The Wolf Of All Streets - Elizabeth Warren PLANS to KILL CRYPTO! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

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testing tested how are you I'm good how are you good I heard yesterday space was rubbish so I'm sorry about that yeah we literally can't survive without your

voice it's almost like we shouldn't even show up and try did you see VanEck's predictions I was just going through it now. I did not see the specific prediction. What did they say today? There's 15 of them, not just one prediction. They've got the 2024 predictions. Oh, yeah, that's right. Matt Hogan was here the other day and he said they were going to be putting that out. And we first said we were going to have him come back and go through them.

I got you. I haven't actually read it yet. Well, what were the key? I was going through. I was just going through it now. I want to go through it later on one by one and get everyone's thoughts on it. Maybe after you give an overview on the market, Scott. And there's a few things to discuss today.

Let's go through the agenda. Not too much news, but we've got probably the most exciting news. Michael Jackson's new album was going through the agenda. Not too much news, but we've got probably the most exciting news. Michael Jackson's new album was going through the agenda. They're apparently launched on the blockchain. So we're listening to that afterwards. But I don't think it's a new album. I think it's his first studio recording, which actually is pretty cool. No, I think he got.

No, no, I think he recorded a new album. What do you mean? He's also going on a tour in a couple of months. Yeah, I heard he's touring with Bob bob marley biggie and tupac and actually and i think jesus jesus is actually anyway there's not much news there's only the jamie one thing i want to talk about is the jamie diamond and novigrad's uh back and forth but most of it is just the market and alts which is kind of your area of expertise so maybe you want to kick it off with an overview and go to the panel and get everyone's thoughts on whether we're in a bull market or not do we have to i mean do we really have to have the is it a bull market or not conversation i mean

it's like at 20 000 is it a bull market or not yes 25 000 is it bull market or not? Yes. 31,000. Bitcoin has hit $45,000. $45,000, right? And we're still debating whether we're in a bull market or not. Listen, it's a bull market. If price goes down, it's a new bear market. This is not some like trend in the existing old bear market anymore. We're seeing every sign of bullishness that you could possibly want. We're seeing altcoins pull multiple X gains seemingly overnight. I mean, this has every single symptom of a bull market.

I mean, Bitcoin right now sitting at 43,886, right? It topped, like I said, tapped 45,000 just a couple of days ago. Bitcoin dominance now, once again, had this huge pump when Bitcoin went up. And now Bitcoin dominance is falling off a cliff once Bitcoin stabilizes. Telltale signs of a bull market that we did not have until Bitcoin was around 35,000, right? Even when we rose from the 15, 16 area, altcoins still got slaughtered. But what you see in a true cyclical bull market in crypto is that people FOMO into Bitcoin when it's going up, they get bored within 24 hours,

if it doesn't go up anymore, and they start throwing their money and their chips into the casino and altcoins start going crazy. And then the rotation happens back to Bitcoin. That's happening. So there's really nothing I don't think to talk about as to whether or not we're in a bull market. I think we can put that one to bed at this point. Maybe if there's someone in the audience who disagrees, I would love to hear that. But yeah, I mean, raging bull. Do you remember we had the regular speaker that's come on a few times? I'm really bad with names. So you know who I'm talking about. They said that there's going to be one final capitulation for altcoins. Remember that day when i was kind of pretty caught by surprise i was a bit disappointed to hear that ben tallent prediction i believe it was exactly yeah yeah yeah do you think there's still a

possibility considering where the markets are obviously everything's possible but do you think it's a plausible possibility uh considering where that absolutely absolutely But the problem is, is that you don't, it's hard to predict when those things will happen. We always get 30, 40% retracements, even in a bull market. And the problem is, is that thinking it's going to happen at every level means that that retracement may come back to where we were at that point, right? If, listen, if you missed out on what's happening, and I love Ben, I actually agree with largely what he says. He's been right, I think, about Bitcoin dominance. But like, you know, listen, if Bitcoin was 30 and you said we need a 30% retracement,

it's inevitable. It's coming. Retracement comes from like 48 down to 38 or whatever. You missed a lot, right? So you can't live your life hoping that that retrace comes at the perfect moment. Right now, like I said, it's a bull market until proven otherwise. Now, I do think there's a very, very viable chance to his point that altcoins get slaughtered versus Bitcoin. If we think a Bitcoin spot ETF gets approved, we see a god candle Bitcoin rocketing up.

The liquidity is going to be massively just sucked out, as Mike McGlone says, the big sucking sound, going to be sucked right out of altcoins and back into Bitcoin, at least for a while. And we also can assume that if Bitcoin drops from here 10%, that altcoins will drop 30. Right? Because that's what we generally see in these cycles. So it's kind of funny, right? I mean, 38,000 on the way up was like a dream. It's like the memes, you know, where it shows like Leonardo DiCaprio and the Wolf of Wall Street and he's partying and then it's like 38,000 on the way up. If we hit 38,000 on the way out, it shows him like, you know, I can't remember the movie where he's out in the snow and like

dying of starvation. You know, the same exact price two weeks later, the sentiment will be completely different. So I do think that there's a possibility, but like, is anything going to new lows? There's no reason to believe that. Carlo? Hey, good morning, everybody. One more thing to probably add to the agenda is we did have some news. The judge denied, actually sided with the government and agreed that CZ needs to sit tight in the United States pending sentencing. That decision came out yesterday. He found that his ties overseas and so forth were too compelling and that he would prefer he cool his jets in the United States. Yeah, basically what he said is this dude has so much money that if we let him go,

there's that even small off chance that he could just disappear because he has endless resources. I think this is complete crap. The guy turned himself in willingly, made a deal, paying a huge fine on the basic idea that he would be able to be sent back, and he's not. But it's not like he's sitting in jail. Yeah, he's not in jail. I don't find it to be that far-fetched like he's one of the wealthiest people in the world so why would you be surprised if not letting him leave considering how easy it is for him to just seek um and seek safety you know in a country that doesn't have uh extradition laws

but is that for carlo is that surprising that they've done that you know people are already calling out on twitter this is targeted against crypto. If it wasn't crypto, this wouldn't have happened. Is that fair to say? Carlo, you've got to unmute. Can you hear Carlo's call? Is it me? No, I can't. It looks like he was trying to mute and unmute. Am I okay now?

Never. Better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the magistrate judge who made the decision on the same judge, but everything has to go through the approval of the sentencing judge, which is the district judge. So, no, I'm not surprised

by this development. I agree with you this should have been dealt with at the time of the plea because he did have the expectation he'd be able to stay out and go back to his country. So it is a wrinkle in the case, but I don't think an appeal court would overturn this judge's decision on the conditions of release. I think we've, when is the sentencing, Carlo? You know, I don't have that in my head at this moment. Let me double check real quick. Travis, do you know

uh last week in march wasn't it yeah i think no no that's sam is it last week in feb the first quarter of next year but i think from a market perspective um scott i know you don't want to talk about the markets but i think no i mean march and uh i think i think uh yeah is last week in feb or something like that yeah yeah just to be clear i think sam i think sam's last march and uh i think i think uh yeah thing is last week in tab or something like that yeah yeah just to be clear i think we can hear let's we can do this really quick so see we'll just give all the news on the uh people who are in trouble with with the law spf that'll be late march cz obviously can't leave the united states dokuan is being extradited to the united States from Montenegro rather than South Korea. That's US 1, South Korea

0. Bitslotto guy pled guilty, I believe, to the $700-ish million in money laundering, and Suzu is out of jail and tweeting, run it back, Turbo. We're good? We're good. I think this is it. Did we miss anything, Lawyer?

I think that's all of them for now. can't i can't even think of anyone who needs to go mashinsky mashinsky is still on the docket yeah and i guess um um i don't want to say like paul stranger what's the name yeah richard hart richard richard hart they've been that that was news i think last week mario that they were trying to serve him and couldn't. But it seems like they're not trying that hard. Yeah. I want to move back to the markets, if you don't mind, Scott, because we do have some new voices here. I want to get Tom's thoughts on where we're at with the market and the recent rally as well.

Is it sustainable? Have we completely priced in the ETF news? Or when we get an ETF, could things change again? Could the market even get better? And could we say this is the beginning of a raging bull market or we're getting ahead of ourselves, Tom? Morning, guys. Thanks for having me. So I've been in the camp that it's going to be really challenging for crypto to continue up if equities are going to sell off. And I've changed my tune over the last few months just because of how things have progressed in the markets with yields selling off and the long ends equities sort of moving up slightly, but not really ripping.

And we've had crypto just run on the back of this ETF news. But also, I think on the back of we're just looking for something new and exciting and interesting to put our capital in. And you're seeing the normies kind of come back in and start to notice our industry again. I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting texts from mom, dad, grandma, people hitting me up on Twitter, asking me what the latest altcoin is. So is this sustainable? I think because of the ETF and then because of the immediate potential for the

ETF, and then a lot of the bad actors we mentioned earlier, kind of getting cleared out of the space, we have this good news after good news after good news going into next year, that's going to sustain the rally. I do think there's probably gonna be some chop along the way. But I think we're in a new uptrend here, and dare I say super cycle upwards. Do not dare say super cycle, for fuck's sake. You're going to kill it. You can't say super cycle. We're banning the word super cycle. We're putting it on the banned list here. Super cycle

implies that you only go up, you never go down. I know that's not what you're saying, Tom, but my God, last cycle when we started really being convinced that Bitcoin could never go down again, was the dead top. Yeah, wasn't it? And wasn't it the guys that, excuse me, you and his partner, Kyle, they were the ones that came up with the concept of a super cycle. I think they were one of the first.

I think Dan Held also, who I love and was here, I think, yesterday. But I think he was definitely one of the champions of the super cycle. And by the way, I was on board. So don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing you last time. You were, sorry, sorry. You were on board of the super cycle narrative? Yeah.

I mean, listen, we saw Bitcoin go to 65,000, drop all the way to 30. And when it broke 65 and was at 69 again, I certainly thought, holy shit, like we're going to take the elevator straight up to six figures. And we didn't, right? And the idea of the super cycle was that. I mean, I guess I was never on board with the it'll never correct again part of the super cycle. We'll never have a bear market. But I'm surprised you thought that.

And we'll go through the next predictions, which kind of are in line with what you just said, Tom. Recession will finally arrive, but so will spot Bitcoin ETF. And they expect over two i'll read it in a bit but i had one question for you scott you're the one that always talks about history repeating itself humans are always the same yet you thought history won't repeat itself this time it's different in the last full month well i'm i'm a human so i was completely caught up in the wave of ridiculous fomo like i was as bolt hard as anyone anyone at the top and I paid for it dearly. Welcome to being a person on this earth. So what I want to do, Scott, is I want to go through the predictions, the VanEck predictions.

There's 15 of them. I want to go through them and get the panel's thoughts. On the panel, you can just jump in on each one or just put your hand up, whatever you prefer. Most of you are regulars. Maybe, Scott, you can take it on the first one. Give us your thoughts. We'll go to the panel. So first one, prediction number one and two, I'll read them together. The US recession will finally arrive, but so will the first spot Bitcoin ETF. Over $2.4 billion may flow into these

ETFs in the first quarter of next year to support Bitcoin's price. Prediction number two, the fourth Bitcoin halving in 2024 will see minimal market disruption and post-halving rise in Bitcoin's price and with significant gains for some low-cost miners. And number three, he sees Bitcoin or NXC's Bitcoin hit all-time highs by next year, spurred by political events and regulatory shifts following the presidential election. So these are the first three predictions. ETF, halving will go smoothly and all time highs next year with almost $2.5 billion in inflows into the ETF first quarter of next year. Anyone disagree with those predictions? I do not. I think those are in line. And I mean, I don't even think that $2.4 billion is high, considering what we saw. Depending, if we're back really, I believe we're in a raging bull market. BITO, when it launched, the Bitcoin futures ETF was the most successful ETF launch in the history

of all ETFs and did a billion AUM in just over 48 hours. So people keep pointing to the fact that that was the top of a bull market. We're in a bull market right now. So I think that $2.4 billion in the first, what did they say, month, quarter, a couple of weeks? I mean, that's exceptionally reasonable, especially with 12 of them potentially launching. I think we'll go higher. Bruce, Tom? Yeah, real briefly. As part of this filing, we also don't have State Street who has this fighter series of ETFs and has the largest gold ETF. We also don't have Vanguard apply.

So I think those guys are both waiting for this to be successful to see inflows. And then you'll have the two and three biggest ETF providers jump on board just to have even more flows. So there's we're pricing in a lot of upside and inflows, but we're still leaving out some of the biggest players in the industry. Yeah. Mario, go on to the next ones. I was just changing the title. I'll go on to the next one.

I want to get Bruce's thoughts. We do need to talk about Elizabeth Warren, though, because we have all our friends from the Blockchain Association here. Take over. Yeah. No, no. There's a lot of them there. Maybe talk about Elizabeth Warren and then we'll go through them maybe to wrap the show as kind of a recap now the title to me says van ek spelled wrong good job

elizabeth warren plans to kill crypto i didn't know that van ek elizabeth warren must be her criminal alter ego because because you got me off on doing it well how about you know you spilled that neck wrong yeah okay i was trying to fix it okay it's like vinnick elizabeth warren is like the new bond bond look look i talk talk about elizabeth warren again because we're not we're not um you know we want to hear more from her because she's very important you know what she is in this context and uh we love to, I think, obviously, poo poo her and dismiss like her comments. But it's important to know that she is literally the most powerful senator in Washington when it comes to banking and finance. And she's public enemy number one of the anti crypto army. And so when she speaks, there's something underlying the narrative. And it seems that we've now upped the narrative, which she continues to beat on, obviously, that crypto is being used primarily for terrorist financing. She's still quoting the disproven numbers from the Wall Street Journal article

about funding for Hamas, which we know are completely untrue. But now she's added another incredible wrinkle, which is the claim that over half, she said, over half of the nuclear weapons and missile program of North Korea is being funded with cryptocurrency. It's like she just her ability to make up a story and sell it is incredible. And by the way, the mainstream sees that and immediately believes it whether it's a retraction or whether it's not true or any of those. Now, we do know that the Lazarus Group, obviously, of North Korean hackers has stolen quite a bit of money. So what she's effectively doing is saying there's this big pile of money. This is how much is being spent on nuclear weapons. It must be the same, right? And first of all, the numbers don't even add up, but it's a preposterous claim.

And she's now brought that claim to the floor of the Senate. She's on TV talking about it. And she asked Jamie Dimon, obviously, about it. And we all kind of famously saw his words that if he was the United States government, he would close it down talking about crypto, how much he hates it, all these things, which is curious, considering JP Morgan's massive investment and time and resources being spent building private blockchains and JP Morgan Onyx. Perhaps that's a story for another day. But in the context of all of this, we know that, and I'm going to let Ron and Dan kind of update us here, because it was at the Blockchain Association meeting last week. We know that the Treasury Department wants more emergency powers, because that was stated implicitly by Wally, uh, MDMO there. I always pronounce his name wrong. And we know that they're trying to pass more legislation now for sanctions, which specifically

mentions, uh, crypto and it's going into the house of the Senate. And we just basically have a ton of legislation right now. That's very much on the attack. These guys would be much better to sort of update us where it is, but it's all effectively funneling down from her. And we're finally seeing sort of the actual manifestation of her words in legislation. So I mean, Ron, Dan, you guys can tell me if that's a poor assessment, but that's how I see it. No, you're 100% on the money. You know, she's actually had a few of my friends who are bank lobbyists text me yesterday saying, good luck. She's your problem now.

And, you know, it's really funny. I think, you know, a lot of folks focus on Jamie Dimon, but I'm glad we're focusing on Elizabeth Warren because, at least to my knowledge, this is the first time she wasn't critical of any of the banks. I mean, she always used these opportunities to really go after Wells Fargo in particular, but she's gone after the other folks for quite some time. And this is the first time that she made, you know, her brand hit in the banks that she is now switching to crypto. We've seen her actually pivot from like other concerns of hers, like private equity and also pivot to crypto. So crypto is now her target and she targets a lot of folks, but we are right in the crosshairs compared to her other main priorities. So I will say, though, the thing about Elizabeth Warren, she doesn't really pass too much legislation these days, but she has a really robust staff. She has a lot of influence,

especially over at the White House when it comes to economic policy. And then Sherrod Brown, who's the lead Democrat for that committee, does defer to her a lot for positions, and not all the time, but a decent amount. And so he said, at least for her bill, and he said this a couple months ago, so things have changed obviously since October 7th, but he said earlier that he was not considering her bill. But there is another bill out there

that's actually pretty similar to the objectives that she's trying to accomplish with trying to expand the Bank Secrecy Act to all crypto transactions, which just does not make sense. And we literally, technology can't comply. But the one- Literally, CZ, I mean, CZ literally just pled guilty to a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. And Elizabeth Warren says we need to alter the Bank Secrecy Act for crypto. Like, seems like it's doing a pretty good job, right?

That's the thing. At least when we're talking to folks in the Senate, especially the Senate, they're saying, see, like, all these bad things are happening in crypto. I'm like, well, yeah, this is actually how, you know, law enforcement works. This is how the law works. But for law folks, they're saying, they think that Binance not doing KYC AML, that actually applies to Coinbase, Kraken, and other foreign and U.S. exchanges. They think no one's collecting information. And that's just patently false. You know what's wild about this? You know what's wild about this, Scott, is that these intermediary, these centralized intermediaries in the financial

sector, banks and so forth, are without question the biggest facilitators of money laundering when it comes to cash transactions. And yes comply they file their suspicious transaction reports whenever they see suspicious activity but yet the little dirty secret is they retain their fees on these transfers and that's something that never gets brought up in the mix of all this they constantly point the finger at crypto but the banking sector and fiat is overwhelming majority of money laundering. Yeah, and JP Morgan, I mean, we all know and Bank of America, I think has the most JP Morgan second Wells Fargo third, but I think JP Morgan's paid $39 billion in fines for these exact things on over 270. Right. So it's like, you know, the pot calling the kettle

black here, obviously. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, you know, I agree with what Ron said. I mean, Elizabeth Warren certainly still has enormous influence over how these how cryptos being viewed within the Senate. There's another bill that came out introduced yesterday, the Terrorism Financing Prevention Act, which has, frankly, a lot of powerful senators on it now, not including Warren. It has Romney, Mark Warner out of Virginia, Rounds, Jack Reed out of Rhode Island, billed as a bipartisan act. And, of course, perpetuated by the October 7th attacks in Israel. They're leveraging that whole Hamas narrative, which is yet another problem we're going to have to face coming into the end of the year. What's false?

Like I said, it's been proven false, and they're just using it. What's the likelihood that gets traction? Ron, what do you think? I think there's going to be some elements that definitely will get traction, especially in the Senate. Again, we have the House doing the stablecoin bill and the market structure bill. The Senate is focusing on money laundering. And so, you know, you got to pass both bodies to get any bill done. We're going to probably have votes in Q1 and Q2 for the stablecoin bill or the market structure bill, if not both.

And so it's hard to see the Senate saying, you know, we're just going to let those go through without any of our priorities. So that's equally then, sorry, isn't it equally then difficult to imagine that Kong that the House takes anything that comes from the Senate, considering it's a different party in control and passes those? So it's gridlock on all of them, basically. Yeah, it's gridlock, though, combined with the there's a lot of desire from both camps, like this is a passionate topic from, you know, from the Senate and the House. And so like they're going to want to get something done. And so the question is, what makes it end these bills in the final versions? What can they live with?

What they can't? You know, it's Congress. Likely they could end in stalemate. But there is impetus to actually work together. So, but again, some things are good in these bills. There's a lot of things that are bad. So it's not necessarily we're directly opposed to everything in these bills. It's all bad for crypto.

Ron, can you give us an idea for those not following this? What are the three key things that you say are good things in the bill? And what are the three things that are the worst in the bill? I'll focus on more of all the bills here because, again, there's the Treasury proposal that just came out from Congress. Sorry, that came from Treasury to Congress last week that was announced at our summit. The other thing that's good, I would say, is the secondary sanctions. That seems to make sense. You know, a lot of folks we're talking to in the industry, from DeFi to exchanges, were totally fine with Treasury having more authority to implement sanctions.

There's a mixed view when it comes to the concerns about stablecoin issuers who are offshore. Obviously, Tether is important for the ecosystem. But at the same time, a lot of folks in the government are really concerned about their reserves, which they seem to shore up to some extent, the audits. And then there's also concerns about de-dollarization and the effect of the U.S. dollar on national security concerns. And so that's another one where it's a mixed view from what we're hearing. But a lot of folks do agree that there is a tether problem. The other one is applying the Bank Secrecy Act to DeFi. That's a major, major red flag.

That's in both the CanSea Act that just came out that Dan was referencing, as well as Warren's bill. The idea that DeFi really doesn't have the information to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, but also they shouldn't be collecting this information to begin with. And they don't operate like the banks do. So that's a major red flag. There's a variety of other proposals here and there, but I think it's important to highlight there's kind of the top three concerns here is mostly from the DeFi perspective, as well as exchanges too. I mean, if DeFi can't comply, DeFi can't work in the United States, these bills get signed into law, it's going to be really bad for the ecosystem as a whole, centralized exchanges included. Hey, Ron, a quick question. Sorry, you covered a lot there. What did you say about Tether? So this came up in more of the Treasury proposal, but there was concerns about,

again, they didn't explicitly say Tether, but they said they have major concerns about offshore stablecoin issuers who are issuing in U.S. dollars. It sounds pretty much like a tether problem there or a tether concern. We've been hearing that for quite some time from both sides of the aisle in Congress. But mixed views, at least when we're talking to folks in the industry, obviously. Is it your view that the U.S. government doesn't have the authority that they need to survey or oversee Tether the way that they want to? At least, I mean, Treasury is pretty limited when it comes to actually making requests to Congress.

I mean, when they do make such a bold request, they really mean it. And they usually back it up with, you know, a variety of claims here. Some, of course, are also in a classified briefing setting, which is kind of tough when you're talking about the North Korea issue Scott referred to earlier. But overall, yeah, I think it's just more

of a mixed concern here from the Tether front. If they're asking for this stuff, it probably means they do have some concerns. We haven't explicitly heard from Treasury what exactly aboutether front if they're asking for this stuff it probably means they do have some concerns we haven't explicitly heard from treasury what exactly about tether that they're not seeing that they want to see more into but um that's that's the that's the part that was alluding to me is that it seems like the u.s government has like total oversight and total control over tether like it's like they freeze stuff whenever they want it they've frozen like 1500 plus addresses it just froze 225 million dollars worth of tether the most tether they'd ever it was like it just froze 225 and like all the tether that they'd frozen ever before that

was like 225 yeah like travis i spoke to go ahead sorry no you go no you go no i was gonna say i spoke to paulo a couple weeks ago and like their tether is very transparent about that, right? Like they make no claims to being decentralized or a part of the, that side of the crypto ethos. I mean, they openly say, listen, we work with law enforcement everywhere. When they send a request, we take care of it. And we are a centralized company that's, you know, running this type of business. And so I think what you're saying is accurate. And I don't even think they would push back. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, that's why. That's why I'm wondering, like, what what the deal is with, you know, the US government kind of posturing in a way that they're, they're not, You know, same thing with like, you know, like another way to frame this is

Loomis and whoever else was on the author that wrote that letter to the attorney general. And it was like, that was in October. And they were like, you need to bring charges against Binance and Tether. And then a month later, you got these massive charges against Binance. And there's nothing against Tether. But then now, Treasury comes back, and they're trying to get like increased oversight over Tether. In the meantime, you know, there's never been more Tether being frozen. So it's just a part of confusing to me. You know, Adiyamo outlined that in that speech he gave at that

conference we held last week, where he didn't, I think, explicitly mention Tether, but he certainly mentioned the dangers of non-U.S. stablecoin issuers that use the dollar backing, arguing that they need their address, we need, or at least the Treasury part needs to address their use by bad actors. So it's been more explicit. And I'll add a dance point, too. If Tether was, you know, at least based in the United States, I don't think we would have seen these concerns or at least this direct request coming from Treasury. And again, the hate for Tether dates back to more of the reserves like two years ago. That was a major concern for Congress, especially when Terra imploded. But now it's mostly focused on them being offshore and they're using U.S. dollars.

And they're very obviously important for the ecosystem. So I think that's largely coming from and I will say out of all the folks here though. For treasury trying to have them come on shore. Folks like the SEC are making it really dang difficult to be in the United States so that's kind of you know we're on two opposite sides here of rock and a hard place. Yeah I think Carlo go ahead. Yeah Ron I had a quick question going back to the issue of treasury putting pressure on AML compliance, I testified in November at the Treasury's public hearing with respect to

asset broker reporting requirements and what that would do to DeFi. Has there been any movement from Treasury on whether they're going to impose those proposed regulations or not at this point? I'm sorry, which profession you're referring to explicitly? These are the IRS digital asset reporting requirements. Oh, the broker provision. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Yeah, the broker provision, for those who weren't aware, this happened during the infrastructure bill, the idea of who is a broker and what do they need to report for 1099s. And we were heavily pushing back against that. You know, it seems right now miners and developers likely will be safe. It wasn't clear back in 2021. But DeFi, NFTs, and a variety of other folks could be classified as brokers under the current definition. So we're pushing back. We've also commented publicly on this.

We're talking to Capitol Hill on some legislation that's bipartisan at the current moment. It's called the Keep Innovation in America Act. I will say, though, I mean, Congress, we've talked about how it's hard to move legislation. Tax legislation especially is very difficult to move. And so I think this is going to be both a congressional pressure on Treasury as well as probably in the courts if this goes forward. But the good news is that there is bipartisan legislation and there actually is bipartisan support from actually the senior officials in the Senate on both sides of the aisle. So we're trying to get some traction there,

but tax legislation takes a while. Tom, then Bruce. For the legal folks on the call, how much of a priority really is crypto within Washington, especially as we come into election season? We are in this bubble. And I guess it's unclear to me personally, where does this rank on their agenda? It seems it ranks pretty high on Elizabeth Warren's agenda. But she's actually up for re-election in my state.

I was just looking at the poll numbers. And unfortunately, she's still leading. But for others, is this number one, two, three, or just way down the list? I think it's very important to any of the politicians who took money or shook hands with Sam Pinkman Freed. They're going now to show that they're just taking the whole thing down. It never happened, and they weren't friends with crypto. They were against it the whole time. I think it was a personal vendetta.

But I also think it is all of their friends, especially Jamie Dimon, they're taking a rake, a, you know, all of the all of their friends, especially Jamie diamond, you know, they're taking a rake and crypto plans to eliminate that. And all of their control, whether you think of CBDC is a central bank currencies, digital currencies or central bank digital control, crypto threatens that. So I think it's a priority on to a lot of people. I don't know that it's like, Biden gets in a room and says this is our top priority. But I think for a lot of people i don't know that it's like biden gets in a room and says this is our top priority but i think for a lot of people it matters i can get in a room and take a nap but

we know that uh the staffers that are in the white house that are you know beholden to elizabeth warren certainly get in a room and say those things it seems like the hamas deal was like a step change in reinvigorating i mean other people on this stage would be able to answer this a lot better than i would but like because it seemed like right after ftx collapse you know there's like this big push choke point 2.0 sec rammed through a bunch of stuff you know cftc ramp ran through a bunch of stuff um new york ag was ramming through stuff. Then it just got kind of quiet for a while.

I feel like I talked to people that were like, this is not a top priority in Washington anymore. A lot of politicians wish that they just never had to talk about crypto again. Then the terrorism financing stuff on the back of the Gaza Strip strip conflict, just like ramped it all back up. It was an opportunity, man. Yeah. Yeah.

I agree with you. I think it was an opportunity and then I'll go to Bruce, but I think it was an opportunity because Larry Fink annihilated the climate narrative. That was the principal flood against crypto for so long. When the king of ESG piles for a Bitcoin spot ETF. It's really hard if you're Elizabeth Warren to talk about how we're boiling the oceans and our transits and our transactions are emptying swimming pools. Right. So I think that, in my opinion,

it's probably a combination of the fact that obviously, Republicans in Congress are pushing very pro crypto legislation, that she probably feels we need Democrats in the Senate to make a stand on the other side. And this just gave her the narrative she needed. It took one article in The Wall Street Journal that was completely false for us now to be funding Hamas, every terrorist organization in the world in North Korea's nuclear missile program. Bruce. the world in North Korea's nuclear missile program. Bruce? Yeah, I mean, I think we got to zoom out a bit and just question the validity of these tyrants in the first place. I mean, this sounds like a scene from Atlas Shrugged, you know, a bunch of, you know, busybody staffers of geriatrics tyrants down in DC, you know, running around like, oh, the Committee on Science

deputy undersecretary is unpleased with your math. Who are these clowns? We don't need any of them. We don't need any of these regulations. We shouldn't care what Treasury thinks of Tether. Who cares what Treasury thinks of Tether? It's none of their business. Let the consumers decide. This is America. This is supposed to be the land of the free. We don't even say that out loud anymore because it's so preposterous because we have all these Elizabeth Warren tyrants up in our business. Oh, file a form for this. Oh, we're concerned. Well, as long as you do it this way, we will have bipartisan. I mean, come on. Give me a break. It's ridiculous. We don't need any of this. This is math and code. It's freedom. It's speech. It's a word that Satoshi wrote down on a piece of paper and he

gave it away. And in my country, I have a right to write and read and publish that code. I don't need a bunch of busy body tyrants sitting there, you know, looking over me. If they want to do something with their time, maybe they can stop the wars. Maybe they can go clean up San Francisco. Maybe they can stop Walmart from being robbed every 15 minutes. You know, let them do something else other than bother us who are trying to make the world better and try and make them completely irrelevant with their time and money. I could go on, but you get the point. I think my favorite part is that you went full like ye olde English Downton Abbey when you did an Elizabeth Warren impression.

Well, that's because they're snobs. They're looking down on us. She's sitting here from her high throne that we pay for in her marble offices with the money that they stole from the people. And she's lording over us like, oh, excuse me, the wolf wants to trade something with Mario

in a digital token. Not without my say in between. Like, who the heck are you? That's who we fought a war against. So, yeah, that's why. He seriously made me want to just go throw some tea in Boston Harbor. Go ahead, Mitchell. You have to.

That's what we're all about. It's ridiculous. And it's this ever-shifting Overton window where this becomes more and more and more normal. Now we're debating like, well, okay, yeah, you know, I know they want to put every single person in jail, but, you know, if we just let them, you know, why don't we have the Know Your Shoes Act? You know, like criminals, I found this research that indicates that almost every criminal has a shoe. Why don't we just, when we buy shoes, we go into the shoe registry, we put our footprint in there, and we go into the shoe registry, we put our footprint

in there and we have our shoes tracked and they put GPSs so everybody knows where everybody is. And if you're against that, you're in favor of terrorists. I mean, it's absurd. This is, you know, money should be free. The idea that they've made money a criminal and made every single person who uses money a suspect is absurd. You know, it's terrorism and human trafficking and all of these things already are illegal. Go after those things.

Go after fraud. They're doing a terrible job at fraud, by the way. You know, they could go after these other things rather than, you know, just strangleholding this entire industry. So, you know, I think we, you know, the whole entire idea is illegitimate. And I wish we didn't have any of these regulations. The only regulations we need are protection of basic property, make sure you can't get hacked, get your stuff stolen, make sure fraud is illegal, which it already is. And that's about it. Mind your own business other than that. That's my two cents. The issue is that crypto is, you know, the Wall Street Journal, elliptic statistics, notwithstanding,

crypto is facilitating a magnitude of illicit capital flows that is too big for the US government to ignore. Your underlying point there is like the concept of the freedom of anonymous transactions. Like in America, should we have the right to transact anonymously? And that's a really big question. But if you look at the way that traditional finance has moved over the last couple decades, then I think the very clear answer is that the U.S. government doesn't want you to have that and are moving to make sure that people don't have that. Yeah, but they're wrong. That's the thing. They're wrong, and I have seen it. I've seen it

up close over the last 20 years and the last 30 years. When I first became registered as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley 30 years ago, I could open an account over the phone with no ID. I didn't even need your social security number. And now look at us. You need 60 pages of stuff to open an account. They've got to have you hold up a selfie like a child. It's none of their business. I don't care what the government wants. We are the people. It's we the people. It's supposed

to be what we want. And this isn't serving us. It's not, you know, they're acting like tens of millions of us are criminals. You know, they're making us jump through all these hoops and make everybody have these compliance officers. Well, there's no way. Yeah, but there's no way to. It's like if you don't do any KYC, then you let all the bad in with the good. And at some point, the amount of bad gets to a point that's untenable for people to be willing to accept. Well, who? Who doesn't accept it? Who's worried about bad? Let them go to some institution that blocks out the bad.

We don't need mother government nannying in here to tell us who's good and who's bad. Let people be with whatever they want to be with. So I think the answer is that that's just not the view of the majority of the American people, what you just said. No, I disagree. I think most American people don't want to. And even if it is, what happened to the protection of the minority? Maybe I'm the only crazy person in the world who wants to be able to freely transact my money without some nanny state bureaucrat running over my head with it and threatening me if I don't fill out a bunch

of forms. I know I'm not the only one, but why should I have... Doesn't this assume that the government's good at protecting people when you fill out those forms? No, of course they're not protecting people. They're terrible at protecting people. Michael? Yeah, I just had a question for Ron. We've heard a lot of talk from the Republican side about the threat of a subpoena on Gary Gensler, but it seems like so far that's really kind of been an empty threat. It gets brought up and there really hasn't been any action. I was just wondering if you had any insight or thoughts around whether or not you actually think that's going to happen or any reasons it hasn't.

Yeah, I mean, the thing that was competing Gary Gensler, like I'm not sure it's going to yield much benefit here, at least especially for pushing any of the legislation that Patrick McHenry wants to push against stable coins and market structure. He does have a year left or 13 months, you can say. I think politically, it just wouldn't really help his cause, especially if he's trying to get Democrats, especially like the lead Senate Democrat, to take his bill seriously. It'd be a really risky strategy to move his legislation while also subpoenaing one of the agencies that he's trying to regulate. So that's been, I think it could easily happen, especially if there's more overstep or more enforced actions, or if the legislation dies and stalls. But right now, I don't see that

happening anytime soon, pending anything else the SEC does. They've gone after pretty much everyone and everyone in this space. And I bet there's more though happening, probably lined up. So we'll see. Yeah, I was curious. Okay, go ahead, Michael. I just wanted to ask really quickly, you brought up McHenry, how impactful and meaningful is it that he actually announced his retirement? We haven't actually talked about it here. Dan, I see you lifted your mic as well, either of you. Well, to me, I'm from North Carolina, and he's been in Congress since he's probably 25, 26 years old, took office in 2004. So he's coming up on 20 years. And to most people, I don't think this was much of a surprise. Rod, I'm not sure how you feel about that. No, we were hearing these rumors actually early this year that Patrick McHenry was going to

retire. And it makes sense. Again, three young kids, 20 years in Congress. He passed up leadership, though, which is a big deal. No one really does that. He passed up being in the Republican leadership to be chair of financial services, specifically for crypto, which is pretty amazing. So at least for the next 13 months, there's two things we can probably see. Either he's going to get some deference from his colleagues saying, hey, look, you put a lot of work into this institution. You worked well the other side of the aisle. You became temporary speaker when you didn't want to be. Let's help you move your

priorities. And his priorities are crypto and among a few other things. On the other side, we kind of saw a little bit of this towards the end with Pat Toomey, if you recall him in the Senate. He was one of the biggest crypto champions for us. And he tried his hardest to get some legislation through on stable coins, especially. And he wasn't given the deference from some of his colleagues, more of the Democrat side, too. Hopefully the market is matured enough that potentially McHenry will just have a better environment to do that in, right? Exactly. And I think the ETF will help.

I think also just the lack of, you know, the fraudster is already shorn up. I think hopefully everything will be a lot easier on our end. But of course, you know, we keep talking about Hamas narrative. We saw this in Russia, too. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the skeptics always point to crypto. You're hearing a lot about North Korea, too. And I think that's one that you've got to really watch out for. But also this anti-money laundering narrative could also really stall legislation at McHenry. It doesn't want to take it. So there's a lot in the air, but a lot of the chessboard is starting to play out. So we'll see the next, I think, three months are going to be really pivotal. And let's not also forget, we have a shutdown to avoid. Republicans have a very narrow margin of just two votes. And so there's a chance we have a shutdown and kind of similar would happen in the fall. This could delay the legislation getting consideration. So we're going to have to see. It's going to be really dicey in D.C. for a while. What's the timing on the shutdown again? Sorry. And then, Nicole, I know I interrupted. They have two tiers. So there's a January and February. I forgot the exact specifics,

but half the government gets funded in January towards the end. And then February is the other half. But again, two-vote majority by the Republicans that has a hard time electing a speaker. So this is going to be really clutch. We'll see.