Perth. Hester Perth. Hester. I know. Or Marco Yeda, who's also great for. They're great. Mark's fine, but like, I would love Hester. I know. I love Hester as well. I've had Hester on Galaxy Brains my podcast. She's brilliant. I mean, she's a brilliant mind. One of those two is.

Principal. Yeah, very principled. Very thoughtful, very polite and very bright. I mean, one of those two is likely to become the acting chair almost immediately. So they, they and I haven't gone through every single action the SEC has taken and which of them were actually voted on by the commission versus can be immediately. changed, but they can replace the entire staff of the enforcement division or the entire leadership of enforcement almost immediately. That's why I think among the first things you're going to get is exemptive relief. So you're going to see no action letters sent. You're going to see the Coinbase and crack in lawsuits withdrawn. You're going to see process.

How do they do that? Wait, every single Wells notice will turn into a course, I mean, no action letter. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, very, very possible. I think if you, if you have received a Wells notice in general, that's an indication from the staff of the enforcement division at the SEC that they intend to sue you. If they haven't filed, I'd be shocked if you see any of those filed.

If you've gotten a Wells notice but not been sued, I'd be shocked if you end up getting sued. If you have been sued, it's going to be a little bit trickier because courts really don't like it when big lawsuits are filed with big, like apocalyptic, angry terms. And then you're like, oops, just kidding. Let me withdraw that. So honestly, there might even be some instances where instead of actually withdrawing the court, forces a settlement between the SEC and whatever. And the SEC just takes a settlement. Yeah.

I mean, these are largely at the discretion of the enforcement division and the chair, I would say. But the big ones, Alex, like the ones against Coinbase and Cracken and Uniswap, the ones that we've heard about. Like, how far, I know that most have not started as well as notices. Yeah. Yeah. And Coinbase is the most far along, right? It's been, what, almost a year and a half maybe or a year.

But again, like, they're not like too far. I mean, they can definitely be amended or withdrawn or settlement. Defanged. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about this. I didn't even realize this really until we saw them send the Wells notice to Cumberland. But I don't know why I didn't realize this.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic. But we know they've basically gone after every single U.S. exchange, right? You basically have Coinbase crack in Gemini and Crypto.com, I think, really operating at scale in the U.S. And not many others. I don't think maybe any others. All of those, Coinbase and Cracken have lawsuits filed against them. Crypto.com received a well's notice and preemptively sued. I don't know what's up with Gemini, but they had a whole bunch of SEC stuff with Gemini

Earn and other stuff. So that's the entirety, basically, of the U.S. like retail exchange market. Then you start to see Cumberland, which is OTC institutional only market, same basic lawsuit, failure to register as a national securities exchange, trading on registered securities. I think if Gensler and this current SEC had remained in for like a, another year or two years, it's very likely that within that time period, you wouldn't be able to

buy or sell anything in the U.S. other than like Bitcoin or Ether. Seriously. Okay. Okay. This is what I feel like non-crypto people who are just like, oh, crypto is kind of a fringe issue. They have no idea what was going on in the crypto industry. Like Gary Gensler's SEC in particular, and you combine that with choke point, which I'm sure we'll talk about, was like targeting all legitimate crypto companies in the U.S. This to me, I've never been on the inside of an industry in the way that I am in crypto, but this has got to be unprecedented. Like the attacks, they just kept coming, and it was everybody in the industry.

I don't think people realize how extreme it was and why this was existential for crypto. And so some people point at like the amount of money that crypto is kind of put into this cycle. And they're like, oh, you're trying to buy all the politicians. It's like, we're trying to stay alive. okay like without this without playing the game we didn't create the game we didn't create this game we did like vote yes on citizens united we didn't vote for money in politics right but like we're in the game and if you're not not at the table you're on the menu and this election cycle crypto decided to be actually at the table and it it you know that's the reason it rent like it um got these wins coming out of

it that's totally right i agree it's not fair to malign crypto for advocating for itself it's also So, you know, Ryan, to your question about, like, has this ever happened before? I've only, I worked at Fidelity and Galaxy in my entire career. I was at Fidelity for 12 years. So I haven't exactly been around a bunch of other industries either. But, you know, one, if we think about choke point, right, choke point 1.0 was against, like, what we call, you know, like gray area businesses. Not even gray, but like things like the payday lending industry, very predatory, right, in the scheme of things, right? But also, like, guns, totally legal, constitutionally protected, right?

And so those are legal industries, you know, that were directly targeted, right? Specifically targeted with the, by the way, choke point 1.0, choke point, that was their name for it. As far as we know, I think there are some FOIA requests to the government to see if it was ever called choke point 2.0. Regardless of whether they called it that, it absolutely has been that. And for an industry as benign, I mean, it's not payday lending. Don't get me wrong. I think we all know there's been plenty of scams. It's open source financial software, right?

So, like, of course, you know, bad actors can use it. We're not asking the crypto industry is not asking for a free pass. We're asking for rules that allow good innovative actors to thrive, and we want the regulators to go after scammers and thieves. Nobody is saying we don't, right? But of course, you mentioned, like, the most high profile actions taken by the SEC have been against the best actors, right? FTX, they did nothing, right?

Celsius, they did nothing, right? But, but, but, but, um, you know, coinbase, like this is a publicly traded company. This is the most transparent crypto company in the United States, basically, by, by rule, because they're public, right? Theoretically, the SEC should want more to be public. That's transparency. Um, so yeah, it's been really unfortunate in general, I would say. And, you know, a choke point, here's another good example of what's going to happen quickly, right? SEC, it's a little tricky. It's an independent commission. I said that, you know, you'll see some immediate relief. I would say also the industry wants longer term statutory relief.

We want legislation, right? So that, you know, if in four years, you know, our biggest, if Elizabeth Warren were to become president, you know, like, you know, then, then, you know, it won't be just immediately rolled back, right? We don't just want exemptive relief, like, no action letters and halting actions against us. We want permanent legal status, right? That will take, it could take the entirety of a four-year term. for that to even happen. But what will happen quickly is all the stuff under Treasury, right? There's no

question whether the president can appoint a new comptroller of the currency at the OCC, which is the primary prudential regulator for national banks. So if you remember that a couple weeks ago, the SEC sort of what I said was exempt of relief. Technically, it's not, but they created this effectively a loophole that let BNY Mellon avoid SAB 121. They said, well, if your prudential regulator, your primary prudential regulator says that you can do crypto and you know and you have a bunch of other risk mitigation stuff of course it's the oldest bank in america b n y they they do have that stuff then you can proceed and you don't have to carry it on your balance sheet your client's crypto assets and so we're all like well i mean there's only bn y is a its primary prudential regulator is the new york department

of financial services and so we know that though nydfs has i mean they're strict obviously but like they have the bit license they have legalized crypto in new york if you're you you have the right license. So that's why we knew it was BNY, even before they said it was them, was because that's the only big bank that we think wanted to do it that has a primary prudential regulator that would allow it. Well, a lot of other banks that are national banks, their primary prudential regulators is the OCC. And we knew that the current OCC under acting comptroller, Mike Sue, would not allow it. Well, a new Trump appointed one will almost certainly allow it. So banks being allowed to do stuff with crypto, let alone the, allowing crypto company,

opened bank accounts was really what chokepoint was about. That's kind of that that that changes fast. I mean, you can appoint a new acting almost right away with a Senate that's in Republican hands. He can probably get them confirmed for the full term, right? And so you start to see now, then you have the FDIC, an independent commission also, but similar to the SEC, he can probably, Trump can probably make a new acting, right? Because the main players in choke point is the OCC, the FDIC and the Fed, right? We can't do much against the Fed. But if the national, primary prudential regulator is saying it's okay or to stop discriminating. I think one of the first things you might see out of OCC is a rule expressively prohibiting,

you know, bias against companies that want bank accounts if they're legal, right? I think we had that in the first Trump presidency. They came in. One of the first things that they did at the OCC was explicitly make that against the rules, choke point style. So I think that that just ends pretty fast. I mean, it's not much of a question. Yeah, which, of course, isn't just good for crypto, but I'll just call it good for freedom,

good for the right to transact in America, kind of restoring some of the foundations that this country stood upon. Alex, there's a bunch of more topics that I want to get to. Free Ross is on the table. I want to talk about the tech sector, because historically the tech sector has been liberal. It's been very conservative this election. Also, Elon Musk is a topic I want to bring up. There's a lot more we have to unpack. First, before we get to all of those subjects, we have to take a break and talk to some of these fantastic sponsors who make this show possible.

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and start building today. Crypto, what's going to happen next? I want to summarize some of this with a tweet from Victor Bunin. He says, Crypto 1. Next, we're going to Free Ross, fire Gary, end Operation chokepoint 2.0, pass common sense stable coin legislation, enable in-kind redemptions, turn on staking in-thereum ETFs, shutter the SEC lawfare investigations, and provide regulatory clarity for crypto. I feel like that about summarizes it.

And Alex, before the break, you were talking about Operation chokepoint getting unwound, like the changes coming to the SEC. I think a lot of the regulatory headwinds that we've been facing have been due to the administrative state. They've been really coming out of the White House and the cabinet and those that, you know, the Biden administration have kind of like selected in positions of power and surrounded themselves with. Do you have any sense for what like the Trump cabinet might look like and the Trump

administration might look like, because we're all expecting sort of a complete pivot from the types of folks that were in the White House and would have been part of a Kamala Harris administration. Do we have any names for who's going to be Treasury Secretary next and that type of thing? I mean, there's a bunch of speculation that really has only really just begun this morning, like I was watching CNBC before I got here. And I'm talking about Rich Besson. They're talking about Howard Lutnik at the Treasury. Are there polymarkets for this yet? Ted Haggerty. There should be Ted Hagrid. Senator from Tennessee has been a long time, who's, by the way, very pro-Bitcoin in crypto, has been a long time mentioned as a party.

You know, Robin Hood's chief legal officer, Dan Gallagher, has been mentioned at SEC. Robin Hood does a lot in crypto. I'm sure that would be good for crypto. We don't really know, I would say, at a high level yet. It's still pretty early. But we do know that they're going to be pro-crypto because, like, actually, last Trump administration, Here's like Steve Munition, the secretary of the treasury, was not pro-crypto. In fact, people forget, but during like the parting days of the Trump administration, he was actually trying to like pass some sort of administrative state lawfare against, you know, self-custodial wallets.

That was like a nightmare scenario. Yeah, he wanted to, they wanted to require reporting on unhosted wallet transactions if they were over like $3,000. So you were going to have to like effectively register. your treasurer or your ledger with the binsen or with coinbase they were going to have to give over information it's kind of like a national crypto registry right we're going to get none of that this time around though you're like 100% confident of this yeah i think the only things uh that that are frankly probably aren't going to be much different under trump or Biden or harris is relating to like

the like the sanctions and bank secrecy act i think you know because trump and his team are so pro crypto, probably be slightly better. But if you think about all of that stuff, like out of FinCEN and the TFI, the terrorism and financial intelligence office inside Treasury and FinC and OFAC, like, that stuff is on a very like hard to reverse snowball like post-911 bureaucracy where it's like, and you could imagine some of Trump's foreign policy goals like bump up against like, you know, never sanctioning a crypto company and stuff like that. I still think even on like, big topics like tornado cash or samurai wallet, you still probably see easing in crypto's favor, because those are patently unfair as well, I mean, in the scheme of things, right?

But in general, like, other than that, it's going to be like a major improvement. I think maybe that's a slight improvement. Yeah, OFAC and kind of FinCEN and the financial surveillance state is like tied up into kind of national security, really hard to roll back. But I do want to ask, because not on Victor's list was the Roman Storm case, which is like top of mind. for bankless listeners. That was scheduled for December, now that's been pushed back to April, I believe. And of course, Roman Storm's tornado cash developer rested from his home for the DOJ.

He deployed a privacy smart contract. And OFAC made that illegal. This is actually something that I've not heard Trump talk about. But you have to kind of wonder, depending on who's running treasury, whether would they remove sanctions from tornado cash? I would guess likely not. But will they at least drop charges in the Remmen's Storm case? Or like, would Trump even pardon him? We have Ross Albrecht on the list as someone he intends to pardon. This is a campaign promise, I believe. What are your thoughts on this?

It's sad when something so important to people's lives and, and also, you know, Roman's life, obviously. And but also, you know, liberty, I think on its fate is subject to such sort of political machinations, right? There is going to be a point where it's like, I don't know where that line is, but where it's not politically helpful for the Trump administration to do certain things. And so then you're looking at like, well, you know, maybe even we agree with it, but we've got to get this other bill pass right now. We don't have time to like go to war on this issue. Like, and, I think the problem for

me with tornado cash and, and frankly, some of Samurai is on a principal basis, what was done, I think is very defensible, right? Like releasing autonomous software, it's like going after Microsoft because like Al-Qaeda wrote a memo and Microsoft word, right? There's, I really think it is like, that. On the other hand, like, there's those, there's chats. They'd never blocked the front end when they knew they could. Like, there are bad facts there that speak a little bit to intent rather than, now, they're not the facts that actually matter for what the charges are, in my opinion, right? So it shouldn't matter. I think if you're Roman, you hope, if that goes before a jury, though, there's going to be plenty of stuff for, for, you know, prosecutors to point to that make

them look like bad actors, right? And so I think, and also, I'm not an expert in this, but Like DOJ historically has been one of the more independent, you know, cabinet level agencies at the federal government. It's not clear that like the president can call up the U.S. attorney of wherever and be like drop the case. He might, again, he might try. He probably. I mean, we don't want that in the scheme of things, right? We do want some separation here of prosecution ability, right? Of course, in kind of the court systems, this kind of thing.

He can pardon. You can pardon. Yeah. This brings up the question because I believe there was a campaign promise about, like, pardoning Ross, for example, but not just that. There were a number of other campaign promises that Trump basically made, right? He went to the Bitcoin conference and said all sorts of things, right? Including, like, buying Bitcoin.

He said he was going to make America the crypto capital of the world and the Bitcoin, like, center of the universe. Okay, okay. So he's written some checks during the campaign as all politicians do. And now the big question, I think, you know, we have to ask is which of those checks is he going to cash? Because to our comments earlier, of course, all of these things require some amount of political capital. Now, there's a clear mandate, I think, and he'll have a lot of ability. So I have hordes of political capital.

Will he keep these campaign promises? Which of them do you think he will keep? Which of them won't? What's his track record of keeping campaign promises? It's okay. his track record, I think, between the 16 election and his first presidency. He also, and I think people know this, obviously we've all been watching Donald Trump now for years. He likes to stake out really firm positions as a negotiating tactic in general, whether it's on tariff is a great example, right?

This is going to add all these tariffs. By the way, same exact issues on the table in 1892 when Grover Cleveland became the first president to win a second on consecutive term. immigration tariffs, hard money. There's a big silver thing back then. And similarly, like the American manufacturing base would benefit, I think, from foreign export import tariffs, right? But, you know, that could cause a lot of inflation. Like, there's issues with this.

I think he's made, he and his surrogates have made very clear, like, that these are negotiating positions he stakes out. I think you'll see that similarly on other issues. So it's not so much that he, on some of these issues, won't deliver, but that, that, you know, coming out strong and then, you know, trying to be smarter is what I saw some of, on some of these issues on the last one. Immigration, too. I mean, rightly so. Like, this is a very contentious election with some serious issues, right, outside of crypto. And, you know, people are like, what's going to deport 12 million people? I mean, they've already started saying, like, we're going to start looking at, like, the 800,000 or so, like, known criminal aliens that, like, the Biden administration says are criminals, right? So I think you're going to start to see, like, come in a little bit and get a little bit more tactical.

Take on crypto, I think something like a free Ross is very easy. This guy has served more than 10 years in jail already. He's not going to be pardoned. He'll probably be offered clemency, right? Which will give him, his sentence will be commuted. So he'll get time served. It's not like it will come off of his record. Right.

Most likely. Because he doesn't have to. And by the way, I'm sure Ross is fine with that. Right. At the end of the day, if he's out, he's out. Because the slogan is free Ross. day one. I mean, he has said he'll pardon Ross Albright, but I think that's mostly

because, like, Americans don't broadly know the difference. I'm learning that difference right now. Yeah, in commutation. I think he's going to do that. He said it so many times. He said it at the net. Remember, he went to the National Libertarian Party's conference and picked them, which I thought was a very fascinating speech.

And he said it there. And that was what the libertarians clapped for and screamed for. I think that happens. I think the national Bitcoin stockpile is something will happen. I think it's not. likely. This is the almost direct parallel to this other election. I keep talking about, you know, he's the only president ever to win, then lose his reelection and then win again. He's the second president ever. Grover Cleveland was the first. And Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison,

the president in between, it's kind of the same in reverse. There was this huge question about whether to back the dollar with gold or gold and silver. And both were legal tender, but the dollar was only backed by gold. And the value of silver was fixed in a legal ratio to gold, right? So The market value could fluctuate, but it was always tradable and redeemable at this legal fixed ratio. So when silver traded below its legal fixed ratio, everyone would try to pay for everything in silver because it's Gresham's law, right? You're basically getting relief. So you could pay your taxes in silver. So when it was actually trading below its redeemable value, everyone would pay their taxes in silver and the government would see a huge inflow of silver.

But then foreign creditors all wanted gold to repay the debt. So then a huge outflow of gold. this massive issue of how to back the dollar. And Benjamin Harrison, who was in between, he passed this thing, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which was directing the government to buy a bunch of silver. It's not unlike the national Bitcoin stockpile, right? So I think he'll do something. I think he's also very vocally been the only dollar candidate, right? He's been saying we want a strong dollar. The dollar is going to be huge. I think if you were to buy like toothpicks to back the dollar, it would harm the value of the dollar.

It doesn't matter what it is. The second, I mean, fiat currency is, it's a confidence game, right? I mean, it's backed by nothing, but faith and credit. I mean, but he could just stop selling Bitcoin

because that's been a policy, right? The U.S. has like 200,000 Bitcoin plus. I think that's why that's what his proposal has been. His proposal was that he said, never sell your Bitcoin. Everyone knows this. So we should stop the government selling. That is much more palatable, I think,

than directing the government to buy it. Yeah. I think, I mean, they may buy it. I think the government should buy it, but they've got to be very careful to buy it for, to telegraph what the, messaging us as to, yeah,

if you buy it to back the dollar, then the dollar is going to plummet. And no one wants that. Like, you know, it's going to happen eventually. All fiat currencies do collapse, but there's no need to accelerate that unnecessarily.

So I think you'll get something on that. I think, I mean, again, on all of the executive agency stuff, I think he's likely to deliver, whether we get any, we may never get any,

like, progressive legislative, package past market structure, stable coins. So you may end up just with a situation where you have regulatory relief, but no new clear framework. In fact, we are, I think our baseline hypothesis is that the more unified the branches of government, like let's say Republicans take the house also. And I've got all three branches are Republican. Very unlikely, I think, that you see something move on crypto in the first two years because- Wait, really? Like I thought this like part of Victor's statement is like,

state. Notice it doesn't say market structure. I think stable coins has a lot less hurdle here. I'm just assuming if everything like goes the way it's looking. They're going to work on other stuff. They're going to do taxes. They're going to do all these big giant Republican things. We're going to get stable coin though. We're going to get fit, aren't we? I'm not sure. I think fit is, fit is more like these are great dealmaking bills, right? Like where there's a lot of bipartisan. I think if you get a, if you had a Harris wave across all both houses in Congress and the White House or Trump wave across both houses

in the White House, they're going to focus on like high priority dollar spending stuff. They're going to do, they're going to try budget reconciliation to big giant tax cuts. These things take a long time to move through Congress, right? I think there's more air in the room and space to do something that's a little further afield like crypto if you can't do those big things. Now you're looking for bipartisan stuff. So the irony is you're going to get relief. I don't know if we're going to get a framework out of a unified Republican government.

It's possible, certainly. I think I can't speak for Victor, but when it comes to stable coins versus market structure, right, he doesn't say fit 21 here. To me, I think the daylight between Republicans and Democrats on stable coins is much less than on market structure, right? Pretty much the only dispute that we're aware of out-of-house financial services between Maxine Waters and Patrick McHenry. has been about which banks can do it and which entities, right? Like the Democrats wanted only national banks that the Fed directly regulates, right? And the Republicans want a state pathway, right? So to me, as far, and perhaps even non-bank entities, right?

Like, why couldn't Walmart issue a stable coin? I don't know. But Republican, but like that's the dispute. I think on like what they hold in order to back it and like what disclosures have to be made. And frankly, even like what regulators would oversee it. Like that's table stakes. lot of agreement there. So I think, and then by the way, if you throw in, you know, Howard Lutnik, the head of the transition team has all of Tethers, you know, treasury collateral.

If he's going to be important. Like there are also dollar strength reasons to do stable coins. So I think that's more likely than in a Republican government than Fit 21. So yeah, it's kind of a paradox. I think they're just going to, they're going to do immigration and taxes and who knows what else. But, but crypto and that's. You can imagine that if Trump delivers on regulatory relief on these issues at the agencies that they say, look, guys, like now we've got to work on other stuff for a little bit. Like, you got a lot of what you wanted. Right, right, right, right. Right.

I think in a divided Congress with a Trump presidency, you're very likely to see a good deal struck on this. Because it doesn't, and by the way, we want it to be a deal. You don't want some. Right. Unanimousness. Right. It has lasted for decades because it was bipartisan, right? Like, you don't, you want, we want crypto, whatever comes out of Congress.

risk to be bipartisan, whether or not it's unified government or not, like, it should be bipartisan. You don't want to ram through, it's going to be hard to tell the crypto industry this, right? But we don't want to ram through something that's like unequivocally, like, too easy for us, too bullish for crypto. Like, you want it to have longevity. Alex, I want to get your take on the impact of this election on Silicon Valley. Notably, Silicon Valley has moved far more right than it has previously when I was, you know, growing up in the early thousands and into the 2010s, Silicon Valley was known as liberal. It was known as blue.

And that was not the case this election. Notably, Mark Hendryson and Ben Horowitz put out this very, very pro-Trump podcast about why they are supporting Donald Trump, which was just a very big move to come out of Silicon Valley. Elon Musk putting all of his marbles on Donald Trump. There were tweets. I thought this tweet this morning was pretty funny from Paki McCormick, where he says, insane how lucky Elon keeps getting, which is facetious, his tongue in cheek. He's like, no, Elon, Elon makes his own luck. And now Elon is like very, very tied to this Trump presidency. He also now

owns Twitter and is landing rockets and catching them with chopsticks. And this guy has like the year of Donald Trump, who has now won the election. What would you say is the impact upon Silicon Valley and the tech sector? Yeah, this is a really interesting one, honestly, because, like, you know, you're seeing some winners and losers and the tech stocks. And, you know, I think, you know, you mentioned, David, when you were growing up that Silicon Valley was liberal. I also recall that Wall Street was conservative and Republican, but most of the big banks and big bank employees are big Democratic owners today. Yeah, that's right. And it's kind of flipped.

I think, look, I think, yeah, I think, look, J.D. Vance, I think is really instruct. here, right? He worked for Peter Thiel. He is what I would describe as a almost a classic techno-optimist. I think you're going to see a much bigger focus on innovation and maybe relaxing of some of the anti-trade stuff that sort of prevents the growth of some of these companies and, you know, venture exits, for example, right? I mean, we even had, I don't have the data in front of me, but the public IPO market has been just lackluster, right, under this last administration, you're probably going to see a lot more companies go public. That gives the exits to the VCs that can keep the machine moving.

So I think it's going to be very positive for American tech. I think you're going to see AI is going to be really interesting what happens with AI because Europe is classically taking this over-regulation standpoint. America looked poised to maybe do the same. I'm talking about an AI safety council and all this stuff. I mean, again, I don't want to be ruled by robots either. I want it to be safe, but like, you know, that's sort of an Orwellian AI Safety Council. You know what that means.

Sound like a lot of regulation. Probably going to get some relief there. So I think it's going to be pretty positive for tech overall, for American tech. I think you saw basically every major tech leader hedging, at least, right? I mean, Zuckerberg called Trump after the assassination publicly praised his, you know, bravery and wrote a letter to Congress saying that, you know, we were. pressured to censor during COVID. I mean, Ben Horowitz, too, David. You mentioned the podcast, but he sort of like pivoted more recently,

you know, three or four months out and said, hey, I've donated to the Kamala Harris campaign. But Bezos, like, declined to allow Washington Post, which he owns to endorse, like Sindar from Google. Trump said on the Rogan podcast that Google CEO had called him. So, like, they've obviously been sort of like, at a minimum, we're hedging for a Trump. Yeah, they were.

They were. Yeah. So I think they, they, you know, they're, look, they, they, they want to grow. I think the big question for me with tech, like, let's go to Elon too with like X. Like, and he really did go all in. It's incredible. I do love that tweet from Packy because, I mean, Elon even, I mean, I was, it's stunning how, how much money he put into it, how much time. I think like the social media censorship questions, both parties, there was a period where they both wanted censorship, maybe for different reasons, or they were both. at like Facebook, either for censoring like anti-COVID lockdown speech or for censoring Donald Trump content, right? But both were or for censoring like alternative COVID, like both parties were mad about this, right? And there was all this discussion about Section 230 and if it would be repealed, which limits the liability of those platforms legally.

I think now you're looking at some kind of reworking and rethinking among the tech firms about how they do on, you know, content moderation. Again, total divergence from Europe on this. total divergence. As we start to draw this to a close, Alex, so one question I have for you is ETFs. So Gary Gensler out of the way, right? So it took so much work to just get two freaking ETFs out of this guy and the SEC. Now Gary Gensler is going to be gone. Do ETFs magically start happening? Do we get an Ethereum like East Staked ETF? Do we get like kind of the long tail of other ETFs as well? The floodgates just open or is that still a process? Yeah, it's definitely a process. I think it's tricky. I mean, I think there's a lot of work to be done. I think you need some movement and whether it's no action letters or a new framework imposed or legislated at the SEC on tokens and are they securities and those questions before you start to see the floodgates. Like, I mean, there's literally just even if they, let's say it's, you know, if they could just wave a magic wand, they'd still have to wave some of the underlying magic wand first. So like there's some time, I think it.

takes, but, you know, if you ask me four years from now, like, whether we have only have two crypto assets with ETFs or if we have 20, like I'd be leaning towards 20 at that point. So there's a lot to be done, but if you ask me to bet, I'd say, you know, we're likely to get more. This is a take from just. And you're staking, by the way, too, just to answer that other question. Like, there's some procedural stuff, right? People have talked about whether, you know, the thresholds with which ETFs can lend their underlying collateral.

And maybe that's a comp that should be looked at for staking. I think, right, the main, one of the main issues for allowing the Ethereum ETFs to stake is whether or not unstaking could happen fast enough to meet redemptions should they occur. I see. So you could see, like, theoretically, let's say that you have a bunch of proof of stake coins that have ETFs. You could see the SEC look literally at like exit Q times, like on Ethereum, right? But these are all valid things, right? Yeah, it's valid. I think it's on the table.

I mean, I think, you know, and that's been, I don't know if that's the main reason why the Ethereum ETFs have underperformed flows-wise. to the Bitcoin ETFs, but it's definitely one of them, right? If you're sophisticated enough, you can buy Ether and put it on Coinbase and just earn your staking rewards. Like, why wouldn't you do that? Is that much harder than buying the ETF? Well, it is for all those old reasons about the ETFs. You know, financial advisors can't do that for their clients.

But I think that would make those products much more compelling and competitive. Yeah. Well, let's talk about this as we draw this to a close then. So the death of the anti-crypto army is it kind of over for them. Here's a tweet from Justin Slaughter. overheard from a Biden White House staffer, he says. So this is rumor mill territory, but this is what the Biden White House staffer said. No Democrats are going to fight with crypto to the death anymore. We have too many other things to worry about. And crypto clearly has more staying power than we thought.

Crypto clearly has more staying power than we thought. So Elizabeth Warren famously came out with the kind of the anti-crypto army. She amassed some recruits, including much of the Biden White House administrative state. Are we calling that dead now? Do you think the Democrats in the wake of this loss, this, I think, you know, Obama at one point, you know, they called a loss of shalacking. They got shalacked this election. They just got absolutely destroyed. Do you think that this causes them to call off the dogs with respect to crypto? So my hope and our hope all along has been, Alex, that crypto should not be a partisan issue. It's silly that it is, right? And I think I think there's a subset of Democrats that you can kind of blame for this.

Some Republicans, too. There's a subset of people in politics you can kind of blame for making this a partisan issue in the first place. But the ideal state is it's not. It's like the Internet. How can you be elected as a politician in the United States if you don't support technology, the economy, and the Internet, right? Like, that just should be a non-starter.

So are we back to that as the new normal? So being anti-crypto cannot win elections and the Democrats kind of regroup in the wake of this and they change their platform. I'm sure they're going to have to reform a lot. A lot of introspection, hopefully for them in the wake of this. But the conclusion of that is they're pro crypto. Yeah, I think very, very unlikely you see high profile members of Congress or elected officials take bold stands against crypto. It doesn't seem like it is a good idea. Again, Bernie Moreno, I think, his victory over Sherrod Brown in Ohio is the clear signal. I mean, this is not a backbenching. senator who got ousted. This is a very, very prominent one. And, you know, and you've already seen,

I think A16 Z in Coinbase, you saw like maybe yesterday, the day before, I've already pledged to combine 50 million just to play in the midterm election in 20. So like this, two years, that's saying. Playing the long game. Exactly. So, I mean, I think, look, this is how politics works in America. And like, not only did the crypto industry deploy significant capital to, to influence and support their candidates, but they succeeded. And that speaks. volumes. Why come out of, you could just say nothing, right? I mean, I, we've talked about this even on this show before, but like, I don't think there's a lot of anti-crypto voters. I mean, there's maybe many Americans who don't like crypto, but they're not like, that's not what's motivating

them to vote. They don't care. They don't care. Yeah. I, uh, all right, well, um, we'll see what happens next. But Alex, this is, this has been great. And I think for everybody out there, regardless of who you voted for, right? Um, I think anyone who's an advocate of crypto can be happy. at the dismantling of Gary Gensler and the administrative state that has attacked this crypto industry for so long. And it seems like that reign of terror is over. So I got to call this overall a big victory for crypto on the back of this. Alex Thorne. Thank you so much for joining us today. Brian, David, thank you so much for having me. Got to let you know, of course, this is not a political podcast. None of this has been

political advice. It's not like buying or trading advice either. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But this is the frontier. We're glad you're with us on the bank journey. Thanks a lot. New projects are coming online to the Mantle layer two every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming onto the mantle layer two to capture some of the highest yields available in Defy and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion mantle treasury in the Mantle

reward station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto or your user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's Defi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. The Uniswap wallet is officially the preferred wallet of bankless, and it's the one we use any time when we want to transact on chain. Whether you're on your browser or on the go, Uniswap wallet makes it easier than ever to swap anytime, anywhere. Use your wallet to transfer funds

directly from the top centralized exchange and taping thousands of tokens across Ethereum. And over 10 other chains like base, arbitram, and optimism. Uniswap wallet delivers deep liquidity, fast execution, and reliable quotes with zero gas swaps through Uniswap X. And when it comes through security, you can rest easy knowing it's backed by Uniswop Labs, one of the most trusted teams in Defy. Their code is open source and independently reviewed so you know it's protected. So why wait?

Download the Uniswap wallet today on Chrome, iOS, and Android. And don't forget to claim your free uni.eith username directly in the mobile wall. Swapping smarter with Uniswap. Centralized finance held all the power. But now Defy gives it back to you. Enter the Unlimited era with DYDX Unlimited, featuring instant market listings where you can list and trade any market instantly with liquidity. Experience trading like never before with all the trading tools you know and love all on chain.

And then there's Megavalt, your gateway to automatic liquidity and yield. Just deposit some USEC and start earning yield immediately. It's so simple and DYDX Unlimited comes packed with so much more. Leverage prediction market perpetual futures, instant deposits. even a revamped trading rewards program to get rewarded for every time you make a trade. So go ahead and check out DIYDX on Twitter at DIYDX to get notified once DYDX unlimited launches.