On The Brink with Castle Island - Weekly Roundup 07/18/25 (GENIUS is Law, Clarity passes, narrow banking and GENIUS) (EP.647)

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  The Coldplay concert incident It's Crypto Week in Washington Talos acquires Coin Metrics Do you need an MTL to run a fantasy football league? GENIUS Act is law pending Trump's signature Clarity Act passes the House Pump.fun ICO Fairshake raises $141m Grayscale is preparing for an IPO Adam Back's Bitcoin access vehicle Polymarket beats the allegations Is GENIUS creating a narrow bank system?  Governor Waller's comments on stablecoins and banks

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 is 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, IG $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. Have you been to any cold play concerts lately? I have been to Coldplay concerts, yes, but not lately. I am a huge Coldplay fan, actually. I actually really enjoy Coldplay.

It seems like that's not the most popular opinion to have, but you've been to a concert, right? They're phenomenal. I adore Coldplay, especially their parachutes through X and Y era, and then I think their Golden Age ended with Viva Lveda, and everything thereafter I didn't like. But the 1998 through 2003 era of Coldplay was generational. Sensational.

Yeah, they had quite a run, quite a run. And I would say, I mean, they put so much money into the live shows. They do such a good job. Very good. I mean, I was actually thinking about this today. Who are the most prolific performers? Like people that have no need to do more gigs in concerts, but just kept going. And I think Coldplay is one of those bands.

Coldplay is up there. Bruce Springsteen is another one. he just puts on a ridiculous show. He's so good. He's like 70. My other nominees for that are Elton John. I think he might have retired now maybe, but he kept going. Unlimited money.

Didn't need to do more gigs. Kept doing it. Billy Joel as well. And U2. I kind of used to be a YouTube fan, not really anymore. They also were very, like these are, it's just they just do it for the love of the game. Yeah, U2 is definitely in that category. Pearl Jam.

Have you ever seen Pearl Jam? I haven't regrettably. The chili peppers as well. Chili peppers, I've seen them. Unbelievable. Really good show, chili peppers. So was there an incident at a Coldplay concert? Is that right?

Yeah, there was this guy who is the CEO of a venture-backed startup who was on the kiss cam and was not on the kiss cam with his wife and he was on the kiss cam with the head of HR at his company. And they didn't handle it well. They both kind of just ran away from the kiss cam. Yeah, I mean, it looked like he literally ducked under a table or something. He did, yeah. And I think the concert was, was it at Fenway Park? Yeah, in Boston.

So Chris Martin clocked this immediately, which is very funny that he figured it out. And then he was actually, he was completely right. Yeah, tough look. They were being suspicious. There's a polymarket on whether or not this guy is going to be the CEO of his company by this time next week. And 43% chance on polymarket that he's out. So this company is called Astronomer. This is not an astronomy-related company, right?

It's some kind of AI company or data or something. Some data business. It looks like I'd never heard of it, but it looks like a pretty big company that raised a bunch of money. It's the best place to run Apache Airflow, apparently. So somebody with data pipelines, nothing to do with the planets. He's going to wish that he didn't go to that Coldplay concert. So the thing is, couldn't they have just played it cool and then no one would have raised an eyebrow at all?

Yeah, I think the answer to that is most assuredly, yes. I think the way they handled themselves in that situation has a lot to do with the situation that we're in right now. Because his wife's not watching the Cole Play Kiss Cam live feed, right? No. So no one would have said anything if they had just been normal. It's tough. It is a tough look, yeah. I think this is the second.

time we've talked about Coldplay on this on this show i don't know what was the other time i don't know i think we're just talking about great live bands and cold play came up i do remember talking about them i think speed and sound speed of what is what's the album rush of blood to the head and x and y is maybe the best two album sequence in any musician's career you're deeper in it than i am but what was the double album that they released is that x and y double i i don't think know what a double album means. They had like old school. Twice the amount of songs.

I don't know. But it was very good. And then they changed their sound. And it was very sad and unfortunate. And it became bad. I guess people are always saying that the bands that you listen to when you're growing up in high school and college, they're the ones that stay with you,

I'd say that's the case for me. I don't really, I don't even think I've listened to their latest stuff. I listen to it still. and I can't. And it's just, it's so bad. And I'm, I don't get it. Like, why is it with most artists that they have a five to 10 year period of productivity

and then 20 years of just nonsense? Why? That is true. Yeah. It's the same for painters, they say. Yeah, I think that might be like a universal theorem. Like, you have five years of being creative and good and then you're done. Like, that's it.

I don't think it applies to venture, because if you look at it, at like a Mike Moritz or Fred Wilson, it's a 30-year run, each of them, of just cranking out hits. That's true, because maybe it doesn't require creativity, just like the nuts and bolts of doing deals. I guess there's such a, you know, a network effect and path dependency in the venture ecosystem. Yeah, very momentum driven. I mean, with founders as well, you have founders that have seven startups in a row, too. That's true. I think you can have real launch. longevity is a founder too. Yeah, I think the second time founders are oftentimes better than the first time founders.

So that's your Coldplay discussion for the week. Shall we dive into some deals before we do crypto week? Yeah, before we do, I guess just in Castle Island content, Nikiel from Predicate appeared on the show this week with Wyatt. That was a good episode. Predica is a very, very cool tool. We're familiar with Nikiel and he lives up in the Boston area. But check out that episode if you want to go deeper on.

What would you call it compliant defy? Ways to be more compliant in the defy ecosystem. We're going to need that. We're going to need that pending legislation here. Well, yeah, let's hop into the deals now. First one's a big one. So we are really excited to announce that Coin Metrics, which is a company we've been involved in.

You started as an open source data project, later became an actual company. They're the leading crypto data provider, network data, market data. been acquired by Talos, which is, of course, the institutional digital asset trading platform, OMS, EMS, just a huge deal and really, really excited about this one. I think the combination of the data from the coin metric side and the trading technology from the Talos side just makes the mix for just an awesome company.

So we couldn't be more excited about this deal. Yeah, very, very happy. You know, congrats at Tim and Katie on the coin metric side, Anton Ethan on the Talos side. You know, this is obviously a company we've been involved in literally since the start. Started as an open source data project that I started in my dorm room in Edinburgh when I was in business school. Then we basically incubated the company out of our office in Kendall. And 2018 brought on Tim. Tim's been running it ever since.

It's been a very long journey. But I think it landed in a great, great spot at Talos. Yeah, I couldn't be more excited about this. I mean, you look at the traditional financial services world and the convergence of data businesses and trading technology businesses. You look at IHS market, trade web, market access. This is how you make these companies really big. So combination of these things together, I think is going to be a home run.

I guess, you know, we're going to keep on going here. We were doing the coin metrics, metrics minute. We'll do the Talos minute. They need us to mop the floors in the office. We're going to do that. So we are all in on this combination. Yeah, I mean, we're obviously, you know, we've been involved in Talos since the start too.

So the journey is not ending. But yeah, I think Talos is a name. It's kind of like a quiet behemoth in the crypto space. You don't hear about them that much, but quietly growing, making a ton of acquisitions, and really the only game in town for what they do, actually. Yeah, completely.

So expect to hear more about, Talos and Coin Metrics on this show as always, but congrats again to everyone there. Second one up here, Spico, which is a cool name. This is a tokenized money market fund platform. They raised $22 million from index ventures and White Star. Then we have Football. Fund, their Web3 fantasy football app. They raised $2 million from Sixth Man and Z Prime Capital. That's pretty interesting. What was that other football one that we talked about a couple of years ago on the show? I like the conversion. versions of football and crypto.

Yeah, I've heard now about fantasy football leagues actually tokenizing interests in the league as a way to compliantly raise from people that are like wagering, I guess, in their fantasy football leagues. So there's this interesting intersection now tokenization and fantasy football. I play in a fantasy football league with a bunch of guys from college. and for about the past seven years have been saying, why don't we just all pay in and put the kitty in Bitcoin, and then at the end we'll just divide the Bitcoin.

And in most years, that would have been a great decision, but no one ever wants to do it. That's a shame. I'm guessing they're not. I'm guessing people are not doing it compliantly with the pay-ins and it's a custodial service. They're not getting the MTRs to do that. Well, isn't this,

is what Venmo is for? Isn't this what everyone just uses Venmo for? I've done a fantasy football league for the last decade with my college friends and I would say my average placement in that league is second to last. Okay. But never last. Have you ever wanted it? I make sure I don't get no, I'm not even close. So I just kind of limp along. I make sure I don't get dead last and that's the best that I can do. Sometimes the punishment for dead last is pretty punitive. So as long as you don't want. Yeah, that's my objective every year, not literal last place. You end up with a placard around your neck at an intersection, just holding a sign that says I'm a dope or something. Yeah, it's unacceptable. So I will pick my team every week. Make sure to do that. If I do that,

I can scrape not last. I need to go a little bit deeper. We're coming up on training camp here, a couple weeks. Yeah, it's not looking good for, I guess we're called the commanders now. We're going to lose Tyri McLaurin is the word. I saw that. He's rumored to be looking at the Patriots. It's devastating for us actually. He's their only good wide receiver. So we'll take him. Could use the help. Next up we have Dakota stable coin banking platform. They raised 12.5 million from a coin fund, sixth man again and DCG. Then it's function, which is a Bitcoin DFI protocol. They raised $10 million from Galaxy Digital and Antalpha Ventures. Then we have two prime. they're an SEC registered investment advisor

and digital asset lender. There is 20 million from Mara Holdings and Susquehanna. Remix, which is a Web3 gaming platform, raised 5 million from archetype, coin-based ventures, and variant. Then you have XMtP, though, the decentralized encrypted messaging network. There is 21 million from USB,

A16Z crypto, and Lightspeed Faction. And the last one is Block Sky, which is a blockchain-based travel platform. They raise $16 million from United Airlines Ventures, Lightspeed faction and others. Congrats to Black Sky. That was the first time we've heard from United Airlines ventures on the show. I didn't even know United Airlines had a venture program. I haven't been on United Airlines in

years. Someone was telling me, I commute in sometimes with a guy that invests in airline companies, and he was telling me that United Airlines is actually a really good airline these days. So JetBlue Ventures has done deals. I know I've read a JetBlue Ventures deal on this show. Yeah, they've done a deal that we've mentioned. But apparently JetBlue doesn't get the customer satisfaction that United does, which is surprising because they're terrible for a while. I can't think of one of those budget airlines that I enjoy. I couldn't name one.

Oh, you don't like JetBlue? I used to. I went and I got the top status and then I went for America and got the top status. Now I'm actually working on Delta because I'm sick of those others. All right. Yeah. All right, well, we got to hop into the news here, but should we leave the votes until the end? Or how do you want to do this?

It's crypto week, but the votes are happening right now. Is this this happening in real time? We're voting on the bills. Yeah, I guess maybe we just hop into it. And then if we're still recording here, we can come back to it. But maybe let's set the table a little bit. So there's been a bunch of... Yeah, actually, Justin, I'm reading Twitter.

it looks like the house is going to pass clarity, I think. Absolutely awesome, huh? And Genius, I think we've sort of like already accepted that that's passing. Well, clarity. Yeah, let's maybe back up for those who have not been following this tick by tick this week. There's been a lot of procedural motions in the house. I really wish I did better in APGov. I just didn't apply myself.

They didn't cover this. I did APGov. They didn't cover this at all. I don't remember learning any of this. I mean, there's so much esoteric stuff in Washington, and we follow it pretty closely, and it's still completely inscrutable to us. Yeah. So, you know, there was, let's set the table. So it's crypto week in the House of Representatives.

There was an attempt to take all three of these bills, which is the Genius Act, which is the Stablecoin bill, the Clarity Act, which is market structure, the House version of market structure, I should say. and then the anti-CBDC bill and just bundle them up and move them forward together. That didn't work. So the House Freedom Caucus said no to that. And it looks like a compromise was reached such that they took genius and clarity. They separated them. There was a further attempt to take CBDC, anti-CBDC and attach that to, I think, clarity. That got kiboshed.

And so now the anti-CBDC bill is going to be put on the NDAA, which I believe is the National Defense Authorization Act. So that's where the CBDC thing's going. Then today there is a vote as we speak on clarity. So in order, what's going to happen is there'll be a House vote on clarity, market structure, and then there will be a vote on Genius, which should happen here in the next 25 minutes, it looks like, then CBDC. And Genius has already passed the Senate.

Clarity has not. Clarity will have to go back to the Senate. if Genius passes the House, that's getting signed tomorrow by the president. It looks like they've already scheduled. I think it's a 2.30 signing ceremony at the White House tomorrow on Genius. So hopefully they're not counting their chickens before they hatch. But like I said, Genius is being voted on, I think, right now as we speak. So, you know, the other interesting development was the Senate was supposed to release their market structure wording this week.

They've decided to hold off. So clarity gets through. It looks like it's currently 291 to 133 with 77 Democrats supporting. Let's see what the final numbers look like. I wonder if this puts a little bit of pressure on the Senate to not diverge too far from the Clarity Act here with their market structure wording. So, yeah, I mean, this is a stunning reversal. Crypto Week started off really bad with all three bills, not progressing. House Freedom Caucus

didn't like they were upset they didn't like the CBDC Here's my question The anti-CBDC language I saw Seems to ban Also Bank deposits held at the Federal Reserve

If you read it Because it basically says You can't have a digital Deposit with the Fed can't issue digital liabilities Which is how the banking system works. So maybe someone smarter than me has written out a better definition that delineates a

CBDC from the ordinary way that the Fed works. But that's something I'm a little worried about, actually. That's interesting. Yeah, I was not aware of that. Okay, final tally here, 294 to 134, 78 Democrats voted for the bill, 134 Democrats voted against the bill. Very strong. seven more Democrats voted for market structure this time versus fit 21 which passed during the last Congress

Now when clarity goes to the Senate is that a 60 voter or a 51 voter? This is again where I wish the AP gov was a little bit more effective. I think you need to get to 60 votes to prevent the filibuster And because there's some bills that you can pass with a simple majority and some that you can't and I don't know the difference. Yeah, you need a, I think budget-related bills and stuff pertaining to not defaulting on the debt can go a simple majority. We might need someone who's really deep in government to come on and just explain this to us. So I guess TLDR, it looks like we're definitely getting genius. Clarity seems to be sailing through.

We'll see what happens in the Senate, and there will probably be some anti-CBDC language tacked on somewhere. Well, I think now we're going to see what we can get done in the Senate here on market structure. You know, Haggerty's been great. Tim Scott's been great. Lammis has been great. We hope that Jellibrand can rally enough Democrat support to get market structure done. That would be a huge accomplishment. Yeah, without a doubt.

I mean, I was hoping for genius. I was not actually that optimistic around clarity. So I think it would be absolutely huge if it does pass. All right. So maybe we'll have some more news later in the episode here. But why don't we hop into some other news. news of the week. Wow, ICOs are back, huh? Pump.com. Dot fund raised $600 million on Saturday in a public ICO. They sold out in 12 minutes. Token's been chopping around a little bit. It's still trading.

It looks like about 35% above the ICO valuation of $4 billion. Yeah, just a colossal one. No idea what's going to happen there. Apparently, they're already buying back the token. So it seems to be doing pretty well. on the political front, fair shake raised 141 ahead of the midterms have to imagine that is influencing some of the Democrats voting on these bills. I mean, I would think so, don't you think it fair shake getting that number out there publicly, although I guess it's all public information anyway, but the fact that that was picked up as a new story this week, maybe a little bit of a warning shot to some folks that are on the fence

here on market structure. Yeah, I think so. It's kind of IPO season as well. gray scale is preparing for an IPO reportedly. Yeah, that'll be a big one, huh? So gray scale is the asset management arm of digital currency group. One of the, if not, the largest crypto asset managers out there by AUM, I think them and bitwise, one too.

Yeah. There's also a ton of these public access vehicles for Bitcoin and others. There's a new one called Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company. This is led by Adam back with Blockstream. They're going to go public via SPAC with Canter. They're being seated with 25,000 BTC from founding shareholders, I guess. A lot of that is Adam's back stash. Pretty interesting.

So this is Cantor Equity Partners 1. It looks like is Jack Mallors is Cantor Equity Partners 2 or something? Yeah, they already did one with Jack, yeah. But I don't think that's been approved as a D-SPAC yet. So, I don't know, more to come on this, but maybe some of these public treasury companies are buying because the price of Bitcoin has just been running this week. Yeah, there's a lot of these. There's Game Square. They're a already publicly listed, media and entertainment company.

They completed a $70 million offering with the intention of buying ETH. There is a microcop company called Bit Origin. They claim that they've secured 500 million to. run a doge coin accumulation strategy. Why not? Dogecoin accumulation strategy? Yeah. Why not? You know, we're just going to go down the list. Every coin, every stock market, we need thousands of these. You know what I really wish people would stop doing is over intellectualizing this trade. I mean, I don't even understand the non-intellectual version of the trade.

People are just talking about this being like the future of capital markets. It's like, guys, we get it. You buy it at a slight discount to NAV and you just hope that retail bids it up. It's not rocket science here. What is the historical analog? Is there one public vehicles to buy basically a commodity? I can't think of anything that's like this. No, I can't think of one either because it's not, it's not at all like a gold mining stock.

I don't think there's been this attempt before. I mean, someone should try it with tungsten. Yeah, like with gold, there are businesses. You buy some mineral rights, you know, you may be, there's like an element of luck in there because you buy a junior gold miner, you do some exploration. Like, you might find some gold.

So there's like some business operations going on. With most of these, it's just, it's just you're just buying the asset and that's it. You know, the interesting thing, of course, is that you can basically service Bitcoin up to people that are buying converts and prefers and, you know, the fact that there's volatility here inherent at the issuer level and that at the underlying asset level creates just a lot of interesting trading opportunities and, you know, the equity gets an option chain.

So I get it. I mean, you're basically just, giving Bitcoin access and Bitcoin volatility to different types of investors. There was actually a podcast with Preston Pish. He had Jim Chanos on with Pierre Rochard. Did you listen to that? No. So they were arguing about the microstriestri, very civilly arguing, I might add,

about the micro strategy phenomenon. And I guess Chanos is long Bitcoin short MSTR. And Rochard was making the point that this premium. could actually persist for a while. Yeah, that's like the same people that thought GBDC would be at a premium forever. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I guess there's some structural differences there, but yeah, I tend to think that these things will eventually trade a discount.

But the thing is, those convergence trades, they can just go the wrong way on you. They can just go the wrong way on you. I wouldn't want to be in Chanos's seat right now. It sounds like he doesn't have a huge position. on relative to his total portfolio, but, you know, the cost to be short is, it could be very large. Yeah, I mean, we've been saying this for a while now that the trade is determining how much BTC or other assets. These things are going to scoop up. ETH seems to be the, the flavor of the day. And then figuring out when, you know, the unwind happens and how and how fast and is it a cascade,

is it gentle? That's still the trade. It seems like things. are going well, but it's just not going to be like that forever. Yeah, I totally agree with that one. All right, so here's some DOJ and CFTC news. Those agencies have ended their probe into polymarket this week. Do you remember when CEO Shane Copeland came under scrutiny? I think it was right before the election, and he was, would they like barge into his house and take his cell phone or something?

Yeah, like a dawn raid, I think, with like SWAT team or something. So I guess you don't always get the clear that they're not investigating you anymore, but apparently that's just what happened here. Yeah, so good for Shane. It looks like he's in the clear now, got his devices back, got his phone back. I wonder if, so there's just no investigation, I guess, now with regards to the geo-blocking. Do you think that's what it was? Was that actually confirmed? No, we don't really know much about it. I suspect that's what it was. But yeah, Polymarket looks to be in the clear.

City Group CEO Jane Fraser said they were looking at launching their own stable coin as well as tokenized deposits. I mean, basically every major bank now has said they're exploring, launching a stable coin by themselves or as part of a consortium. Kind of new is going to be this way once Sab 121 won away and once Genius. started to come closer, which, by the way, I think it just passed the house. It looks like Hakeem Jeffries and Minority Whip, Catherine Clark, are apparently a yes on this as well, which is awesome. That's genius or that's clarity? That's genius.

So genius, it looks like has enough votes right now as we speak. I think they're still voting, but we're going to have a signing ceremony on the stablecoin bill. What awesome news. That's great. I mean, that's the first ever pro-crypto piece of legislation in history. And so back to what you were saying on Citigroup, yeah, everyone's going to come in now. My question is, what's up with these tokenized deposits? Is anyone asking for these things?

Did you see Maxine Waters held up a copy of a report in the House yesterday, which was it was JPM's report on Conexas about cross-border payments? basically saying you could run CBDCs on Kinexas. It's their private blockchain thing. Miss that. Yeah, I don't understand what her point was. It's like you don't need stable coins. You can do private blockchain and tokenized deposits.

Very strange. Fair to say that Maxine Waters has lost her fastball based on what I'm seeing. It was very surreal to see her holding up like a sell side report on that. I just I don't think tokenized deposits are anywhere near as attractive as stable coin from an interoperability perspective and a risk perspective. No, I don't think they make any sense at all. If you're trying to move a dollar, you'd want to do it in the stable coin that's fungible. These tokenized deposits won't trade at parity just based on the credit risk. So, I mean, maybe they would if they had FDIC insurance up to 250K, but you're moving 300K of a tokenized deposit.

it's just not going to work. And I think if you zoom out on genius, it is a seismic change in the structure of the U.S. banking system because we are basically going to a narrow bank system is what I think is happening. And it started in 2023 with SVB with the recognition that bank runs can happen instantly. They can happen way faster than you think. You know, on Thursday, March 8th, 2023, SVB had a hundred hundred and we have a hundred and $100 billion in withdrawal requests in one day.

Wow. 100 billion. So you've never seen anything that fast. So now there's a recognition, okay, unsecured deposits, non-insured deposits are not safe. Everybody started going to fintechs that hold money market funds. So, you know, commercial bank deposits not considered safe. Okay, let's go to money funds. Now you have basically legislation ratifying effectively what are token.

money funds, a full reserve system, they are as interoperable as dollar, commercial bank dollars for the first time. So that's authorizing a narrow banking system. The stablecoin issuers, we heard it from Chris Waller, are going to hold reserves of the Fed directly. Yeah. So a stable coin issuer is effectively, I don't know, am I getting trouble for saying this, an outsource CBDC, it's a private sector CBDC, they're tokenizing the safest thing in the world, which is reserves of the Fed effectively or tokenizing, you know, U.S. Treasuries, commercial banks, those deposits are becoming irrelevant. So we're moving into a narrow banking system.

That's what's happening. Well, I think it also comes in the, you also have to frame the other lines of business that the banks are losing at or getting out of post-d-Frank. And so look at the largest market makers out there, you know, liquidity provision. The Jane Streets, the virtues of the world have gained such tremendous share versus the banks over a 10-year time period. Then look at the LBO market. Like who's financing these big LBO deals? It's the Apollos of the world.

It's not the banks through syndication anymore. So a lot of things that the banks used to do, I think, are getting chipped away. And it seems like prime brokerage is also in that category with the hidden road type business models emerging, these non-bank primes that are gaining share. I mean, even mortgage and small business lending is non-bank lenders or gaining share. So I don't even know what banks do anymore, to be honest with you. And I want to read some comments from Chris Waller that he said in his speech, Fed Governor. I've never heard a Fed Governor be this callous with regards to commercial banks before.

He says, talking about stablecoins are just a new method for making a payment. It's going to open up completely different ways of making payments. they're fast 24-7-365 they're just a dollar representation you have to have them fully backed there's no banking credit backing it up it's just pure liquid assets treasuries or reserves in the fed and the whole idea for me is that this is going to introduce competition and payments it's going to make cross-border payments so much easier it's going to make them faster and cheaper and that's the goal for me as a free market economist i want competition and payments to drive down the cost for households consumers and businesses. That's it. Banks have to compete. Sorry, that's your job. It's not my job to protect

profits of individual firms. But I want a level playing field. If you're going to enter a stable coin, let the banks on it too, go compete, see what happens. So he's basically saying stablecoins are going to erode a huge part. I mean, they're basically disintermediate commercial banks. Payments are going to move out of the banking space. And it's going to hurt the banks. So they're going to have to adapt, they're going to have to issue stablecoins. They're going to have to compete. There's a lot of things they can compete on. Although it does seem like they're just going to make it more difficult for these fintechs, which in some ways, I think, will make stablecoins more appetizing. So did you see that J.P. Morgan is going to start explicitly charging fintechs for access to their

customer data? So this is the plaids of the world. I think this is just going to drive fintech firms away from FBO accounts to establish cash accounts via stable. coins on public blockchains. Why do you need an FBO account if you can run a cash infrastructure on a stable coin? And eventually you could potentially run securities infrastructure on public blockchains once we get a market structure bill. So I don't think we need the banks for that either. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how the banks adopt. I think and, you know, now with new banking charters, you know, are available apparently, you know, the OCC. and FDIC Open for Business on new banking charters.

There's going to be more competition and banking. I'm very pro that. I've always thought, I mean, since Dodd-Frank, there's been not enough competition and banking. Basically no banking charters granted. So it's a very, very exciting time. If you're a student of free banking or banking history, we're at a real inflection point right now.

Yeah, we really are. Okay, it looks like we have an updated vote tally here. there's only three votes outstanding. There's 307 yes votes for the stable coin bill, 205 Republicans and 102 Democrats. This is a bipartisan compromise slash victory here. Yeah, huge win. One of the most momentous days in the history of crypto,

actually, in my opinion, following the ETF approval day. I think we, you know, pat ourselves on the back as an industry. here. There's a lot of hard work that went into this. Yeah, really. You know, credit to fair shake, stand with crypto, all the lobbyists in Washington. I know people in D.C. like to complain that crypto is like polluting Washington or whatever, but I see it as just standing up for our interests. And for our young industry, what we've been able to do in Washington is really remarkable. Yeah, the narrative of crypto is just pushing for deregulation. It's now we're pushing for for regulation. Two bills, please. Yeah, and it's weird that Democrats were against genius in

particular because that actually regulates and establishes guardrails around stable coins that were basically completely unregulated or regulated by the states on a patchwork basis. I always thought they should be in favor of that. So it's really strange to me that they were not. All right, some odds and ends this week. Bitwise put out a great key to crypto market review. We'll put that in our newsletter, but recommend everyone check that out. They always have great content over there. Bitwas. And that actually might be it for the week. So busy week. Live bill passing during the podcast, huh? Well done, everybody. Pireself on the back. Clarity is going to be TBD that's going to go to the Senate. I've been told by my Washington people,

it will be, quote, messy. We're working on a couple senators for the podcast coming up, by the way. I don't think I've told you this. But I didn't know that. Yeah, we've got some irons in the fire there, trying to get some senators on the pod talk about market structure any member of congress is welcome on the show either party at any time yeah and shout out to tom emmer the whip did a great job whip in votes he didn't just whip uh republicans he whipped a bunch of democrats too yeah seriously well done all right everyone that is it for the week everybody have a safe and healthy weekend and we'll see you on monday