The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin & Stablecoins Are About to Change Money Forever | Chris Giancarlo

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo joins the show to break down the massive policy reversal now driving crypto innovation in the United States. We discuss why the SEC and CFTC are finally aligned, why banks may need crypto clarity more than crypto itself, what is really holding up the Clarity Act, and how stablecoins, prediction markets, AI, and tokenization fit into a much bigger national strategy centered on growth, innovation, and competing with China. Giancarlo also explains why the Genius Act is both a breakthrough and a missed opportunity, why privacy is still the biggest unresolved issue in digital dollars, and why prediction markets could become one of the most important social innovations of the next decade.

We now have an environment where crypto is actually being encouraged. In fact, it's part of an overall strategy of encouraging every type of technical innovation. How do we get there? We unleash technology. And in financial services, that means crypto. I think there's a recognition that this is the new architecture of finance. The banks recognize the analog network system they operate on is going to be superseded by this. This is a freedom technology.

Decentralization is a concept that allows all of us to have direct-execrack. engagement with the financial system. We are on the verge of the United States of making the mistake of designing privately issued digital dollars by stable coin operators, but are not much better than surveillance instruments. If we could get to sustain 5 to 6% growth for a decade, we will grow out of our debt. Innovation happens. You want to be part of it. You want to understand it.

You want to get into it and benefit from it. If we're going to have a successful future, we're going to ever have a golden age under any president. It's got to be because we embrace and further innovation. So Chris, you've been busy. Really busy. The crypto industry, I think it's fair to say, has opened up. And obviously, you know, having the head of the CFTC, having a legal practice that focuses now in an advisory capacity, I would imagine your day is very full.

Now, you know, if everything's changed so much, the policy turnaround, the 180-degree policy change from the Biden administration, although it was never announced, but it was certainly their official policy to try to stymie to, they were quite frankly hostile to crypto. We now have an environment where crypto is actually being encouraged. In fact, it's part of an overall strategy of encouraging every type of technical innovation as a way of getting through our debt load through economic growth. Four, five, six percent economic growth is the target. How do we get there?

We unleash technology. And in financial services, that means that means. services, that means crypto. It means perpetual futures. It means prediction markets. It means all of the above. And so what you're seeing at of regulators, like my former agency, CFTC, with its new chairman, Mike Seleague, or at the SEC under Paul Atkins, is an openness to innovation. So it's really almost like a policy-led innovation wave. Mike Seleague is your protege. Mike Seleick is a protege of mine. He worked for me as a young law clerk when I was at the CFDC and I recognized in him a rare talent band and encouraged this

career and I brought him with me to Wilkie Farr and Gallagher where he made partner at the firm no mean feat in a big law firm. Mike is the real deal and then he went to work for Paul Atkins and today he's chairman of the CF2C. It's interesting that he worked for Paul Atkins but now he's the chairman of the CFTC but Paul Atkins is the chair of the SEC so you have close friends now operating and seemingly very well aligned in what they want to accomplish which is forget even how the regulator was towards crypto, how the regulators were towards each other. You're absolutely right.

In fact, they meet almost every two weeks in one of their offices with their most senior staff just to make sure they stay on alignment. That's remarkable. It was considered remarkable. When I was there and Jay Clayton and I would meet once every six weeks, they've got it down to one. There's no daylight between the two agencies right now.

So what does that look like for Unleashing Innovation, as you talked about, because I think there's the legislative side, and everybody argues that we need legislation. But from a regulatory side, you would imagine that a lot of that is actually getting out of the way, so deregulating. It's exactly right. So they are basically calling the field right now. It's a zone defense, where I should say it's actually a zone offense.

It's like, you got the right side, I've got the left side, let's not cross each other, let's get downfield, let's open up innovation. And it's almost as if the industry, I'm still meeting with industry participants who have battle scores for the last four years having been sued or shut down that are saying, really? Can I really go in and see these regulators and tell them what I want to do and not have to be fearful that I'm going to get sued or the enforcement? And I'm saying, no, really, go in and see them, tell them what you want to do. That was literally the Gary Gensler catchphrase was come in and talk to us, right? Come into my web, said the spider to the fly. Yeah, but there was great examples of how badly that went.

Library, right? I mean, Coinbase, went in and presented a low-yield product that was half of what Voyager and Celsius and all of them were offering. They went home for the meeting, never got a call, and then got a Wells notice or a threat to sue if they proceeded. And in fact, I mean, it's funny, you know, I hear people today talk about the Trump administration breaking norms. There were never, never norms were broken the way they were broken by the SEC under the

of Biden administration from the misuse of Wells notice, using Wells notices to freeze companies and never bringing a lawsuit and then never removing the Wells notice after the traditional 12 months are supposed to be removed. The way they used enforcement actions to shut down companies when they weren't even sure what the law was. I mean, so on a notice and comments. The standard notice and comment used to be 90 days, putting out rules on 30-day notice and comment, I mean, completely violating all the norms of the SEC over and over again.

Should we take for granted this Goldilocks period that we're in right now? I mean, you've got to imagine that that pendulum can swing. So the Trump administration, when it came to financial services, came in with real free key buckets of initiatives. The first one was to get rid of the bad policy that had been in place. And that was achieved largely on day one by simply sacking those heads of those agencies and replacing them with pro-innovation people. The second was delivering on a series of promises, whether it would be crypto councils or executive orders, and that was done within weeks of there. But now we're down to the hard part, and that is actually, it's one thing to get rid of bad policy. It's nothing to put in place good policy. And good policy is not only putting in good

rules at the regulators, but ultimately it's getting good legislation out of Congress. The appetizer was the Genius Act, done, accomplished. It would have been better if it had been passed alongside with clarity. Now we've got the hard part of market structure, the so-called Clarity Act, getting that through Congress right now. And unfortunately, it's fallen into politics, right and left, Republican Democrat, but also TadFi against a defy against Newfi. And so we've got a lot of issues to resolve before we're going to get this done. As you said, there's obviously left and right, but there's obviously banking crypto. Banking crypto, this so-called yield issue.

And it could not be a worst time we're in an election year. And so everything that takes place in Washington, every daily statement, every press conference, everything comes out of Washington right now is all about swaying the voters for the elections. Okay, so I was of the impression when Genius passed, the clarity, was a foregone conclusion. I was wildly wrong, I think. over the past few weeks, I've become exceptionally negative towards the likelihood of a passing, but I know you're very close to it. Yeah, I'm close to it.

I'm not negative. I think the odds, my betting odds right now are 60-40, that it gets done. I think when you take the crazies out of the picture, and I put Elizabeth Warren and her people in the crazies camp, and people that might primary moderate Democrats, if you put the reasonable people, the moderate Democrats, the moderate Republicans, I think this gets done. I think there's a recognition that this is the new architecture of finance. And America, our financial institutions are the world-dominant financial institutions. We need to modernize that. We need to adopt this technology.

I think moderate people of all stripes recognize that we need to do it. If nothing else, we need to clarify the rules, the guardrails between the CFDC and the SEC. That's in the bill. There's a lot of good in the bill for all sides. So I think once we take the crazy out, and you know what, the banks need this more than, and the crypto needs us. Why is that? Because the banks recognize the analog network system they operate on is going to be superseded by this. And crypto is going to build.

These are risk takers. They're going to build it here, or they're going to build it abroad? but they're going to build it anyway. The banks, however, can't afford regulatory uncertainty. Their general counsels are telling their boards, you can't invest billions of dollars in this that it's going to take to build this unless you've got regulatory certainty. The banks need this more than crypto.

That's an interesting take than I haven't heard at all, because I think everybody's focused on, which I would say is a bit of a red herring or misdirection, the yield debate. I don't think that's the reason this isn't passing. Remember 15 years ago when we still swiped our credit cards, And we'd go to Europe and they're using chips. And we'd come back to America and say, why aren't the banks doing this? The banks didn't do it because they didn't need to do it, right?

Because they had such a built-in franchise here. They could avoid it until it was too late to avoid. I feel the same way about crypto. If the banks resist this now, it's not going to go away. It's just going to go to Europe. It's going to go to Asia. Digital rails will be built. And then the American banks will say, whoa, what happened here?

Our analog, you know, identity-based, message-based system is no longer working anywhere outside the rest. We need to modernize, they'll be on the back foot once again. The banks need this clarity because they need to build this. They need to be in the forefront, not in the rearguard of this innovation. It sounds like a major catch-22 for the banks, or at least that they're sort of backed into a corner because, A, they don't want to offer the yield because then they lose the deposits, or at least that's the time. That's the argument, right? And there's no empirical data for that.

I don't think that's true, but that's the media statement. That's the PR statement that they're putting out to the media. When I listen to you talk about it sounds like they actually just need to slow everything down and grind the gears to a halt so that they can catch up because it's going to eat their lunch if they don't have the opportunity to do that and they're going to become the Kodak and Blockbuster. The good news is we do have, as I say, that moderate middle. We have people in Congress to understand the bank's game. I think Senator Bill Haggerty last time around handled that really brilliantly in the Genius Act.

And I think there's others that understand we can't beholden. The American society, the American economy cannot be beholden to a banking cartel that doesn't wish to modernize. They need to be prodded along. We need to get the Clarity Act done. There's a compromise to be found in that issue of yield if sensible people come to the table. I think we can get this stuff. If clarity does not get done, you put it at 40%, it's a real chance. Yeah.

You'd be sweating at a poker table if your odds were 40% you were all in. So if it doesn't get done, where do you think that leaves the industry? We obviously have as pro-crypto regulation as you could look for. Could that be enough with a three-year window? Could the industry grow to be so big that it's effectively too big to fail or be killed by legislation? or is there, I guess, the really dystopian scenario that the Warren Cabal gets back in power and we get a clarity act that's written by the anti-Cryptor? I know.

Look, I got to say this to your audience, but the Warren Cabal really has to be brought down a peg. And by the way, I'm a huge supporter of John Deaton. We thought they had been, by the way, and we were wrong. I know. But, you know, that wing of that party that is anti-progress, that is sort of anti-liberty, really needs to be brought around. It's unfortunate because we are an indebted society. The only way out is through, it is through economic growth,

and this is what's going to propel our financial institutions forward. It's going to, you know, for people that are concerned about the underrepresented, this is a technology that's going to be able to bring capital to groups that have formally been left out of financial services, not only here in the United States, but around the world. So we really do need to further. to this. Look, if it doesn't get done, I do believe that under leaders like Paul Atkins at the SEC and Mike Sealy get the CFDC, they will write the kind of rules that will make this

work for now. They won't have the support of legislation that makes it work forever, or at least into the next presidential cycle, but it'll make it work for now. Now, it does that give the industry the certainty they want? No. And who needs that certainty more than the banks? crypto doesn't need it. Look, they were building even under the whip hand of Gary Gensler. Goymese's offering yield last I checked. Exactly. So, yeah, they're obviously in a favorable position there.

I mean, I hate to go further down the political rabbit hole, but every conversation I have, points right back to Warren once again, how bad is it? Because I think we had this moment where it became politically unpalatable to be outwardly anti-crypto. The anti-cryptory lost. Right. Their leaders lost. she was still there, but she was marginalized by obviously a Republican Senate.

I mean, she's one vote away from being the head of the... I know. What motivates these people? I don't really know, but I'm always reminded of a quote from my favorite author, Doug Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. And he says, anything that is invented before you turn the age of 35 is super cool, super fascinating and probably the subject of a lifetime sense of engagement and belief. But anything that comes about after you turn 35 is dangerous suspect that needs to be suppressed.

Hey, your kids get off my long. That rap music. And honestly, I, you know, I look at the Elizabeth Warren wing is like the geyser wing of the Democrat Party. But there's some young. There's some young people. I don't get it. I mean, I just don't get it. But I think that's what motivates them. It's like there's nothing wrong with paper checks, and I grew up with branch banks, and why shouldn't you? I mean, I think that's their attitude.

But you sort of alluded to the fact that you view them as basically anti-freedom. They wouldn't view themselves that way, right? This is a freedom technology. This is a freedom. Decentralization is a concept that allows all of us to have direct engagement with the financial system, as opposed to going through big bank intermediaries, big bank intermediaries that will debank you if they don't like your point of view or your politics, a big bank intermediaries that will create monopolies

that will take a VIG out of every transaction. You know, the average remittance from the United States to the Philippines might go over seven or six or seven different banks with each one of them taking a Vig out of it as much as 17% of the transaction. I mean, our current system is not a freedom-based financial system. It's a financial system that has served well. It's functions.

It gets capital to those that have the wherewithal to obtain capital, but it doesn't do a very good job of getting it to those that have historically been left out of that system. And you can browbeat them all you want, but it's the very architecture of the system that requires credentialed identity to use the system. That's the reason why it doesn't get capital. And so Elizabeth Warren can yell at the banks all that she wants, but the very architecture is one based upon credentialed identity to have it. In a world of 8 billion people where 1.5 billion do not have credentialed identity,

the system doesn't work for them. And you can browbeat it all you want. It's not built into the architecture. The architecture of crypto doesn't rely on credentialed identity. You verify the token, not the person. And so it has built into it the ability for anybody with a token to engage in financial transactions. But she built her career being anti-bank, and it seems that anyone with a grain, ostensibly. If you look at how she is funny,

her lifestyle, it's a lot of banked funds. Right, of course, that I was going to say, but if it doesn't take a genius to see that she's aligned with them, at least in this fight and many others. Look, I'm not here to trash her. It's a point of view that I think, unfortunately, is holding back innovation. And I know many people have that point of view, but I think they need to reexamine that and think about how do we get to the goals they want, which is financial inclusion, but in a way that doesn't stifle innovation.

Well, the vision that you just sort of put forth and your view of the industry and the importance of crypto, I think has really come to the forefront with stable coins. Oh, absolutely. And obviously, we've talked at length about your work in stable coins and central bank digital currencies, digital dollar project. Where do you see that now? You've been working on it for a very, very long time. Obviously, it seems like genius has given them a green light. So do you think that that is the, I guess, the front line of the crypto battle? for going completely mainstream around the world?

So I have really positive and I have some concerns about steadputs. Positive views are I think it's going to project the dollar and to be in the reference currency of the digital payment systems of the future. In the future, we will pay for things seamlessly without reaching for our wallet because it will be done at the point of access to whatever it is. If I'm reading an article, the reader will judge my eyeball and determine how many words I read and pay for it out of my digital wallet using staple coins. In micro payments that can't be done in a message-based bank transaction system will be done with stable coins. And because the United States is so far along in this, the dollar is going to become the reference currency of the agenetic digital future.

And I think that's very good for the United States. Very pro-stable coins. Full disclosure, I'm on the board of directors of Paxos, which empowers the power of the... PayPal, Stapagerclips. However, I will say, and I supported the Genius Act. I'm disappointed in it, however, in that it doesn't address the issue of privacy. In fact, the word privacy doesn't appear in the Genius Act. It's a real missed opportunity. What the Genius Act did was applied the full panoply of Bank Secrecy Act surveillance onto Stable Coins. It's a real missed opportunity. Ultimately, although I think the dollar's now got a head start in this future, the winners of the future are going to be. those currencies that represent aspirational values. And one of the aspirational values of free people is to be able to conduct their financial affairs free of surveillance by either government

or big tech companies or stablecoin operators. Unfortunately, the Stablecoin, the Genius Act, doesn't protect that. We are all going to be subject to both government and commercial surveillance in our use of stable coins. That's a missed opportunity. You know, China is designed a digital on that's a control instrument. If you criticize the regime, your ability to use that to get a bus out of your village will be turned off. Europe is designing a digital euro that is a surveillance instrument. The leaders of the initiative have said they want to know where every euro goes.

We are on the verge of the United States of making the mistake of designing digital dollars, privately issued digital dollars by stable coin operators, but are not much better than surveillance instruments. That's a missed opportunity. And we at the Digital Dollar Project will continue to work with regulators and others and legislators to make them understand that if we get the issue of privacy right, we win the future. It's so interesting because we've had so many conversations in the past. And the focus was on central bank digital currencies. The digital dollar project, to my knowledge, was created to make sure that CBDCs were done right and still have the aspects of privacy that you just discussed. You're basically saying that,

We ended up through a Trojan horse or backdoor with completely public stable coins where they'll still be able to view all of our transactions. We did not replicate cash in a digital manner. And maybe the thing that we let in is the dystopian CVDIC we were concerned about in the past. So let me just make sure your view is understand. The digital dollar project does not advocate for a central bank digital currency. We have always said if there's one, that we need privacy. We need these elements to interoperability being one of the privacy being another one.

But we've always looked at this in a holistic manner. Somebody's going to digitize the dollar. Either private sector actors or government. And how do we make sure the dollar represents the values of a free people? Unfortunately, with the Genius Act, we got the worst. We got both surveillance by stable coin operators, which is not prevented, and surveillance by government through the bank secrecy act. Now, arguably, if the government's government...

had said, no, we're going to actually have the government do a central bank digital currency. Well, our Fourth Amendment would have protected it from government surveillance, and since it was done not by a commercial actor, you wouldn't have had commercial surveillance. Unfortunately, we've got both commercial surveillance and government surveillance built into this. We're not off to a great start from a privacy point of view. We are off to a great start from an innovation point of view. I have every confidence that America's private sector will innovate the dollar in a digital network world, far better than government can ever do anything.

So the good news is we're going to innovate the dollar like it's never been innovated. The bad news is we've really got to rethink this privacy issue because right now, when you're going to use stable coins, everybody's going to know what you're doing. The government and the stable coin. Is there a fix for that? I can't imagine there's much appetite to go back and change the Genius Act right now, or at least change that part of the Genius Act right. You're right.

I actually think it's cultural. we America have taken our privacy not seriously enough. We allow Facebook and Amazon everything to just mine all our data. We don't demand the type of privacy and we ought to man. And so for us, if we're going to allow Amazon to know everything we shop for and market to us, if we're going to allow Facebook to not only monitor what we do, but try to condition what we do as YouTube does, what voices we can hear, as we've learned they partnered with government

to tell us what to believe about COVID and its origins, what to believe about the Russian dossier, we allowed them to do that to us. So, you know, for too many Americans, so what's the big deal if they know how we spend our money? Right. What is a big deal? Because at some point, they may not like how we're spending our money and may decide they're going to tell us

how we can spend and how we can't spend in love. Now, there's always a carve-out for law breaking. If you're engaged in law breaking, our law enforcement does have a right. And you know, in Western society, we've been balancing law enforcement and privacy as far back as Magna Carta when we declared a man's home as this castle unless there's law breaking going inside, in which case the government with a subpoena and probable cause can break down your door. And that still exists today. So I'm not saying that privacy is an absolute. Privacy has always been balanced. But for lawful transactions, neither the government nor commercial actors should be able to

surveil you unless you allow them to. So circling back just a bit to the Clarity Act, having looked at it so deeply, what do you think are the points of contention right now, not the PR statements on the points of contention? What do you really think they are? The more I look at it, I think the ethics clause probably has a lot of ruin. Well, I tell you, I love the ethics issue. The so-called ethics issue is the Trump family is benefiting from. crypto, so we need to stop that. But who's the we? Congress. The biggest insider trading den,

the biggest boiler room operation of the history of U.S. securities is going to tell another branch of government what their ethical obligations are. I think would Congress be on much firmer footing if they'd say, you know what, we're going to stop insider trading at all, no trading by Congress at all. Right, that would be much better. But until they do that, I find the issue somewhat comical. That's not to say that there's not. legitimate issues of, you know, who should be able to benefit in government. When I was making rules about crypto, I own no crypto during my time of government. Even though there was no requirement for me, I felt if I'm making rules for it, I shouldn't be able to benefit from

those rules. So I do think there's some logic here, but it's just really rich for Congress with their track record of benefiting from the information they have to benefit themselves personally. I think the right answer for this probably is nominee, for the open vacant seats at the two commissions. So when they start rule writing on the Clarity Act, it can be a bipartisan effort. And I think that may be the solution to the so-called ethics issue.

I don't see one branch of government saying, oh, you're right, we're going to stop, but you guys can keep it. It's just not going to happen. Okay, so the rule's insane. I get that. Although I think it should be nobody. Like you said, I'm not saying that one should or one should.

Full agree. But I think I just mean from a pragmatic perspective, How are Democrats going to sign a bill that doesn't have it? And how is Donald Trump going to sign a bill that does? I agree. That's where... I think they're going to have to move off it. Now, I understand for Democrats, they're concerned about going to the voters and saying,

we didn't stop Donald Trump from doing this. I don't think a single voter cares about that, by the way. Right. But I think that's the argument. I think there's got to be some other... Look, these are political things. Political things always get settled in political ways. They'll find some other avenue.

It might be in those nominees, but they'll find some way. The other issue is the issue of defy versus tradfai, and it's the issue what I was talking about with actually digital dollars is what the Clarity Act does is, again, applies the full panoply of Bank Secrecy Act requirements to defy by putting obligations on wallets and others. That's a complicated one. I understand the needs of law enforcement, but there's got to be a limit. There's got to be some way that there's some probable cause. It can't be, we're going to surveil you in case you do something wrong as a minority report. Exactly. Well, you know, in a free society, we're presumed to be innocent and so proven guilty.

So surveilling me in case I do something wrong isn't anathema in a free society. So we've got to refine that balance. My worry there is defy is just not organized enough in a political context the way the banks are, the way the parties are, to fight for their freedoms here. And so my worry is that a bill gets passed because once again, as it was done in genius, freedoms get violating. Privacy gets violated. And then finally, there's this issue of yield. The issue of yield is, can crypto trading platforms pay some yield out to depositors on those platforms?

As you mentioned, Coinbase does today. The banks are objecting saying it's going to somehow drain monies out of bank account. Or really, they may have to pay more interest than they're paying. Yeah. So we'll see how that, but that's not R or D Republican Democrat issue. That's a banks versus crypto issue, and we'll see how that one gets resolved. Just feels like there's too many issues. Too many.

I'm not pessimistic. We live in a time of miracles. I mean, the Genius Act got passed within five months of a new administration. The first financial service regulations since Dodd-Frank in 2010. pretty remarkable. So they could get done. Things can get done. Yeah. I like how you earlier put it in context of unleashing innovation in general because I saw that Atkins was on TV saying that this would be a, I don't know if it's the exact term, golden age of IPOs again. Yeah. Right. I think the crypto industry we've had blinders on because we've felt so oppressed

that we didn't realize we're not the only ones in this fight. I mean, there was basically no innovation, no mergers and acquisitions, no IPOs for years, right? And I think it left American companies behind. Yeah. And being a public company was not worth the salt because of the restrictions placed on public companies. But what I'm hearing from firms that I'm advising that are going through the IPL process now, that the staffs are attentive, they're moving things through fast, they're dropping a lot of sort of like these. So under the previous administration, Crypto trading platforms were being told as part of the IPO process what tokens they could list to what tokens they couldn't. And it was almost none.

And it was always none. That's gone now. So things are moving along. I expect this to be a bumper year for IPOs. A bumper year for IPOs generally and for crypto, I imagine. Yeah. And are you advising on both? Yes.

Yeah. So really the floodgates are open. The floodgates are open. In fact, for people that may look at the Trump administration and try to say what's, what's the government? what's the overarching drive here? The overarching drive here is we live in a mountain of debt. We're not going to cut our entitlements. So the only way out is through growth.

If we could get to sustain 5 to 6% growth for a decade, we will grow out of our debt. How does America traditionally get growth through innovation? That's what we do better than anybody else. So let's put crypto aside. It's about AI. It's about drone technology, about rocket technology, about space exploration, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and crypto as architecture, crypto innovation. That's what's right. And the word is out to all the financial regulators, to the energy regulators,

the market regulators open the doors to innovation, put innovators front and center. That's how we get five, six percent economic growth. That's how we solve our debt problems. I would also imagine beyond the debt problems, it's just an arms race. It's an arms race. I mean, you know, we're not the only country that's trying to, lead in these and unfortunately we may be a bit behind. Yeah, certainly China is formidable. I mean, India's formidable. Europe has lost its way, but I think, quite frankly, they're going to start following the

U.S. lead and trying to deregulate a little bit because they've realized they've lost it, they've lost two decades. You know, in the 1990s, the Europe was just slightly smaller economy than the United States. In 20 years, the United States has eclips. by a long way because they've gone into a 20-year non-innovation cycle. And that was the risk we were heading toward as well. But fortunately now we're reopening to innovation. Well, what has you the most excited these days?

We'll talk about your book in a moment. I'm assuming that's it. But you're such every side of all of this, right? I'm very excited about prediction markets. I think prediction markets are going to be a social innovation on a par with ride sharing. And in fact, the path forward looks a lot like ride sharing. You know, when ride sharing first came out, it faced a series of monopolies at the city level,

at the state level, taxi and limousine commissions. You fly into an airport, you'd find that the Uber share ride was like a mile away or it wasn't available at that airport. And it had to break through all of that. And it broke through because people liked it. Now, it didn't get rid of taxis. You can still hail a cab, but it augmented in a way that really has become very,

socially transformative. I think prediction markets are going to do the same thing. They're not going to get rid of polling, but they're going to augment it. So, you know, I ask audiences when I speak often how many people check the weather report before you came to this conference. And it's always three-fourths of people put their hand up. Why do you, you do that to get certainty. You know, it might not be perfect. But if it says it's going to rain, you pack an umbrella, and then you go back your day. And think about all the parts of our life that are actually more important than the weather where we have no certainty. Will an air traffic controller strike go another week, in which case I'm going to cancel that trip to Minneapolis, because I don't want to get stored cut from a blizzard?

Will interest rates go up or go down? Will a pro-energy candidate win or lose, in which case I'm going to sell my energy stock? These things have real-world consequences, and yet there's no predictability. But once we harness the wisdom of the crowds in an incentivized structure to go out and do the research and come back and move the market in a way, that actually reflects reality, that's going to give us the predictability. In 2024, more people around the world went to the polls and every before and recorded human history. And in every case, the prediction market's got it right to the percentage.

And the polls were wrong. And the polls were biased. Why do you think that the TV shows don't call the results to late? Because they want you watching their commercials. In 2024, Kelchie and Polymarket called the election for Donald Trump by 6 p.m. But the TV shows kept us watching on the edge of our seats because that was good commerce for them. But it wasn't really reflecting the truth that was already known. And so these markets are going to change human behavior.

And because we like this, we're going to break through all of these monopolies, this time not taxi and limousine, but gaming commissions and others that create small reference sets rather than the giant global reference sets you need to make the wisdom of the crowds really demonstrable. on the outcome. Is there a side of predictive markets, prediction markets that concerns you? Of course. Just there is... The ability to gamble on everything all the time? Yeah, we're going to need to write rules. So, you know, I regulated the gold markets when I was at the CFTC and the foreign exchange markets. Those markets go back centuries, and yet there are still frauds and manipulation. That's why you need cops on the beat. But I'm not one who says, okay, because there might be ways to defraud it, let's ban the innovation. I'm one to say, let's get the innovation right. Let's build the right rules so people who seek the game can be sanctioned

so the rest of us who just want to use this properly can use it and benefit from it. Yeah, I've never understood the notion of banning it agnostic technology because bad actors use it. You don't ban the iPhone because a drug dealer used one. Exactly right. We never ban the dollar and it's used all the time in criminal activity. Why do you think that new technologies get that treatment. Is it that same fear, 35 years old? It's the Doug Adams adage. It is. Yeah. And where do you see the intersection of crypto and AI? Oh, so fascinating. I think AI is going to change market. So I'm a market sky originally. I don't come from the banking side. I come from the trading side. I think AI, people are going to be able to use AI tools to hone down their

trading, you'll be able to trade when they're asleep to be able to engage. They're going to use AI agents. They're going to be able to use agents to write code of their own trading and then be able to sell that code, allow people to copy their trade. I think AI is going to be transformative for so much parts of finance. And now we know markets are going to go 24-7-365. I suppose one of my friends at hedge funds and they're terrified. They see that coming and they say, how are we going to do this? Maybe it's going to literally be AI that's helping them with their jobs.

Yeah. But look, every new innovation, you can fear it or you can adapt it. You can adopt it. And I tell this, especially young people, your brains are more flexible than older people's. Your job is to master this technology and then bring it into the system

so the rest of us can benefit from. For young people, master AI, master distributed market structures, master prediction markets, master perpetuals and other markets that are coming, because this is going to be the future. If we try to stop it here, we'll be like Europe, you're not going to stop it, you're just going to not participate in it. It's going to happen anyway.

Transformation always comes. Innovation happens. You want to be part of it. You want to understand it. You want to get into it and benefit from it. And that's the one, if America's had one edge over the rest of the world, It's we've always embraced innovation. You know, we don't do everything that well.

We don't build things anymore, you know. We design them, we don't build them anymore. You know, we make a mess of transportation. We make a mess of a lot of fields that country, you know, tip my hat to Europe when it comes to transportation. I'd rather write a European train, American or Chinese train. But one thing we do better than others is traditionally we embrace innovation. And that's got to be our future. And we've got to say no to those who want to stifle innovation.

We've got to stand up. Whether a Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter. Our future, if we're going to have a successful future, we're going to ever have a golden age under any president. It's got to be because we embrace and further innovation. And certain technologies, the cat can't be put back in the bag anyways. You're not stopping AI. I can say you're not stopping crypto. That's true.

Other technologies, but more than anything, I think. You're not stopping. We're not stopping rocket. Stoppable technology that's probably ever existed. I love SpaceX. I mean, not to call one company out, but I love our new generation of space exploration. I mean, the notion of putting data centers on the moon or on Mars,

it's just brilliant. I mean, this is the kind of stuff. We've just got to be so out there on. We've got to be on the edge building these things. Okay, talk about your book. We talked about it last time, and you were up in a cabin. So everything we just talked about is going to be in my new book. So my new book is called The New Adventures of Crypto Dad.

And I'm going to talk about how, you know, how when we embrace innovation, how we can transform our lives, how we can make our lives better, and how having gone from the Biden administration into the Trump administration. And a lot of inside views of how things came out the way. I was fortunate to be invited to a lot of the meetings of the Biden administration, trying to encourage them to embrace this. I got involved in the early Trump evolution on this. I had a hand in his Nashville speech before the Bitcoin 2020-24 conference and tried to influence that. And so I'm going to talk about how a lot of these things that have taken place where we are today and how it came about and then look forward to where I think we're going into the future.

When is it out? It's going to be out in October of this year. In time for the holidays, it's called The New Adventures of Crypto Dad. I look for coming back on the show and talking about it. Can I get a signed copy? Oh, of course we had a signed copy. To the wolf. Thank you.