On The Brink with Castle Island - Vivek Ramaswamy on his crypto platform, stablecoins, and Choke Point 2.0 (EP.478)

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy is a Republican candidate for President in 2024. In this episode we sit down to dig into his crypto policy proposals:  Vivek's keynote in Ft Worth Vivek's crypto platform and how that derives from his convictions Vivek's view on Bitcoin mining Is Choke Point 2.0 real? Is banking a utility? 'Choke Point 6.0' and how it goes beyond just crypto and banking Does the suppression of speech have a technological solution? Can public blockchains actually be supportive of the US Dollar? Further resources: Vivek2024.com Vivek's Speech in Ft. Worth: "Three Freedoms of Crypto Policy"

Hi, I'm Nick Carter. Welcome back to On the Brink. Today we're sitting down with the vague Ramoswami Republican candidate for president. Very happy that we got this time with him. A couple of weeks ago, I watched him deliver his first major speech on crypto at the North American Blockchain Summit in Fort Worth. I was very impressed by the speech. He called out choke point 2.0. He called the Bank Secrecy Act unconstitutional. He criticized the third party doctrine. Said the Constitution. Said the Constitution, Constitution protects self-hosted wallets. He said he would resend most, if not all, SEC crypto regs on day one and reduce the number of federal bureaucrats by 75% in year one. Suffice to say, it was an excellent speech. I'm going to include the whole thing in the show

notes here. Definitely recommend you watch that on your own time. Today we dig into a few more parts of his crypto platform and get a bit more context on his crypto views, including things that he didn't have the chance to touch on in that speech. I've never encountered a can for presidential office with such a fully fleshed out crypto platform. It's clear that Vivek has actually done his homework here, and even though his background isn't in crypto, he has done a lot of work to understand what matters in the industry and is coming from a principles-based approach. To learn more about his platform, head on over to Vivek 2024.com. That's it for me. Let's dive right in.

Vivek, Ramoswamy. Thank you for joining us. You've spoken about your crypto platform. on a couple podcasts, we'll try to not retread the same ground. But I did have the chance to watch your speech in Fort Worth, which I thought was fantastic. Thank you, man. So it's a, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for being here. Yeah, it's good to talk to you. So where are you? Are you in Iowa at the moment? No, it's in Iowa until yesterday. I have my first full day in my home in Ohio. And it'll be my only full day in like weeks in either direction. But I'm enjoying it. I'm sure it's absolutely hectic, so we're really grateful that you would spend some time with us. Actually, one thing I want to ask first was the speech you delivered in Fort Worth laying out your crypto platform.

That was the first time you've actually given that speech, right? Yes, absolutely. How did you kind of with no notes and no teleprompter, extemporaneously speak for 25 minutes and not use any filler words also? Oh, I don't know about that. But I think, you know, my method, and there's another, you know, there's sets of issues that I dive into. and I need to generate my own conviction on it. If I don't have my own conviction on it, I'm not going to bother going deep in my public statements about something.

But I did, you know, as in many regulated industries and in many areas where government regulation, I think, has impeded not only American innovation, but the American constitutional vision. Yeah, that's what pulls me into this race. And so for me, the way in which the regulatory, assault, which I believe is just beginning on crypto as a sector broadly, is really just an embodiment of our national decline. That's something that goes to the core of my campaign. And so, yeah, the details I, you know, studied up on or whatever, but I don't like to read

from scripts. I like to speak from true conviction. One, the only problem with that approach is actually left out a couple of things that I wanted to say that day that we didn't get to talking about, but that's okay, because this is the beginning of a broader conversation that I want to start in this country. Yeah, well, we'll have the chance to fill in some of those gaps today. There's so much to cover. One thing I want to ask you was your, I don't know if embrace is the right word, but making

favorable noises about the crypto industry, talking about the struggles we've had in this country. Do you see crypto as a constituency? Like, is that there are some crypto single issue voters, but probably not that many. How does that play into your political strategy in terms of going to crypto conferences, appearing on crypto podcasts, et cetera. Look, I think that some people do have a crypto strategy. It's interesting.

I've kind of seen this amongst sort of off the beaten track, generally younger candidates. Yeah, I don't mean to, I'm not, I like a lot of these people and I'm not going to name them and I don't want to speak ill of them or anything. But I think that that's almost like a cultural feel, right? Like it's like, I'm different is like a sort of virtue signal. And in some ways, if you're quoting the constituency, that seems to be like a more effective way to do it. Okay. At least, you know, so far, you know, my sense as RFK has been much more successful in fundraising from crypto world than I have been.

So I guess maybe if it's to be done as a strategy, I'm not doing very good job of it is what I would say. For me, this is actually a natural extension of just my own convictions about what the U.S. Constitution means, what it stands for, and what my core commitments are, the things that drew me into this campaign. I care about maybe a little bit more of the details, maybe have a lot. a little bit more of an understanding of what Bitcoin is, what other cryptocurrencies are, with the essences of the regulations that are going after them, understand the best arguments for the other side, including the idea that just because you don't call it a security, but if it walks like one and talks like one and quacks like one, then it ought to be ensnared by that same regime while also understanding what's wrong with that existing regime in the first

place. And so I guess I don't mean to sound boastful about it, but I guess since you're asking about it, no, it's not a, it so far at least has not been a strategy for me. I think that it has been a strategy for others. I think they have been more effective at raising funds from the crypto, you know, user base than I have been. And so maybe that says that I need to be more thoughtful about making it a strategy. But right now, this has been the extension of what my natural convictions are and the very reasons that I'm running this campaign. I think it's part of a revival of our American identity. It's a revival of the 1776 vision that set this nation into motion. And, you know, I think if I'm wearing my political tactic hat, maybe I need to do a little bit more of the heartstring

pulling too. You know, RFK or others, I think, have done that without the meat or the detail. And that's been more successful, I think, as a political strategy for them with this constituency than than I've had so far. But I don't know, my style as a candidate is speak my convictions, go deep when necessary to get to the essence of what's actually happening. And my hope is things work out the way they're supposed to where people reward that in the long run and can see the difference between somebody who's deploying a political strategy and somebody who actually is sharing their true convictions. Yeah, I think that distinction comes through as well. So I won't recover your platform. I think you've ably discussed on other podcasts. We'll touch on it. But one thing you didn't

mention in your speech was Bitcoin mining, which is obviously Texas is really the heartland of Bitcoin mining in America. And America is the nexus of Bitcoin mining globally. How do you? And, you know, I think we actually had a conversation about this before your campaign. And of course, you started the asset manager focused on, I don't know how to put it precisely, but lessening the impact of ESG on sort of corporate strategies. How do you see Bitcoin mining currently in the U.S.? Is it someone to be feared? Is it accretive to American interests?

How does that play into your views here? Yeah, sure. And just so people have an understanding of where I'm coming from, I mean, you made reference to my asset manager. I just say a word about my background beforehand. I'm not a politician. I am an entrepreneur. I built Royvent.

That was probably the biggest company I've built so far, which is a multi-billion-dollar biotech company. I was the sole founder, built it from scratch, led it as CEO for seven years. Five of the medicines we worked on are FDA-approved today. But it is a tightly regulated industry, and it's a monopoly profit industry, in part created by government erected barriers. But some of those barriers also, you know, pick the favorites of who is or isn't able to get ahead.

And my company was directed at breaking that system. And, you know, I've been more critical of the FDA probably than anybody else in the farm industry because of seeing the, I would, would say multiple negative effects of the regulation, both in some ways that fail to live up to the standard of what it's even stated to do, but more importantly, in my view, impeding innovation and the drugs that I developed that are approved today would have never been developed if my company hadn't existed. And then my second company was certainly my second major company that I founded and led was a company called Strive that competes directly with the likes of BlackRock

and State Street and Vanguard, offering index funds that are very similar to those offered by Black Rock and State Street and Vanguard, except in one critical respect, not voting shares or advocating using those shares for environmental and social or political policies, such as emissions, caps, or otherwise in corporate America's boardrooms that most of the owners of capital disagree with. And the reason why those firms are doing it is some of their biggest clients of government actors, including state pension funds, that effectively require them to advocate for political policies through the back door, that they couldn't get through the front door, which, as a side note, though you did not ask about this, is why I think it is quite concerning

when you have BlackRock or others trying to now enter the Bitcoin exposure game through ETFs or otherwise through the back door, because it's a good way of having a Trojan horse to ruin the essence of what an alternative actually looks like. But that can be a longer, a separate discussion that we have. Your quick question was about energy. Well, look, I think that I don't believe that the government should be in the business of deciding what are or are not the just uses of energy. So I personally happen to believe that my for Bitcoin and the creation of Bitcoin itself represents a frontier in American innovation that follows the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, literally writing the Declaration of Independence while inventing the very swivel

chair that I'm sitting in today, I think that he would have been a Bitcoin miner if he were alive today as well. So that's my, you know, that's my personal view. But from a policy perspective, that's not why I believe that policymakers should go out of their way to roll out the red carpet for Bitcoin. They shouldn't go out of their way to roll out the red carpet for anybody, but they shouldn't go out of their way to erect barriers for one particular sector either. And so for this proposed excise tax on utilizing energy or electricity specifically for mining for Bitcoin, I think that's wrong. I think it's unconstitutional. I think it's a use in weaponization of the law that a requires surveillance for the usage of energy that itself would require the violation of all kinds of constitutional principles relating to one's own privacy from the government. But separately, I think, is also unconstitutional in its selection of one particular use. usage of energy that ought not be punished any differently than any other usage of energy. So I personally have my bias that's a pro-Bitcoin bias, but that's not my reason for saying

that it's wrong to impede the mining of Bitcoin. My view is you're free to do whatever you want as long as you're following the same rules that everybody else is. And in that sense, capitalism itself is a meta-system that selects for what should or shouldn't exist in the American economic landscape. And that's not something that I think the government generally should be in the business of interfering with and not here in choking out the existence of Bitcoin through backdoor regulations on energy usage either. No, I certainly align with that. And along those same lines, you mentioned choke point in your speech more than once.

And what we call choke point 2.0 in this industry refers to the, in my view, unconstitutional usage of bank regulation to shape who banks are willing to do business with, which, you know, energy is utility. Banking arguably is a utility. I mean, it's... It absolutely is a utility. It's backstop by the government. I mean, it's a too big to fail post-2008 regime. It's absolutely a utility. Higher profit margin involved for the people who are there, but, you know, there's an old... This is a side joke. But, you know, my friend of mine sort of said had a quip where it's like, you know, if you're a teacher, you walk home with an extra pencil. If you're a nurse, you walk home with some extra latex gloves. If you're a banker,

you walk home with a few extra green pieces of paper. So in the utility where there's a lot of inefficient rate in the people who are participants in that utility, but that's absolutely what it is. I agree with you on that characterization. Yeah, and you know, under Obama, we saw what they literally called choke point was they used the FDIC and other bodies to use insinuations. to persuade banks to not serve payday lenders, adult industries, firearms, manufacturers. This time around, the same FDIC chair, Gruenberg, under Biden, has executed the same attack on the list of the letter against the crypto space. Yep.

Every major financial regulator was involved. No doubt about it. It's just my only thing is I don't call it choke point 2.0. This is like choke point 6.0. I mean, in the sense that this pattern repeats itself, the books I've written, I mean, two of the three books that I've written are dedicated to expose. various versions of choke point operations, but the essence of it goes like this. The government does not have the political mandate from the voters who ban a behavior or a form of speech or a form

of expression through the front door, through Congress, either because the voters don't stand for it or because the Constitution prohibits the government banning such behavior. And so the government instead uses a complex series of levers to accomplish through the back door, through the private sector, what it could not get done through the front door under the Constitution. And one of the messages that I am trying to impart to the crypto community, and, you know, I'm not, you know, I get it. Don't conflate Bitcoin and crypto. Fine. Just like get over it guys for a second. Like I'm talking about decentralized finance. Bitcoin community, I'd say the same thing, too. Okay. So if it helps or out in the conversation to the Bitcoin community and separately to the

crypto community okay like i mean i get it and some these distinctions aren't lost on me and you know like people come at me after like the speech that i gave it's just like guys there's big i'm looking to lead the united states of america and one thing that will help you all us all of us is if we're able to actually step outside of our own vantage point and realize that this assault on liberty is not in a vacuum this is just another step in a broader progression that actually has nothing to do with crypto, right? And so like all I would say is when you sort of see the prism, see the rest of the world through the prism of crypto, you're missing the actually 90% of what's happening versus I would say join me a little bit in seeing crypto through the prism of what's happening

and the rest of the world. Then you actually get it, right? So government's telling social media companies that they cannot censor speed or they have to censor certain speech or else they're going to regulate them. They'll crack down on them, strip them of their sex. 230 protections. I mean, I've written a body work on this that's now, thankfully, being picked up in federal appellate court cases and otherwise. The government cannot use a private actor to avoid a constitutional constraint through the back door that the government couldn't accomplish through the front door. So Nick, let's just like practice what we preach for a second, even just step outside crypto for a second. Then we'll come back to crypto and it'll, I hope,

bring a greater level of clarity. So, you know, there was a case, there's two cases. I'm to bring up. And, you know, I think, I think just the face of it has not was it after the crypto, no. Just listen to it on its own terms and then come back and you see hopefully your own space with greater clarity. So one is it related to the railroads. Okay. So the government in the war on drugs wanted to be able to randomly search and seize your person, like literally you for drugs as part of the assault and the war of drugs. The only problem is we have this pesky thing in this country, thankfully, called the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in the United States that says you need a warrant to be able to do it. Well, what the government decided to do was to do a clever move through

the back door. People were traveling through railroads, and they said that, hey, we're going to give you a special form of immunity as a railroad manufacturer to say that you can't be sued if you're randomly searching and seizing a passenger for drugs. So the government's hands off here, says, we're not the ones doing it. But the railroad is the one that then starts to be. of doing it because the gut they kind of got special favors. It's a regulated industry. It's a monopoly profit industry that's closely embedded the government. And they were also saying that, hey, we're the ones that are actually doing a good thing for the country here. Well, a passenger then sued. And it took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court says, nope, that seizure of drugs

on that passenger was unconstitutional because it was even though it wasn't the government directly doing it with railroad, if the government is immunizing that company, giving them a special form of immunity to do through the back door with the government couldn't through the front door, it's still state action in disguise. And if it's state action in disguise, the constitution still applies. Another case of a bookstore owner who wanted to sell a book, a prosecutor said, well, I don't want you to sell that book. He said, you know, go eat dust. I'm going to sell it anyway. the prosecutor says, well, I've got this other dirt on you. And I'm going to bring this case against you unless you stop selling the book. And then the bookstore owner is like, okay, fine, I'm not going to

sell the book. Somebody walks in, wants to buy the book. He says the bookstore owner and says, sell it to me. It was on sale last week. Why aren't you selling it to me now? Take it all the way to the Supreme Court. They find that, again, the government can't use threats to achieve through the back door, what the government couldn't do through the front door. In this case, censoring speech. Well, the same thing happens with respect to banks now in the Green New Deal. They couldn't pass it through the front door. Literally, over the last couple of years, John Kerry, the so-called climate czar, self-named climate czar, has bragged about this, used his relationships with those banking CEOs

to get them to sign onto what is a North American climate pledge instead, which restricts many of the same activities that those banking CEOs, quote-unquote, voluntarily say they don't want to sign up to, well, that Congress couldn't ban directly. John Kerry pressured them to be able to sign up to, quote, unquote, voluntarily through the back door. Banks are not charitable institutions, right? So what are they getting or being threatened with on the other side of that? So I bring this up because the same thing you've seen with respect to firearms manufacturers, the same thing you've seen with respect to, you know, I've met with church leaders who have been unable to expand their plot of land because they weren't able to get proper lending from certain banks because they ended up

on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups because of their views of traditional views on marriage. So now you then come to what's happening to the world of cryptocurrency. And banks effectively, they have to get a charter to ride the rails of the Federal Reserve system, both state charters and federal charters. And everybody knows that if your board doesn't contain the sufficient level of diversity. Are they talking about ideological diversity? Of course not. They're talking about the classical attributes of race and gender and sexual orientation. By the sexual orientation is a funny one, 10 years ago, if you asked about it, you would be committing a civil rights violation. Now, if you fail to ask about it, you're at risk of quote-unquote violating

the same laws to fail to have quota systems. Everybody who getting a bank charter knows that you need to play by the rules that the regulator loves. And then in that context, right, doing business with or banking those who are in the space of crypto broadly. And you could say Bitcoin is part of this as well is another red flag. And so, yes, it's like choke point six point O is what I call it is just part of a litany of an assault on liberties using the veneer, the smokescreen, the avatar of private behavior as an excuse for the government to be able to choke an industry out of existence that it couldn't quite choke through the front door because in the case of crypto, people of this country would never hate cryptocurrency enough to say that we want to ban it,

and we don't think that they should be able to bank with traditional banks that are part of the Federal Reserve system, but they're doing it through the back door instead. And so that's kind of what brings me to this, is I've been on the fight of each of these assaults on speech or the energy sector or the firearms or religious liberty and crypto's on that list for me. But I think when you look at it exclusively through the world of crypto, which is like, why do they hate us? That's not quite what's going on, right?

It's part of a broader disfavored class that the government is able to choke out of existence. And so once you see it that way, then I think it makes a lot more sense than wondering, you know, as I see many in the crypto and Bitcoin world do, which is, hey, maybe we just educate the government about what we stand for and that's going to help. The problem isn't that the government isn't educated about what you're doing. It's that many of them are. But they're constrained in their ability to go after and choke crypto or Bitcoin out of existence. in the existing rules of the roads.

They're using the backdoor of banks and other private actors to be able to accomplish it through the back door instead. Yeah, no, I think there's this kind of myth in the crypto space that, oh, it's just a matter of telling them about the technology and educating folks in Washington. And people don't realize that many of them are smart and do understand it and they just hate what they see. Exactly.

And they want to defeat it. Exactly. So we actually underestimate our enemies, enemies, opponents. on the topic of the government deputizing the private sector to police speech, this is something you've spoken about. I think it's becoming very apparent now. There's a lot of new developments, disclosures. We know that this is a real thing.

A lot of folks in the crypto space think there's a technological solution to this, which is maybe that's naive, but they think, well, if we create, you know, blockchain-based social networks, then you will truly own your credentials and you won't be able to be kicked off by a Facebook or, you know, Twitter or whatever, there's also potential, you know, judicial solutions to this, Missouri versus Biden, I think is one case I've been tracking. How do you see this developing? Is it a matter of the Supreme Court just having it say? Is there a technological solution here? I think there's technological assistance, but I do think it's important to not fall into a trap that I think that the techno optimists sometimes fall into, which is to assume that there's a

technical solution to a normative problem. It's almost a cousin of the problem you just talked about, which is, oh, if we just educate them, right, assuming that the disagreement was a technical understanding one, when in fact it was not a technical disagreement. It was a normative disagreement. It's a difference of worldview. One worldview is that we, the people, create a limited government that is accountable back to us. I subscribe to that worldview and started our founding fathers. And I think that's why I believe that we're the pioneers, we're the explorers. And whether it's drug discovery or the advances of new forms of energy or old forms of energy or the use of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency to the fullest extent possible within the bounds of existing anti-theft and anti-fraud laws,

that's my vision that I embrace. But there's an alternative vision that says the state precedes the individual and that the individual cannot exist as a free agent without the existence of the state. I don't agree with that view, but it is an ancient and coherent worldview. It's not, It's the wrong worldview, in my opinion, but it is an alternative vision. And so anyway, I think that back to the question you asked, does putting, you know, speech on a blockchain stop the physical capacity of a government or a sovereign, you know, government to immediately choke that in the same way they're able to when there's centralized platforms like Facebook or Twitter or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's technically more difficult for the government to then then maneuver through a back door. But it's like a game of cat and mouse, right? It's like you squeeze a water balloon in one place. It shows up somewhere else. They might just come after anybody who's using that blockchain, which in some ways is where this is heading. And my crypto policy rollout in some ways was about whatever you believe,

about the securities regulations or whatever, anything coming after self-hosted wallets, I think is basically where this frontier is going. They're going to say you can't. There's a reason why, even if something is a rich, registered security, you're not able to just trade it from in a decentralized manner 24-7 because they don't want that decentralization to be the thing that happens. And so those who say the techno optimists to say that putting it all in the blockchain is the answer, they're coming

for you there, right? And I think if they're going to have to cast a wider net to do it, then they're going to cast a wider net to do it and say anybody who's using that within the United States, that behavior is going to be criminalized too. So in some ways, the impulse to choke it out through the back door is always going to be there. But we have to conquer that through the front door. And so that's why I'm doing what I'm doing now instead of being an entrepreneur is I think that we can't fix that until we have assumed the reins of political authority to liberate the misuse of that political authority, which is what's happening today. And so I don't think that there are technocratic solutions to normative problems. And that's why I

think that there's no avoiding the journey that I'm on now, which I came into reluctantly, but I think we're going to have to succeed in if we're to really protect liberty in this country. In your speech, you said something which I agree with, which many crypto folks don't, which is that the blockchain, the development of blockchains, development of crypto, financialization can be supportive of the U.S. dollar. Yeah. Isn't necessarily hostile to dollar interest. Can you expand on that a little bit?

I mean, obviously we see stable coins being mainly dollar. How do you see this developing? Can they be synergistic? Yeah, it can be synergistic, but I'm not approaching this with the prior that one result or the other of them is good. I'm just, I'm talking about it as somebody who's running for U.S. president. I believe it's inherently better for the United States that the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. And I believe that many of the risks to the dollar remaining the reserve currency of the world have nothing to do with cryptocurrency posing that threat. To the contrary, it's the opposite. It's the behaviors of the government.

that have debased its own currency through its own practices that if there's an opt out of that system, which is what I think Bitcoin represents, for example, probably the cleanest and best version of that, that forces the government to hold its own feat to the fire and abide by heightened standards for respecting the value of the dollar that will actually do a better job in the long run of remaining, of preserving the dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

Now, I mean, think about stable coin issues, you think about who, who are some of the largest holders of U.S. backed securities or whatever, you know, there's technical reasons for believing that there can be a stable coexistence here as well, right? That's something that, you know, we could get into. But that's not even where I'm coming from is more of a normative foundation. From a technical perspective, like, I mean, you'll know better, you'll know this better than I, but, you know, you can sort of get into how, you know, stable coins and dollars can actually,

you know, prop, the U.S. dollar can actually increase the value. one or the other, that's something that we don't really, you know, talk enough about. But I'm coming at it from more of a normative standpoint, which is that if you have an opt-out to the existing system, that the value proposition, if you can't defend your own value proposition and you're trying to choke out the competition, it means you probably should work on your own value proposition. So I favor a single mandate for the U.S. Fed, 90% headcount reduction, and just peg the dollar to a basket of commodities, gold. silver, nickel, agricultural farm commodities. And I think there's a reasonable conversation over the

long run for whether Bitcoin should be on that list as well. I'm certainly not opposed to that. And I think that it's almost inevitable that it would be over the course of time. That's what I believe is by stabilizing the dollar as a unit of measurement, we actually strengthened the dollar over the long run. Having an opt out from the dollar through, say, Bitcoin holds the government's feet to the fire. And then for technical reasons that I think you and your audience will be familiar with, I mean, I think you would also observe that there's a very good opportunity for coexistence. I mean, like, you know, you would say stable coin issuers probably are one of the bigger holders of U.S. Treasuries, if I'm not mistaken, by way of fact.

And so 16th at the sovereignth level. Yeah, 16th. Including like even nations, like like Japan and China are like one and two. Yeah. That's amazing. Right. And so I know it's, I mean, it was high. I didn't know it was that high.

So obviously there's, there's, you know, mutual. coexistence there that I think is positively reinforcing. But that's a technical point. I'm coming at it more from a, I guess, dare I say, ideological standpoint in terms of competition, breeding, discipline. And I think that that's something that the next president of the United States should embrace instead of issue. Well, you are a tremendously busy man. You have a packed schedule ahead of you. So we'll leave it there for today. But I want to wish you the best of luck. Yeah, appreciate it. Maybe people can watch my other speech because I'm glad we definitely did not cover the ground that we've covered in the other podcasts or speeches that have done. But for people who are just listening to this, they could feel

free to, you know, check that out. And the other thing is, you know, I will say this is now, since you got me in with this headspace early on at the start of our conversation, like, I have not been particularly successful yet at sort of, quote unquote, this campaign benefiting from the policies that have advanced. And that's okay. I'm advancing my convictions because I think these are the right, I mean, the crypto policy framework that we rolled out, I think it's just right for the country. That being said, I do think it, you know, is a little bit ironic. It makes me, you know, this process, if anything, has made me cynical about the entire process of running for office, mostly with the establishment of both major parties. But even in the

people outside the establishment, it turns out it's a much more effective way to raise money from from crypto audience is to say something in a deliberate, you know, emotional tenor of saying how important crypto is for the future without having the first idea of what that actually even means. And that turns out to be a much more effective method for fundraising. But I will say, I think if you care about driving change rather than just the optics of conversation, I think on the closest shot we've had of somebody, and I think we have a path to success here that is real. The IOCIS is on January 15th, and I think we're going to deliver a surprise there. If that happens, I think of a very good chance of being the next U.S. president, you know, running anywhere between

second and fourth in the primaries right now. I don't think that the people in our community, if I'm to call it that, and the first candidate who's wrong was actually in a presidential disclosure form held Bitcoin. It certainly publicly reported. That would seem to be the first one and that long predated my knowing that I was going to run for president. All I would say is like if you want to, you know, be the change you want to see in the world, step up because the Republican Party's, the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, who I criticized on the last

debate stage, said, I'm not going to get another dollar of funding from the RNC. Our families put tens of millions of our own hard-earned wealth into this. And we're going to stop at nothing because we're in this for our country, but I would like to think that the people who are allied in seeing a better future for crypto and Bitcoin in the United States, and you have a candidate who actually knows what the hell they're talking about that is ideologically committed enough to take shots along the way to do it, you know, I mean, you guys follow your convictions, but I'd say one way to do this would be to help me win the White House. And, you know, whether, you know, you want to make a donation or volunteer, whatever it is, Vivek 2024.com, I mean,

we'll take 3,300 is the max you can give to a campaign. A lot of people have done well in this space. And, you know, there's other people who are in other sectors that play the game of politics and they get the results they pay for it. And sad the system works that way. But in the meantime, standing for my convictions either way, but I'll ask for you guys to help. Help push me there and I'm going to do my part. Well, we appreciate the specifics. I think that's the first time I've seen that from a major candidate. So it didn't go unappreciated. Vivek, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Good luck. Take it easy, man. Thank you.