The Wolf Of All Streets - Big Battle Between Bitcoin & Regulators Is Coming | Caitlin Long, Custodia Bank

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

There’s a BIG fight coming between the Crypto industry and regulators. Is Crypto ready to put up a good fight? Our guest today, Caitlin Long (@CaitlinLong_), explains that this fight has a lot ridin...g on the U.S. Dollar. Caitlin is the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank and Bitcoin advocate since 2012. She joins us today to discuss potential threats to your bank account, why money is really just a game of confidence, how voluntary Bitcoin usage benefits the industry, and the essential role of regulators moving forward. JOIN THE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS ►► I couldn't be more excited to announce that Vuori is a sponsor for the show. I've been wearing their clothing for years and can't get enough of it. Countless episodes have been recorded in Vuori, and I tell everyone they need their incredibly versatile and comfortable clothing. You can do practically anything in it. For our listeners, they are offering 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at vuori.com/melker. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any U.S. orders over $75 and free returns. Get your outfit today at: https://vuori.com/melker ►► Vauld is a Smart Investing Crypto Platform which allows the user to invest without any stress! With Vauld, you can earn free passive income in crypto. Vauld lets you earn the highest interest rates in the crypto industry - 12.68% on stablecoins and 6.7% on BTC and ETH.. Sign up below and get a 40% kickback on trading fees, 5% commission on interest payouts and 5% commission on loan interest. Vauld’s ‘Buy the Dip’ function automatically purchases specific cryptocurrencies for you when the price dips below a pre-set level. It’s awesome! Sign up here: http://thewolfofallstreets.info/vauld EPISODE LINKS Caitlin Long: https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 So the moral of the story is that there's a big fight coming, but we're ready for it. Huge fight, deep pockets. I hope we're ready for it because the industry is going to have to very quickly figure out how to get together and back the ones that are actually pursuing the litigation. This episode is sponsored by Vauld and Vori. Please stay tuned for more information on both of these amazing companies later in the episode. There's a big fight coming between regulators and the crypto industry. And I believe that the crypto industry in the United States is ready. Nobody knows better about that than the CEO of Custodia Bank, Caitlin Long, who has been on the forefront of the fight to bring banks into the crypto space. Now, we had a conversation here that was very enlightening.
Starting point is 00:01:01 A lot of things I didn't know that were coming. We talked about the SEC and the CFTC, but it's the bank regulators that may be the largest threat to the crypto industry in the United States. She'll tell you why right now. This conference is out of control. Yeah. Even versus last year.
Starting point is 00:01:14 Yeah. Last year, out of control in the best of possible ways. But you just said, not like Bitcoin of three years ago. No, that's it. I'm a huge Serena Williams fan. I think it's awesome that Serena Williams is here. I didn't know she was involved in crypto at all. There are so many people who are, so many celebrities that are here for just the wave of it, I think. And I don't mean to single
Starting point is 00:01:38 her out because, of course, you know, there are so many, many others, and there are, I don't know, 30,000 people here for this. Yeah. I remember the early Bitcoin days where instead of actually, I just put out a tweet about the QR codes, because there's so many QR codes around here, which, by the way, everyone be careful not to scan them. Oh, my gosh. If this is a hacker's paradise to just set up a random QR code, free crypto here. On the back of your shirt. And then they hack your wallet. So everybody be careful.
Starting point is 00:02:07 But I remember back in 2013, conferences where people were giving away Bitcoin, like actually giving away Bitcoin. No one's doing that now. It's funny. I was noticing what is the crypto that is being given away? It's stable coins. It's random tokens, right?
Starting point is 00:02:24 It's not Bitcoin anymore. But yeah, back then when they were teaching you how to set up your own wallet. And yeah, I think what's cool, though, is this is a Bitcoin only conference. Right. So in 2022, I would expect maybe if you had a huge NFT conference or something like that, you would see a lot of celebrities because they all have this sort of NFT presence. So seeing them here. Yeah, I know. Pretty cool. I know. It's interesting because it's a Bitcoin early conference. At the same time, a lot of people are talking about things other than Bitcoin. Just not on stage. Not on stage. That's correct. They're not out. So listen, last time we talked, you were Avanti, right? Now you're
Starting point is 00:02:59 CEO of Custodia Bank, obviously. Can you just catch us up on what's been happening the last few months with obviously launching the business? We'll get into regulation after. Let's just talk about the business first. Well, we're getting ready to launch in Q2. So we are in Q2. It's coming up pretty quickly. And we're walking before we run. We're the proverbial tortoise versus the hare.
Starting point is 00:03:22 We're the slow ones that are building the infrastructure for the next four-year cycle in Bitcoin, the next bull market. And it's literally because the U.S. dollar piece is so critical. And there is a lot of, I think there's a big fight coming between the Bitcoin industry specifically and the regulators over the US dollar access. It's starting behind the scenes. We've been in direct conversations with Fed governors who said it's coming. And so I believe them. I take them at their word. There's a crackdown coming.
Starting point is 00:03:59 And by the way, if you've been around Bitcoin for a while, as you have been, every four year cycle, there's a banking crackdown at the end of it. Yeah, that's true. So this should not shock anybody. That's true. Can you talk more about what that's – I know you can't predict what it's going to look like in a year or never. But when you say that there's this battle coming, are we talking about the way stablecoins are structured or specifically the way that exchanges and such are able to allow customers to... To move U.S. dollars in and out.
Starting point is 00:04:28 Yeah, it's all of the above. And what you're also seeing is that some of the banks are getting involved in lending against Bitcoin, secured Bitcoin lending, and offering trading accounts. You're now seeing community banks offering trading accounts. And I look at that as a hardcore Bitcoiner and say, oh, no. They're not even offering that with securities and commodities. And now they're offering it with Bitcoin. That's just a that's an invitation to the regulators to come in and to the bank regulators to come in and say, no, you can't do that.
Starting point is 00:04:57 We're not even talking about Gensler here. Yeah, we're not talking about Gensler. We're talking about bank regulators. We're talking about FDIC, OCC, Fed. Exactly. Yeah. So but do you think that they're offering these services with a total YOLO mentality and we'll see what happens or do they think they're compliant? Well, it depends because if you listen to the bank regulators
Starting point is 00:05:18 speeches and I take them at their word because they have the power to do a lot of things without needing specific congressional authorization. They've been warning about this since November, that this whole bank as a service for fintechs, rent a charter for fintechs. So not just crypto. Not just crypto, but that's a great point. It's definitely aimed at crypto, but it is broader than crypto. There is a huge fight amongst the bank regulatory community that wants to bring all of fintech into the bank regulatory realm, make the fintechs go get bank charters, instead of doing what everybody does now, which is funnel through one or two banks, which is really how the crypto industry functions. If we lose one or two
Starting point is 00:06:01 of those banks, we lose our US.S. dollar access as an industry. And that's the problem that I've been working to solve. And you don't see it happening right now, but here's the other thing. It won't be on a billboard somewhere, just like it was in the previous situations. It's quiet. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, the regulators will not tell the banks why they're cracking down. And then the bank, when they close your account, can't tell you why they're closing your account. So you have to just surmise it. You have to put puzzle pieces together
Starting point is 00:06:31 as opposed to actually hearing, hey, we're closing your account because you sent money to a crypto exchange. And this wouldn't be the first country that we've seen that happen. And obviously people had bank accounts closed all the time. But now you're talking, I think we've seen it with institutions or companies that have had to find a way to get private.
Starting point is 00:06:49 Now you're talking about my bank account. Or just your average person who's been banking with someone with a Morgan in the end or beginning of their name or something. And all of a sudden loses their ability to bank. Exactly. And it's not just the businesses, it's individuals. Pretty much everybody in crypto that I know has been through that at some point during our time. Does that mean that we all become unbanked too? Well, who knows?
Starting point is 00:07:11 You know, this is crazy. This is why I think there's a real fight. This is why we've got to support senators like Senator Lummis, who I had missed her American Banker op-ed and tweeted about it this morning. She said the Federal Reserve is not adhering to the law or something of some sort. And I saw a couple of crypto people picked it up and embellished it a little bit. We love to embellish. Absolutely. But she's absolutely right. That's exactly what our experience is,
Starting point is 00:07:38 that they're just ignoring the statutes that apply to them. And so if the statute's controlled, then all of us would have our banking access. But I don't seem to think they do. We've seen her, Tumi, obviously. We now have a cohort of senators and congresspeople, and it's ever-growing. It is. But is it big enough?
Starting point is 00:07:58 No, of course not. If this fight comes now, are we even close? No, no, we're not. We're not. And I think the Biden administration, just like the Trump administration before it, had people who were adamantly anti-crypto and adamantly pro-crypto. And so it doesn't really cut across political lines. I mean, we're definitely seeing some, some, it seems more Republican, but there are definitely more progressives and liberals that,
Starting point is 00:08:22 yeah, I would love to. So there's a woman that I met, Morgan Harper, running for Senate in Ohio as a progressive. And she would love to debate Elizabeth Warren about the progressive view on crypto and why Elizabeth Warren should be pro-crypto. And it would be awesome. I think you ought to host that debate. I think you ought to get it going.
Starting point is 00:08:40 Oh my gosh, I would love to host that debate. I don't think Elizabeth's letting me anywhere near her if she does a little backtracking on my history of talking about her. And, you know, I actually find her to be an intelligent, accomplished human being who's just missing badly on this. But it makes me wonder if she's, if it's intentional. Does she think this is what her voters want to hear because it's not? Is it because that's just, she doesn't get it and she's old guard and it's a threat? Or does she really believe like everything that she's saying?
Starting point is 00:09:15 Yeah. You can't, I don't know how you can look at an asset class that helps the individual and be liberal. Right. And believe that that's a bad thing to help raise people out of poverty, give people who don't have banking access access and such. I just don't get it. Yeah. She, I think, is a believer in government as a regulatory authority and that everyone should be surveilled as in for tax collection reasons, as opposed to that any of us have a financial privacy interest in our financial transactions.
Starting point is 00:09:51 But she is definitely – there was an interesting NBC Meet the Press coverage of what is happening in Wyoming. And they interviewed both Senator Lummis and Senator Warren. Not together, unfortunately. Oh, my gosh. That would be awesome if they had actually been together. That would be a great pay-per-view event, actually, to do it here. But I did hear Senator Warren say something that I agree with. She said it's all a confidence game.
Starting point is 00:10:17 It is. And actually, that NBC Meet the Press story did a great job of laying out subjective value theory without actually calling it that. What gives money value? They actually dug into the entire question. What's the intrinsic value of a piece of paper with a picture of a dead president in green ink on it? It's.0002 cents. The word of your government and their military, someone could argue. And they went into that, right? But what does it mean to say full faith and credit of the U.S. government? And the answer is, it's all a confidence game. And so it's kind of funny how both senators ended
Starting point is 00:10:49 up coming to the same conclusion, which is money is a social construct. It's ephemeral. It's all subjective. It's also subjective value theory. We just, no one uses that fancy phrase because the Austrians are the ones who use that fancy phrase, but that's exactly what it is. It's a confidence game. And so I actually do agree with Senator Warren on that. She came around to that conclusion. Funny that they don't understand that you can make the same argument for government. Well, right. And of course, the social construct in a confidence game. Right. And her big critique of Bitcoin is that it's backed by air. And we hear that all the time. And the answer is it everything's backed by it. She would tell you that it's backed by air. And we hear that all the time. And the answer is, everything's backed by... She would tell you that it's backed by heavily polluted air with jets flying through and dropping. Actually, it's interesting that the NBC piece did not pick up
Starting point is 00:11:35 on the environmental issues. She's dropped it. Yeah. We've moved on to greener FUD fields. And the next FUD, of course, that she talked a lot about was sanctions. Bingo. Exactly. Yeah. But you run a bank. Yeah. Is that can an American circumvent sanctions and operate?
Starting point is 00:11:53 It's almost like people don't understand what sanctions are. Right. Right. You're cutting them off from the United States economy. You're effectively saying Americans don't do business with them. And no, Americans are going to all of a sudden start sending Bitcoin to Russians. Absolutely. First of all, it's not in size. So Under Secretary Nellie Liang actually, or Deputy Secretary, I think is her title,
Starting point is 00:12:12 actually said that the U.S. is surveilling all of this and seeing that the money that's going is not in size. We all know this is a relatively small market despite this huge conference. It's still a relatively small market by financial services terms. Great talking point, though. Yeah, it is. Well, but because it's a canard, right? Everyone, it's just the latest on the FUD dice. And so, of course, that's where Senator Warren was going. But I really, I wish, she actually was my law school roommate's favorite professor at Harvard Law School. I'm quite sure she's brilliant. And I would love to sit down with her and just say, all right, leave. Let's do this off the record. Just this isn't for the press.
Starting point is 00:12:53 It doesn't go outside this room. Let me answer your questions. Let me answer your questions. Please just hear us out. But we are seeing politicians let us answer their questions, I think, for the first time. Yes. Actually, it was, you think, for the first time. Yes. Actually, it was, you know, famously when Sam Bankman Freed showed up with the poorly tied shoelaces in front of Congress. But that, to me, and it was after the infrastructure bill, of course, when I think politicians realized this was a real issue.
Starting point is 00:13:16 Every one of them has us in their district. But they were actually asking questions now. Yes, they were. Before, they were speaking down and attacking with their catchphrases, right? It was like everyone was trying to get their soundbite. I do really think that the tide has turned for them caring. Maybe it's because their constituents care, but don't you get U.S. having blocked a G8 country's reserves. There was just a great article in the Financial Times about that just this morning, about how revolutionary that is.
Starting point is 00:13:59 This is a financial war that's being fought. And the U.S. essentially just said, yeah, and not just the U.S., most of the Western world, we're literally blocking the legitimate assets, whether they're illegitimate or not. Right. And there are people who I presume are unfortunately, just because they happen to be Russian, that may or may not be connected to what's going on. And yet their property rights are being stolen without due process. So it's not just the entire country. It's the it's individuals who may or may not be involved. And it's just this mass hysteria. I think we're going to look back on this and and say it was the modern version of putting all the Japanese in internment camps.
Starting point is 00:14:43 That is going to be the turning point for how these conflicts are probably approached in the future. It's going to become financial warfare. With legitimate anger on the human rights abuses and the war. If you're just a Russian person who doesn't support this war and you now don't have access to a credit card, bank account, your stocks are zero, you can't trade them. Guys, I have a serious question for you. How much interest are
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Starting point is 00:17:22 So I've traveled deep into Siberia and all across Russia. It was Moscow to Vladivostok, two and a half weeks. And it was a tour, so we really didn't get a chance to talk to the average people. Everyone that we talked to was arranged. But it was definitely an interesting experience. I could not use credit cards or ATM cards anywhere in the country, not even in Moscow. And this was in 2016, so two years after Crimea. And at that time, I actually wrote a travel blog about just, I understood that Russia was going in a very
Starting point is 00:17:56 different direction. And if you understand the history of Russia versus the West, that is not uncommon. They typically are in very different cycles. Things were booming during the Great Depression. During our Great Depression, things were booming in Russia, and a lot of Americans ended up trapped behind the Iron Curtain because there were jobs in Moscow. And for college graduates in the early 1930s, they couldn't get a job at home, so they went to Moscow, right? Those kinds of things, it's just an interesting countercyclical.
Starting point is 00:18:25 And at the time, I had been reading up about the central bank in Russia stocking up gold. And instead of defending, instead of doing what the IMF had recommended to defend their currency when the currency got weak, they actually doubled down and bought more gold. So you kind of knew they were on a different cycle, on a different path, even back then. And it was essentially impossible for a Westerner to use a credit card in Moscow even back then. And so now the sanctions are even worse. But the punchline is I'm not sure that it moved the ball that much for the average folks inside the country because they were so disconnected from it anyway. It's so crazy. It's like Putin didn't get the not your keys, not your coins message with his reserves that are in another country. Something I love that
Starting point is 00:19:09 you just said, though, you talked about how they doubled down on gold in the face of the IMF. Yes. Isn't El Salvador doubling down on digital gold in the face of the IMF? And this is another interesting article I just read, too. A Citigroup, I think, just put out an equity research report. Someone sent it to me. And they have a bond payment due in the first quarter of 2023. And it's going to be fascinating to see what happens with the IMF. Is it headed towards a default on the old debt? They haven't been able to issue the Bitcoin bond yet, which was... And they can't get new debt from the IMF.
Starting point is 00:19:40 Well, they definitely can't. It's going to have to be restructuring, right? So which path are they headed? And I've been definitely supportive but cautiously in a Valsalva experiment because I'm not a believer that you should force people to use Bitcoin. I think it should always be voluntary and they're trying to force people to use it. But I'm definitely sympathetic with the approach of let's double down on something that's not the mainstream financial system. We were right down the road when they made the El Salvador announcement at this very convention last year, right? And as exciting as it was, my first instinct was, man, I hope they don't blow it.
Starting point is 00:20:19 That was the first thing I thought. As excited as I was it was going to happen, I was like, nobody does this again if it doesn't work. Our future is somewhat in their hands. Do you think that that's still the case? Do you think that the eyes of other countries that would be considering this are still watching? Oh, of course. A lot are. The big challenge, though, is that I think this can all be voluntary.
Starting point is 00:20:40 There's something less than just going the full Monty and saying Bitcoin has to be legal tender and everyone's forced to use it. Instead, just put it in the central bank reserves. Make it legal, put it in the central bank reserves. And all of a sudden, people just voluntarily go there because it's a reserve asset. And I'm pretty sure that there are countries that are already doing that. They just haven't announced it yet. Just like I knew that there was a Fortune 10 company using Bitcoin quietly since 2014. And they've still not announced that they use it. A lot of people are using it and just keeping it quiet. I'm sure. And so El Salvador is interesting because obviously their currency is the dollar. Yes.
Starting point is 00:21:20 Right. So they can do this in a way that a country maybe that doesn't use the dollar as their currency can't because we could destroy that currency, we being the United States. But they're looking for Bitcoin as an answer. If you're an average person in most places of the world, as we're seeing in Ukraine, certainly, and Russia right now, you probably actually are a lot more interested in getting your hands on stable coins than you are on Bitcoin, right? Because you want dollars and you can't get them. Yes, and we've seen that in some of the reporting that's been done out of Venezuela, that Bitcoin was the intermediary currency
Starting point is 00:21:50 to be able to get stable coins as opposed to the other way around, which is how we think of stable coins, right? Yeah. There's so much happening around stable coins literally right now. Senator Lummis, of course, has proposed legislation. Do you think, and you talk about it all the time,
Starting point is 00:22:04 you're like my go-to person for when I want to understand what is going on with stable coins. I just checked your Twitter. of course, as proposed legislation. Do you think, and you talk about it all the time, you're like my go-to person for when I want to understand what is going on with stable coins. I just checked your Twitter. But do you think that they're going to be regulatorily approved as long as they're fully backed? Do you think there's going to be any wiggle room there? Do you think we're going to see them backed 60% by dollars and 20% paper? I don't know how this is going to play out because there's a big fight, like I said. And there are camps within the Biden administration that either want to just literally shut the whole thing down and block all U.S. dollar banking access to the entire crypto industry. And when I say that, that sounds crazy, but those are loud voices.
Starting point is 00:22:44 And I'm definitely hearing them in my conversations with the regulators, even if those in the industry say, oh, Pasha, that'll never happen. I'm not so sure that they won't try to literally close off the U.S. dollar on off ramps. And that's, of course, how they get stablecoins, because the stablecoins have to be invested in some assets, unless they're algorithmic, some assets that are U.S. dollar backed. And so if you can't get access to the on-off ramps, then all of a sudden, that's how they could get stablecoins. I'm not saying I think that's going to happen. No, of course. You have to be aware that it's a possibility or that it's even a conversation. But the conversations behind the scenes in this industry are that people are itching for a fight. They're itching for a fight against the SEC.
Starting point is 00:23:26 If the banks do pull this, then there's a big fight coming with the banks. We are deep pocketed and we are a much bigger industry than than most folks realize in the powers that be. And if they pick those fights, bring it on. We will fight those fights as an industry. And I think the industry will pile on just like we did. The infrastructure bill, they didn't see that coming. They thought they were going to slide that one little sentence in there. And it froze for five days. It's funny, you talk about how deep pocketed the industry is. You have these Forbes lists of billionaires. And I
Starting point is 00:24:00 personally know 20 or something year olds who are billionaires and have never made a list because they've just been quietly... And they mostly don't want to. Right, but you talk about the deep pockets. I don't think that the powers that be are even aware of how much money there is. To a litigation fund to take on some of these issues is going to be nothing for these deep-pocketed crypto faults. And I think even also the industry on a retail basis. If someone were to issue a token, for example, to fund lawsuits against regulators who've had bad faith, then I think the industry would just swarm that. Can you imagine that? Yeah. Reversing it and
Starting point is 00:24:37 litigating against the regulators? That'd be fun. Not a fight that I want to see picked, though. Well, let's hope. And this gets back to how is this going to play out? Is Congress ultimately going to do something? I think the answer is yes. But it's interesting that, and by the way, I don't think it's going to happen during this administration. So at least during this Congress. So if there's a changeover in Congress, then there may be something that ultimately comes out under a Republican-controlled Congress where the Biden administration comes to the table. But right now, the Biden administration is doing nothing on it.
Starting point is 00:25:11 They don't have to. And they're just, you know, right. They're leaving the SEC to regulate by enforcement. The bank regulators to try to regulate by shutting off individual companies and retail individuals' access to bank accounts quietly, one by one by one, so you never really know that it's happening. That's what's happening right now, period, full stop. They are doing that. But beyond that, we'll see. I think there is something that is probably going to come out, I would guess,
Starting point is 00:25:43 in a year or two from Congress. And that will answer the stablecoin question. A year or two. I know we look at it now and the crypto community thinks everything's going to happen this week or this month. Absolutely. A year or two gives us some time, actually. And you said, I mean, you're launching in Q2. You're aware of these risks, obviously. This worst case scenario, what would it mean for you? Well, the industry will hopefully win, ride to our help if we need it. Right now, we don't. But but yeah, look, we're on the forefront of that fight. Those those who are attorneys know that we have standing to be one of the litigants.
Starting point is 00:26:30 One of the things that's really important about taking on regulators, and I've talked about this with kind of lamenting that Coinbase didn't take on the IRS over the, over, because they had their shot, right? You have to actually have one, one plaintiff that is actually being harmed. They have to have what's called standing. They have to have a true case or controversy to be able to get into court. And so what you need is the companies that are getting the blowback, right? They're the ones with the standing to sue. You can't sue on behalf of the industry. It has to be one or two of the companies. And I saw Grayscale came out and announced that if they don't get the ETF approved, the conversion to the ETF, that essentially, Michael said, essentially we're suing in July, right? I think they're the ones who are willing to take that fight. And that's the point. You've got to have those with actual harm, with an actual case or controversy.
Starting point is 00:27:18 They can get into court. And then that's where I would hope that the industry will just gang tackle and go in behind those who do end up taking it on. And they can also make the argument that they're literally themselves offering a subpar product versus what they would be able to offer for the average person. We don't, GBTC isn't great. It's ours. It's not great. If we had a spot ETF, this would be so much better for every single person buying this asset. They say that and they mean it. And they're and then, you know, they're right. I'm not a huge fan of ETFs, as you know, because I don't like the mechanics that allow the issuer to go naked short. I'd rather have a proof of reserves type structure than than than ETF. So
Starting point is 00:28:01 I've always said the ETF is a double ededged sword. But when the SEC is just arbitrarily blocking it like that, and then the SEC just last week came out and announced unbelievably onerous rules on crypto custody that apply to crypto custody, but not to custody of securities and commodities. Did you see this? I think a lot of people in the industry didn't see it. Everything is going under the radar right now because there's too much happening. Right. But it's the insidious stuff. So I was just having this very conversation with someone this morning that, oh, if they come at us, the industry will do what we did in the infrastructure bill again. That was a full frontal attack. They're not doing the full frontal attacks. They're flanking us, right?
Starting point is 00:28:45 And it's quiet. And so how do you get the industry riled up in the face of those kinds of more subtle attacks? But what I'm referring to with the SEC announcement is that the SEC is now requiring crypto custodians to account for the liabilities, the custody liabilities, on their balance sheet. What does that mean? Why is that a big deal? Because if it comes on balance sheet, then the financial institution's regulatory capital requirements apply. All the custody assets are, it's a custody as a service. It's off balance sheet. You think that you are not transferring the legal title to your asset, to your custodian. Technically, you are for securities.
Starting point is 00:29:26 But the way it works is, you know, the state streets of the world. I looked it up. State Street has $43 trillion of assets under custody and $300 billion of assets on their balance sheet. So if the SEC said, you've got to put all $43 trillion on your balance sheet, so you go from $300 billion to $43 trillion, the capital requirement that State Street would have to raise, they'd have to probably raise $2 or $3 trillion. This is what the SEC just did to crypto. This is a huge deal. Again, somebody, I think, will end up taking that on probably in litigation. The moral of the story is that there's a big fight coming, but we're ready for it. Huge fight, deep pockets. I hope we're ready for it because the
Starting point is 00:30:08 industry is going to have to very quickly, you know, figure out how to get together and back the ones that are actually pursuing the litigation. Well, it's so much better to get perspectives for someone who's actually having these conversations and not the media and the pundits and everyone who's telling us what's actually happening. So thank you so much for that. And where can everybody follow you and what you're doing after this conversation? On Twitter, Caitlin, Caitlin Long underscore and at custodianbank.com. We are opening in Q2 for our first again, like I said, we're going to walk slow, but we will take our first customers and knock on wood in a couple months.
Starting point is 00:30:45 And then after we work out the kinks, then we'll open it up for a more broader group of, once we get past that initial group that help us work out all the bugs. But in the world of banking, you're either open or you're not. There's no concept of an alpha or beta launch. So we'll take our first deposit. And I'm going to be, my company is going to be the first one that will be the guinea pig and make sure that it all works before we open it up for the company. I'm pretty confident to say that you're going to have a long line at the door.
Starting point is 00:31:16 You do have a long line. And everybody is pulling for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, we're trying to look at us as a utility for the industry. We're trying to solve a problem, which is the lack of U.S. dollar banking services. We really only have two banks servicing the industry right now. And if they get the pressure from the regulators, we need others like us who are going to step up and support them, but also take it on. We're cheering for you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:31:41 Good to see you again. You too. And in person. In person. Exactly.

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