TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #627: Competing With China Using Bitcoin with Ken Egan

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Marty sits down with Ken Egan, the Director of Government Affairs at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, to discuss his journey into Bitcoin, the evolving perspectives within the U.S. national security establishment regarding Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin Policy Institute's strategy to influence policy in Washington D.C. Ken Egan on Twitter: https://x.com/Bayman11771 BPI: https://www.btcpolicy.org/ STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Shoutout to our sponsors: 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/ STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Shoutout to our sponsors: 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's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all 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 And that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Ken, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me.

Marty, finally. You've been kicking us around for a few weeks. I'm glad we were apparently able to make it work. As I was telling you, in the middle of a move, conference in the middle of that move. It's been a hectic week, so I think I'm finally settling in. As you can see, no bookshelf, but we have stacked books behind me. hopefully they will be on on shelves soon no there are definitely ways there are ways in the

world to get you know to get credits on um you know uh what do you call it um uh you we're good catholics you know when you when you pass and they'll go to heaven um come on purgatory thank you well moving is purgatory credit so i've done it many times in my life because i uh i feel for you well thank you but i'm really excited for this conversation and likewise the event in a few weeks the bpi event down in dc the summit we met about a month ago two months ago now at this point in austin during the takeover and zach was very eager to introduce you to me considering the history of the show topics we covered and i think i'm excited for this because i'm infinitely curious to learn of somebody with your pedigree and your resume got into bitcoin is now working

for the bitcoin policy institute as a director of government affairs so for anybody listening who was unaware of ken's resume he did 20 years in government culminating as deputy chief of operations at the cia center for cyber intelligence uh you've worked overseas for the u.s state department and now you're advocating on behalf of bitcoin on capitol hill so how does somebody with a resume go from statecraft to cypherpunk sort of ideas yeah no so i um like everybody else i uh i um my bitcoin journey is a little bit everybody has a unique journey right um mine actually started cia believe it or not it was for purely professional reasons i um so i was an operations officer. I spent most of my career overseas,

as most of us do. But my last two years, my last two tours at CIA, I was at the Center for Cyber Intelligence, which is CIA's cyber unit. And my first job there, I was a group chief, I was an operations chief for a group that worked on cyber threat issues. And this was

in 2018. So you remember, this was when Lazarus Group, the North Koreans, figured out that stealing crypto was a lot easier than trying to rob banks. This is when ransomware broke out as a serious problem. just preceded you may remember the colonial pipeline hack on the shutdown you know gasoline shipments to the east coast so in 2018 um and it's kind of funny like i this is people say did the

cia create bitcoin i can tell you in 2018 when policymakers first had to confront it it's used by actors as an issue like nobody was ready for it like if they created it it was tucked away and hidden in the basement because the bench for people with crypto knowledge in general digital assets certainly bitcoin was really really really shallow um i remember we had two guys um who kind of had background in it and then you know they became superstars because all of a sudden we were calling upon them to teach us about bitcoin and digital assets in general um but yeah so i learned like everything else i learned about it because i had to because people we cared about people we cared about were using it um but like everything else there was sort of a mind virus to

it. Um, and I, I admit, you know, I, uh, during COVID I was in the, uh, I was in the altcoin casino. I was defying and meme coining and it was, it was fun. No, no, I, I, I don't hold any hate for the, uh, for the altcoiners people that they want with their money. Um, but I, you know, that, that was when it was during COVID. Um, I had been sort of buying it 2018, but during COVID when I really started learning, cause this is where everybody learned. Right. Um, and I, you for me bitcoin was what really attracted me to it and i was sort of inspired by um i mean the coven kenny trucker protest was something really important to me um i said i was being used um but also sort of in my day job you know i i had a pretty good understanding of how the government

uses financial uh financial tools as a weapon um freezing bank accounts ofac sanctions that kind of thing and if you're on the you know on the giving end of that that's great those are great tools to to have if you're the government uh not so great if you're on the other end of it and you know watching these canadian truckers the first time you know you'll be able to it's very easy to say yeah sanction the iranians sanction north korea whatever you know i'm not iranian um but when you see all of a sudden canadian truckers people you had some sympathy with being targets of financial you know why position the financial system you know it struck it struck a struck a nerve like a really, really profound stinging shot

to my consciousness about this issue. So for me, the first thing about Bitcoin was permissionless transactions. That's what got me into it. And then, of course, you go from there. And by the time I left the government in 2022, I was full bore. I was attending meetups.

And that's when I started doing some advocacy stuff on Capitol Hill and messing around with Dave and Granite PPI doing some advocacy stuff. but yeah but it comes from my time at cia and you know i think the um the uh i think what might surprise some people is there are a lot of bitcoiners um not just at cia but across the whole national security establishment and i think they're into it for the same reason that you know that everybody most of your listeners are right like it's you see what's happening in the world you see the challenges we're facing you see how governments use financial tools to weaponize

them against opposition you know it's very natural that if you have that kind of insight that you look for things to protect yourself and Bitcoin is obvious. So I tell a funny story. When I was first into it, there was a cubicle, one of the guys, and he had a bumper sticker. It said, we are all Satoshi.

This is in one of the offices. I'm like, I know what that means. The guy's like, oh, you're a Bitcoiner? Yeah, dude, me too, me too, me too. And they come out and like everything else, when you're into it, you learn, you meet people. I was in Europe at a dinner with the chief of station and he busts out his BlockFi card to pay for dinner.

And I was like, wait a minute. He's like, no, no, I take in Bitcoin, man. I take my rewards in Bitcoin. And there's two examples, but there are a lot of Bitcoiners across the national security establishment, which to me makes perfect sense. I think a lot of listeners will find that surprising,

but they're there, and they're in it for the exact same reasons that everybody else is. I think the latter part there is what would be surprising to a lot of people. And I think that's one of the reasons why i'm very excited to speak with you today is to get better insight into how the government particularly the intelligence apparatus is approaching bitcoin and crypto more broadly

especially as it pertains to sort of civil liberties and the right to transact permissionlessly because i think that's one thing as we look out at the industry now particularly what's going on with tornado cash and samurai wallet those cases i think there's a lot of questions that bitcoiners have particularly around the attempt by the government to form fit laws that were written 50 years ago onto this new nation unique asset in bitcoin and i think Like, I would imagine Bitcoin existing and people using it in a peer-to-peer distributed fashion has to incite some uncomfortable questions of, hey, are we going to be able to continue to leverage these financial tools the way we have over the last 50 years, maybe further back than that? um and are we simply just gonna have to concede that bitcoin is this unique animal and reorient

the way we approach yeah um the way we approach enforcement of the laws uh we've been saying it on this show in rabbit hole recap for many years i truly believe that bitcoin instead of trying to force it down the road of form fitting into bank secrecy act and a lot of the regulations and laws that have stemmed from that it's simply going to come down to law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies having to do better sort of detective work um because the big worry is that you throw the baby out with the bath water by trying to put the incumbent regulations on a system like bitcoin yeah no i think i think it's first it's important to realize that like the national security establishment is not a monolith right it's big um it's as big as everyone thinks

it is, but it encompasses whether it's the intelligence community, CIA, FBI, which despite what people think is culturally very different from CIA, DOD, the Department of Defense, you know, the vast sort of octopus that is the military. So all these different units have, these different pieces of it have different perspectives on what they look at. And I think these are also institutions, right, that have been around a long time. I think the sort of the idea that being able to transact freely, self-sovereignty is new, is a little bit of recency bias.

I mean, I think it, my view is that it all sort of, the things went bad for September 11th for a lot of reasons. I'm from New York. I took it very personally. But if you think to the evolution of how the surveillance state

and what's happened in government since 9-11, you get a flavor for how things went off the rails and how we can actually bring them back in a way that still, you know, America was a perfectly fine country in 1999. We survived perfectly well without all these tools of surveillance that were built in the aftermath of 9-11. And again, I understand, I get what happened. But I think the story of 9-11 and the evolution of not only surveillance state, but also global politics since 9-11,

sort of creates a sense among people, certainly younger people that maybe don't remember the pre-times, that these institutions are inherently anti-basic ideas of sovereignty, basic ideas of the ability to transact, all the things that we care about in Bitcoin. But I do think now with President Trump and the sort of the cultural shift, and I think that that's peaked during the Biden years. I remember just last year, I did a couple of panels

at the Bitcoin's Policy Summit last year before I was an employee. And we were really, it was like, we were fighting on our backs, you know, just struggling, you know, keep trying to stay in the fight. The tone shift in D.C. is remarkable. And that's not just about Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is part of the general tone shift

away from this Goliath of a surveillance state that I think reasonable-thinking people would agree was abused over the past couple of years, not just against people in the digital asset space, but if you're at a school board meeting and all of a sudden you're on an FBI terrorist list because you spoke at a school board meeting that's problematic right i think people have and i think we've we've arrived at a sea change um bitcoin's going to benefit from that and i think it's it's

actually part of one of the bigger wins in the sales behind that um but i think the the idea that sort of these institutions are inherently certainly the national security sector inherently against these things is um is again it reflects a little bit of recency bias yeah i think that's encouraging to hear it's like how in your mind what do you think needs to happen within these four years to really cement that that mindset into the minds of not only yourself and bitcoiners but the american people more broadly you know i think on some level i mean it's it's going to be also on these institutions to prove it right like there was no like i'll give you an example like these uh the

letter that like these former ci officers signed um you know saying that trump there was a you know it was it was um russian propaganda did no favors and then you know i feel bad i mean i'll be honest like i one of the people signed that letter i had worked for him early in my career and knew him and he was very good to me right uh so i it's it was really sort of disappointing and i felt i didn't like seeing him on that letter um and even though that wasn't cia's letter right these are former officers who are entitled to speak their mind they wrote in such a way that gave the impression that it was sort of their official opinion and i think that things like that i wrote a lot i wrote a lot of trust um and i think the best thing that for example cia but the entire national security

establishment can do is just to deal fairly with people uh speak the truth and more and also don't abuse your powers i think a lot of what happened um and i you know i have a lot of friends at fbi and there are really good people at FBI, good Americans who honor their oaths to the Constitution. But when you become a fixture in Washington, D.C., I have to say that I think CIA benefits from being across the river in Virginia in ways that FBI does not benefit

being stuck on Pennsylvania Avenue right between Congress and the White House. I think it's important that the leadership of these institutions hold themselves accountable for some of the things that have happened in the past. More importantly, just do your job well. I think people understand that these institutions are important but do your job well, do it honestly

don't mess around don't get cute with people's rights and I think all of a sudden you'll see a sea change I think for example we have Deputy Director of CIA coming to our summit on June 25th I don't know exactly what he's going to say but he's not coming to talk about censorship

or censoring OFAC compliant blocks He's going to come and talk about why Bitcoin is important for the future of the United States. And I think things like this, gestures like this from the national security establishment to not just Bitcoin community, but to the country will go a long way in reestablishing trust. Sup freaks. This rep of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at CoinKite. 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 coin kite.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 bitcoin or 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 oh that's um going back to what you originally said in the beginning of the conversation and handily debunked that the uh cia created bitcoin and that when you when you hear when you hear that theory it's often

sort of uh sort of set up with the idea that like back in the early 2000s post 9-11 the cia was running war games at the pentagon looking at the debt looking at the money that was going to need to be printed especially um considering what happened in 2008 and they launched bitcoin as a way to create a strategic advantage for the u.s in the long run um you know that was often that's that's one of the theories that's put out there if you are one of the ones like Catherine Austin Fitz who believes that the CIA created Bitcoin but even if that's debunked is that sort of how the CIA views Bitcoin as a strategic economic asset that could play into the massive benefit of American citizens in the United States overall I do and I think it's

it's important to remember that you know cia is not a policy organization right it's intelligence organization its job is to to know the truth right and report that to policymakers i think a lot of what i think most people at cia if you if they're if they're involved bitcoin is because there are foreign actors using it to do things i mean that's just the reality right like it's foreign actors use bitcoin to move money to do all sorts of things that that we have to accept that i you and that's part of having your freedom of protocol, everybody can use it. But I think that there's a larger,

and the National Security Establishment is ahead of the rest, certainly they're ahead of Congress on this. The basic idea of the impossibility of the current monetary system continuing as it has been since, we'll call it 1971, but maybe possibly longer, is a threat to national security.

And what options are available that fit within sort of a core plateau of American values to help get us out of that situation. And this is why I think, I'll be honest with you, I haven't met a lot of gold bugs in CIA. I'm sure they're there. I've not. But if you're looking for solutions in a world

where dollar dominance slides, our adversaries aren't holding treasuries like they used to, Maybe the rest of the world has decided that they want to de-risk a little bit from their U.S. holdings and don't want to have their national wealth stored in a bank in New York City. What are the options? And this is what the kinds of things CIA will think about. What are the options? Where could these, where do these actors go?

Where do we go? Bitcoin is a natural, it's a natural option. It's digital. It fits in the modern world. You can self-custody it. It's permissionless. these are the sorts of things when you when you when you sort of game out a red team where will the world go or for example how do we compete with with china right which is building their

sort of parallel system in the world um what are our options for building a um a building a backdrop building a set of options to deal with that bitcoin's a natural option yeah i mean that i think when i think about it there's there's three things that really stand out number one how young bitcoin is and if it does truly compete with global currencies reserve assets and we're still at the beginning stages of the adoption you have this incredible upside asymmetric opportunity to get an early benefit from the adoption wave to i think river posted a report just last month or a few weeks ago basically highlighting that american hold the most Bitcoin per capita, the most businesses focused on Bitcoin are started in

the United States. We have the largest percentage of hash rate in any individual country here in the United States. And so in the private sector, we have an incredible advantage already just in the first 16 years. And then three, if you think about this playing out, adoption does continue at the pace that it has over the first 16 years since the protocol launched and it does become a formidable reserve asset that competes like does having a neutral reserve asset that cannot be controlled by any individual country company group of people does that change the the game theory of geopolitics in a positive way yeah i think it does and i think you have to look at where you know what offers us competitive advantage comfortable advantage right do we have compared to china

or russia do we have a comparable advantage in gold no i don't think so we have no natural advantages in gold um do we have does do we have a does bitcoin speak to our comparable advantages um we we do hope that you know as we look at where we can go you know are we going to look at options that speak to what i think still remain core u.s core american principles right freedom, private property. Bitcoin, in my mind, and I think in the mind of a lot of people in the national security sector,

Bitcoin hits all those points, right? We have a natural advantage in it because of mining. It is, on some level, it's a technical protocol in which we excel. And most importantly, it does not undermine U.S. values. It actually strengthens U.S. values. One of the reasons why I think China

can never become a superpower, a Bitcoin superpower, It's because at the end of the day, Bitcoin undermines the authority of the Chinese Communist Party. If you're a dictatorship, you don't want people having sovereign wealth. Thus, Bitcoin is not a good option for China, which is why they're looking to build their alternate system and their cross-border payment systems and some of the other,

and ballot roads, some of the things that they're working on. Conversely, for the United States, a protocol that encourages self-sovereignty, that allows people to control their wealth. Permissionless speaks to what I still think, I still hope there's a basic consensus in the United States that these are American values. And Bitcoin understates all those. Yeah.

I really hope those values still exist at some level. Yeah. I think so, and I think you're seeing it. It's interesting, Marty. I think back to last year, talking about politics a little bit, Where we were in Capitol Hill and sort of the environment about, you know, the policy establishment still doesn't look, they're learning that Bitcoin and crypto are different. I think Trump's executive order went a long, long way in establishing that fact, that Bitcoin is different than everything else.

Because people sort of get that conceptually now. um but the the reception that we get on capitol hill among policymakers there's no longer discussions about is this just criminal money um can is it fake can it be stolen all the things you talked about is it you know is it only for buying drugs all the sorts of discussions we had uh just not that long ago a year ago about bitcoin now the questions we get are talk me through what's good for national security talk me talk to me why this will not undermine the u.s global monetary dominance uh walk me through how this encourages other countries not to join the belt and road or china's parallel systems these are these are the kind of discussions we're having

now so but the basic premise is no they're not questioning whether bitcoin is going to exist or whether it should exist they're asking about the kinds of things it can do that is a huge huge shift from where we were a year ago or basic questions about like will this thing be around in 10 years and can it be stolen and what if satoshi comes comes back and you know and hits reboot you know what happens you know basic education uh we're way past that now where you have and and it's it is largely a bipartisan consensus not entirely but more and more the bitcoins here to stay um and they're asking really smart educated questions about how bitcoin can address these certain policy challenges that no longer includes it just for buying drugs on Silk

Road, which is a huge, huge policy shift just a matter of a couple of months. to read the full report. That's unchained.com slash TFTC. And with that in mind, I mean, as the Director of Government Affairs at BPI, I think it's become pretty clear in the last two years, specifically leading up to last year's election,

that a bunch of individuals in the industry sort of became privy to the fact that you may not care about political power, but political power cares about you. And if you accept that, It makes sense to interact with politicians no matter, despite the fact that you may be an anarcho-capitalist that is in this for the cypherpunk ideals that Bitcoin was founded on. But you can either ignore the reality of political power or engage with it. And I think with that in mind, what have Bitcoiners been doing right?

What have they been doing wrong? And how should the industry be interacting with the government as it tries to wrap its head around Bitcoin? How it can impact the U.S. government or excuse me, the U.S. economy? Yeah. So to speak to your earlier point. So when you're like involved in sort of Bitcoin clouds, BitDevs in D.C. area, it's a little bit different than the rest of the country because a lot of government people, a lot of military people. Right. Right. So it was a lot easier to sort of when you're, you know, broing out with your Bitcoin friends,

a lot of people in this area have sort of basic frames or sort of similar frames of reference. I'll tell you where I had some great discussions though, was in Austin at the mining summit. Cause you know, these are people that don't live in DC. Most of them, you know, just want the federal government to leave them alone. They had these kinds of discussions.

And my point to the people like that is always Bitcoin is resistance money, but you do, but you don't want to have to put that to the test. I think people that use Bitcoin as resistance money would much rather be in a situation where Bitcoin is a savings tool for them. It's a way to store wealth. All the other reasons where people like us look at the advantages that we enjoy of Bitcoin, we don't have to worry about it being resistance money. And if you neglect the political process, you could find yourself in a situation where Bitcoin becomes resistance money. And I don't want to live in a country where it becomes resistance money. It's a bad scene.

I think people accept the basic fact that the government can't stop it but you really want to be in a position where you're putting yourself in legal jeopardy to be able to use Bitcoin had you thought about this a couple years ago you could have participated in the process called your congressman, gone to summits

all the things we're doing and instead of letting it get to that point Bitcoin becomes a legal accepted, widely traded widely used tool in the United States So yeah, my point is always, let's not test the resistance money thesis

in the United States. It plays that role in a lot of countries, and thank God it's there for those people. But really, if we could not get there in America, that'd be much better. To your other point, I think the, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, you got it.

I think to your other, the second part of your question, what we're doing right, I think the industry has, and I've had the chance to see this sort of many job. There are a lot of big brains in the Bitcoin business a lot. And I think that they are,

and I think there's been a growing, and it has a lot to do with the fact that DC is no longer hostile. But I think there's been a growing acceptance of leaders in this industry, people, whether they're building protocols, long-term holders, sort of Bitcoin OGs. But the willingness of people like that

to actually talk to policymakers is going a long, long way. Because there's no longer this sort of adversarial view of the government. And the government has been adversarial. I'm not discounting their experiences. Last year, the government was an adversary. It just was.

That's just the way it is. That's changed. And I've been impressed that industry leaders have pivoted really quickly and are taking on the challenge of coming to D.C., meeting with members of Congress, sitting through discussions. That's great. Again, some people were doing it. But across the board, I know some of the people that the BPI supports, a lot of people that you know, you included,

when they come here and have these discussions with policy people, it makes you part of the process. And all of a sudden, through that, you do find that you actually have some natural allies, not just in the administration, but also on Capitol Hill. And that has been, I mean, I think that showed a certain maturity of the Bitcoin culture, where industry leaders are willing to come here. and not just leaders, but we have a day on the Hill on the second day of our summit and we have great sign-ups, people from all over the country coming, they want to go meet the representatives, talk to them about Bitcoin.

That goes a long, long way, and I think people are skeptical that if I call my congressman, is he really going to care? But if you call a congressman and you say, we have a Bitcoin meeting, if we meet every month and we get 50, 60 people, they start to care. It starts to matter when most campaigns in this country are decided by a couple thousand votes. But that basic cultural shift in Bitcoin

from plebs to industry being able and willing to engage with D.C. policymakers has gone a long, long way. Because at the end of the day, even if they want to support you, you have to help them get there. They have to know that someone's got their back. If they're going to step out and allege, they need to know that there are supporters out there that will have their back if there's political disagreements about this.

So that, for me, has been a radical shift. And it happened really, really quickly. And I think that Bitcoin, the community in general, is definitely benefiting from that. And it seems like it was very wise to start that initiative or to change mind on the approach to interacting with the government years ago. Because, I mean, there are big battles. I mentioned them earlier. The Tornado Cash developers and the Samurai developers are going through some cases. And I think we have the Blockchain Digital Clarity Act that is potentially going to be presented to the House.

And I believe over the weekend there was an amendment made to a bill that's already on the floor that sort of integrates a lot of the language of the Blockchain Clarity Act. And at the same time, you had the Secret Service last week tweeting out a conflation of centralized mixers and coin join transactions, which I said on Rabbit Hole Recap is a red line that we need to defend that you can't you can't really be throwing people in jail for writing software that allows people to use Bitcoin in a self-sovereign fashion without having control. So as the person who wrote that software, I think it's pretty clear that the Tornado Cash and Samurai case is that the software they built made it so they never had control of funds. And obviously the DOJ under Biden went to FinCEN and asked, do you think these are money transmitters? They said no. They went forward with the case anyway. And then fast forward to last week at the Secret Service come out and sort of doubling down on this. So as it pertains to this idea of the ability of open source software developers to write code that allows Bitcoin or Bitcoiners to use the protocol in a way that preserves their privacy, how do you see this playing out? Yeah, so we're lucky.

Secret Service is a law enforcement entity. They don't make laws. They enforce laws. So, you know, their guidance is, I think it was, it's kind of interesting to me how that got out. and why they put it out um i um it's you know at bpi you know our job is to sort of be there refute these sorts of things um from our perspective it's unclear what happened in secret service why that happened but um just because they say it doesn't make it law doesn't make it um doesn't make the rule uh the larger point though um or tornado cash and samurai i

mean i think you you um i mean you're familiar with with um you know you as you referenced the DOJ's just blatant decision to ignore guidance from FinCEN about the status of these protocols. But I think at the end of the day, this is the Redmonds. And my personal opinion, I'm confident that it's going to work itself out in the courts. But this was the Biden administration wanting to set precedent. They couldn't get Damla through. Elizabeth Warren couldn't get her bills through Congress. So they're looking to set precedent through the legal system, which frankly is not the way it's supposed to work, but happens all the time.

um so i you know i we we think a lot about that um i think the um the brca the blockchain regulatory clarity act uh certainty act rather i'm sorry and um and even now the um the big beautiful bill which you referenced you know the senator lomas has added some um essentially some components of brca into that into that bill we'll see but we're working on that to see what happens if we can get that through through the process um there there's a there's a there's a um there's a very deliberate policy um move right now to make sure that using the legal system to set precedent when law is not hasn't caught up as avoided and brca is an important part of that and if you know whatever brca is just you know it's some of its parts right if we can get those components into tax bill all

the better if not you know come next congress will come the fall rather we'll um we'll take up brca and work with uh congressman ever and congressman torres to get that through the house and into the senate yeah well pulling on this thread there's um a lot of people in the industry think there's there needs to be a sense of urgency to get bills passed within this administration specifically obviously we had the executive order for the strategic reserve quickly after trump was inaugurated we've had a sort of um vocal verbalized agreement or not even agreement the the trump administration has said we're ending operation chokepoint 2.0 we're not going to attack you and many people are very excited about these developments however cognizant of the fact that

due to the nature of politics in the united states in 2025 and the 21st century things tend to flip flop a lot unless something is enshrined into law we could just have a temporary sort of lull in the attacks on the industry here until the next administration gets in whether that's another republican administration or a democrat democrat uh administration that that wants to be more combative with the industry has yet to be determined but i think we're all in agreement that it would make sense just to not have to worry about who's going to be president or which party is going to be in control four years from now yeah and there's there's the reality of like working in dc is there's a billion priorities and you know our industry gets i don't know 0.5

percent of their brain power right to to to pay attention to our priorities this and this is why what we discussed earlier about how the industry's changed that's why it's important because the loudest i mean the loudest voices really are the ones that get heard um and loudest loudest can be you know numbers of activists loudest can be the most money contributed um but the loudest voices get heard in dc and this is this is what bpi's core mission is right is to stay in these people's faces and let them know we have a you know a very active um committed group of bitcoiners who will either support you or oppose you depending on how you treat this industry um and you're constantly fighting for attention um and this is why things like like the bitcoin conference having jd vance

the bitcoin conference for example sends a message to the republican party right this this administration is pro-bitcoin so you know you might you may or may not care about it but we need you on board and then our Bitcoin Policy Summit on June 25th. These are really, really important because this is how DC talks to itself, through conferences, getting in front of people, watching different policymakers looking for signals. Oh, this senator was here.

Oh, the deputy director of CIA, he said this. Maybe we care, you know what I mean? And so it's a flywheel effect of always being in people's faces and not just talking to Treasury, right? Bitcoin, I think one of the unfortunate events the proportion is sort of inevitable, was that Bitcoin, thinking about Bitcoin policy was regulated,

was relegated, better word, to FinCEN and Treasury and finance people. So Bitcoin's a lot bigger than that. And I think the fact now you have the intelligence community, Department of Defense, I mean, there are some people, Marty, at the DOD thinking really deeply and strongly about this, what it means for global competition, what does mining mean, how do we use mining for energy resilience. There are people thinking, even the Department of Energy,

um some of them will be at our conference um thinking really deeply about everything this ecosystem has to offer and how we can apply it to sort of a comprehensive national security strategy um but at the end of the day though it's your we remain competing for limited attention um there are a lot there's a lot going on right we accept that we're not the only thing in town it's very important to us um but other people have other priorities um it's it's always being in people's faces it's it's constantly letting people know that this community is out there um and we'll Again, we'll be your best friend or we'll be the biggest pain in the ass

if you propose things that we think are right. And at some point, it does come down to that, right? Like, there are people we disagree with. Sometimes it doesn't matter. But sometimes it does, and the Bitcoin community needs to be up there ready to fight, to fight for what they believe in,

and to be part of the process. And I think, you know, right now, we are front and center. We have all the minimum. And you have the vice president at a Bitcoin conference talking about how this is a national priority, you don't get much better than that

when you're signaling to your party. The challenge we have, of course, is we don't want Bitcoin to be, it's not a partisan issue, right? I heard people say Bitcoin's not political. I disagree. I think it is political, but it's not partisan.

It's not the same thing. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to speak today because after this, I'm going to Capitol Hill to meet with an office of a Democrat senator who kind of wants to be supportive of this industry, right? but you know they they live in their own universe as well um you know they don't want to be seen as you know being aligned with white house priorities so our job is to give them space and find ways to

them to express that support in a way we have to be realistic right we can't expect you know members different parties to get up and align with it's just not the way dc works you have to accept that um but we need to be give people space these members space who want to engage and you know we and that starts i'll be honest with you starts with telling them there's no litmus test here we have some really basic core principles i think brca kind of outlines those but if you don't want to support the sbr i mean okay that's fine like there are big corners don't like it right we can you know that doesn't mean your this industry has to be your enemy um but we're looking for sort of we do have core set of principles uh that we were looking for people to

abide by i think brca is is a um is a good example um we need to give these these sort of middle people space to support the industry um because that that's how you get so you get enduring majority that's how you make sure next time the white house flips and eventually we'll flip congress will flip that we have friends um that see bitcoin as being sort of in their net and their interest and also they've built relationships with the community they know what to talk to and you know we can we continue to get the treatment that we think that the uh the industry deserves does uh does your pitch change depending on who you're speaking with like i find personally when i'm when i'm pitching bitcoin to people who are in finance or um more right-leaning it's hard

money only ever be 21 million government can't mess with it and then left-leaning just point to alex gladstein the human rights foundation like if you're for activism and in building up the global south and giving people financial freedom and access to tools that that they don't have access to like this is a great protocol for that as well yeah 100 and that's that's the beauty of of of this thing right like you if you're most the most important thing on your agenda is energy resilience well i can wow i've got i've got a great story for you right what bitcoin money can do for you if you're the most important thing you care about human rights or or bringing disenfranchised people into the financial system i've got a great story for you and then of course

you're sort of our traditional sort of crypto anarchic libertarians they're already our friends they get the story but you have to because again these members are human they have their own personal interests

they can't be interested in everything you need to meet them where they are and if they're in my concern is making sure that people who don't have access to the banking system have access to financial services,

yeah, well, that's what we'll talk about. And it's not, you know, there's nothing disingenuous about that, right? Bitcoin does that, for example. Human rights, you know, my goal is to support human rights activists around the world. Bitcoin does that.

You can have an honest conversation and let people know how Bitcoin can serve that purpose. So yeah, you have to meet them where they are. Because again, if you go to a progressive and you're like 20 million, no inflation, you know, the government can't control it, It's like, eh, give me something else, right? I'm not sure, but I don't care about that.

Let's talk about these other things. Yeah, you meet people where they are. That's the important thing. And then the idea of being, again, and I subscribe to this. I think there's been a lot of discussion. We were actually going back and forth on Twitter yesterday. I don't think at the end of the day, I don't think there will be either institutions

are going to capture Bitcoin or Bitcoin's going to capture institutions. I really, really believe that. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, right? I'm at BPI because I believe that. And I think that Bitcoin and its incentives are powerful enough that if it is granted entry into these institutions,

it will affect how they're ultimately formed and built and function. The alternative is captured by institutions, which we don't want. I really, really believe that. And I think that the best way to do that, again, you have to get in the door and so you speak to people where they are.

At the end of the day, at its sort of base core level, for me, this is the ultimate thing BPI is working on. Either institutions capture Bitcoin or Bitcoin captures institutions. Our perspective is that Bitcoin will win. Bitcoin will capture institutions to the benefit of all of us. But it's a battle. And this is what we do here. Well, let's paint that picture.

What does it look like when Bitcoin captures the institutions? so even when the dog catches the car it's kind of like when i when i it's the just to tell you a story but it's funny when i started it um i started here back in february you know we had all these plans about this is what we're going to do vpi and we're going to do the sbr and all of a sudden you know we got in and then trump completely front ran us and you know did it good problem to have um but you know but i think the right now to to answer your question you know i think it doge if you look at what doge did and people you can we can quibble whether doge is successful or not But it certainly did shine a spotlight on some of how twisted and perverted the incentives and institutions have become.

The primary incentive is just to continue status quo and do nothing. There's been a gross reliance across the government. And I actually think that the national security sector is probably the most responsible in this regard. But certainly the incentives across federal agencies have been to continue business as usual, not challenge the status quo, no concern with efficiency, and just to continue spending money. When all of a sudden you bring Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is not just, it's not just you can't print it, right? It brings more to it. It brings a sense of responsibility. It brings a sense of, it brings value back to dollars.

Because right now, a lot of federal agencies, I'll give you an example. You know, if you're in a federal agency, the fiscal years are October 1st through September, the end of September, right? That's the government fiscal year. everybody gets it come july i'd say what's your spending rate oh you're spending too slow spend spend spend spend spend there's no incentive not to spend um the incentive is to spend and protect your budgets so you get the same next year or the sort of the um you know the wreck through the requisite five percent increase that everybody wants um you know you bring you you you bring sort of the basic principles of bitcoin into that discussion and it simply changes the way people

view of the world right now money is that there's no there's no real there's no real appreciation for people money is just a way to in government to yeah it's it's about continuity right it's it's about doing what you're doing continuing your programs uh the the results be damned when you bring different incentives into that where the money they spend is actually valued um i think you'll get better outcomes. I also think that there's a general, this is across the Western world, there's a general sort of drift toward statism,

sort of soft authoritarianism, whether it's censorship or well-trod territory, right? You know, when you bring Bitcoin into discussion and Bitcoin becomes part of a natural strategy, you know, those things are incompatible. And I think that when people understand, when they see the benefits Bitcoin does bring, it makes these other things that they've been interested in in the past

untenable. So again, I hear it a lot from Bitcoiners, Bitcoin has no role in the government, why are you doing this? I go back to the fact that one side's going to win, either institutions are going to win or Bitcoin's going to win. But we do fundamentally on some level need institutions to make the country run. We want those institutions to be properly incentivized.

I think Bitcoin does that. Yeah, and I don't know if it's a brain-dead theory or a pipe dream, but as somebody who prefers small government, small federal government, allocate everything to the states, let states' rights lead the way when it comes to the topic of something like a strategic Bitcoin reserve and how to acquire it via a mechanism like BitBonds, That excites me, because to your point about individual agency budgets and just the unfettered access to increasing amounts of money. Endless, endless, endless.

I think there could be a way to get smaller government, but it has to be via Bitcoin where you take care of the debt problem over the long term will take decades to do it. But ultimately, the government grows at the rate that it is because of the debt problem itself to a certain extent. And if you really, truly care about manifesting a smaller government, the best way to do that is to help them take care of their debt problem so that they don't they're not forced to expand at the rate that they have been. in recent decades and that's something that really excites me and then you mentioned department of defense department of energy think about mining and its implications and we've already seen it in texas tennessee many states like the mining industry has become critical parts of their energy infrastructure has allowed them to expand capacity and made them more individually resilient as as states and in grid systems and if you begin implementing it in all these different ways that's

the beauty of it too it's so multi-faceted it can be plugged into many different areas of the economy that you can again might be a pipe dream but i'm a an idealist optimistic person i guess and when you think when you look at the problems and think of the ways to solve them like bitcoin to me is honestly one of the only ways to actually solve these problems in the long term yeah and for me people also ask me like was it done for you i mean at the end of the day for me bitcoin is has made it easy it's made it easy not to be cynical um especially when you you know you you work in government especially with my line of work i mean it's easy to become cynical because things are just constantly breaking uh but when you do see something that offers a path maybe you

know it's a bit of a return to normal um it can't help but it can't help if you have if you have any like sort of optimism inside you it can't help but erase cynicism and i think one of the goofiest things you betting early bitcoiners like save the money save the world that sounds really goofy when first getting a bitcoin like what does that mean um but the longer you're into it it starts to make sense um because again you see all the destructive incentives that the basement has allowed to uh to fester in washington dc um again the whatever cool about doge but doge showed some of it and there's a lot more of it um when you when you find a something called a tool that can revert can reverse that

rot, can re-incentivize people to be productive with both their time and their resources, how do you not be optimistic? This for me is, I think in 10 years, Bitcoin is either at a million dollars or it's zero dollars, right?

It can't not do one or the other, my personal opinion, right? Either a million or zero, or higher and higher and higher because of all the things Bitcoiners know. But when you do get a basic consensus among policy people, and not just policy people, but also sort of the body politic,

when you get a basic consensus about something that people think is regenerative, they're going to flock to it. Yeah, I say among the controversial things I've told my Bitcoin friends, like the big corner of 2024, it was Larry Fink. Like the guy,

you know, regardless of who you thought of where he was before, whether it's disingenuous or not, he did some serious thinking and he changed and he opened the door for normies to get into this line of work. And when I hear him talk about Bitcoin, whether it's fake or not, but he gets it.

He's clearly done some big thinking, and it's not easy for a guy to have to change his mind, do it publicly, still waiting on Jamie Dimon. But I think that when you see someone like Larry Fink, literally a pillar of the financial system, flip. And not just flip, like, okay, fine, we'll sell it because we can make money off of it. But like, no, we're going to allocate to this

because we believe in its properties, and we believe in what it offers, not just our company, but the financial system. as a huge huge shift and i think people like my father was it was a wall street guy grew up in new york my father was a wall street guy um and you know he's 83 years old and i i you know try to kind of walk him through this and he he gets the basic incentives but when larry fink's swath switched you know i heard it from him like oh my god how'd that happen dad told you um he gets those and the good thing i think the community is generally speaking opening toward toward people

penance, right? You oppose it, now you like it. And at one point, we all opposed it, right? If you asked me 10 years ago, would you buy Bitcoin? I'm like, what are you talking about? It's fake internet money. The community is welcoming to converts and to penance.

But we see these major, major shifts, and I think Larry Fink was a pivotal shift. Just like I think when you have the deputy director of CIA coming to talk to a Bitcoin conference about Bitcoin policy, that's a huge shift. They send signals to the world that there are important parts of the U.S. establishment, institutions

that see this for what it is and they're adopting it. And they're thinking about it and they see its power and we better too because why else would these institutions be doing that? Would BlackRock really sink that much cash, that much capital, that much credibility into something

they didn't believe in just for money? I don't think so. Would Michael Ellis spend half his day going to a Bitcoin policy summit because he just thought it was cool and trendy and the White House liked it? I don't think so. That's almost as if everybody finally

found the 2017 meme from Bitstein, Bitcoin, the only winning move is to play. Marty, you're a husband and a parent. You know it's not often you get to be right, so save for it. I savor it.

it's uh no i i completely agree i think it's completely binary and i'm uh wouldn't be doing what i'm doing if i didn't believe that the binary outcome was going to be the successful one and yeah if that's true it's going to be massive not only yeah for us individually as bitcoiners but for society at large um and it is really exciting and i've been extremely pleasantly surprised with uh pleasantly over surprised with the work that bpi has done and the effect that it has had on policy discussions i mean you're mentioning jd vance and his appearance at the conference being very humble i mean he mentioned bitcoin policy institute that was cool that's one thing i'm curious and i won't pretend to be some sort of dc sleuth that's very privy to the

inner workings of uh all these different think tanks and their influence on policy but you hear them the brooking brooks brooking institute rand hoover cato you hear a lot and behind the scenes they they basically get uh lambasted and made fun of as just academic people who put things out there and never actually change things at least for the most part maybe every once in a while they do have some some influence that gets implemented into policy but it seems like bpi to me has been outpunching its weight class uh as as an early institution as and obviously you're biased as the director of government affairs but somebody's been engrossed in dc culture for many decades is is that is that a correct characterization in your mind i mean it

helps when you're like when you're shilling a good product right like that that that does help um no yeah it does and i think you know there's some of these institutions like you've been the dc like you you drive down k street you've got these massive buildings you know full of hundreds of people you mentioned brookings uh or heritage you know full of former generals and former deputy secretaries of this and that um sort of but they're you know but i think a lot of what bpi's appeal has been a lot of these institutions these sort of stalwarts of the dc policy scene um you know they're they've been sort of they're not challenging any core narratives yes brookings is a little bit left and heritage is a little right and they have different opinions about

health care they have different opinions about tax policy right but all sort of within that sort of traditional overton window of what has been sort of accepted in polite polite cocktail company in washington for the past how many years you know dpi is a little different um you know there's we're what are we 11 12 employees now um you know we're i think part of it is we're just we're just telling a different story um and we're lucky and i joke we're shilling a good product but you know when people think back to and everybody has a story about when they first heard of bitcoin it's kind of actually cool when you talk to staffers and they tell you no some of my friend told me i should have bought it back in 2018 and i didn't i'm stupid um but our story is completely

different right and again it's sort of i don't know that bpi would be successful as it has been five years ago because this sort of the culture just wasn't ready for it right um there was there was no talk like you hear now and on basic in regular trad fire right fiat debasement that's a word you never heard five years ago after i follow a lot of financial people on twitter i think there's some smart people out there um you never heard about that you know fiat debasement It's never talked about, maybe because, you know, we weren't forced to confront it as a sort of political culture that we are now. So I think BPI definitely benefits from a change in the zeitgeist about where people see the fiscal situation is. And clearly they look for options, right?

Okay, we're in deep shit here. What do we do? What's an option? No, well, there's this thing called Bitcoin that these people are talking about. Let's hear them out and listen to them. and the message resonates so I do think there's timing, like everything else in the world, good timing

helps, showing a good product helps but I think we hit it at the right time, with the right message as a solution to some of what I think there's nothing else in DC, there's a consensus that we can't continue

on the same path. Does everybody believe that Bitcoin is an option? No. To a lot of people yeah and you know our job is to make that that you know that that second group bigger and bigger bigger yeah and apologies it looks like my camera and mic switch so it's all good the audio sounds a bit different but on that note what can we expect in 16 days at the policy institute what would you like to get out of this great gathering in dc this year so i think you know we did we did bfa back in march um and that was sort of to mark uh the new administration that was to mark

the establishment of the SBR. I think now the idea is to set, now that we've gone through these basic wins and I think the turn to our Bitcoin in D.C., at least temporarily, has been solidified, the idea is to set the policy agenda for this year and for the end of this Congress. A lot of our focus is going to be on national security.

We have a couple of panels. Michael Ellis, I've mentioned before, but some others. we'll talk about about bitcoin and changing global order which as you've read like you know matt pines you know our executive director writes prolifically about that um he'll be on stage a lot as will i talking to people about this sort of thing um the idea we want we want to let we want to we want to give part of being a think tank is to put policies out there right we want to give dc the agenda um for bitcoin future and that's what we're going to do in june 25th well ken thank you uh for all that you do and for joining me for this conversation it was

fascinating that was great again even though uh hand up i've been highly skeptical of the cia on this show for many years and i've never had anybody who's worked for the cia on so thank you for coming on and maybe uh over some drinks we can talk about some of my uh my deeper theories on the cia but as it pertains to uh as it pertains to bitcoin policy i think that's the beauty of it as we discussed it's it's binary the only winning move is to play and you may not care about political power but political power cares about you and i think it's incredibly important that we have people like yourself in positions advocating for for bitcoin as a protocol developers as individuals building on the protocol and really putting the case forward for Bitcoin as a

economic and geopolitical strategic asset that Americans need to dominate. And as an American citizen, and somebody who cares deeply about Bitcoin and the future of America as an individual who has a small but growing family with young children, I think this is important work that for a long time in my bitcoin career i'd say like the first five or six years uh you know i was i was one of those people said don't even talk to the government it's not worth it they hate you and they're not gonna work with you and maybe they did but i'll leave i'll leave with one thought i tell people this all the time like don't underestimate your voice i i every time i talk i i leave them with this thought

you know call your congressman if you have a bitcoin meetup call your member of congress and invite them to come. They may send a staff member and then, you know, they'll come once or twice and they may show up themselves. Don't be afraid to engage. Be polite.

Tell them you're a Bitcoiner. Tell them you want them to support legislation that's pro-Bitcoin. And you'd be surprised if they get enough phone calls, they start sending people to your events

and they start listening. So I can't emphasize enough the importance of doing that. It seems like you're sort of yelling at the clouds. But believe me, you know, you get enough voices,

you keep those phones ringing, they start to listen. so if people have any questions about who the representatives are or how to find them feel free to just reach out to BPI we'll be happy to help you with that but I really really encourage people to do that it's very very important and actually at the end of the day

if people do it enough it actually does work yeah and as it pertains to the summit if you're in the industry and you're interested in going you should still reach out there's still time correct there's still time yes if you want to feel free to hit me up

on twitter I'm at bayman 11771 feel free to hit me up on twitter or you can visit the summit website um maybe marty can post that in the notes it is btcpolicysummit.org awesome we will link to that ken good luck on the hill today thanks marty look good you're confident i think it's gonna be a good conversation i'm gonna change some minds and uh i'll see you in dc in a few weeks you know it all right have a good Thanks. Peace and love, Freaks. five days a week in the newsletter we also have the tftc elite tier if you sign up for that become a member we have a private discord server for the elite freaks out there where we're dropping

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