TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #613: Why A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Is Imminent with Brian Morgenstern

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Marty sits down with Brian Morgenstern to discuss the state of bitcoin policy. Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBzBrian Morgenstern on Twitter: https://x.com/MorgensternNJBitcoin Voter Project: https://www.bitcoinvoterproject.org/Riot: https://www.riotplatforms.com/ 0:00 - Intro 0:36 - We’re winning in bitcoin policy 10:18 - Fold & Coinkite 11:50 - Policy priorities and timeline 19:36 - Unchained 20:05 - Order of priority - stables before bitcoin 25:53 - Amassing wins for midterms 29:09 - Getting bitcoin too entrenched to ban 34:00 - Bitcoinized fin products 38:04 - Treasury and BitBonds 47:28 - We should not fund our demise 56:06 - Trump PR strategy 1:06:29 - Chevron doctrine Shoutout to our sponsors: Fold https://tftc.io/fold Coinkite https://coinkite.com Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be sup freaks we're bringing back sup freaks to start the episode brian you're the first

nice uh first guest in a while where we've done it uh so thank you for bearing with the uh the intros i was told that we need to bring sup freaks back so bringing it back with brian morgan stern I had a policy at Riot, and like I was saying before we hit record, I'm happy we were supposed to record on Wednesday originally, but you had to attend an event at the White House, and I was attending an event yesterday, and I think that time between Wednesday and today was actually good to create better context for this conversation, which is the state of Bitcoin in the world of policy in the United States and D.C. You were very close to it, well versed in it. And right before we jumped on here, you were saying there's a lot of a lot of wins that we can that we can point to right now. And starting with the history of Bitcoin policy up to this point in the wins that we've we've been amassing. Yeah, there's there's a lot to discuss. I mean, I remember when I started in this role at Riot, we were dealing with a state bill in Texas that would have been challenging for Bitcoin miners.

We were able to overcome that. And then the Biden administration launched pretty much a whole of government war against the industry and tried to kick us out of the country in a number of different ways. I mean, everybody can identify with the censorship regime that was going on in social media, things like that. But with respect to Bitcoin miners, the administration had come after our bank accounts, our ability to do business with Operation Chokepoint. The Fed, the OCC, and the FDIC had issued guidance essentially telling banks that they shouldn't do business with companies in our industry. They came after our access to electricity. We had to sue the Energy Department because Senator Warren and the Biden White House had issued some statements announcing their intention to limit or eliminate Bitcoin mining in the United States. And then that manifested in this effort to sort of create a registry of Bitcoin miners.

So I had written an op-ed about that, like censoring and debanking and then unplugging. So it was sort of this, like I said, a whole of government approach to try to harm our industry. And now when the campaign got started in 2024, we were able to talk to the Trump campaign, explain who our voters were and why they cared about these issues and how the president could really find a wedge here that was that we thought he would be sympathetic to. and how he could make good policy and good politics at the same time by really kind of embracing Bitcoin. So we met with him. We had written up some research on polling data and on policy issues. He was very open to it. Obviously, he came over to our side and ended up attending the Bitcoin conference, gave a great speech, issued a couple of tweets that word around the world. And, um, now that he's taken office, he's been, you know, promises made

promises kept as kind of one of his mantras. They've eliminated operation choke point through executive order and then through guidance issued by various agencies. Um, he signed executive orders, establishing a task force, uh, of government advisors. They've been accepting industry input. He signed an executive order launching the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. And the hits keep coming. So, it just keeps going on and on. It's been very favorable. There's some other issues we're working on, some other wins that we can get. But it's gone from a government, from us defending ourselves against our own government trying to put us out of business, to an administration asking us, what do you need from us? How can

we help you succeed how can we help america lead the world uh in this industry so i mean it's just been a complete sea change it's been fun to be a part of it um we've had a lot of help from some of our industry colleagues but i'm you know proud of i think some of the leadership we've shown as well it's been it's been a wild ride and it continues yeah you guys have been crushing it particularly the the show the is that officially sponsored like a official rumble show where you're sitting down you're interviewing the peer-to-peer policy pod uh so rumble is very generous that they have a studio here in dc you know they want content creators with sort of insider knowledge that uh that can help them post more content and build more audiences and so they've welcomed us

into their studio and just allowed us to record and post whatever we want they don't tell us what to say they just say uh essentially you know pre-schedule with us so that we can manage the flow of creators but you know put up whatever you want and we really want bitcoin content we really want uh digital asset people to come in and speak to their issues because it's underrepresented on other platforms so they see an opportunity to grow um through that so they've been really generous with us. I have a very good problem, which is that my co-host was just appointed senior advisor and chief speechwriter to the treasury secretary. So, I have brought in a new future co-host who came to us from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a great guy named

zach whiting he hosted a podcast down there in austin uh so he and i'll reboot the uh the peer-to-peer pod and we'll have uh season two coming soon but yeah rumble's been been great they've just invited us in and said create content say whatever you want get your messages out and and uh we've been doing that it's it's really and they're a terrific team to work with and it's top notch content as well i'm very happy that they're giving you that space to have those conversations because they're important and as you mentioned i didn't know if it was public yet but your former co-host sam uh joining the the treasury staff i think that's pretty big for our industry i don't think many people realize that there's a person like sam in the treasury he was somebody i mean i

saw both of you in dc at the bpi event last what was that last month early last month and uh i didn't know that he had that position or was vying for that position but i guess right before he joined treasury treasury secretary uh besant's staff i mean he wrote an article for forbes basically laying out bit bonds and so after reading that article and being like oh wow you're You're in the staff now. It's pretty interesting to me. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's a small town here. It's a big high school in Washington, D.C. But somebody who's as talented as Sam, I mean, they they need him as much as he wanted to to go and serve the country. He's a tremendous guy, really talented. He had been working on the Bitbon stuff for a while, was really interested in it.

I think, wrote articulately about it. And he's a former speechwriter. He had been speechwriter to Senator Orrin Hatch. He also contributed to his hilarious Twitter account. He's famously really funny. So he has experience joke writing, too, which I think is cool. But great storyteller. And I think he and the secretary have a good vibe together.

So I think he's a good person to kind of be his voice. And he has great views, of course, on Bitcoin, but also on sort of the economic model the administration is trying to build with reindustrialization of America, building up more working class jobs, reshoring, kind of the whole of cracking down on immigration and focusing on American citizens. And I think he does have kind of it helps when you actually believe in what you're doing and you're willing to take the risk and you see the value of what's on the other side. So I think it's a really good fit. And and he's a great guy. So he'll be a big help there at Treasury. And the sky's the limit, you know, in a Trump administration or any administration, people will these are pressure cooker jobs. You can't do them forever.

Your average White House press secretary is there for like a year, year and a half, just as one example. So he has an opportunity if he sticks it out a little while to potentially move up in the ranks as well. And with his level of talent, I have no doubt that he will if he wants to stay for more than just this gig. But he'll make a great impact. I think these are important issues to articulate to the American people and to the world. And so you really need a talented writer like Sam to help do that. Listen, Freaks, I know you're tired of me talking about Fold, but I'm going to beat the drum. I'm going to beat the dead horse. If you're a Bitcoiner living in the United States and you're not using Fold, I'm just going to ask one question. What are you doing? You're leaving sats on the table. They've got gift cards. They've got their debit card. you can use your credit card just connect your credit card to the fold app use the fold out

to pay off your credit card and you're going to stack your credit card points and bitcoin as well they even teamed up with crowd health to give their members fold plus membership at no cost don't leave sats on the table go sign up for fold today go to tftc.io slash fold there's nothing to lose except sats that you could have stacked sup freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at coin kite they make the cold card queue my favorite hardware wallet the most secure hardware wallet on the market as you can see it's got the blackberry form factor full keyboard it's got two secure enclaves you create your private public keys offline the device never has to go online never

does go online so you keep your bitcoin secure if you have your bitcoin on exchanges and you're looking to get it off secure it in the best way possible pick up a cold card queue go to bitcoinkite.com find the cold card queue use the code tftc for five percent off if you're a power user of bitcoin like i am if you're running a business on a bitcoin standard if you're just a bitcoiner wants to secure your bitcoin get the most secure hardware wallet on the market go get the cold card queue it's a beautiful thing it's just nice to know we have our guys placed in uh very important positions you know yeah putting uh putting a good foot forward for for bitcoin the industry and the movement at large and i think on that note what we were discussing before we hit

record is we've had a lot of wins up to this point obviously we have an administration that wants to foster nurture and really accelerate the the bitcoin industry in the united states let's touch on what's on the table right now what the priorities currently are what maybe they should be like i was saying it was an event yesterday and became clear to me it has been clear i've heard people talking about this but it wasn't until yesterday where i was sitting down we were talking about the policies that are on the table right now i was like oh these are really the priorities particularly stablecoin legislation market structure legislation and it seems like the the bitcoin strategic reserve is a distant third in terms of

priority and i was sitting there listening to this and to me if you're thinking about long-term benefits to the united states and individual american citizens putting all this focus on stable coins and market structure at this particular juncture uh doesn't seem like the best sort of order of operations of things to prioritize in my mind because in my mind stablecoin legislation it's like do we do we really need it and the free market is sort of solving that problem and i in my mind i didn't say this in the tweet i sent last night but i have tweeted this before it just seems like u.s centric stablecoin issuers particularly circle and usdc are a bit jealous of the success that tether has had internationally and would like to create

somewhat of a regulatory moat here in the united states and if they're successful in doing that i think it's going to be a pyrrhic victory because i think tether's had incredible success globally just because of the nature of their product and the ease of use of somebody downloading a wallet getting onto tether as quickly as possible and having essentially a u.s dollar bank account in the form of tether um if we get a stable coin bill that sort of kills tether and circles like we're going to go do this i don't think they're going to have similar success to tether and we could actually see an encroachment from bricks countries trying to get their digital currency in the hands another uh in many parts of the world hands of individuals in many parts of the world

and then market structure it seems like that was a problem that that stemmed from gary gensler being the the chairman of the sec and now that he's gone it's like do we do we really need appropriate market structure bills to be passed and prioritized right now when you have trump launching meme coins and uh it seems like that problem as well i mean we know there's a lot of grift and scams that that exist in the in the world of broader crypto but people have lost a lot of money but still like i'm a free market guy it's like if people are going to burn their money it's a good lesson to learn like is that a priority where the strategic reserve distant third it's if we're thinking about long-term american success i think focusing on how to incorporate bitcoin

at the federal government level via the treasury is probably where most of the effort should be focused now considering the the arms race that that has been incited globally and if you wait too long on that you could sort of slip up that's that's my perspective interested to hear yours um i would say broadly in agreement with some nuance to it so first of all i i totally agree that the moment is now especially since they announced the creation of a reserve i think the space race has begun like the starter's pistol has been fired you don't want to then wait a long time and lose your kind of first major mover advantage um that said they are looking actively at budget-neutral ways to acquire new Bitcoin, aside from the legislation that Senator Lummis

and Congressman Begich have introduced. So the administration is working on it actively as we speak. And I think they'll have more to say about that probably in the president's 180-day report that he ordered. So they're working on that. I think in the next couple of months, We'll have more information about what exactly the administration wants to do on that front. I do kind of agree that if you're prioritizing legislation based on urgency, which arguably you may want to do, you should move the strategic reserve up front. I think the stablecoin bill, you know, my hope is that they're not exclusionary in that way. I know great people at Circle, but I don't think they should have a regulatory moat. I think it should be more of a free market.

I think some kind of memorialization in legislation would be good to prevent a backslide in the future for both stablecoins and the market structure bill. I do agree that, you know, I think Gensler was acting lawlessly. and so you don't necessarily need a new law now that you have an SEC chair and Paul Atkins that intends to follow the law. That said, perhaps some clarity in legislation, again, could prevent a backslide in a future administration or a whipsaw. We don't want any industry's success to depend on who wins the next election. It would be nice to have some permanence. And given the administration's approach, the Biden administration's approach, I understand that, you know, past can be prologue. And so I think this order of operations was in response to what the industry, various industries experienced over the last four years.

And so that kind of carried over. And there can when you've shifted an aircraft carrier so dramatically, it can be hard a little bit to be as nimble as you want to be and reflect current circumstances. You know, that said, I have noticed a change in messaging and tone from several members on the Hill, in particular, the Senate Digital Assets Subcommittee, that, you know, the Bitcoin Reserve was a distant third. Now, I think it's creeping up in the list of priorities. So, I think that's a good development. Hopefully, that trend continues and we can get it to the front of the line, as you suggest. Um, but I, I think, you know, we experienced choppy waters, of course, these other industries did as well. So I understand why they want legislation so that if the next election goes in a different direction, they don't then have to fight the same fights over again, for their very existence. So I agree the priorities, I think, could be adjusted a little better based on urgency and current circumstance. But I do see some value in getting legislation

across the finish line just to have permanence and not have to fight for your life again. Our good friends, Parker Lewis and Dhruv Bansal, are two of the deepest thinkers in Bitcoin. while they come from very different backgrounds they've landed on the exact same conclusion it's bitcoin that matters not crypto this master class lays out why 21 million is the key breakthrough how bitcoin not blockchain creates decentralization why everything else will be built on bitcoin understand why bitcoin works and why nothing else does watch the premiere at unchained.com slash tftc that's unchained.com slash tftc no and i can totally see see that as well and agree but again just going back to like priority like long term what will have the the most profound

effect is it stable coins market structure or bitcoin strategic reserve i think undoubtedly it's the third i think if you're thinking long term like locking that in because as we know right now the executive order has been signed we do have a bitcoin strategic reserve but as you said the same could happen to to that executive order if a new administration gets in and i guess that highlights like how with midterms and in mind like how narrow or wide is the window to get to get this stuff done in your mind well they're trying to get stuff done this year i mean they want to get all of it as much of it as they can done by august recess that is an ambitious schedule in 2017 i was at the treasury department and you know they were wrestling with whether to

do health care first or tax cuts first, and health care failed, and then they had to do tax cuts. And I remember being on the phone with leadership staffers over the summer saying, we've got to get tax cuts done by the end of the summer. That didn't happen. So then it was tax cuts for Christmas. They were restless over that timeline saying it was too fast. So it's not a good thing, but this is how slowly Congress moves.

So if they're able to get all three or at least be on a glide path for all three in the next few months, I think that that would be great. I know that, you know, David Sachs and Bo Hines in their roles. I mean, David's a special government employee in SGE, so he has a limited time appointment. I think Bo has noted that they've gotten a lot of things done, Operation Chokepoint, SEC dropping cases, things like that, in a very short time. And I think his position is they'd love to get these things done by the summer recess as well and have a whole bunch of achievements to hang their hat on. Um, similarly with the tariff agenda, I think they want to get as many trade deals across the finish line as possible because they don't want to be heading into midterms with markets as sort of disrupted as they've been and people looking at their 401ks with some dismay. So I think they want to see things on an upswing with a bunch of achievements and a rising tide in the early part of next year, of 2026, so that voters will have a chance to get comfortable in advance of the midterms. They want to be in as strong a position as possible to make that argument that more Republicans should be elected to Congress in the next year.

And you can't do that if things are smoothing out until like October, like right before the election. There isn't enough time for voters to process that. So, they're on a very limited time frame. I would say the drop dead date in terms of when they want to accomplish a lot of these things is going to be Q1 of 2026. But their stated goals for at least for market structure stable coins and to some level the SBR, we're talking about this summer. The 180-day report, I think, is going to be the landmark, the next landmark along the way to look at because whatever is in that report that's not accomplished, at least on the regulatory side or the legislative side, there may be more executive orders to come out of that process. But just making sure that they are ticking those boxes because they made promises, they want to keep them. they built this coalition of voters that aren't your typical voters on party lines and they want

to keep them intact if you get a voter this is just political science for you if you get a voter like a bitcoin voter who is totally across party lines demographics everything many of them didn't vote in past elections but they voted in this one if you can get them to vote again in the next election, you have a very high chance of keeping that coalition together for future elections. If you lose them after that first election, it's very difficult to bring them back. So, they really want to keep that group of people motivated, interested, happy. So, they really do have a very strong incentive to get these things done, especially for some of the members who have a lot of Bitcoiners in their district, or where we spent with the Bitcoin

voter project, or where Fairshake, you know, spent more broadly on crypto issues. These members are sensitive to it. And especially if they were opposed by crypto voters, they want to win them over. If they were supported by them, they want to keep them in their tent. So it's not just Trump that's concerned about this it's the members as well so they do feel the urgency to get stuff done in the next few months i'm hopeful that that will happen it is a very heavy lift as i said like even something as simple as republican majorities in congress in 2017 2018 like if you told me that it was going to be difficult to get republican members to pass tax cuts i would have said that's crazy that's like always agenda item number one but it was difficult because you got blue state

republicans you got some red state democrats it's it's uh the sausage making is very messy which i learned up close yeah i think that's pretty obvious from the outside looking in it's never never as easy as people think but again it is important to try to amass as many wins as possible both via legislation and on the regulatory front and i think last night was a big step on the regulatory front with the federal reserve board announcing the withdrawal of guidance for banks related to their crypto asset and dollar token activities and related changes to its expectations of these activities and so again going back to like the stable coin bill it's like was sab 121 a bigger hindrance to banks and financial institutions uh instituting

stable coins or other quote-unquote crypto assets and is sab 22 now that it exists and now the fed essentially bending the knee and saying yes you guys can play with this without having to report it sort of a sign like maybe that doesn't need to be the top priority yeah potentially i mean that i would say what sort of kicked off in earnest the war on the industry was that guidance which was paired with statements from the white house about how bitcoin or stables or crypto activity whatever vague terms they were using posed risks to the safety and soundness of the financial system, which is what scared the pants off of every financial institution from even doing business with a large public company or having community banks respond to

their customers who said, hey, I would like to add Bitcoin to my holdings. Would you custody it for me? And that kind of governance by press release had really chilled the market and scared people away and then of course was followed by a number of actions like the the energy department so having those statements taken away repealed revoked whatever really does kind of signify that it's a new day in town and which as you say reduces the urgency of those other pieces of legislation. But the Bitcoin piece probably should be the most, definitely should be the most urgent because it's a finite asset. If we don't capitalize on this big first mover advantage, somebody else will. And now is the time to do it. So I'm glad the administration is working on it

as we speak. I wish Congress would move it up on their agenda. Hope springs eternal. We keep making the rounds and encouraging that. Like I said, there's been kind of a shift in tone, but we haven't seen Chairman Scott, Senate Banking move it to priority number one. I wish he would. We haven't seen Chairman Hill and the House move it to priority number one, but I wish he would. But we'll keep pushing and we'll see what happens. If they get stables and market structure done quickly and are working on the SBR at the same time so that they can just kind of rapid fire these votes, that would be great. But I don't know that that'll happen.

We may have to wait a few more months, unfortunately, but I wish they'd move faster. Again, I think it's important to put everything in perspective. The fact that we're even having this conversation about prioritization of these different things is mind blowing in and of itself. If you were to tell us only a year ago that we were having serious discussions about it, it would be like, what? So I think we should, again, take the wins while we get them. It may be frustrating, but put things in perspective. It's much better than it was this time last year. and on that note too like knowing that how the sausage is made is very

very messy and can be take quite a while especially in light of the fed's announcement last night sab 122 122 uh the repeal of 121 like do you if the banks actually lean into this over the next four years and implement it into their businesses begin offering products and services to their customers do you envision um a scenario in which even if legislation doesn't get past the embedded nature of bitcoin in the financial system i don't want to say too big to fail but it sort of entrenches itself to a point where it's going to be significantly harder for an upcoming administration that may think differently to just sort of pull that out of the system if it's already been implemented? I do. I think all of this feeds off each other.

And I guess to use an old adage around town here in DC, you know, politics often flows downhill from culture. And so now that at least these barriers are removed by changes in personnel, personnel is policy, and a lot of these changes are being implemented by the new administration, that's going to pave the way for these activities to start. And there's already the market incentives to do that. And so, I think it will make the legislative avenues even more common sense and put the people who oppose them in an even more awkward corner than they're already in um so it should create more of a smooth road more of a glide path to get them done and even like you say even if the legislation is slow moving or messy or gets tripped up

the market availability you know to be creative and start offering more services is there now and so i think the the race is on for these institutions to to go down those roads and And we're looking at, and they're going to have that runway for four years now. So, four years hence, who knows? I mean, Riot just did a deal with Coinbase for liquidity, you know, based on our strategic Bitcoin reserve, $100 million deal. Of course, in our sized economy, maybe that's a ripple in the pond, but you're going to see more of that. You've already seen what Saylor's doing at strategy. I mean, there's a lot of creativity happening right now, a lot of new avenues for liquidity and leveraging Bitcoin. I think that's going to continue now for four years. It's going to be very hard to roll that back.

And from a political standpoint, they already saw how big our community is, how diverse it is, how people can actually be motivated to vote on these pocket literal pocketbook issues. So I think the opposition is dying on the vine more each and every day. And we've, I think, done a pretty good job of putting like Senator Warren in her own little box where any Democrat who wants to look moderate in any sense, like in our meetings, a lot of times they'll either listen intently for our feedback and take notes and take it back. or some of them will kick it off by like sort of apologizing and saying well we're not sponsoring that we're not signing on to these letters like she's doing her thing but like that's not our thing you know so we're already kind of seeing how we've been able to isolate the extremists on our issues and so that's one step towards growing the coalition that like i said is going to put us in a position so that our success doesn't depend on the next election we're going

to succeed no matter what it's just a matter of degree um and this four-year runway for new creative creativity new products uh embedding bitcoin in the financial landscape um it's going to make it much harder to oppose i very much agree with that that's i've been pushing that on the show in the newsletter for months now it's we have this air cover from the trump administration well i do think in the perspective of the three bills that are on the table stable market structure bitcoin strategic reserve i think the reserve should be the priority however even if we don't get a strategic reserve if the private market just does its thing and embeds bitcoin into as many products as possible as quickly as possible i think it's going to be extremely hard to

unwind that and i that's like the drum i'm beating is like you know private market just get to work start building products getting it into the system don't wait on the government to give you permit like you actually have tacit permission to go do this go do it don't depend on the strategic bitcoin reserve to really put the nail in the coffin of any chance of bitcoin getting destroyed by the government like just go embed bitcoin into as many nooks and crannies of the u.s economy as you can to to make it systemically important and uh that's why i'm excited about products like battery and their their structured finance products and um strike launching their lending product everything that's going on with meanwhile their life

insurance i think all these sort of vanilla products that that everyday people are familiar with bitcoinizing those is going to be way more high leverage than people realize right now i agree with that yeah and um a lot of people like they just had a hearing in the texas house about the texas strategic bitcoin reserve and there was a member you know sounding the alarm I guess about the volatility and how the people's money being held in a volatile asset is risky and it could devalue and all this stuff. You know, I wasn't at the hearing, but if I was, I would have pointed out, you know, over the last decade,

the dollar has lost a third or more of its value. Bitcoin's gone up by like 37,000%. which asset do you think is riskier again you know like um so it's uh yeah it's it's a matter of time before the hardest soundest money ever uh really does get does get embedded it's a stark reminder of the importance of education that we keep having to make the rounds that not everybody lives this day to day. There's still so many people who need to learn more. And I know the president values the dollar as the world reserve currency. I think Saylor and others have made the argument that we don't have to sacrifice that. Bitcoin could help it remain that if the US is

smart about it um and having bitcoin in its uh in its toolkit maybe a bitcoin stablecoin barbell situation whatever it may be but if you just turn up your nose at bitcoin because well it's volatile then i mean you're just you're gonna fail like you're gonna be you're gonna wake up someday and say oh man i wish i got in there but this is our one of our last chances to as purchasers of as consumers as individuals to front run the united states and then every g7 and g20 government and everybody else so uh you know wake up and put your coffee can travel fund or whatever now in bitcoin because you're not going to have that chance uh or you'll get much less for it if you wait um so yeah now's the time i wish the sbr were were higher on the agenda

yeah well that in mind let's let's shift this to focus on the treasury and how it may or may not implement bitcoin in your mind with the options that are on the table for budget neutral ways to acquire bitcoin strategically for reserve what makes the most sense to you and is the most politically palatable and the best way for the treasury to approach this yeah there's there's several ideas on the table and um you know we uh interviewed i think bitcoin magazine's got something coming out where i was at the white house with them uh on wednesday as he said thank you for rescheduling they um and and bo talks about how they're compiling tons of ideas There's lots of smart people talking to them and planting seeds in their mind.

They're going to have to meet as a working group, as a task force that the president created. And we weed through these things, separate the wheat from the chaff. The first order of business is the Treasury Department is getting an accounting of how much Bitcoin the government owns. So, they've had to send letters and solicit information from departments all across the government, U.S. attorney's offices all across the country that have had law enforcement actions that may involve seized assets. Of course, they seized lots of different assets. There's the forfeiture fund that has like famously really cool expensive cars and planes from drug dealers and stuff. So, cash, there's all sorts of assets. of course, Bitcoin is some part of that. So they're trying to do an accounting. And then in

terms of how they supplement that and acquire Bitcoin in budget neutral ways, some of the interesting ideas I've heard are, you know, I love BitBonds. I love the idea. That's going to take, that's a heavy lift to get people comfortable with that idea. There's the treasury office that manages all the debt and issuances. I think we'll have to get educated and up to speed on that. I think the Treasury Secretary himself, while he has said very favorable things about Bitcoin, will still need to be kind of educated and enlightened on this issue. Whether we are able to get that across the finish line, I don't know, but I do think that's a great way to do it. Some of the other ways, you know, the President's been talking about instead of accumulating more

debt, helping the American people accumulate assets, monetizing a lot of the properties. The US government owns like two-thirds of the Western United States. They have licensing agreements for oil and gas, energy development. The energy department issued an RFI that is currently outstanding, if anybody wants to comment about how to run data centers at federal sites where energy resources may be available you could potentially have bitcoin mining operations you could have private miners have similar licensing agreements where with like oil and gas companies you're kind of sharing the benefit with the american people it you can make an agreement that makes sense both for the private company and the government

Maybe the government, as part of that agreement, has paid rent in Bitcoin that is mined at the site, something like that. The Army Corps owns, I forget, hundreds, I think, of hydro resources that are, to my mind, currently way underutilized. So the government could have mining facilities at sites like that. um there are there's senator lummis's bill the bitcoin act which would revalue the gold certificates interesting point about this is that you know it's been done in the past if they were to mark the gold to market you're basically unlocking i mean hundreds of billions of dollars up to a trillion dollars uh in in new money um that has could have a bit of a deleterious effect in that you are kind of printing money in that way. There is the political

calculation that if the Republicans controlling the majority of both houses in the White House right now, if they don't do it, in the future, the Democrats could do it. And if you're talking to a Republican member, the message is, and they could spend that money on something that you don't like, whatever that may be, a department of DEI or department of minor trans surgeries. I don't know, whatever the idea may be that a Republican congressman is not going to like. So you should do it on your priorities, like no tax on tips or ceding the sovereign wealth fund or using 10 or 15% of that to see the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Um, so I don't know where that's going to go. I think it's in discussions among some members for the reconciliation package to make

the tax cuts permanent. Um, whether that could be a part of it, maybe a portion of it could go towards, uh, relieving the national debt. Um, you know, but taking a slice of that for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. It's an idea that's under discussion. That's a tough coalition to build in both houses of Congress. Perhaps that urgency message I just described could help move it along. But these are a few of the methods that I have heard about that I know have been communicated to the administration. But as I said, you know, Bo Hines is great and our interview with him will come out, I think, early next week. And he talked about how they're collecting tons of ideas. They're going to have to meet as a working group. They're going to have to set

the top two or three easiest or most sound ways of doing it. And then they'll execute on that. But he's made it clear that the government's position, the Trump administration's position is they want to acquire as much as possible. He said, it's like asking somebody how much gold do want or how much any other valuable asset that you want if you want to be a superpower you want as much of it as you can get so i think it's an encouraging statement of policy from the administration how that is translated into reality we're gonna have to wait and see i think a few more months but i'm hopeful that that 180 day report gives us more clarity on that yeah well So if anybody on the working group is listening to the show, which I know you are, I know you guys all listen, Bitbonds, we're approaching the 250th anniversary birthday of our Declaration of Independence from the British Crown.

We need bold action. Debt, a little high, a little high right now. That debt expense, that interest expense, getting a bit higher. Tenure yield, not where we want it to be. We need bold action. I think Bitbonds is the bold action. A trillion dollars every 100 days in debt. If you reduce that interest rate from four and a quarter to 1% or even less, you're going a long way towards solving this problem, which the president has said is a priority. The Treasury Secretary, this is one of the reasons why he ended up leaving his multi-billion dollar business to come be Treasury Secretary, was to fix the debt problem.

You can dramatically reduce your debt expense in one fell swoop if you can get BitBonds off the ground. You can give risk-free exposure to the upside of Bitcoin to millions of American families by doing this. You will improve the quality of life. You'll reverse the trend of the melting iceberg dollar if you do BitBonds. So, yeah, we need to get that Andrew Hones guy into the Treasury Department to sing the gospel of BitBonds and try to get this thing moving because it really would be revolutionary to commemorate the 250th anniversary. At the time, it's a great story. I know Andrew well. He could talk the balls off a pool table. He can get in there and tell a story and sell BitBonds. We just need to get him in the room. Bo, if you're listening, I know you are. I know you listen to the show. Let's make it happen. Bold moves. We need it. Yes. And Tyler Williams, our friend, used to be at Galaxy. Now he's counselor to the secretary. I love Tyler. He can be a little... I don't know. He's an institutionalist. He's like, you know, is a creature of the Senate. He's more deliberative. All I'm saying, Tyler, is deliberate faster because this is a really good idea. But we got to do it sooner rather than later. So let's let's push that through.

Yeah. Speaking about bold moves from the Treasury, what are your thoughts on taking a broader view on the Treasury's position and the goals there they're trying to accomplish? how big was secretary of dissent speech earlier this week in your mind um i think it was great i think he's an excellent messenger for like i said this economic model that they're trying to build it's hard to argue that over the last 30 years the quality of life for your typical american the their purchasing power uh has improved because i think the data shows that it really hasn't. He wants to reverse that trend. Him saying, not this week, but in a previous speech about how, you know, Wall Street has done very well. Market returns have been, I think, somewhat inflated. I've benefited a good amount from that. But a rebalancing

really is needed. There have been a lot of discussions about the downward trend started by China entering the WTO and then us just becoming an importer of cheap goods rather than a maker and exporter of all sorts of things. I think these are really sound goals and would broaden and strengthen a middle-class economy where you could have a one-earner household more frequently. You can have people with much greater purchasing power, or at least it'll erode much slower. Another argument for Bitbonds, seriously, in just allowing people to have risk-free investments or keep their cash in things that are going to appreciate. so i i think his his description of what they're trying to do is really really important because

there's a section of people who have an outsized microphone i i can be part of this group at times because i live in the acela corridor but they're just looking at their portfolios and they're not thinking about the rest of the country or the country as a whole and elon musk has talked about like if the ship of america sinks then what's going to happen to your company what's going to happen to those returns over the long run so this short-term volatility is interesting for me to listen to and the explanation of why it's okay and why things will be better later because it's something i think bitcoiners are of course really familiar with that this transition or this uh the years since Bitcoin was created until now has kind of been like an EKG

reading, but it's gone up into the right. And I think that's, he's helping to translate that message for a broader audience, not specifically respect with respect to Bitcoin, but with respect to, we need to endure this short-term volatility in exchange for long-term stable growth and a stronger economy as a result. We saw in COVID that the U.S. doesn't make enough stuff. We don't make enough pharmaceuticals or the items that belonged in the strategic medical reserve, like rubber gloves and PPE and all of these things. We don't make enough things that we need in a crisis in the United States. We cannot be relying on adversarial nations for

these items. We should build them here and build a stronger workforce and middle class as a result of it. I think his translating these things is critically important. His speech with respect to China and the global organizations, World Bank, IMF. I mean, I love it when an American administration goes into the multilateral institutions and just punches them in the nose because they deserve it. Giving China favored nation status or giving them developing nation status, of course, is ridiculous. The U.S. is the biggest funder of the World Bank. The fact that China is a big offtaker of those loans means the U.S. taxpayers are funding their own demise. It makes no sense. There needs to be a very stark correction. IMF and World Bank need to

be refocused on their mission the world bank should not be a climate change i don't know spokesperson or cheerleader or whatever it's supposed to be solving poverty and that was our goal to build up other markets around the world and to have a more profitable and prosperous and safe world um that should be the focus um so you know to the extent the imf has been going down that road they've been very bad on monetary policy for a long time if you ever want to read the same op-ed 150 times, look at David Malpass's writings on the IMF and how bad they've been at monetary policy. So getting these institutions pointed in the right direction is necessary for the world, but especially for the United States as one of the biggest funders of these institutions.

We do have goals that are in our strategic interest with those groups, but they've become America hating climate churches. So we got to fix them. So I was very glad to see that. I loved it when Trump went to Davos, when I worked for him, he went to Davos and said, I don't know what you guys are doing. You should do what I'm doing. Cut taxes, deregulate, argue for trade deals that are good for your country, just as I'm going to argue for trade deals that are good for my country. I don't know why you're all not doing this, but they were all dreading his arrival and his speech was just a total punch in the nose. But I remember when he did arrive, everybody had their cell phones out. They all jumped out of their chairs. They were all starstruck. So, the American

presidency is very powerful. You can use it for good if you're willing to take bold action. So, I think Besant is spreading that good word on behalf of the president in a way that people can understand and they can digest it and it calms their nerves a little bit when they understand exactly what he's trying to build and i think that's been a very good byproduct of his speeches yeah i think that particular speech i was even i mean it makes sense after he said it but it's like one of those things you need to have articulated to be like yeah this isn't right the whole china being treated as a developing nation when it's the second largest economy in the world it's like yeah that doesn't make any sense the fact that we're funding our own demise

as you laid it out yeah i think that is powerful potent and most importantly pretty easy to distill like you can say yeah that these two things don't add up it doesn't make sense it does make sense that we should try to fix that and change that to get everybody on a level playing field well and here's kind of a dirty little secret i think when because i've spent time around the imf and World Bank. I think a lot of these member nations and their representatives know this. This was not a surprise when he said it, that these are the facts. What was a surprise was that he said it out loud and in public. That was the surprise, because this is something that everybody knows and everybody would kind of hang their head and shrug their shoulders and say,

like you know if if it was said public or privately they'd say yeah that's probably bad and we'd rather do business with you than them and yeah but what are you going to do about it you know kind of shrug and hang their head now we have the american government saying it out loud why are you doing this this is crazy we're going to fix this that's a leadership that's necessary to get everybody to stop with this mindless nodding and shrugging and actually say all right you know what we could fix this and that would be good for all of us so um it's amazing how things can happen when you're just willing to say that verboten thing out loud and in public but it's taken the trump administration and secretary besant to actually get it out there

And thank goodness they did. Live not by lies applied by the U.S. government. It's good to see if you want to prevent yourself from turning into a communist hellhole. Live not by lies. Point out the obvious lies that are being fed to the people. This is insane. You should not be subsidizing China. And it is chaotic.

And you mentioned the market volatility. I think that's another important thing. To really realize, particularly if you're just reacting to the mainstream media's reaction to what the Trump administration is doing. If you look at polls outside of the boomer generation and white women, Trump's favorability has actually gone up in every other demo. I'm pretty sure I saw that earlier this week. So I think it's important while all this is going on and unfolding and the media and the left pundits pundits on the left are reacting to it and trying to manufacture why the perception of widespread dread and hatred for these policies. If you actually look at the polling numbers, it does seem like a very large section of the American population is OK with this volatility. because these moves are being made and there does seem to be some understanding because of the

hyper communicative nature of this administration that that this is some necessary pain to reset things i think that's right i i think a lot of the mainstream media doesn't give the american people enough credit and president trump knows that i mean he of course was i mean he's been famous for 50 years and he was always on the cover of the new york post when i was a kid growing up in the New York area. But, you know, one of the ways he had built this base of support was not through being famous on The Apprentice or any of the various ways he was very well known nationally, but he would have sort of a state and local communications plan. I'd learned this when I worked at the White House. He would do a lot of morning drive time

radio shows. He would do a lot of, you know, good day Birmingham, or, you know, the kind of the local, uh, local version of the today show or, or whatever you want to call it. And he would just listen to the questions, see what those people were talking about in their communities. Still, a lot of Americans are watching their six o'clock news or listening to their local radio hosts and things like that. And he would do those shows, which don't get you national attention, but it brings you into the living rooms and hearts of like those people. And there was a hilarious story from my buddy Cliff Sims, who also was in the first Trump administration where he had run a media

outlet in Alabama and he had Donald Trump on a radio broadcast in like July. And he said, you know what people don't do anymore? They don't say Merry Christmas. I don't like all this happy holidays. It's Christmas. We should say Merry Christmas. And he said the phone lines were lit up and it was ringing off the hook of callers calling and saying, yeah, you know, he's right. Like, I don't like, I've been kind of not along, like going along with that, but this happy holidays nonsense, but I don't like that.

We should say Merry Christmas. And so like, he has this ability to just, like I said, say that thing out loud that people maybe have been thinking, but haven't been saying. And when they hear it come out of his mouth, it's, they feel like he's on their side. And he notwithstanding all the screeching and rending of clothes of what's going on right now with the tariff and trade deal negotiations, most Americans actually do get it and understand he's sticking up for them. And he's trying to build a stronger employment base for them in their communities, whereas these corridors on the east and west coasts have been more focused on their market returns and not the day-to-day life of people between the coasts. He is focused on that. Most people get it.

But we live in echo chambers these days. and the echo chambers that are reflected by the mainstream media don't think in those terms but he knows that there are all these other people who do that's why when he was running for president 2016 people were surprised but he would fill a stadium with 24 hours notice i mean he sold out uh i forget which arena it was might have been chicago i don't remember um but on like very short notice i think 24 hours they had filled the entire arena and they broke the attendance record And we got out of his car. There was somebody there to greet him and said, congratulations, you've just set the record for ticket sales at this facility. And we had Elton John here last year. So like...

Well, if it was the United Center too, that's where Michael Jordan was coming up. Yeah, pretty wild. So that willingness, going back to Besson's speech, that willingness to say that thing that people know out loud has really endeared him to tens of millions of people. And that's why people understand what he's doing now. and there's still a lot of consumers in the mainstream media still really good ratings for your mainstream broadcast nbc nightly news cbs evening news uh abc world news tonight they still it's been going down but they still have uh you know pretty good market share of those boomers you talked about um but now alternative media is getting his side of the story out much more frequently and much more effectively. So, it's not as much of this bulwark that he has to bust through. It's still there, but it's not as much of one because he spent so many years laying that

groundwork I'm describing of talking to people directly and through their local outlets and doing events there and all that. So, and it's paying off now. I think deep down, you know, he had been flirting with running for president since like the 80s and I think knew in his heart of hearts. I'm going to be president someday. So I actually think maybe a lot of this was in service of that goal. But now he's reaping the benefits. Talking about a long play. I mean, my gosh. And he's been talking about tariffs since Oprah in the 90s. And now he actually gets to execute and run this experiment. But it's fun to watch. And I agree. There's an audience that totally understands it that is not reflected in the mainstream media.

and you think after decades of trump basically playing this this media game the mainstream media would wake up and understand particularly in 2025 it's like you guys have lost the plot over the last decade and he's been president twice tried to kill him he's back and still like you're doubling tripling down on this this failed sort of strategy from a media perspective i always say if you're in a adversarial relationship you know you escalate proportionally and you start start out friendly where can we find common ground can we quash the beef and then if you find out that the other person is just not acting in good faith over your series of communications it becomes time to just defeat them no more

playing nice no more negotiating you just defeat them and at some point along the way i think you know he's still got pretty decent treatment uh not good but okay tolerable treatment before he ran for president and then when he ran for president they wanted to capitalize on the ratings with trump hate and then they just continued from there just do everything we can to tear him down it reminds me of the movie private parts with howard stern if you ever saw that, but his producer, Paul Giamatti, uh, runs in to the room and says, your ratings are off the charts. 40% of your audience loves you because they don't know what you're going to say next. 60% of your audience hates you because they don't know what you're going to say next.

And so I think the mainstream media capitalize on the Trump hate, uh, for a number of years, um, and have just not adapted to the fact that like, actually 60% doesn't hate him anymore. you know actually a lot of people like you really see what he's doing they love him um but they they just haven't been able to get out of that mindset and i always say when it's garbage in it's garbage out if you're just filling your mind with information this echo chamber that's like he's a nazi and he's a threat to democracy and blah blah blah it's gonna be very hard for you to call balls and strikes and say this thing he did was good this thing he did was bad. It's just everything is bad. So I'm glad it's too slow moving, but I'm glad to see the

shift to alternative media and people being able to consume information in different ways from different sources. Because I think we've had, and I think the reason he won this time was that people were able to see through the constant hysteria and actually look at individual things, policies that they care about um i think that's been a a really important sea change but there's still people out there who haven't gotten it who haven't gotten the memo i mean i i talked with a a friend of mine recently actually who is like a mainstream media person and at some point in the conversation i said you still believe in the charlottesville hoax don't you and they're like what do you mean i was like did you ever watch the comment very fine people comment and then

watch the next sentence where he said and i'm not talking about the nazis the white supremacists they should be condemned did you ever see that next sentence they're like i don't know what you're talking about so like again i say garbage in garbage out now there's a lot of better ingredients more healthy information diet that people can have and i think that was reflected in the uh electorate in 2024 yeah exciting times exciting times it's uh i feel fortunate to be in this chair having conversations with people like you about bitcoin and broader macroeconomic and political topics because it's uh never boring never nothing to talk about and i think very important to talk about what we talked about today as it pertains to

policy around bitcoin what's happening on the regulatory front so maybe um before we wrap up that's one question i did want to ask you before forgot to but want to take the opportunity to ask it before we hop off here chevron doctrine i feel like that that ruling got overturned and it's sort of a low-hanging fruit that people should be taking advantage of maybe aren't to the fullest extent is there anything there they think whether it's the bitcoin industry or any other industry should be taking advantage of as it pertains to the chevron doctrine and sort of suing regulators that are making laws that then it goes through the house and the senate you know i've become a little bit more or a lot bit

more plugged into energy policy in this role. And so, I think there's probably more to come on that front. Now, against this administration, you may not need as many lawsuits. You can get policy changes in the friendly way. We saw Administrator Zeldin at the EPA re-examining the doctrine that kind of established the climate change agenda, looking at CO2 as a harmful emission. So that's one example where there may not be as many lawsuits required at this time. You may be able to actually just ask for policy changes and they may agree with you. I would say just more broadly in terms of Chevron, and then there's a couple other issues that I think we're working on that are not Chevron related, or could be. But I think there's

tax issues, the banking regulators. I think Chevron and related case law could have been used to challenge things like choke point because you were having regulation by press release and not, you know, on behalf of experts. So those actually, I think you could get, you could have won on procedural or constitutional grounds independent of Chevron, but Chevron would have helped with those. But now with Trump's executive order and the new regulators in place, they were able to just remove the choke point guidances and regulations without the lawsuit um on tax stuff uh you know maybe kind of a similar posture that congress hasn't weighed in yet on how to tax mined bitcoin the sec cftc agree that it's a commodity the irs hasn't gotten that memo it's

not taxed at the point of sale it's taxed at the point that you mine it and then it's taxed again when you sell it so like changing guidance like that i mean you could potentially use a probably not chevron but a a litigation strategy to get that changed but i think now we're hopeful that there would be just a policy change by the people in power so you don't necessarily need the lawsuit Absolutely. So that's kind of a long answer with a few anecdotes in it. But point being, I think with this administration, they have an open door to industries who are like, you said you want us to thrive in the US. Here's something you could do to help us thrive. And they're like, oh, good point. We can do that. So you don't have to sue them under Chevron. I think you'd see a lot more litigation activity under it had Kamala Harris won because they would have wanted to preserve that administrative state strength and had more decisions like the one that was litigated in Chevron or like that was or some of the health care cases in terms of benefits and religious organizations. There's a lot of different threads of litigation that I think would have been more active had the election outcome been different. So but if there's anything in particular you're thinking of, happy to talk about it.

I just think that's the explanation for why there hasn't been more, because the administration has thrown open their doors and said, tell us what you think. And when I worked at Treasury, that's a stark contrast because when I worked at Treasury and would take industry meetings, the first thing that people would say was, thank you for listening and thank you for meeting with us. Because the Obama administration wouldn't even take our calls. They wouldn't respond to our emails. They would only invite in like professors and think tanks and NGOs. They wouldn't listen to people actually doing business. They wouldn't even let them in the door. so thank you for allowing us in to share our concerns so um just an anecdote of course but

that i think illustrates what we're dealing with now and why there isn't more litigation that makes a lot of sense and my my questions pertain to that tax issue because that was brought up yesterday too that tax issue is extremely burdensome um as you know being a right but um brian thank you for all the work that you do and for coming on on the show like i said it's exciting times and i think i really want to make that clear to the audience when there's people individuals like brian having sam and tyler in the treasury department like there are very hardcore bitcoiners very close to policymakers and i met 12 years of bitcoin I've never been more optimistic about a political or presidential administration actually having good information sources as it pertains to Bitcoin in their ear.

So thank you for all the work that you do, both at Riot, the Bitcoin Voter Project. I know there's a lot of cross-pollination between all the Bitcoin-focused think tanks down there in D.C. So I think all the work that you're doing. For the longest time, I was a fade the government, don't interact with them, just go anarcho-capitalist. But I think as I've gotten older, had children, building businesses, you may not care about political power. Political power cares about you. And with that in mind, you need people who actually understand Bitcoin, the industry, the potential it provides individuals in the country at large in these positions. And I am just extremely impressed with all the work the multiple individuals in D.C. like yourself have been doing to really push the ball forward.

i appreciate that's very very kind of you um yeah riot has been greatly supportive and i think they had a similar view to what yours was when they hired me which was we're not government people we're bitcoiners what do we care and then when various government entities started coming after them they realized oh i guess we have to care um and the great news is that it's gone from defending ourselves to going on offense and racking up wins and so you know we have the bitcoin voter project we have i'm on the board of the texas blockchain council executive committee of the digital chamber like all these different avenues we're moving things forward in a positive direction now uh and it's going to make we're building this kind of foundation and and fortress

uh, that's going to be much harder to penetrate. Whereas prior, um, we were kind of low hanging fruit to attack. And I hate this metaphor, but it is pretty good. Uh, is if you're not at the table, you're on the menu and now we're very much at the table. We're, you know, maybe not the head of the table, but we're definitely there. Uh, and, uh, and racking up wins. So thank you for kind words i appreciate it thank you for the invitation to come on uh this is really fun and let's do it again sometime we definitely should do it again sometime see you in dc in june maybe bpi's event yes we'll see you there i'll see you in dc ryan that's all we got peace and love freaks freaks thank you for listening to the show i hope you liked it if you did like it

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