On The Brink with Castle Island - Weekly Roundup 01/24/25 (Trump EO, the Stockpile, Ross Free, SAB121 Gone!) (EP.591)

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

The episode where we logged on and won forever. Probably the biggest week in crypto history...  In this episode:  Ross Ulbricht is granted a full pardon  Did Ross Ulbricht deserve a life sentence? SAB121 is finally gone  Why SAB121 was bad Crypto ball review Trump launches a memecoin Trump is inaugurated OCP2.0 is over  CBDCs are banned We review Trump's Executive Order No Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, but a stockpile instead Larry Fink calls for 600-700k BTC Mark Uyeda, announces the formation of a new task force: SEC Crypto 2.0 Senator Cynthia Lummis announces the formation of the Senate Banking Committee on Digital Assets A US court in Texas overturnes the sanctions placed on Tornado Cash

Matt Walsh and Nick Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All of these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle Island Ventures. Guests and host may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast. You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Brought down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated.

The federal government loans American International Group, AI, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping it to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis. The Bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars, and all of a sudden, people start to worry.

So out of this worry, we have something called the Bitcoin. Welcome to On the Brink. I'm Matt Walsh. And I'm Nick Carter. And what a day. Sab 121 was just. killed. Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're going to, that was like one of the main things we complained about on the show. I mean, is this the biggest week in the history of this industry? Yeah, I think so. Without a doubt, it has to be. Trump executive order today. So much stuff in there

to talk about. Ross Albrecht is freed. The crypto ball was interesting. Probably other stuff that I'm forgetting now. Trump launched a meme coin while you were at the crypto bell. Right. The Trump coin. I mean, yeah, it's the biggest week in crypto history. I mean, we've got an executive order and we'll go through it. It is pretty incredible, pretty incredible for this industry. You've got the CEO of Morgan Stanley on CNBC talking about entering the Bitcoin custody space. You've got Bank of America's CEO talking about getting into stable coins. It's all happening. Did Larry Fink go on TV and said he wants Bitcoin to trade at 700K or something. Larry Fink went on on TV and said that Bitcoin could be in the 600 to 700k range if people

start to see this as a speculative store of value slash chaos edge type of thing. I mean, you know that expression we're not tired of winning. I am tired of winning. I'm tired, man. Well, we had a long night last night. What a great dinner that was? Yeah. I mean, we were in Chicago this week.

my god was it cold in chicago it was minus it was in the minuses in fahrenheit i didn't even know temperatures would go that low it was it was very very cold uh what was the name of that place we went we have to give them a shout out because the was it the guy who owns it who was a crypto guy yeah he recognized us he uh he was super nice um assador bastion in chicago yeah i think it was honestly the best steak i've ever had in my life assadar bastion that's right highly It was excellent. And shout out to our friends at CMT Digital for hosting us. What an incredible evening.

So, man, I was looking through our list of news items here, and it's just, I didn't know how to start tackling this. There's just so much. I just, I don't know, I feel like I want to run through a wall right now. This is just incredible. I guess we should do the deals and then just get into all the details. Yeah, we got some, we got some deals too, some interesting ones. So we'll hit those real quick.

First up, Circle Acquired Hash Note, tokenized money market fund platform. Congrats to Leo on the team over there. Yeah, great news. Congrats to Leo. Next one up is Kepler. This is a crypto wallet platform. They raised $5 million from one confirmation,

Coinbase ventures, hash key, and others. This is definitely the most interesting news of the deal. WingBits, a decentralized flight tracking app. They raised $5.6 million from borderless, bullish, Spartan Group What is that all about? Wing bits. Decentralized flight tracking.

I didn't even know I needed that. This is very common, I think, for Deepin deals where didn't even know it was a thing. So it is a Deepent network that offers rewards-based flight tracking using cryptographically secured

ADSB receivers. Do you have one of those, Matt? No, do I need one? I should probably get one. It sounds like you need one now to collect flight data. So what does it just tell you that flight is delayed? Sometimes that does break. Yeah.

I use an app called flighty. Do you use flighty? No, I don't use flighty. I just use whatever the airline apps are. Got to say flighty, very good. I recommend it. Okay. Well, it's about to get disrupted by wing bits.

Next one up is GRVT. I think that's gravity. Is that gravity? It could be gravity. gravity. This is a decentralized crypto exchange that they raised $5 million from further ventures. Hamilton is an RWA platform on Bitcoin. There is 1.7 million from disrupt tech ventures in CMS holding. Shout out CMS. Then you have a phantom. This is a big fundraise. A crypto wallet provider. Everyone knows Phantom. They raised $150 million from Sequoia, Paradigm and Andreessen. That's a big time raise there.

Yeah, actually, we didn't even talk about two other huge things that are going on. one is this like identity crisis in a theorem and then two is salana kind of broke this week yes we need to talk about both of those for sure those are all those are other big things that happened yeah i mean i guess some stuff breaks but in general we move forward repo is a crypto ai protocol there is 2.2 million from protocol lab CV lab CMS holdings and others all right so where do we even start do you want to just do sub 121 first i feel like we should start chronologically Okay, chronologically, you get in a tuxedo. Go forward.

You go to the crypto ball. I squeezed into a tuxedo. Squeez into a tuxedo. Crypto ball. There are a lot of critters of the crypto ball, man. There are a lot of political types, members of the Trump admin, AI people. So many sea level executives from crypto firms. It's actually very well done.

Congrats, too. I guess David Bailey put it on. He did a great job. I had so much FOMO. I just didn't, I didn't think I wanted to be there. And then as soon as you started putting pictures on Twitter, I was like, oh, man, I should have gone. It was great, actually.

Rare to have a highly anticipated crypto party be actually good, but it was. And at 9.45 p.m., Trump dropped the Trump meme coin on Twitter. And let me tell you, he kind of rug pulled everyone at the ball, because there was no chatter at the ball of the meme coin. I mean, you do it when some of the most powerful people in the industry are all stuck in a room with probably bad cell phone service. It's like the red wedding, the crypto red wedding. It kind of rugged us.

So I did not buy the Trump meme coin and then it went to $64 billion or something completely preposterous. I thought it was fake when it came out. I thought he must have gotten hacked. And then Melania followed it up with her meme coin. so that was kind of the less good parts of what Trump did this week in crypto. Yeah, I think this is like a, I don't want to sound too stodgy here, but I think this is probably a net negative for the whole industry. This is just going to be something that Elizabeth Warren and herd goons punch around on.

Yeah, Preston Byrne had a good piece on it in his blog about the risks. And there are risks, actually, to Trump. I mean, there's, okay, the SEC will probably not investigate Trump over this because he runs SEC. But and it's a meme coin. I guess in theory meme coins are somewhat immune maybe from securities laws. I don't know. Not financial advice at all. But yeah, I mean, that's what people think. Probably not true. You could always just sue Trump if you lost money on the meme coin. I mean, you know what? I guarantee you that's going to happen. I guarantee that it's going to happen. I mean, the plaintiff's bar is out of control. Yeah. So that was an enforced error. Not necessarily.

doesn't help. I had some choice quotes in a couple of news outlets for Mr. Trump, you know, so like we're not just shills over here. Okay. So he does it before he takes office. So I guess he's not technically the president. But I don't know, you sit back and all these people that are criticizing it. And I'm one of them. But all these people that are criticizing it from the perspective of the left, it's like, well, if Gary Gensler actually did his job for the last four years, then this actually wouldn't have happened. If you had clear rules of the road on what takes issue an asset, how it needs to be traded, how it should be underwritten, you just wouldn't be seeing this. So you go talk to Gary Gensler about it because his complete failure is what

has resulted in a lot of this. Yeah, totally right. I mean, Mamecoins have existed since I guess 2014 or so. And some have had real longevity, but I would say ultimate responsibility for the Mamecoin frenzy lies at the feet of Gensler for harassing anyone. trying to do anything other than create a meme coin. So that was Friday. Let's go into Monday. So Monday is the inauguration. SBR.

We forgot to mention the inauguration. Trump became president on Monday. He did do that. It was inside. I guess it was too cold. Zuckerberg was there. Bezos, Sundar. I mean, everyone bent the knee.

That's the craziest contrast. All the big tech guys. showed up. Yeah. Sam Altman. Sam Altman was there. Jeff Bezos' his wife was there.

That's right. That's the most polite thing we can say about that. And then we did not get a Ross Albright. I keep on saying Albright because did Trump call him Albright? It's all bricked, but I think Trump actually. Yeah, no relation to Madeline Albright.

Yeah. So he was not day one pardoned. And a lot of Bitcoiners went ballistic over this. but he was kind of within 24 hours he was pardoned and it wasn't committed it was a full pardon yeah and honestly I have a lot to say about this I don't know if I'm allowed to say some of the things that I want to say

well the Russell brick thing is is complicated on a lot of levels because I think the impression that a lot of people have about him so I guess to recap he was the you know he started the Silk Road drug and really anything marketplace it used Bitcoin. It was the first real application of Bitcoin. He was not actually convicted for murder.

That's right. That was not included in the charges. Well, no one was killed. No one was killed. Yeah, no one was killed. But he was, I think the story that a lot of people think is that he hired hitmen. And he's actually never tried for that. So he was, what were the actual charges that he was convicted to two life sentences for?

They were a lot. it was like, you know, facilitating narcotics trading. And actually they got him on a kingpin charge. That's right. The kingpin charge is like the one reserved for the big cartel bosses, which is like you have at least five people under you that are running a drug empire. Yeah. And that might have been the name of the book actually, right?

Kingpin. But that actually wasn't proven, by the way. They never proved that he had five subordinates. It was basically him. Yeah. And there was all sorts of ebbs and flows of that case. And there were FBI officers that actually went to jail over the, that because they were extorting him and stealing the Bitcoin.

Yeah, it's a very complicated case. There were two officers, investigating officers, that went to prison for six and eight years. Carl Force, four, I don't, whatever, his last name was Force. Mark's Force. Yeah. Call Mark Force the Fourth.

What a name. It's a great name. Honestly, great name. But he, he abdicated his duty. He extorted Ross. for the Bitcoins. He got admin access to the Silk Road somehow. And he was ex-so, so one of the guys just stole Bitcoins. And then Carl Force extorted Ross for Bitcoins. I think he said he would, you know,

release the information of the users or something. And then he posed, I think we're on the story, I think he posed as a hitman. Either he posed the hitman or he was like the putative target of the hitman. Or he suggested the hitman thing to Ross. Yeah. he was somehow involved in the like hitman narrative. But anyway, Ross was clearly under duress, not to justify the murder for hire charges at all, but the long and short of it is,

because the whole thing was so muddled, those charges didn't make it into the case at all. Yeah, he wasn't actually tried for that. So you might say, well, kind of morally justifies the sentence, but legally, it's kind of hard to justify a double life

with no parole sentence if he's a non-violent first-time offender. He's double life plus 40 years. So it's basically just infinite years. Infinity years. And not to mention, the actual vendors of the drugs on the Silk Road got less time.

Right. Nobody got a sentence as bad as him. So I think they were trying to make an example of him. I think the fact that he was using Bitcoin was aggravating. And I think it was an excessive sentence. And from a purely moral perspective, I think the existence of the Silk Road was a harm-reducing activity.

And you say that because you're basically cutting out the need to physically meet a drug dealer or that type of thing? Yeah, totally. So you're dematerializing the drug trade. Now, I'm not endorsing drugs at all. In fact, I get in trouble all the time because I'm against weed legalization. Yeah, Eric Vour, he's always given you a real hard time. He didn't like that. Yeah, he really didn't like that.

So you're taking the drug trade out of the hands of the cartels, so you're disempowering them. You're taking it online, so you're taking it out of the real world, out of meat space, where otherwise you would have gangs controlling the distribution of these drugs. And that's an inherently violent enterprise because you've turf wars, you know, you have to use violence to maintain your territory. And there were studies that showed that the Silk Road drugs were more pure, less dangerous. because there's the rating system. It's not like you can use Yelp to rate your drug dealer or anything like that. So I know this is more of a radical point,

but I think morally speaking, the existence of the Silk Road, probably actually on net reduced the amount of harm in the world. That's kind of my perspective on that. I guess that's kind of the libertarian perspective, right? I think that's a big part of the reason why the libertarian party has embraced Ross so much. And that was, you know, how Trump actually came to this. So he went to the libertarian presidential convention and he was actually trying to become their candidate as well. And this was a big part of his platform.

So wasn't just a promise to the crypto people to get them on their side. It was a promise to the libertarians as well. Yeah. And like at the end of the day, Ross served over 10 years in prison. And he spent a lot of time in solitary, I believe. Yeah, it sounds like it. I don't know why he did. So look, he served his time, man.

I don't think anyone benefits from keeping him in prison any longer. So I'm very, very happy that he's out. I think those very good of Trump to make that promise and follow through on it. So that was, I guess we can call that day one. What else happened here? So almost immediately after Trump takes office, Mark Uweda becomes the acting head of the SEC. So now you have actually only three commissioners at the top.

So you have Mark Uweda. You have Hester Purse and you still have Crenshaw, I believe, which is crazy. So she's actually allowed to continue, even though she's a lamb duck. So you have two Republican pro-Crypto people and you have Crenshaw who's just doing the bidding of Elizabeth Warren who actually has no backbone. Never mind that, though. Immediately, UADA comes out and puts together a task force on crypto to propose rulemaking and just market structure stuff. So it's just immediately to work.

I've never seen anything happen so fast. And Hester Purst is in charge of this thing. I mean, there's no one better to run this task force. Yeah, and Hester Purriss is in charge of it. So that is a day one thing. So all of a sudden, look, SEC is back in action. Then the SEC comes out, and I believe it's called the Sunshine Act. So they need to disclose when they're having closed-door meetings with SEC commissioners.

So they came out on like Tuesday and said, hey, on Thursday, there's a meeting, and we're going to discuss all sorts of policy things. They did a list where you couldn't really. tell what they're going to discuss. And I'm still not sure what they discussed other than Sab 121. It could be that there's more news coming. But we're recording this podcast at about 830 on Thursday night. And about two hours ago, the SEC announced that they have repealed Sab 121, staff

accounting bulletin 121. Just an incredible day. Yeah, unbelievable. What it has to per se, bye-bye, Sab 121, it's not been fun. So that's staff accounting bulletin. 122. 122 is my favorite staff accounting Bolton. So I'm going to give the background here.

So in, I think it was April of 2022, the SEC put out accounting guidance, which if that sounds weird to you that the SEC and not the FASB would be putting out accounting guidance, you're not alone. And this staff accounting Bolton 121 said that any bank in the United States or publicly traded business. And some would actually argue any broker-dealer. If you are holding customer crypto assets, you need to treat those customers' assets as if they were an asset of the bank or the financial institution for balance sheet purposes. So that basically means that if you're a bank, if you're one of these banks that wants to custody crypto, you need to hold capital against that client asset, which is positively perplexing to me.

And we've been renting and raving about this for, I guess, two years now, more than two years now. So it just makes it functionally impossible for a bank to be able to offer custody because you'd be offering your custody product at, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 basis points to custody of custody, but you'd need to hold like 500 basis points of regulatory capital against it. So it just makes the entire business model of custody non-economic for these banks. And of course, that's not how any other bank works with any other type of asset. So State Street holds probably, I don't know, $35 trillion worth of customer assets. They don't record it as an asset on the bank's own balance sheet. It's segregated customer account. So makes no sense.

The only way it makes sense is if you view this for what it really was, which is Gary Gensler doing Elizabeth Warren's bidding and trying to choke off the industry. So this would be a great way to shut down crypto in the United States, just make sure none of the banks, none of the broker dealers, none of the publicly traded companies that are engaging in custody services can actually enter that market. The co-henchman of this was a guy named Paul Munter, who is the chief accounting officer of the SEC until about three days ago. So he's also, see you later mode. He's gone. And then Hester Peres and Uaa come in and they immediately rescind it. I'm going to pause there, but I think it's impossible to overstate how big of a deal this is. if you just look at the financial services firms that want to be in the space that have not been

for the past three years. Yeah, I think this is actually the biggest news of the day. And there was a lot of big news today. It just changes everything. And it was such a bad rule. We've been complaining about it for so long. And just overnight, it's gone. How many times have I said, have you ever heard about Steph counting bulletin 121 to someone in our conversations?

It's like the bingo card. But it's crazy. I mean, if you want to run a well-lit industry, how do you do it without the banks? And they've wanted to play for a while. So what are you going to see now? You're going to see all of these banks push into market. And you're going to find out who's ready. Like Bank of New York Mellon is the worst kept secret in the world.

They're ready. They run on fireblocks. They're going to be in market here, custodying Bitcoin ETFs real fast. Yeah, I don't know about some of these other ones. I think we're going to live in a world here where M&A starts to pick up pretty aggressively in the custody category. It was also such a bad rule because it was counterproductive because it had systemic effects within crypto. It reduced the number of entities that could operate in custody. Ended up meaning that most of the basically Coinbase ended up being the dominant custodian.

And it didn't allow any of the most credible big custodian banks to get into the business. of custody and crypto, which they wanted to do. So from a safety or, you know, consumer protection standpoint, it was just a terrible rule. And it only makes sense if you understand that it's a campaign to squeeze crypto and keep it out of the more regulated, you know, financial institutions. So it was so, so bad. I can't believe Biden vetoed it. I mean, what an awful thing to do.

I guess that's the other thing. So bipartisan support to roll this thing back in the last Congress. So past the House, past the Senate, had a bunch of Democrats on board, and then Biden vetoed it. I mean, Biden clearly had no idea what was in this thing and just asked Elizabeth Warren and John Donenberg, her little lackey boy, what to do. And he vetoed it. But we don't have to worry about that anymore, I guess. I mean, the other thing that's infuriating about this is just how hypocritical. Gary Gensler is as a human being.

So he's making all these statements about, hey, all these exchanges, they're the exchange and the custodian. Like that can't work in traditional financial services. It's like, hey, Gary, that's because you don't allow the custodians to be custodians. So what do you expect to happen here? He's driving people to, you know,

basically had the net effect of pushing people into the likes of FTCS when they push this thing out. So that's a huge, huge win. I can't even describe how big of it when it is. The market doesn't really appreciate it because too obscure maybe. But that will be a very important long-term thing. And then on top of that, we've got the digital asset executive order. The strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology is what it's called.

Wow. Where do you want to even start here? I mean, there's a bunch of stuff. Yeah, I mean, basically it's promises made promises kept. There's so much in here. Probably the first thing. Let's talk about the SBR. So a lot of Bitcoiners had been expecting the Trump, not Congress.

They'd been expecting Trump to buy Bitcoin for a strategic reserve. We did not expect that, nor did we think it was a good idea, for that matter. But Trump does, he basically embraces the more reduced version of this, which is the stockpile. So he says the working group. So they set up a working group, which consists of basically every major financial regulator and agency except for the FDIC and the Fed, which is quite funny. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. They're on the naughty step.

They're not invited to the party. Everybody else is involved. So the working group shall evaluate the potential creation maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and proposed criteria for establishing such a stockpile potentially derived from cryptocurrencies the lawfully seized by the federal government through its lawful enforcement efforts. So we don't get the reserve. It doesn't really seem likely that would probably have to come legislatively. But we will probably get a stockpile.

So I guess they're just not going to sell the bitcoins. It's kind of about what we thought, right? Yeah, I mean, and that's also what Trump said he would do. So people hallucinated, I don't know why this happens. People just made up in their heads that Trump was going to do a strategic reserve and proactively buy a million bitcoins or however many. I mean, there was no sign ever that he was going to do that. Well, I think people got it confused with the Lummus Bill. I mean, the Lummus Bill is a real proposal.

it's just it has to pass Congress. And it's not, frankly, it's not the priority in Congress. Even from the pro-digital asset caucus, it's not the priority. So I don't understand why this happened, but Bitcoiners had this collective mania and this hallucination that Trump was actually going to install an SBR

and actually buy, I mean, you wouldn't even constitutionally being able to do that without asking Congress. Yeah. I thought it was incredibly far-fetched. I also thought it was a bad idea, but I just thought it wasn't going to happen. And we got exactly what Trump promised, which is the stockpile. So how could you possibly complain about that?

Stockpiles are great. You never know when you're going to do to stockpile. Yeah. I mean, so that is, that's good news. A lot of people are upset because they didn't get the SBR, but they set themselves up for disappointment by believing a fantasy. So I don't have any sympathy. There's a lot in here.

Otherwise. All right. So there's going to be a regulatory framework for digital assets. It's going to include stable coins. Touched on the stockpile. There's going to be this working group led by David Sachs. You'd mention who it's from. There's going to be, there's basically going to be an end of choke point.

I mean, I guess, skipped over something pretty massive there. Yeah. These are like my two pet causes back to back. So they're going to promote the dollar through the growth of, they say, lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stable coins. It's actually kind of interesting phrasing there. It kind of implies that there are unlawful and illegitimate dollar-backed stable coins. Well, there are. Yeah. And then they say they're going to protect and promote fair and open access to bank services for all law-abiding individual citizens and private sector entities alike.

Actually, I think that even felons should have access to banking. I don't think you should be deprived at banking because you go to jail. But we can leave that aside for now. This clause is a clear shot at choke point. We know that there's efforts underway to remediate choke point in the House, the Senate, the new leadership of the FDIC, but this is really nice to see in the executive order. So thank you for that. Absolutely incredible. And there's some other boilerplate in there. it's also very hostile to CBDCs. It wants to protect Americans from the risks of CBDCs, which threaten the stability of the financial system, apparently.

And so they're basically prohibiting the issuance or usage of a CBDC, which is also great. It also takes away this executive order that Biden put out there around crypto, which at the time, it was a little bit weird because I think he put out these EOs. It wasn't an overtly hostile EO. It ended up being very hostile. it must have been in coded language. But I guess the story for another time is we actually did a,

I guess it was a team's call with a couple members of the Biden White House at that point. And they had reached out to get our advice ostensibly. But I'd say it was a red alert type of situation when we got on the call, when we realized that, A, they had no idea what they were talking about. And B, they were just jumping to conclusions that the whole industry was a scam. Yeah, we regrettably took calls with the Biden admin a couple times. after they tried to pass the DAML thing, the mining excise tax. At that point, I said to myself, I will never talk to a member of this administration ever again.

Right. And that was it for me. But yeah, there were a few moments when we did talk to them, but obviously achieved nothing because they weren't interested in our feedback. No, they were just checking a box and they wanted to say that they had spoke to members of industry as they tried to kneecap the industry. And the other story, I guess, for maybe a later time, is you actually, you tried to talk to Warren at one point. Yeah, no, I did.

Well, I talked to her chief of staff. I don't remember if she was on the call, but I was put on a call with Warren's team. And they just read out to me all the tweets of mine about her that they didn't like. Just intimidation. So, hey, we want your advice on stuff. Get on here. And here's all the mean things you've said about our boss. Yeah, it was very bizarre. It was probably the most uncomfortable call I've been on in my life.

And we've heard that that has happened to a few other people in this industry, too. So it seems like a tactic for John Donnenberg and all the Elizabeth Warren staffers to just try to intimidate people in private industry. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know what they were really trying to achieve. It just annoyed me. And then I left the state. So, you know, lost my tax. lost my tax base. Elsewhere in this order, the time frame is 180 days of the order, that they have to come up with reports, regulatory legislative proposals. And yeah, they again double down on prohibiting CBDCs. So did we miss anything? I think that's basically it. I think that's it. I mean, there is actually, I think some of this SEC stuff could move quite a bit faster. And so the part that I found interesting, I think it was section 4B maybe or 2B,

within 30 days of this order, Treasury, Department of Justice and SEC and the heads of the working group, they're going to have to identify regulations, guidance, in orders that impact the sector. So they're going to have to like do that read out in 30 days. Within 60 days, they need to put out their recommendations. So I think some of this stuff will happen fast. I actually saw that and I said, all right, well, there's your timeline for Sab 12121 going away. And I tweeted it. I said, hey, I think this is the slowest this will go, you know, 30 to 60 days. And then it was like 12 minutes later, Sab 1221 was rescinded. So this administration is moving fast. Yeah, I mean, I've run out of things to ask for because they've done all the things that I wanted.

So it's kind of bittersweet. But I guess what I'm looking forward to now would be any legislative of developments, fingers crossed there. And then the choke point hearings mainly out of academic interest at this point because basically a choke point is gone. Yeah, I mean, I think all this body of work here hopefully culminates with a stable coin bill and a market structure bill and just clear rules of the road that are really hard to overturn if someone like Elizabeth Warren ever gets in charge of Senate banking again. Yeah, so actually next topic, Senator Cynthia Loemis announced the formation of the Senate Banking Committee on Digital Assets, which she will chair.

And her priorities are oversight over the financial regulators, so to make sure things like chokepoint can't happen again. And promoting bipartisan crypto legislation, the ones that we're talking about, market structure, stable coins, and the SBI. are pretty great development there huh i mean i think i think that's it on the political development side maybe there's something else that's wildly bullish that we're forgetting but that's a very very full week well yeah there is one more thing so you remember tornado cash of course so tornado cash was sanctioned so this open source piece of software was sanctioned on the o fact list a u.s court in texas has overturned that sanctioned basically saying that you cannot sanction open source software.

Wow, I actually had completely missed that. So that's a big deal. I mean, that is a win for the free speech side of the crypto industry, for sure, which is, I think, most of it. And we briefly mentioned this, but the Bank of America's CEO, Brian Moynihan said, the banking system will embrace crypto for payments should regulators allow it. I think it's understood now that regulations, leaders will allow it. Bank of America didn't cover themselves on glory on Twitter today though.

They had a kind of a bizarre tweet. Yeah. Well, they tweeted that they welcome conservatives and they would never close accounts for political reasons. That's not something that you tweet if you haven't done anything wrong. Yeah, I don't think they're telling the truth with that tweet. Yeah, it's actually quite well documented that they debanked. certain high profile conservatives. So that's,

that one's going to get community noted. Maybe they're just going to say, well, they weren't conservatives. There were people in the crypto industry and crypto startups. That's why we debank them. That's what they were.

In other news here, there was a story that, I guess the CME website for some period of time here listed some initiative to launch Solana and XRP futures. So I don't know if it's actually still up here, but I wouldn't be shocked if this is true. I think this probably is true. I think

CME is going to launch Solana and XRP futures. I think you're probably going to end up getting a Solana and an XRP ETF this year. Yeah, I think so. Bitwise also filed for a Dochecoin ETF. So maybe we got that one too. Yeah. Why not? Absolutely crazy. It's all happening, man it's kind of it's such a strange feeling to be fighting against the tide for so long and then just to have it break and just immediately all of the bad things have been lifted yeah i mean after 591 episodes of this podcast we just logged on and won forever and it's just it's such a good thing for the united states digital asset industry if you just think about how many jobs have been stymied. You know, even just think about like some of the banks that started building out their

custody practice and then just had to let go of a bunch of the people and all the startups that haven't been started just because of this regulatory ambiguity. It's just, it's going to be great. It's going to be great to see people growing and, you know, hiring more people, starting more companies. I think it's a terrific development. Yeah, you know who I want to take a pot shot out right now is the people that didn't believe in America and they left. you know they offshoreed their I mean if you're an entrepreneur building in defy I get it that's pretty pretty defensible but if you just chose to leave because you thought you know America was doomed and uh the future of crypto is in Hong Kong or Singapore or something you're wrong but you know it's

okay you can come back we will welcome you back we will welcome you back um well I think is that it for the week yeah man I feel like I need a sick or something. Just crazy. I mean, at least you're back in the warm climate right now. It is very, very cold here in Boston. Yeah, I, man, Chicago almost killed me. The river froze.

I couldn't believe it was throat. The lake? Yeah. It was, I've never seen something like that. You could have walked across the river. I've never experienced temperatures like that. I think it was the coldest day in five years in Chicago. And that was the day that was the day.

we happen to be there. It's been super cold in Boston too, but as I've told you, I built a little outdoor skating rink in my backyard. So we got activities for all seasons. When you describe that to me, I was like, it's probably like a puddle or something. It's actually a full-fledged rig. I was very impressed. I went ham on that rink. I have a proper NHL rank in my backyard right now. It's not as bad as though. Yeah, I was actually very shocked at your level of DIY skill on the ring. I'm a handy guy, I guess. But yeah, someone did ask me if the turkeys have been visiting. And, you know, not initially, but there was a lot of turkey feces on it this morning, unfortunately.

You know, the other big piece of news that we didn't talk about is the commanders are in the NFC championship. Oh, what a game that was, huh? Yeah. I mean, I gave us no chance to get the lions and we just crushed them. It's because your quarterback is training in virtual reality, apparently. I actually didn't know this. Is that true? Yeah, they said that he spends, is it three days a week, one and a half hours a pop in a VR headset doing simulations of like, you know, opposing defenses or something. I mean, that's just next level stuff. Other QBs, they don't have that kind of technology.

No, you can tell that he seems unflappable. He's just operating on a complete different plane of existence. I mean, he just leveled up. be a tough one this weekend, but stranger things have happened. I mean, look, we beat the Eagles in the regular season, so I could see us winning TBD, and then unfortunately the chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl because that's what the NFL wants. I sure hope not.

Yeah, because then, you know, is Brady even the best of all time? Brady's got seven rings. Talk to me when Mahomes has six. Okay, I'll revisit this conversation in three years. I hope not. All right, I think that's it for the week. Everybody have a great weekend. Just everybody enjoy.

This is, you know, these are the good times right now. Everybody should just take a step back, touch grass if it's not snowing and ice where you live, and just enjoy what is happening right now because this is about to be a very exciting next couple of years for this industry. A lot of new things getting started. So have a safe and healthy weekend, and we will see you all. Thank you.