On The Brink with Castle Island - Weekly Roundup 09/13/24 (Trump-Harris debate, World Liberty Fi, Stablecoins in EM) (EP.560)

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Matt and Nic return for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  We review the Trump-Harris debate Matt's new wildlife problems Nic's birthday party Trump doubles down on World Liberty Financial The Castle Island stablecoins whitepaper is out! Our reactions to the emerging markets stablecoin report TZero gets approval to trade tokenized securities Coinbase's cbBTC North Carolina bans CBDCs Something is happening to Friend Tech Circle is moving their HQ to NYC Content mentioned: Castle Island, Visa, and BH Digital, Stablecoins: The Emerging Market Story Sponsor notes: Withum's Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Team specializes in crypto-assets, offering accounting, tax and advisory solutions to fortify trust in a dynamic industry. Contact them today to get started. - withum.com/crypto Coin Metrics state of the network: A Primer on Blockchain Network Health: Exploring key metrics to gauge network health and centralization in PoW and PoS blockchains

Brought down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated. The Federal Government Loans American International Group, AIG, $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 Concentive Easing. You've printed a couple trillion dollars, and all of a sudden, people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called a Bitcoin. Bitcoin.

Welcome to On the Brink. I'm Matt Walsh. And I'm Nick Carter. And this episode is brought to you by Witham. So if you listen to this show, you know that we take tax accounting and auditing very seriously. And when it comes to digital assets, building trust in relationships with counterparties like custodians, brokerages, and even regulators is critically important. And that's where Witham comes in. They're a top 25 accounting tax and advisory firm. They have a team of professionals that is dedicated to the digital. asset and blockchain industry, and they assist some of the highest profile companies in the industry with things like tax advisory, accounting for token sales, stable coin audits, financial statement audits, and much, much more. They're not just accountants, they're

crypto enthusiasts, and they are the first accounting firm to build out a full-scale digital asset practice. Witham is passionate about the space. They're passionate about helping your company. So head over to witham.com slash crypto to learn more. Your startup in this ecosystem, you've got to be calling Witham. So we have an episode on crypto accounting this week on the On the Brink podcast. Yes, that's right. So I can't tell you who it is, but it has to do with proof of reserves. I love proving reserves.

We have a couple in the queue, actually, on the topic of compliance and things like that. Very pertinent topic. Yeah, you know, not a lot of podcasts are going to teach you about crypto accounting. but we will. Well, you better be doing it right. So if you're a company that doesn't have a good audit and accounting firm, that is a major league risk. For sure.

Well, I don't know. The debate happened this week. Did you watch the debate? Did not. Did not. Was a little busy. Saw the polymarket. It's not looking good.

I watched 10 minutes of the debate. I actually can't. I don't know. Political debates just give me the hebie-jeebies. I can't sit through them. Yeah, I don't know. I watched the first one, but is there ever going to be a more impactful one than that one? Yeah, that was the most memorable debate ever. When I was in high school, they had Bush Gore in Boston. I don't know why they did it in Boston.

It's not like Massachusetts is a swing state, but they had it at UMass Boston, which was pretty close to my high school. And, you know, that was the one where Al Gore said something about putting social security in a lockbox. and then Saturday Night Live was lampooning the lockbox thing. Really? Yeah. That doesn't seem like a gaff or anything. No, simpler times, though. It was back when debates were very civil.

So the only thing I know about this debate is that Trump said that immigrants are eating cats and ducks, I think. Yeah, pets, cats, and waterfowl. It doesn't sound good. No, keep... I don't have any pets. That's what I do. If an immigrant wants to come over and eat my turkeys in my backyard, I'm, I'm here for that. They're welcome. They're more than welcome to. If we have plenty of turkeys, it could feed an entire immigrant community.

I've befriended a gecko that lives in my garage. Oh, you have a gecko? That's the wildlife news on my side. There is a gecko, and I leave at little offerings now, because I'm worried, because it's very small. It's like a baby gecko, and I'm worried it can't feed itself. and so I will like feed the gecko now. I'm hoping for it to become tame and eventually become my pet. Oh, that's good. Yeah, how big is the gecko?

It's like an inch and a half. It's tiny. It's baby gecko. I haven't told you this, but I'm having another wildlife issue relative to chipmunks. Okay. So I've got chipmunks and some of them borrowed into the foundation of my house and are entering the basement. Really? Yeah.

It all is something new with you? Well, because I live in a home that was built, like, in the Pilgrim era, and it turns out that they didn't have concrete basements back then. Really? It's basically just rocks, rocks and dirt. So we're going to solve that problem. How did they make it through the rock? They dig through the dirt, and then they come in through the little grooves.

I mean, a chipmunk can get through a very tight window. So I was down there the other day, and I knew that there was like a mouse or something, but turns out a chipmunk just ran across and it's a chipmunk problem. But I wouldn't, I don't know, I find chipmunks to be very cute. I think there's a qualitative difference between a rat and a chipmunk. Even if they're related, there's just the cuteness factor. It's very different. Well, when they're wreaking havoc in your basement, it doesn't matter what they are.

You just don't want them in. So we're going to go chem reet on the side. It's a little concrete spray. I think that'll solve it. I can't. So you're living in like a half. house made of waddle and daub or something yeah i mean you know until until this crypto market turns around i am do you think maybe there's like some kind of hex or a curse of sorts on your home which is causing

animals to be attracted to it it's possible because i'm not a huge animal guy i don't have any pets and so they're sensing that they sense that and they want to punish you for not being their friend yeah i didn't grow up with dogs in the house or anything so i'm not written like you know we're dog guy either. Maybe if you go to a petting zoo, this will change if you have some face time. I'm willing to try just about anything at this point.

I had a petting zoo for my last birthday party. Yeah, that's a... And it was also a pig roast, so the first plan was pig roast, and then I'm like, I also want to do a petting zoo. And we told the petting zoo, we actually had to run through four petting zoos

because they kept canceling on us. Yeah, because they were like, usually we do petting zoos for like six-year-olds. You guys must be joking. Yeah, it was a 31-year-old's birthday party, and they're like, well, this all sounds very suspicious and weird. And eventually we found one. It was basically two farmers.

They actually didn't speak a word of English. And I tried to communicate to them in my broken Spanish, which animals I wanted. And I specifically said no pigs because I thought it would be kind of cruel in a way to have a live pig in proximity to a deceased pig that we were in. That is. That is cruel. And they

We got our wires crossed And they brought an abundance of pigs Oh my gosh So there were little baby piglets running around squealing Meanwhile we were roasting a gigantic pig So I'm just getting ahead of the allegations I don't know if that's in any way wrong It's maybe a little tasteless

To have a pig roast And also live pigs there to witness it Yeah that's cruel That's cruel. You'd think it's cruel. Well, I wasn't going to go that far. So you remember how there's a story about Zuckerberg who fed a chicken, a live chicken, a piece of chicken. And that was a very many scandal a long time ago.

I do. Because he, like, did Harvard give him a chicken to take care of for a school project or something? Yeah, this was in the social network book, right? Yeah. And he fed it a chicken nugget or something. People like, he committed. cannibalism, chicken cannibalism. So anyway, this is my Zuckerberg moment.

It is, yeah. You're going to have a redemption arc, though. Don't worry, just like him. But, I mean, to be clear, we didn't feed the pigs, pig. Although, the issue was, we just rented someone's home for the birthday. It was in a residential neighborhood. And the farmers brought a number of goats. And goats are actually savages.

I don't know if you knew this about goats. Yeah, they don't. seem friendly. So they are very aggressive as it pertains to the flora and they'll just tear up plants by the root. And so the goats ate like half the

shrubbery. Hold on. You didn't tell the person that you were renting the house from that you were having a petting zoo on their property? No, for obvious reasons. We cannot inform them of that. This is a ridiculous story. I think they knew about the pig rose part. We had to conceal the petting

do from them. And then, unfortunately, the goats ate all the bushes on the property. Those are, that's an expensive thing to replace. And, uh, you know, we told them about we came clean and we said, look, you have 10 fewer shrubs than you started with. And they charged us $50 for it. That's it? That was it. Yeah, they were very forgiving. Shrubs are, shrubs are quite expensive. They maybe didn't like the shrubs or something. Maybe we did them a favor. You could have. Wow. Well, that was talking, that was talking animals. That was my 31st. I'm joining 32. I know. I'm old soon. And I'm having, and it was also a cowboy themed birthday party. I made everyone dress up like a cowboy. This year, it's pirate themed. Oh, my,

my three-year-old guy is having a pirate themed birthday party in October. Yeah. So it's the same thing, but 10 times older. And I'm making everyone dress up like a pirate and I'm renting a pirate ship. I like that. Yeah, give me the invite to that one. You can, yeah, you're invited to attend. You can come to my birthday party.

It's in Miami. I'll be there. I'll be there. Yeah, I think you're never too old to have a themed birthday party. Like the moment you stop celebrating your birthday, that's when you start to die. All right, so I have late breaking announcement here.

It looks like. like Donald J. Trump has just tweeted or posted something about World Liberty FI. Oh, oh, dear. What did he say? Join me live on Twitter spaces at 8 p.m. the September 16th for the launch of World Liberty Financial. We're embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind. All right. So that just dropped. It looks like Monday, September 16th at 8 p.m. there's going to be an announcement about World Liberty FI, this is a terrible idea. I cannot believe this is actually happening.

Despite our best, I mean, do they not listen to the On the Brink podcast or something? Like, I'm starting to think they're not listening to On the Brink. I'm really, the numbers, I guess you can't triangulate if you have Mar-a-Lago listeners, but we must not. That's very disappointing. If they were part of Brink Nation, they wouldn't be doing this. No. Just don't do this.

You have like 40 days until the election. So he lost the debate, most say. And instead of focusing on winning the election, he is now focused on a defy protocol, which I get it. Crypto is fun, okay? It's a fun rabbit hole. But he has bigger,

he should have other priorities. Yeah, there's a lot of other things to do. So count me skeptical. I guess we don't know anything about it, but we're pretty negative on it. Yeah, I mean, and look, we're not just reflexively against it. It's because it's a huge liability for him legally, reputationalally. What if this thing gets hacked by North Korea?

What if he gets TV out in there? And then Lazarus Group hacks it. Imagine the headlines. Yeah. Imagine that. You don't have to imagine them. Like, that's a thing that happens in crypto all the time. That's an unusual thing to happen.

I mean, this thing better have a lot of audits on it. I need them to use every audit firm. twice and then whatever certic says do the opposite of that too yeah yeah i mean certic don't don't hire surtic yeah and yeah they shouldn't do this under any circumstances all right well let's move on to some happier news uh this week we finally unveiled uh the new white paper so it's called stable coins the emerging market story it was in collaboration with brevin howard uh visa crypto and artemus and it is spectacular so congrats on that You did all the heavy lifting.

Yeah, I mean, I guess we're just congratulating ourselves for that. Yeah. I mean, it's a great report. It shows a lot of cool data on stablecoin usage in emerging markets. That's me clapping. Yeah, I'm very happy with that, very proud of it. I think it's a great contribution to the stablecoin literature. It is a sequel to our first white paper, crypto, what was it called?

Crypto dollars? Crypto dollars, the story so far. So this is four years on from that, almost exactly. and boy, did things change in stable coins in four years. It would have been hard to predict how powerful the stable coin narrative would be, really. Back in 2020, it was, what was it, like $4 billion of total stable coins outstanding? I mean, it had just breached 10 billion at that time. Very minimal.

At that point, it was 40% of values settled on blockchains, roughly, were stable coins. That went up to 80. and the supply of stable coins went up to 170. I just looked at this today. The number of addresses holding a stable coin on blockchains is $120 million. It doesn't mean 120 million people, but still, it's an insane amount. And so for this study, we wanted to go beyond the on-chain data. Everybody has established very clearly that there's a lot of usage.

We know that. But what about, like, what are people really doing with stable coins? No one has ever answered that question. And so we went to great lengths to answer it. And this is our first attempt to do so. And I hope others build on it. It's not meant to be the final word at all. But we wanted to know, okay, have stable coins cross the chasm

into being a mainstream consumer or B2B financial technology? Are they a realistic part of people's financial lives? We thought emerging markets was the place to start. We looked at five countries. I think the answer is yes. I think the answer is yes. So what were your biggest takeaways from the report? And I guess any surprises?

Main one for me was confirmation of what I suspected, which was, well, the number one use case is still access to crypto. That's fine. The number two use case is currency substitution, going from local currency to dollars, using the dollars as a savings tool. And then there's, you know, and you know, feel free to consult the report.

We put all the data in there. People are using it for remittances, for cross-border payments, for payroll, for corporate treasury, anything you can think of in varying amounts. I found the Nigeria answers to be very compelling. So for context, there were five countries that we investigated.

Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey. Brazil and India. They're all in the top 15 for chain analysis adoption of crypto. Nigeria was head and shoulders above the rest in every single metric. So something is going on in Nigeria. I'd love to hear more about it. We actually include a vignette from Yellow Card, one of our port codes. They're active. They're probably the biggest exchange brokerage in Africa. They add some color. But I want to understand what's happening with stable coins in Nigeria. why adoption there in particular is so high,

especially when compared to these other four countries where crypto adoption is fairly high as well. That was a big takeaway. I also found it interesting that we asked people what wallets they use. The number one wallet was just Binance Exchange. Yeah. Tells you how Binance's go-to-market motion

has just been so powerful in some of these geographies. Yeah, so Binance is critical financial infrastructure for tens of millions of people worldwide. which pretty remarkable. Yeah, I mean, there's so much data in there. I mean, we found that 39% of Nigerians surveyed had used phantom wallet. I mean, that's really interesting.

Like, that's Salada. So there's tons of data in here. We present new on-chain data as well, which I'm really happy with. We've created a whole new methodology to estimate transaction value settled. And we found that, the run rate stable coin transaction value is around $5 trillion, $5.6 trillion for $24.

That's less than what others had said. So it's not all, I mean, I think still that's a huge number, obviously, $5 trillion. Can you even imagine how big that is? Gigantic. So we're trying to be more conservative and more precise. We obviously think the numbers are really big and impressive, but we also don't want to get carried away. like most of the on-chain data people use nominal figures they won't do netting and they won't do denoising and they'll get to crazy numbers we want to present data regarding stable coins that's realistic and supportable so that's our new estimate actually visa revised their dashboard that they do with allium to reflect that so there's updated numbers there so it's on-chain data it's commentary for

from the companies that are active in these markets. And it's this new survey data. So yeah, super happy with it. Go to our website. I'll put it in the show notes as well. It's an easy read. I think it really adds to the conversation. Yeah, I thought it was great.

So head over to castle island.vc. And you can download the report, no paywall or anything. So really good stuff. All right, should we hop into some deals of the week? For sure. The first one up. This is from the Castle Island portfolio. So this is Nirvana, a blockchain cloud infrastructure company.

They acquired Vector, a multi-chain query and execution platform. Congrats to the Nirvana team. Next one up is Tether. So Tether invested $100 million, it looks like, to acquire a 9.8% stake in a company called Addecoagro, which is a publicly traded Latin American agricultural conglomerate. So that's a pretty interesting transaction. I wonder if there's some sort of a concept of having, like, a agriculture token or something like that like a stable coin backed by crops or something?

What do you think they're doing there? I mean, it could just be the case that Tether is just diversifying their balance sheet and putting it in all kinds of different investments. And maybe there's no crypto angle here at all. Yeah, maybe. That's really interesting. Next up we have DRIP, an NFT platform on Salana. There is $8 million from NFX, coin-based ventures, and progression.

Then we have Huma Finance. This is a defy liquidity platform that raised $10 million from distributed global, hashkey, folius, and others. Next up we have PuffPaw, a VAP to Earn project. Never heard of that before. Vap. Vap to earn project. Oh, man. Well, they raised $6 million from LEMNUS CAP, Volt Capital, and the Spartan group.

Vap to earn. Okay. Next one up is E-PAL. This is a blockchain gaming platform that raised 30 million across two funds, or sorry, two rounds from A16Z, Galaxy, and Anamoka. Then you have Amalgam. They're a defy lending protocol. There is two and a half million from light speed faction, framework, and robot ventures.

Then you have a Nitro Lab, a Web3 gaming developer that raised 8 million from OKX, Aptos, and Hashkey. Next up, it's Infinite, a defy abstraction protocol. there is $6 million from Electric Capital, Miran Adventures, and Lightspeed Faction. And the last one is a MNA transaction. Stake with Us, which is a staking service provider, was acquired by Nansen, the on-chain data platform. So those are the deals of the week.

And before we dive into the news, let's look at the metrics minute, courtesy of coin metrics. Today we're looking at network health across Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin's mining pool rewards have fluctuated narrowly between 3.14 and 3.2 BDC per block recently suggesting stable minor incentives. Founder in it pool collectively contribute to 57% of Bitcoin's hash rate.

Ethereum's consensus health is robust, with over 99% of its over a million active validators consistently attesting to blocks. Ethereum's participation rate dipped to 96% in May 23, when a bug in the prison validator delayed finality affecting validated performance. And lastly, two block builders, Beaver Build and Titan Builder, now produce nearly 80% of Ethereum blocks potentially impacting transaction ordering. That's your metrics minute. All right, good metrics minute.

All right, let's hop into some news of the week here. It looks like there is another special purpose broker dealer that has been approved here by the SEC to transact in crypto asset securities, whatever. those mean. It is T0. So they have, they have gotten this approval. T0 has been around for a long time. I haven't really kept up on this, but this was originally affiliated with, I think, the Tobacco brothers, John Tobacco. And yeah, was it Overstock, Patrick Burns? Yeah, and then Overstock did a, did an offering with them. I think back in like 2015 or 16, they issued some sort of a, you know, corporate bond or something with T0, I believe. And I think Overstock,

owns a chunk of this company through Beyond Inc, which I think is the parent company of Overstock. So, you know, if you had told me that there was going to be an ATS approved, I would have thought that these guys would have been like the first one as opposed to Prometheum. So I'm not overly surprised that something happened here. I just don't know what's on the T0 platform. I have no idea what they trade. Yeah, I mean, they've been at it for, I feel like, almost a decade now. Yeah.

Yeah. a long while. I think the view is that there is going to be clear, like, regulatory framework around digital asset securities, but there really hasn't been. So the secondary market trading for these type of assets just hasn't really materialized yet. I think it would in full force if you get a market structure bill. And I guess these guys will be well positioned. They also don't seem to be the type of people that the Promethean people are in terms of going out and saying like, hey, Ethereum is a security. we need to trade it on our venue. You don't hear much about that from T0.

Yeah, I mean, private blockchains and tokenized securities, those have been long dreams in the crypto space, haven't happened. Maybe it is time for tokenized securities to happen. I don't know. I think tokenized securities definitely happen, you know, especially now that you have stable coins because one of the key things with the tokenized securities in the first generation was, you know,

number one, you just don't have regulatory clarity around the secondary market trading. So what good is it to issue an asset that you can't trade on a secondary market? And a lot of questions around like good control location and things like that. But then the second thing was always, well, how do you settle these things? So let's say you have a stock certificate that's represented on chain. You can move that instantaneously on a blockchain. But then you have to have a wire transfer to actually settle the cash.

That's kind of pointless. So you'd think that stable coins would actually be a key piece of this infrastructure, Sure, which I think that's probably why I figure or so into the stable coin category. Because if you could actually have the cash on chain to settle against the securities, this all starts to look really disruptive to the way securities settle. So we'll monitor that one. We'll see if they get more traction than Prometheum. Next up in news, E Toro settled with the SEC for $1.5 million on charges of operating

as an unregistered broker with regard to its crypto business. and they agreed to shut down virtually all crypto trading on its platform. Now, E. Toro clients are limited to Bitcoin Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. Remember that one? This is like end of the fiscal period SEC stuff right now. I think we're going to see a flurry of these. I think the fiscal year ends 930 for the SEC. And this one's kind of a shame that E Toro didn't go to bat on this. I think they probably got threatened with some sort of a Coinbase Cracken style lawsuit and just didn't want any part of it. And if you can just get out of crypto basically for $1.5 million and just operate internationally, that's what you do probably. And unfortunately, it'll probably be used

as somewhat of a precedent for the SEC to go after other brokerage firms. So I wish these guys fought it because I think they would have a decent chance of winning, but they didn't. And so now it's just Bitcoin, Ethan, Bitcoin Cash on Eitoro, US. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, It's not existential for ETOR. They have other non-cryptial lines of business. So I suppose they felt it was not the hill to die on. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, these guys are big in CFD's contracts for difference in Europe.

And those are illegal in the U.S. So I think their core business is actually outside the U.S. anyway. So next up in news, Coinbase has launched CBBT, an alternative to wrapped Bitcoin, which has been through a lot of turmoil recently. So it's a way to use Bitcoin in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. This is partially a response, I would say, to WBTC custody services moving from BitGo to BitGlobal, which is partially controlled by Mr. Justin Sun. I think Coinbase is incredibly well positioned to have an asset like this, like a Bitcoin defy asset. Coinbase is the number one on and off ramp in the U.S.

And the integration with Coinbase wall, it's actually quite good from a product perspective. So I think this is a smart move. North Korea, North Carolina, rather, has passed an anti-CBDC bill. So they've overridden the governor Roy Cooper's veto. So this bans the state from participating in a Federal Reserve-backed testing of a centralized CBDC. I don't think there was any real risk of North Carolina being forced to use a CBDC in any capacity, but they've now banned it anyway. It's pretty interesting that you have an override of a veto of a crypto-related measure.

I don't know if I've seen that on a state level before. Yeah, so no CBDCs in North Carolina. There weren't any already, but now they're very much going to be no CBDCs in North Carolina. I wonder what the calculus on Roy Cooper vetoing this was. Does he actually want CBDCs or is it just like the other side of the table is for this? saw him against it. I wonder if there's actually anything to it. Like, does he know anything about crypto? I have no idea.

So this is somewhat similar to the House bill that was passed in May, sponsored by WIP Tom Emmer. He's done the show number of times. Although that one has not made it through the Senate. Do you see that FrenTech is shutting down this week? I guess the developers

have renounced control over the smart contracts. They've basically like null and voided the contract. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's shutting down I don't think it's shutting down. I think it's just burning the keys. Yeah, I think they've consigned

administrative control of the keys over. So I believe that means they can't make any updates to it anymore. I think the protocol itself still works, but basically no one uses it. I never got on Frontec. I was a little bit afraid

that you'd be seen to be like issuing a security. Yeah, I mean, I find those things very questionable. The BitClout thing was a huge problem for a lot of people. It just kind of runs the risk of you rugging your own followers, either on purpose or inadvertently. I didn't get on it either, even though people liked it for a time.

And yeah, it looks to be basically over at this point. I mean, it's an intellectually interesting idea, the fact that you could have a token or, monetary value attached to an influencer basically and you could bet on whether or not it would go up and value I guess based on how popular that person gets like going along Travis Kelsey at the beginning of his relationship with Taylor Swift or something I just don't know how you can square the circle

from a regulatory perspective with something like that yeah I mean I don't know if we're really solving a problem that anyone has either like is do we really need the ability to bet on social clout at all? Yeah, I don't know. It's not clear that there's like a jobs to be done other than increasing gambling addiction. So in Congress this week, the Financial Services Committee hosted a hearing

on the merits of defy. Crypto was very well represented with folks from Coin Center, the Defy Education Fund and Polygon testifying. That was an interesting watch. Yeah, I thought that was quite good. They had really great representation. So it was what, Peter Van Valkenberg,

Rebecca Redick. Amanda Tuminelli and Rebecca Reddick. I thought they were all exceptional, really. Very eloquent. Peter Van Valkenberg is one of the best spoken people on planet Earth, I think. Yeah, his highlights are always exceptional. That was well done. Yeah, that was super well done.

There's a bunch of SEC related congressional hearings coming up. Have you seen this? And also there's an action, I guess, that was taken, an investigation being taken by Jim Jordan and some of the House Republicans against Gary Gensler for some hiring practices. So I guess, do you see this? Yeah, yeah, I did. So Gensler has been accused by Republicans of political bias in his hiring. So I guess selectively filtering for political ideology. I don't know how that works, actually. So it's what, you have to, what, hire an equal number of Republicans or something, if you're the SEC chair, is how that how that works?

So I actually don't know if there's a hard and fast rule, but I think you're not supposed to just overtly hire people because they agree with your politics. It's not supposed to be a hiring criteria. So my understanding is that Virtue had filed some Freedom of Information Act request against the SEC. They had a bunch of documents that came back that there was a senior person at the SEC.

I'm not going to say his name now, but he's quite senior over there. And I guess in his back and forth with some members of the SEC on why he should be hired, he said, I'm on the right side of the political aisle for what you're trying to do, something to that effect.

And then six months later was hired. So I think it goes into that, which I don't know. I mean, I guess you kind of, you probably know how people lean politically for some of these top jobs anyway, as my view. and it's no surprise that Gensler's prioritizing, like, Elizabeth Warren wing Democrats to some degree.

Yeah, that shouldn't be shocking. But I guess you can't say it. So to the extent it's written down. That's the problem. Yeah, you'd probably go out to dinner and talk about how much you love Elizabeth Warren, and then you check that box, but don't put it in email. Exactly. So the big news up here in Massachusetts is that Elizabeth Warren is not really wanting to debate John Deaton.

Oh, well, that doesn't surprise me. at all. I mean, also, she's probably going to win by 40 points, so I'm sure she doesn't feel that she needs to. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if there's a polymarket on it, but I think there was, but I don't know how much traction it has. But I think they'll end up doing two debates, but she had done like four debates with Scott Brown back in the day. And I think Deaton's pushing for five debates on five individual topics. That's a lot of debates. It's a lot of debates, but I mean, it's a big, role and you're in the role for six years and it's really important. I mean, these people

matter to the state of Massachusetts, right? These are the senators that are going to draw infrastructure investment from the federal government to Massachusetts. It matters. Yeah. I'm surprised that she would even do one, frankly. Yeah. Well, she also sent out this, so I guess the Winklevoss twins are behind Deaton in a pretty big way. They've made some big contributions to a pack that's supporting Deaton, and she explicitly called them out in a letter that she sent out to try to raise more money. She said the social network guys, the twins, she didn't say Cameron and Tyler by name, but it was pretty clear who she was talking about. She said they're trying to influence our election. I mean, I guess they are, but it's allowed. I'm not, I haven't seen any Elizabeth Warren street

signs in my travels across the state. But you have seen Deaton signs. Deaton signs are everywhere. Well, there you have it. Yeah, so the straw pole is Deaton by, I don't know, 99 to 1. All right, and the last one up, it looks like Circle has agreed to move their headquarters to New York City.

Man, this is actually a, I just refresh the page here. This is a big blow to Boston. Wow, that's quite shocking. Yeah, I mean, Circle is literally a block away from our office in downtown Boston, And I've always said, it's just crazy how hostile these Boston politicians are against Circle. So Stephen Lynch, who's the congressional, it's his congressional district that circles in, is just the most hostile person besides Elizabeth Warren to stable coins.

And you have a huge company here, really a mainstay of the crypto industry in his backyard. He doesn't care. And then Elizabeth Warren, obviously. So I guess they're fed up with it and they're moving to New York City. And sounds like New York Mayor Eric Adams is attending a Friday, ribbon cutting. That's a shame. Yeah, that's a loss for Boston. So I mean, Circle was one of the biggest crypto companies in Boston, maybe the biggest. Yeah. I think it's, you know, Circle and fidelity right on like opposite sides of the street there. Yeah. Both probably the largest employers of

crypto people in Boston. So a big blow. So more jobs leaving the state under Warren. All right. So I think that's it for the week. Everyone check out the Stablecoin report. Island.V.C. Find it under writings. A really good report. Everybody have a safe and healthy weekend. We'll see you on Monday.