The Wolf Of All Streets - CLARITY ACT Delayed? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Today on Crypto Town Hall, the panel breaks down the Clarity Act delay and low odds of favorable crypto legislation, Michael Saylor’s STRC “infinite money glitch” powering massive Bitcoin purchases, Basel III capital rules for banks, agency guidance from SEC/CFTC, Kevin Warsh’s crypto-heavy portfolio as potential Fed chair, and controversy around Trump’s World Liberty Financial token unlocks and ethics issues. The group debates if the current administration has been a net positive or negative for crypto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every other weekday here on X at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. We've got a lot that we can dig into today. We have Clarity Act delayed as the main topic here, although I'm not sure that Clarity Act being delayed should surprise anybody at this point. But the news basically is that the Clarity Act is off the Senate schedule for next week. We're supposed to have a hearing, I think, today, but nothing specific to the clarity about crypto. And then the... The expectation was that Tim Scott would have the crypto market structure bill markup scheduled for next week, potentially the week after, but certainly by the end of April. It's not currently on the docket. That has to eventually align with Senate agriculture and then pass 60-vote Senate floor, which needs the Democrats, then it needs to reconcile in the House. And all of this when we haven't even seen the stable coin language, which, in my opinion, is the smallest problem that we have,

because especially if we already had a world liberty fight a Donald Trump ethics issue, right? The Democrats obviously want ethics language. Trump doesn't. Now we have the world liberty financial situation blowing up at the exact same time. So once again, I mean, my position is that Clarity Act is very unlikely to pass, very, very small chance, but others think otherwise. I guess we can start there. I want to talk about STRC for sure and quite a few other things. but anybody, any inside baseball or color here on what's happening with the clarity act or disagree with what I'm saying.

There's no Dave guys. I can't talk all days. I just need you guys to jump in or raise your hands. He did feel optimistic about this, Scott, that it would get done by the summer. So whatever that little hope of optimism might be, I know that you speak to a lot of folks and you have your own opinion. But Tim Scott seems optimistic that it might get done by summer. I think Tim Scott's been saying optimistic by next month for a year. Yeah.

My concern, Scott, is the language. I want to say it. I think that Carlos mentioned this as well. The biggest concern is that this gets put in last minute, and that's the biggest opportunity for there to be, you know, language in there that's not beneficial or favorable for the crypto, broader crypto community. And so I really think that's where we need to focus at to get this thing

parsed through so we can kind of hopefully get through everything for our benefit. Okay, if I'm pessimistic, Jamie, about the odds of it getting passed, I'm 10 times more pessimistic about it being favorable legislation for the industry. I agree with you. I mean, you know, if anything, I would say that the Clarity Act, as it has read, and from what I'm hearing, from people who won't say the quiet parts out loud on the press, but then we'll tell you things privately. It's basically a act that gives the bank's clarity as to what they can do in crypto. I agree 100%. I think it's, I'm very skeptical at this point. The way things have gone and the way this has been handled, I'm not. Not that I, otherwise I am the way politicians are and things that go to our benefit. But yeah, I'm waiting for the sledgehammer to fall. Yeah. So I guess the next natural question is if it passes, what does it mean for the industry? And if it doesn't pass, what? does it mean for the industry? I guess maybe that'll spark a bit of conversation. I think obviously

the non-Bryan Armstrong part of the industry says a bad bill is better than no bill. And Brian Armstrong very clearly says no bill is better than a bad bill. I think I agree with him generally, actually, but we also know that Coinbase is able to offer yield right now. So they're in a favorable position of nothing happening being potentially good for their business. And I think he has a duty to his shareholders. So I think if it doesn't pass, maybe that's good for Coinbase. I don't know what it means for the industry. What if it does. I mean, does anybody think that this could actually be the catalyst that sends the market in some way? Feel free to raise hands. No, this bill means nothing to Bitcoin. And I agree with that. I agree with you, dude. A bad bill. Look, to me,

the biggest indicator here is how much lobby pressure the banks are putting on, you know, delaying this thing. To me, it's a very good indicator that Bitcoin's going to work. They don't like it. They're fighting it. I would rather no clarity than bad clarity. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of people who want that. I don't think it impacts the price whatsoever, Scott.

I mean, it could impact the price of the moment. The only thing that's going to impact the price is, you know, something so bullish out of I just don't, you're not going to have a bunch of money move into the alt market because we have a clarity bill, especially one that's not a good one. So, I mean, I wouldn't, what, I'm going to get all excited about Ethereum because we have a clarity bill. Yeah, I agree. I actually agree. Totally. I think Mauricio was next and then Ryan.

Yeah, hi, guys. My two cents is, as it pertains to Bitcoin, I actually think the more important, ongoing sort of legislative exercise right now, or not really legislative yet, but it's the request for comments on interpretation of the Basel 3 capital requirement rules or banks, and basically what that does or the implications of that in their treatment of Bitcoin. Because right now, as it stands, it's, again, I'm open to a lawyer, you know, helping me clarify this, but my understanding is that the main impediment for banks to service Bitcoin right now is the capital requirement rules that are imposed by the Basel 3 interpretations,

not so much what's coming down the pipes from the Clarity Act. I think Clarity Act would have a more direct impact into decentralized finance and other types of assets in the space. But the Basel 3 request for comments is still ongoing. I'm not sure if anyone on the group has more insights on how that's progressing. But I think if that comes out positively and basically adjusts the requirements such that banks can start doing more in Bitcoin, I think that actually has more of a direct impact to the Bitcoin market structure than necessarily the Clarity Act. I think the Clarity Act is trying to, for lack of a better word, add more clarity in the sort of interaction points between centralized and decentralized finance and the regulatory frameworks around that. But I'm personally looking at the Basin 3 work that's being done to see if that

adjusts how banks can adapt those rules and whether they can service Bitcoin or not. Yeah, that makes perfect sense and kind of aligns with the fact that I think the banks are looking for more clarity even than the crypto industry is right now, which is an interesting nuance. And even when I spoke to Chris John Carlo, who was the former head of the CFTC, he said the same thing. He kind of implanted that idea in my head that the banks actually need this more than the crypto industry does because they want to participate and they are much more heavily regulated and scrutinized than the crypto industry. And so they need to know what they can and can't do.

And they want to obviously control the narrative there. I think it was Ryan, then Tony, then Kenneth. So Ryan, go ahead. Thanks, Scott. Good morning. Happy to always talk to you guys. Man, Scott. If I could say I learned anything from settlement negotiations with my ex-wife, it's don't push so early for a simple bump and clarity and lose ground on the long-term battle. The reality is, we know that we have something special. Bitcoin's not going away anytime soon. And everyone is just waking up to it on the world stage.

We see governments getting involved in mining. We see governments getting involved in treasuries. We're just at the start of all of this. If we push for malformed clarity now, it could start a terrible precedent. I would much rather wait for proper clarity, proper guidance, and not push for just an incremental bump in price now. I think we had, what did I say, Tony and then Kenneth, go ahead. Thanks, Scott. To add to what Maricio was saying, I think he's spot on.

And what we are seeing, despite the hold up with clarity, the regulatory agencies, the SEC and the CFTC, and look, even the OCC and these folks, they're making progress and they're putting out some level of rulemaking and guidance. And I was talking to Austin Campbell, founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting, and he's saying that's more important than the Clarity Act itself, because the agencies are the one that have to, you know, take action, provide. the guidance and also enforce it. The Clarity Act is essentially just to prevent another administration later down the line reverting what the agencies are doing. So I think we definitely want to get a clarity act passed, but it's not as important as the agencies themselves putting out the guidance, which I think a lot of folks care more about. The Clarity Act is just this macro overarching rubber stamp of approval. Kenneth. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, everybody. Groucher Marks once I wouldn't join a club that would let me in as a member.

And certainly, Cryptotown Hall is an an eclectic club. Us? Yeah, sure. You know, this is a club. I'd like to be a member and say a member of, by the way. You know, this isn't a Crouture Marks Club. But what I want to-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. What I want to say is, someone said the Clarity Act will not have any impact on the price of Bitcoin. I'm not really interested in that at all. I'm interested in effective, successful deployment of crypto. And the price of that only is impacted by successful deployment, implementation and adoption of crypto as a web three vehicle of better communications. That's my agenda in this club. We need to make sure that we continue to focus on successful deployment and bringing everyone

with us, by the way. That's the controversial bit. I'm saying we've got to find a way to work and live. with banking. If we want to tear it down, and I'm sure there's a whole lot of people that will put their hand up in what I've just said, if we want to tear it down, we better know what's in its place. And Salfadinaamos says that's Bitcoin. I'm not interested in that. It may or may not be up the road.

You know, we've got, we're going to get on to strategy in a moment. But what I'm interested in is making sure that crypto is here successfully. me for banging on there a little longer than maybe I should have. No, it's quite all right. Tony, I want to circle back to what you said as well. It's actually, we've been doing a dry runs of my new show and my entire, like, rant yesterday, which unintentionally went eight or nine minutes was about sort of the, this bifurcation between what we're seeing in the legislative side and the regulatory side.

You know, Matt Hogan spoke about it quite a bit, but the fact is, as you said, eloquently, is that even if we don't get legislation, and even if we get wholesale change in the midterms, the regulators are in place for at least the next two and a half years. So we're definitely, C-Leg is going to be there. Atkins is going to be there. We've seen exactly what they're doing

and they're taking action on a regular basis on effectively every front that we would want to see all the way down to how to treat wallets and exchanges, not necessarily as brokers and safe harbor and these ideas. So to me, like if you want to take a silver lining from that, you know, Tony and I would love your thoughts. as we kind of conclude that topic is that we now have the ball in our own court as an industry to prove that we're worth it and to become too big to fail effectively.

You've got two and a half years in a positive regulatory environment where at least they'll set some president. So even if the pendulum swings back at the next presidential election, if we've done enough to prove the worth of the industry, they won't be able to kill it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think if you recall under the Gary Genser regime tenure, folks wanted to do things. There was no clarity act. There was no legislation.

But the fact that they would get a lawsuit or a Wells notice against her in the SEC at that time prevented them from doing things. But the moment President Trump came into office, they started billing because Genser was out. So it's not that they necessarily need that clarity act, right, that actual bill. The bill just is like a mandate to get things going. and again, it puts it into law to prevent any reversion from a future administration. But as long as these agencies like the SEC are giving that guidance, then folks feel comfortable. They know they're not going to get sued, you get a lawsuit, and they know what the rules of the road are. And yes, there's going to be more fine-tuning and things that are going to be added on later on.

But I love that Chair Atkins and Chair C, like they seem to be front-running the Clarity Act by providing all this guidance, right? Chair Atkins talking about reg cryptos coming, tokenization rules, which I'm sure all of Wall Street is waiting for. So they have the full details and what they, what, you know, what guard was they can operate in. Yeah, exactly. I think that aligns well. So moving on from the Clarity Act, let's talk about STRC. For those who have not been paying attention, we are once again hearing that Michael Saylor has created an infinite money glitch. This time, his infinite money glitch seems much better than the infinite money glitches of the past.

which were obviously manipulating or managing strategy stock and then all of the previous products like STRK and STRD, et cetera. When I spoke to Saylor at Money 2020 and STRC was brand new, he really viewed this as the final boss of products. He said that he wished that he had created this one first and never created the other ones in that context and that he really believed that this was the product that Wall Street and the mainstream would really,

attached to, and it seems like months later that's really, really happening. I mean, just to sort of revisit, the story started picking up Steam, I think, last week. Strategy bought 13,800-ish Bitcoin for about a billion dollar last week. But the headline that came with that is not Michael Saylor buys Bitcoin on Monday, because we know that's normal. The headline was 100% from STRC profits, right? So that's a very, very big story. And then Monday we saw that they did insane volume and were able to buy $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin in a day, roughly $7,800 Bitcoin, I think.

And then yesterday, we were already at like $6 or $700 million on STRC volume by noon. And so we've seen it picking up day by day by day by day. I have a tracker. I can check. I don't have it here in front of me actually at the moment. But the story being that, you know, you can watch him buying basically. or, you know, how much they would be buying and we know he does in real time. So it's effectively 65% of whatever is raised. They could tap the ATM and buy Bitcoin. So I think they bought

another over 14,000 yesterday. So this week was at 24,000 before we opened today, right, with $2.4 billion worth. So I guess we can unpack what that means if there's risk here. But when you have a transparent buyer in the market at a billion plus now daily, not weekly. What does that mean for Bitcoin? Really interesting. So, Andre, I would love to take out. Oh, you raised your hand. I was going to go to you anyways.

So thanks. Yes, have to be your DM. Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, STRC is like this kind of new infinite money glitch and it's also some kind of error in the matrix, right? because if you look at all like similar fixed income products right if you look at high bonds that have a similar rating like b rated higher bonds or like preferred equities themselves right they yield around like six to seven percent right like b rated higher bonds they they yield

around 7.5 percent right and we know strategies issue a ratings around b minus right so they should like yield around that number but i mean stress is yielding 11.5 but with like a 1% wall, right? So 11.5, 1% vol. It's probably one of the highest sharp ratios on the planet. I don't know who actually shared this kind of bar chart, but I think like the historical sharp ratios like above four or something, so it's ridiculously high, right?

So it's some kind of error in the matrix. Traits like a short duration, debil, right, but pays a dividend. in like a junk bond, right? And so for me, it's actually not surprising that it attracts so much capital, right? But yeah, I think it's a genius strike. I'm not sure what's going to stop this kind of accumulation train by Sailor. I mean, we've seen that like post-dividend today, STRC dropped below 100, right, drop below

par. So he won't be using STRC to fund new Bitcoin purchases this week. probably, but as soon as like STRC rises above par again, we'll probably see that train Yeah, Andre, can you explain to go? I don't know if you can. I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you explain that mechanic, right? What happens when STRC price drops below $100? What is the financial engineering required to bring that back to par?

And why does that mean they can't buy more Bitcoin? So it's like a fixed income product, right? So it trades at par or close to par because it pays a monthly dividend, right? And that dividend yields around 11.5%. So you have this kind of pull-to-par effect anyway because of this ridiculously high dividend yield. And the moment it trades above par and there's like increasing demand and like the dividend yields even being compressed by this kind of demand, he uses this demand to issue more.

more stretch, stretch security. So you see, he increases the supply, which pushes the price back below 100, right? And so you have this kind of back and forth and like the price of security, but that allows him to raise capital to buy more Bitcoin, right? And that's essentially the mechanism. Right. So what's the mechanism? When they're below 100, what do they need to do to bring it back to 100?

So there's usually in fixed income, there's usually this kind of pull-to-part effect. right because you get the dividend you have the dividend interest rate payment so to speak and that actually pulls the security back to par right except there's some kind of default risk or any kind of material risk insolvency risk then of course you see like a significant discount right significant discount to par but i think as long as like there's no imminent bankruptcy Ceras, no insults, which that isn't, right? We know this. So that should always bring back the price back to par, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect. Thank you for that. I think that helps the audience a ton. Sailor, they've said that basically, and not specific to one year, but generally, I think they need 2.05% appreciation of Bitcoin yearly to not be at a risk. And I think Fongley even went on and said, like, Bitcoin could drop to $3,500. and they'd still be able to manage this, right? Just, I don't know if we take them at their word,

but very clear that this can go on for a very, very long time, even if Bitcoin goes down quite a bit. Scott, I saw some analysis just yesterday that said he can pay out. At $35,000 Bitcoin, he can survive two years paying out those fees with the cash in fact. So, like, I'm not to interrupt you guys, just to add a little color here. just moved a chunk of money into SCRC because I'm confused as to what's going on to the market. Okay, now, we can look at this and go, oh, Gary should have bought 66. It's at 74. Hey, I don't think 74, 75 is going to hold here. I don't know what's going on. This is all a war thing now and

interest rates for me to be able to roll a chunk of money into STRC and sit there as a cash sweep. I mean, I do not have any commitments to stay in that fun. I think that's what you're seeing. You're seeing a lot of money that's confused about the conditions of the environment right now. And I look at it and go 11.5% and it's Bitcoin's got to go to $35,000 for me to get exposed. I bought this sub $100. Like, and by the way, somebody pick, if it goes to 95 and you're able to buy $95 $95,000 SDRC, you're still going to get.

the $11.5. Right. So you're getting $11.5. That's even a greater return than 11.5%. Yeah, it's a higher return. Yeah. That's right. It's almost 20.

That was kind of his selling point. It's structurally, you know, I guess because it's a, you know, perpetual preferred security. It doesn't, it's not treated like normal income. And therefore, you get a major tax benefit, right? So the effective yield is 18, 19%. I mean, is that overstated? I think that's what he said to me.

I think it's the other way. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. I actually food price appreciation. It doesn't make sense. So somebody, Matt, go ahead. Yeah, I think we know I'm the second dumbest person on the app here. But my question about this.

Am I first? No, no, I think it was the guy that said that, you know, somebody was Satoshi. I forget who it was. But anyways, my point that I wanted to ask you guys is that if Sailor is buying a million Bitcoin, right? Just doing the simple math from a minor perspective, we're only putting out 450 Bitcoin per day. where's he buying the Bitcoin from and who's selling? Because to me, supply crunch seems inevitable at this point. Yeah, he bought in March before we even had this massive sort of inflow into STRC,

they bought, I think, four times more than was mined, just strategy alone, right? So just to put numbers behind that. Yes, I think today it's like three times, right? Yeah, who's selling, Andre? I think who's selling, yes. good question but I think if you look on chain right I think short-term holders are still selling right they're still realizing losses because on average like the average short-term holder investor those investors that have held for less than 155 days that are more like retail investors unsophisticated

investors right they are still on average underwater they're still in loss right and so they're still realizing losses but I think that could change once we reclaim 80K because you see a nice level confluence not only as far as like short-term model cost base is concerned right but there's like the average ETF cost base is around 80K and I also think the the true market mean is around 80k which is like the average acquisition cost of all investors including like the Satoshi wallets and stuff so I think there's a nice little confidence where like the the switch could flip from a kind of bear market mentality,

especially among retail investors, to like, from sell the rip to essentially buy the dip, right? I know institutional amount is big, right, especially a CRC and a CRO, but it's, if you look at the whole market, it's only 20% of freelance cap.

So it's 20% of capital investors. The rest is just like on chain, capital invested. And so I think, Yeah, I think once we reclaim this ADK mark, I think that, yeah, then we could see more like sustainable, more like a sustainable bull run. But I actually agree. I think there's still like a risk that we see this kind of bull trap, right? I think that's, I mean, right now, if you just take a look at the chart, that's what it looks like. It doesn't mean it will last that way, but right, I mean, we had to March, March high, right, around 76.

We tapped that almost to the dollar yesterday. right so clearly a rejection at resistance and a pullback doesn't mean that it won't consolidate move but a lot of people saying hey you just hit the range highs get short right yeah exactly anybody else from maybe just from the just to add from the macro side i mean we've added we've priced and i think bitcoin has essentially priced in a recession from macro side right but i think the key risk is that track fight is still from from my point of view it's very much much complacent, right? If you look at the SB 500, right, it has done like a 9% drawdown from its all-time high. But like if you consider recession risks, that recession risks are

still probably higher than 50 or at least 50% not like Kalshi. Kalshi says like 27% or 28% for 20, 26 years recession probability. But I think it's probably more like 50% just because of the old press shock. And so. So in any kind of recession, right, since the 1970s, the SB 500 has had a drawdown of average, I think is 33%. So even if you say, okay, there's like a 50% of a chance for like 33% drawdown, then I think the minimum drawdown for the SB 500 is probably more like 15% or 9%. Wow. What a world we live in where we can analyze these things instead of crazy to me. So anybody see the next Fed chair, Warsh? Did anybody see his portfolio?

Good time. Did you guys check that out? He's got more wealth than any other previous Fed chair in history. Okay. I think he's worth $192 million in his disclosures, but that's not the fun part. That's not the fun part. This guy is like in the trenches, man. I know it's through his funds, but he owns compound, GYGX, lighter,

Ulyth, Solana, Optimism, Blast, Your Gravity. Diso, FlashNet, Lightning Network. These are investments. Polychain, scalar capital, polymarket, lemon, cash, Alpaca, Juno 1, Sanifredian, Skylink, Kaliza, Kinetic. Now, here's Web 3 NFTs and crypto-adjacent. Cross Mint, Creator, Dow, Friends with Benefits,

dapper Labs, tenderly, VADA, Structure, Meta Theory. Those are all, and bit-wise. Those are all in his disclosures. Crypto-adjacent or directly crypto. I mean, this guy is one pepe, short of pump fun.

Yo, any idea how much he's got invested in these things? Most of it was $7,000 to be in the funds, but then, because I think under $1,000 you didn't have to disclose, but some of them are much larger. It just wasn't disclosed because structurally it's not his. It's inside certain funds that didn't have to apparently disclose. And there's much bigger funds that are completely opaque that we don't know what's in there that certainly have more crypto exposure. A lot of crypto.

Not, not, I'm assuming it's a. meaningless fraction of his $192 million net worth, but still. When does he come into play? Next couple months. That seems suspect, though, because Senator Tillis seems to be the guy holding it up. He's the guy on the banking committee. And because the whole deal with Powell and the DOJ there, he's kind of holding up the nomination. I thought April 21st was the last thing that I read.

Lawrence Leppard seems to think that this is going to get done regardless. But Tillis, also the guy kind of involved with the Clarity Act as well. still funny to bring that full circle. It's amazing how few people actually pull the strings when you drill into any of these things. David. Hey, I was just going to say, given the conversation about Kevin Warsh, can we now rename him Daddy Warshbox? I love it. I don't know.

Everybody's got to be old enough, as old as us, to understand the any reference. But I like it. It's still on Broadway, I think. I know. The son will come out tomorrow, David. So, yeah, I mean, this guy, but there's a lot of bad takes about this, right? It's like one of us, first of all, he's promised to divest. Second of all, I bet a lot of this is passive.

Like, it's in funds and he's not necessarily doing it directly. But still, this is going to be yet another ethics argument. Like, can you have, you know, even if he divest, if he's invested in these things, can he be, you know, completely objective? We're already hearing these same arguments. I mean, I guess the question is, does this matter that the Fed chair actually understands crypto, or at least has some money in it? Yes, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

Yeah, it can't be a bad thing. Can't be, man. He understands it. He's got investment in it. It's got to be a good thing. I don't, I mean, I'm not sure about what his entry price was on some of these investments, but. Oh, if he's really one of us, he's 99% underwater. Exactly.

Yeah. Jamie, go ahead. Divesting his dust. Yeah, no, that's funny. I mean, obviously, self-interest is always in people who are going to be shaping policy for people who are looking for some kind of alpha.

I think you listed it out. And so I think just pay attention to those things. And if you're looking for it to follow the way that manipulation may be or where the investment or growth may be, these are probably a pretty good place to start. Don't you think? Tom?

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, he's made a lot of money off these crypto investments. So if you made a lot of money of something, you're naturally going to be more inclined to be a little more favorable to it. And looking at some of the names he has here, I mean, this guy's diamond hands, right? He hasn't even worked these off as tax loss harvesting, like, compound, friends with benefits. Like, I mean, these things are way down.

and he's still holding them. So I see a true believer here. He's in the trenches. It's one of us. He's definitely on Pump Fun and just hasn't disclosed, I'm telling you. He probably is going to launch Warsh or Warsh Bucks for you, David, on Pump Fun when he goes. Yeah. I was going to just say, we're probably going to be his exit liquidity.

Well, we've certainly been the Trump's exit liquidity. And by we, I mean, any of you idiot too about World Liberty Financial. Sorry. Because it ain't. Have you guys seen that news? Because we've obviously been tracking it generally, but there was a kind of a new update on it, which is Trump Act World Liberty Financial moves to unlock 62 billion tokens after 75 million loan controversy. I mean, good times.

Ryan, I'll just let you jump in before I even unpack this one. Yeah, I saw some posts about it. I'm not super familiar, but I saw some posts saying that, They included a backdoor in the smart contract, and people are just now exposing it. And I said you're scratching my head. Yeah, and I was scratching my head about all that because smart contracts are open source. I mean, anyone could have audited that before anyone put money into any of it. I don't understand how it's just now being discovered.

It's kind of wild. Yeah, I don't know if it's just now being discovered or if it's just now being divulged by Justin's son because it kind of hurt him. I don't It surprised me that no one looked at the fee structure that they were able to take out that deal As soon as you saw the fee structure you're like wow man You guys are making fees on all these transactions You know I mean they're getting it coming and going

It's such a bad look What's that thing? When I looked at their text I'm sorry go ahead I didn't hear the last part of like Gary said. What's World Liberty worth today, market cap? Anybody know? A lot.

A lot. I can book a billion. Go ahead, right? So when I first looked at their tech stack because they were touting like all this great functionality in the defy world.

And when I first looked at what they had, they were just doing a wrapper on other existing lending markets. So I didn't really understand like what was so novel about what they were presenting because it was just, as Gary said, like, there was a fee structure built in, even on chain. And it was just a, it was just a, a crappier wrapper on top of existing defy markets. I mean, it was built on Doe Finance that the founders

had already had exploited right two months before, right? Like, Doe Finance, I think was the name of the platform. That was exploited and rugged, and they basically just took that tech stack and created World Liberty Financial with it. And at the time, for anybody who doesn't know the whole story, that's the very brief story, obviously they launched World Liberty Financial. They only took on SEC accredited investors to their credit. They were saying that this was, you know, the future of finance, obviously. Raised a ton of money.

Locked 80% of investor tokens. There's been a lot of controversy, obviously, over the years. But over the year, I think a lot of his noise just because it was Trump related. But then they took their names entirely. There's no about page on the World. Liberty Financial website anymore. No mention of the Trumps, no mention of the Whitkoffs, no mention of any of those other people who are involved in it. And then they went to Dolomite, which is a lending protocol that is run by Checks notes, an advisor to World Liberty Financial, and took out every penny of liquidity from

the lending pools on basically the entire platform. I think last I read there was like 2.8th. They could still be withdrawn, 2.8 million worth of ETH, excuse me. And drew the pools basically all the way out and took USC using World Liberty Financial, which they obviously created out of thin air and have everybody locked up on as collateral. And now they're actually having some sort of government's plan to release those tokens to the insiders. I think for the general investors, it's like, I don't have the number,

17 billion or something, if I read correctly, that'll have a two-year cliff and two-year vesting. This token will be zero by then, by the way. And then the other insiders get a two-year cliff and five-year vesting for the team, which is like another 80 billion tokens or something astounding. So, I mean, there's, I can do the mental gymnastics or try to fold myself into a pretzel to find a way that this makes any sense besides being just using everybody as exit liquidity. If anybody can do better than me at that, I would love to.

It's 17 billion to the early investors, I guess, supporters and 45.2 billion allocation going 40 well it's 45.2 they're burning 10% and 40.7 billion tokens begin on mocking over five years after a two-year cliff to the advisors, insiders, et cetera. But again, they're not on the website. Loans haven't been paid back. If you're retail and you, you know, are on dolomite trying to earn a yield, there's no way you can exit. And we're talking about the Clarity Act and ethics clause this week. Great optics. How is this defensible? Anyone?

Am I missing something? No, I don't think you are. I don't think it is defensible. I think that just I'm going to believe that there are no coincidences in life. So I think that this is the perfect synergy and the perfect time to have this conversation. Let's just hope it gets resolved in the right way. Because I do think that there's some, you know, there's some serious questionable activity here that obviously, you know, smarter minds are looking at and taking a look at under the hood.

I mean, it's just wild. It's wild. And I think all this sparked by one of you, making a joke about exit liquidity. But clearly what's happening here. I mean, anybody, any other takes, I guess we can have AM, you know, in the last, as we have a little bit more time, a deeper conversation on to whether people view this administration, having been a net positive or a net negative for the crypto industry,

that could be an interesting conversation here. What do you guys think? Benos, you're giving the thumbs down. Oh, it's definitely been a net negative for the crypto industry as a whole. I mean, all Trump has done is pump his shit coin and cause a lot more pain than pleasure when it comes to crypto. So I think this has been a terrible administration for crypto. I think, unfortunately, I hate to say this. The Democrats would have probably been better for crypto, in my opinion.

Bold tick. Anyone else want to take either that side or the other side of that one? I was going to, wow, that's a hot tick there, Phyllis. I'm going to take the other side. I would say that I don't think the Trump administration has been that great for crypto, but at least I think it's better than what we saw what we had under the four years of Biden. So at least there's something there. But at the end of the day, I don't think that it's the overall win that we really want as an industry and as a community.

Yeah, I mean, we can talk about the price of crypto and we can talk about, you know, regulation and framework and stuff like that. I think that's two different conversations to have. I'm mainly talking about the price, right? Like it's been, apart from Bitcoin, obviously Bitcoin's done amazing over the last, however many years. But I think everyone just realized that most of this stuff are just scams. And I think Trump launching a meme coin and all these celebrity meme coins and pump funds, I've just absolutely ruined it. I wouldn't even blame the administration.

I just think that the industry has just gone really downhill. And right when we thought we could finally win, I think there's optimism though. I think there's a silver lining. I do think that we are generally winning. I mean, it's easy to have recency bias and say how bad it is because prices are down and Trump. I mean, you know, if anybody didn't think you'd be trading your Trump token while eating Trump steaks, drinking Trump water at Trump University while getting rug pulled on

World Liberty Financial, I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's just the pattern. But like, we're in a much better position than we would have been, in my opinion, regardless. even if just back to what we were talking about before, where we have not Gary Gensler and we have Paul Atkins. That alone, like that situation is probably in that possible. Will the pendulum swing all the way back as a result? I have no idea.

But yeah, guys, that's all we got for today. I know when Dave's not here, I'm ending a little earlier because, as I said, I'm starting this noon show. So I only have an hour to do my prep and get together. So I appreciate you guys being here. We will be back on Friday once again with another CryptoTown. I appreciate you all. Great conversation. Thank you. Go again. I'm Scott. Thanks, Scott. Thank you. That's one.