The Wolf Of All Streets - Fed Access for Crypto Firms? Massive Shift Ahead #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

In this episode, the panel breaks down President Trump’s major Executive Order directing the Federal Reserve to expand access to the financial system — including “skinny” master accounts for crypto firms, fintechs, and non-banks. They discuss redefining what a bank is in the crypto era, the future of fractional reserve banking, stablecoin adoption, making your wallet your bank, Bitcoin as collateral for lending, and the push toward seamless global dollarization. Additional topics include Elizabeth Warren’s latest moves, potential inflation measurement changes, Fed policy under new leadership, easier IPO rules for crypto companies, and the massive U.S. budget deficit challenges ahead. A wide-ranging conversation on the next phase of crypto integration into traditional finance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, good morning, everyone. First, before I talk for a long time, can you guys hear me? Let's start with that. Anybody. Gotcha. Okay, cool. You never know. And having gone on soliloquies with into the air, I really didn't feel like doing it again.

I hear myself talk all the time. And it's not so great. But this executive order that Trump put out is actually a big deal. And I just put out a quick video. The fact is, it's an I told you so. When everyone was talking about Kevin Warsh being nominated, I didn't hear people discussing what it meant. The most important piece was the regulatory side of the Federal Reserve. I will continue to say that.

I said it last week. And frankly, I would be stupefied if the new Fed chair hadn't actually had input into this executive order. I would actually be stunned. I'm curious if I'm the only one who thinks this. But what does it mean? Well, it means that the Fed now will have to, and all the Fed governors and all the Fed boards are going to have to chime in and weigh in on the whole notion of why we have restricted access to the financial system. And that restricted access matters because you know anyone and it would be awesome if we could get Caitlin on because she fought for for so long and got screwed by the Fed not giving access to the master account to Custodia Bank. But this puts the entirety of fractional reserve banking on, if not trial, but it will allow the market to determine whether fractional reserve banking is a big deal.

Now, why the crypto investors care? Well, the rails of all the various crypto firms are going to offer investment options and will also be able to offer payment options. And if you understand what's actually been happening, most crypto firms have been opting to be trust banks. But that gives them limited scope for what they can offer. This is essentially another. path. I see the hearts up here. I didn't want to start until Carlo, you were up here. I know this. Yeah, Dave, I would say not even just trust banks, but most of them even just had to operate through an intermediary bank. And we saw those banks repeatedly getting killed or cutting off the rails. So they were dependent largely on other banks. So that's a good point. So I actually had a conversation and consensus with Scott Shea. If anyone doesn't know who Scott was, Scott was running

signature bank when Elizabeth Warren put a bullet in his head or put a bullet in the bank's head. And they will tell you, you know, swear up and down on stacks of Bibles that they had billions and reserves. They had no issue and they were just regulatorily shot because the Democrats at the time listened to Warren and let them do so. And so, Scott, your point is very well taken. There are many crypto entrepreneurs. There are many just regular fintech entrepreneurs that have been very very wary of starting businesses that could be killed by regulators. And this is a point of just changing policy to make that impossible. So it is a very big deal. You are absolutely right. Anyway, good morning, Carlo. Are you there? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, you know, it's

interesting. There's been a convergence of three interesting events around this. I put out a video yesterday in response to Senator Warren's letter to the OCC, she is demanding that they produce all of their communications and all of their records that went into their nine crypto firm trust charter grants. And I asked the question in my video, what is a bank? Because I think for the first time in well over 100 years, crypto is forcing the conversation around what is a bank. So, I built on that after I saw the president's executive order come out, and I put out an article that kind of touches on all of this because it is a question worth asking. The interesting timing of this is also that in addition to Warren's memo, we had a very lengthy and I think a very well-thought-out article that was put out by one of those actual bank charter players. And I mentioned that as well in the piece that I just put up in the nest because he pushes back against Elizabeth Warren.

This is Bitko's CEO, Mike Belchie. And he basically challenges the notion that, you know, before we can have this conversation, we got to clearly define what a bank is. And you can't just simply throw out the word crypto bank because you're muddling, as you very well articulated, you're muddling the difference between what a trust bank is, what an FDF. CIC insured bank is that actually works on a fractional reserve model and how once again, she's lost the narrative because what she's doing is, and she makes valid points in the sense of the charter language and the fully regulated bank language are not necessarily crystal clear on all this. The Genius Act doesn't necessarily clarify at all in her opinion.

She makes valid points, however she, as usual, goes too far because what she's essentially saying is that, again, I want to protect the consumer by denying options and choices. And I want to paint this in a frame that banks are safer because they have FDIC insurance and because they're fully chartered. But that doesn't tell the whole story, as you and I know, because they work on fractional reserve. And what Belchie says in response is basically, actually, no, these trust banks are probably safer because they are required to custody separately customer funds in remote accounts that are bankruptcy protected. So this is all leading up to with the culmination of the White House's memo and their executive order. This is going to really press the Fed to have to decide.

Because what the executive order is essentially saying, Dave, is he wants to give Fedmaster to these cryptocentric banks. And this is exactly what Custodia Bank wanted with Caitlin Long. She was shot down. And this will drive the banks crazy if it happens. So I've got my popcorn out and I'm tuned in for this one. Isn't he also saying that he wants to give it to the ones that aren't banks yet, the exchanges? Yeah. It's very, very broadly pushing the boundaries.

So this is really pushing the conversation now of, do we need to revise the definition of what a bank is if we're going to truly integrate blockchain technology into this financial rail. Sort of, sort of. I mean, I think that when you say things like that, I mean, and I'm not trying to be offensive, what you're doing is you're giving people in the banks the ability to say, oh, look, you see, you see they're trying to destroy banks and make it unsafe. That's actually not true.

What you're saying is that the function of being able to pay a bill to be able to instantly send money, you know, we've got it's been, it's been moving and changing, right? you know, with Zell and other things that the bank started, you know, Venmo, et cetera, it's been neobanking. But still, the average vendor, when you want to pay, you know, I use the example this morning, and our air conditioner cleaners are coming on Friday to clean air coils, right? You know, I want to pay them. I generally have to use a bank, a payment account from a bank to do that or a third-party processor.

Well, let's say my money is being saved in Bitcoin, and I want to sell Bitcoin to, who bake the payment. Now I'm actually not doing that. My Bitcoin, I'm not selling, but it doesn't matter. If I want to do that, why should I have to go to a separate application? Why shouldn't a firm that has the ability to safeguard customer assets and take people's investment account to go from investment to payment instantaneously and being able to make those payments? Why shouldn't that be allowed? And that's what you did. Are you saying that you want to make your wallet, your bank? I know a guy who wrote a book about that very thing. I heard about it.

You know, I was going to try to tee you up. You shouldn't do it yourself. But yeah, no, all kidding aside, you know, it's like I was having an argument as I was flying back from New York to Miami yesterday with somebody who is like, you know, a Bitcoin maxi going on about how Bitcoin's network effects are not helped by micro strategy or not helped by the ETFs or not helped by institutionalization because it's stopping people from using Bitcoin. What drives me absolutely fucking crazy about Bitcoin Maxis who believe that is they have absolutely no idea of how you want to get Bitcoin into the hands and the value proposition into the hands of the average human being. Not tech, you know, not cypherpugs, not tech people. And that's a big deal. Once you can own Bitcoin and use it the same, use it in a superior way to what you do with stocks or anything else,

to be able to make your payments and live your life and invest and save. Once you actually have a savings account that can use Bitcoin, that's a very big deal. It's a huge unlock, in my opinion. I mean, I got to believe side triggered somebody here. I mean, I don't see any hands. So do I have to start calling on people? I'll jump in here. I got to give a shout out to Carlo.

It's great, great stuff you've been putting out, especially with the book. But I think that banks have always had that giant advantage. That's, you know, access to the Fed's plumbing. But we see crypto firms get even limited access. man, that moat, that moat's getting smaller. And Waller's been an advocate for this. We know, like, back in December of last year, they were talking about this and Cracken, obviously,

kind of leading the way. But the skinny master account concept, really from what I've read, is about giving eligible payment focus firms access, right? So not just everybody. I don't know, man. I mean, I'd like to see, I didn't see what Trump put out.

But I really think at the end of the day, the hot take for me is this could be the beginning of the PayPal moment, really for stable coins, where they move from, you know, like crypto trading to everyday settlement layers. I don't know. I think that's a big deal. Dan. Hey, morning for us. Yeah, it's funny. I haven't used my bank in a long time.

I don't hear, Dan, if he's speaking. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Scott, you can't hear? Okay. Uh-oh. I think Scott's in a car, so he's going to be bouncing up and down. Okay. I'll try and continue. Yeah, I don't use my bank.

I came on here before and said that I live all. stable coins and on crypto and that kind of stuff. And I still do. Previously I was using the cast card as a company that I was working for. But recently I've gone back to my crypto.com card. And I have an amount of Bitcoin in my crypto.com app. And I have an auto top up so that when my card drops below $500,

it tops up by another $100, I just leave the money in Bitcoin on my account and spend on my card. I get cash back immediately in tokens. And I have an automated task at 9 a.m. every morning that converts my CRR. back into Bitcoin. So I live on Bitcoin and spend on my card.

I don't really think about it. It doesn't matter to me what's permitted in the U.S. or whatever. I don't live in the U.S., not American. I live on my crypto card. I spend my Bitcoin every single day and get cash back effectively in Bitcoin. It just works. Don't even think about it.

Any way you can spend Visa, you know, do my Airbnb, everything, tap it, physical card in personal, Apple Pay. I mean, we're going there in the U.S. The point is, is eventually the U.S. gets to the same place. The difference is the biggest, the last remaining hurdle, the final bosses tax policy, as far as Bitcoin is concerned. That is true. And I'm going to assume, yeah.

Jurisdiction. Well, I don't know. Jurisdiction for me would be in Singapore. So there's no capital gains. I've never paid capital gains in my life. Don't even think about it. I've never thought about it. So, yeah.

Right. So that's the biggest deal. But the ease and use and, And ability to do that makes life really easy. I mean, when you talk about Bitcoin, are you, you know, it's the UIUX for, you know, sending, you know, sending Bitcoin for one place to another. I know people who still, you know, get terrified and sweaty bombs every time they have to do it, you know, having, you know, you don't have that problem of it.

Yeah. It was a bit of a pain in the ass today, I'll level with you because I had to, I'm currently in Indonesia. I'm on a small island in the West Java Sea, I guess, somewhere. about a thousand people in the island. And I had to move some money. I didn't Deribet. Now Deribet's blocked by the Indonesian government.

So I had to VPN, and then I had to go on to Deribut, and then I had to send it from Deribut to CoinBen, because that's the only place I could withdraw it to. And then from Coinbase, I could withdraw it to my Crypt.com account. And the whole thing, each one took, I think, two or three confirmations. It took well over an hour to move that. A big crowd, which was a pain in the ass. But I mean, I'll have to do that.

Um, yeah. Yeah, well, that obviously, obviously that makes it tough, right? You know, but, you know, it's in the internet. I can hold it there. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, I can hold it into the com app. I can do whatever, yeah. Yeah, but now imagine crypto.com in the United States as getting, you know,

access to the banking system, which is clearly what one of the things that's going to Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. When I make it a deposit. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I love what you're saying, Dan, because we're trying to solve for that. And, you know, I'm trying to build out the education module to help consumers actually do that. And it's very fragmented right now in the United States.

Really, you have two ways to do it that are pretty straightforward. One, of course, you can get like a coin-based debit card, and you can use that at the point of sale with a USDC. And you can pay directly in stable coins if you don't want to touch your Bitcoin. and then two, which is what I do also is I do the Gemini card where I tap at the point of sale and I get Bitcoin rewards, it would be wonderful to have that all seamlessly integrated into a banking app where you don't have to go through those other intermediaries to get there. And I think that's what the administration's building towards.

I think that's probably true. So, I mean, look, the implications for the market are non-trivial. And, you know, we're still, and nothing else is happening, right? You know, the market is like kind of sitting right where it was. No one seems to be. Can I? Yeah. Sorry.

Yeah, I was just say, I think it's, I'm assuming it's just coincidence. But the fact that Warren wrote that letter on Monday to the OCC and then Trump came over the top directly to the Fed with an executive order on Tuesday is great comedy. Well, I mean, look, Warren, you know, Elizabeth Warren, and, you know, we like to make fun of her here. but I mean, it is really, she is a parody. I mean, she is an Ayn Rand character come to life. You know, you're talking about the, the, all the memes of her acting like, you know, Karen, right, and yelling. But that's what she does.

She hasn't gotten any bills passed in her entire tenure, but she writes letters and she tries to annoy people. And, you know, there's theoretical oversight-ish, but, you know, they don't have to respond. They could ignore her, but, you know, if you ignore her, then she'll grandstand, oh, look, they're ignoring me. So she just likes to create work for people. But unfortunately, underneath everything she does, Scott, there's no, there's no assumptions and no, and she never answers. So, you know, why is it that this is a big deal?

Well, you know, there's a some, the assumption, like I heard, I was talking to somebody, random person who doesn't really know very much about this stuff, but was genuinely interested. And they were saying, but wait a minute, you know, what would happen to my FDIC insurance? You know, if it's not, you know, why would I want to put money in a bank?

that doesn't have FDIC insurance and I laughed at them and I said well you do understand you know why you have FDIC insurance they go no I said because when you put a pot this is a normal person do you realize that when you put a hundred bucks in your bank the likelihood is somewhere between five and ten cents of that are actually at the bank and so as a result in the 30s there were bank runs and banks could go out of business so they had to create the FDIC in order to make people be willing to put their money in their banks but with but if their bank actually if you gave them $100 and they had the $100 and it was always there and by law they had to hold those as resources, you don't need that insurance. The only time you would lose money is if it fails. And people, you say that to people, they go, that can't be true. I'm like, you know, and it's funny, right? It's literal financial illiteracy in this country. And Elizabeth Warren is banking on people being stupid and ignorant. That's not stupid. People being. ignorant because nobody nobody you know knows this i mean we know this because and you know and that's the whole thing that that that kaitland always talked about she always talked about it wasn't about

being crypto it wasn't the fact that it was a bitcoin bank it was it was a fully reserved business model where banks charged fees and didn't make their money by lending by doing you know this fractional reserve banking that that's what she always said was the real bugaboo and i always thought she was right matt that's a new hand i yeah that's a new hand one thing that i think a lot of folks here in this room got some really bright minds um bitcoin lending is something that i'm really focused on i've heard a lot of conversation about that my question would be moved to some of these smarter folks in the room could the fed access that we're talking about here with this this executive order could that really turn bitcoin from buy and hold really

into a pristine collateral inside modern lending because i really think that that is where things are going is bitcoin lending and i looked at some numbers by 2030 if this all gets approved i mean banks could They could be Bitcoin-back credit lines, but there could be all sorts of new financial services and products. You know, private bank, Bitcoin loans, high net worth clients using Bitcoin as collateral, et cetera. So I'm wondering if this does not actually kind of help move that along a little bit farther and bring it in online. Because I think, again, Waller's talking about having all this rolled out by Q4, right? I don't know who Waller. You mean Kevin Warsh?

No, no, Chris Waller, the Fed Governor. Right, he is a Fed Governor, right? Yes. Waller was the one that I had to get. Absolutely. He's the architect of the Fed Skinny. Right. Yeah. And he's the one that's saying it wants. He wants to roll this out by Q4, right?

Right. But well, now that they have 120 days to respond, but they'll prop, you know, which in government terms basically means you'll get it on day 120. I mean, it would be nice to think that they'll do this quicker. But it's pretty clear that the direction that they want to move in, right? I think it's pretty clear. But, I mean, as far as your question, I don't want to be the only one to answer. Yeah. There are a bunch of people here who probably care.

And I think that, yeah, Jamie, go ahead. Hey, Dave. Yeah, I mean, you know, it kind of falls in line. I mean, Trump's obviously got pro-crypto policies, right? Then you add Fed access. And then like Matt mentioned earlier, with the stable coin clarity. And that clearly seems like that's the strategy they're doubling down on. And, you know, I was, you know, recently kind of like we were talking about in spaces, you know, given the environment.

It's a high GDP environment. you got 40 trillion in debt. I think you even had a post about this, but it's not an ideal rate lowering environment, right? So like, you know, the idea for needing some massive growth, I mean, these kind of initiatives are the things that could help those things happen. You know, productivity gains and, you know, business investments, you know, consumer spending. That's kind of like what we need if we don't have the environment

where you could kind of lower rates down from a, that side of a policy to stimulate it. I mean, I'm assuming that's kind of where your heads at as well. Am I right? I mean, my head is that that the Fed is can't act alone and succeed and do anything, that they're trapped. I mean, you know, Scott, what was your analogy about how bad of a job, you know, how you wouldn't take, you know.

I mean, yeah, I've had a lot of them, but I mean, I can't imagine stepping into a worse job at a worse time than worse. And he could have literally, I mean, you know, he's married to Estee Lauder's granddaughter, he's worth billions of dollars, he can have ridden off into the sunset and done anything with his life. And now he just has to be beaten down on one, in both sides.

It's in a no-win situation, it's unbelievable. Well, I mean, but what it means is the Fed can't be independent anymore. We're going back to a situation. The last time we had debt to GDP at this level was at the end of World War II and what happened. the Fed and Treasury work together. The words that, it's actually a pretty reasonable word.

The words that economists use is financial repression to talk about it. And what does that mean? What that means is a set of policies to disincentivize, you know, basically to incentivize holding government debt is what that is really what that's It was also the birth of Bretton Woods and the entire debt cycle that we've gone into. So it actually opens the door now to revisit the entire dollarized network in the world.

And I think that's why stable coins are really timely in that conversation, Dave. Yep. Oh, you're right. I mean, so I think that you're going to see a lot of policy, you know, you're going to see a lot. I mean, but at the end of the day, if we continue to run to $3, $5 trillion budgets, you know, deficits, there's not a damn thing the Fed can do. the only thing they can do is figure out a way to print money to keep the inflation pushing into assets and away from consumer prices by stimulating investment,

lengthening supply chains, yada, yada, yada, and that is not easy to do. Right. And I've been talking about that for a long time. But what does that mean if you're a Bitcoin holder or if you're in crypto? Well, if you are building the rails that are going to speed up finance, that's good. if you are holding Bitcoin as a provably scarce asset, that's good. What does it mean for, you know, dog memes?

I have no idea. But if you do have a lot more liquidity sloshing around the system, I think you might see a lot of other things up. Adam, I finally got you to raise your hands. How's it go, man? I'm wondering how they're going to tie these kind of two things together. How they're going to tie stable coins into kind of the broader use case of like globally, how are people just going to use their visa card and pay in stable

coins? Like what Dan was describing earlier, right, he's using centralized exchanges to basically spend his, uh, his Bitcoin through, you know, that exchanges, visa card. Totally understandable. But that's not the way most people are operating, right? If you're in whatever, I'm in Costa Rica, everybody I know here pays for everything, 100% of purchases, you know, using their visa card or their master card. How is it all going to get done? So that person in X country is just paying with a U.S. stable coin and doesn't even realize it. Like, what's the bigger kind of play to get that to happen kind of globally?

I'd love some input in that. I'm waiting at Carl, I thought I saw a new hand. Yeah, yeah. No, I think about this stuff a lot. And I think the way that's going to happen is that there's going to have to be a massive change in the point of sale, tap, and pay mechanism. The credit card companies already understand that they're getting immense pressure from stable coins because of their instant settlement and the merchant side not having to wait for their money

while it's being parked in float. So there's going to be a huge incentive to disrupt at the point of sale. And it's going to essentially, I think, be something that's going to force banks to have to integrate into their back end the ability for the consumer to pay directly with stable coins. And that is the flywheel that will usher in,

I think, the next Bretton Woods which will be the next era for dollarization of the world, which will be people getting easy access to dollars without having to go through intermediaries, be at their own local bank, their own FX exchange, and once they get digitized dollars that can flow seamlessly like that, that's going to spark, and I think that's Best's play,

that's going to spark massive demand for treasuries. Yeah, that's where I'm kind of going, Carlo. For example, like wherever, if you live in a different country, they almost always have these banks have you know you can have you have a account in the local currency and then you have an account in dollars right and so getting these banks in these other countries to basically turn on well you can have an account this space was downloaded via spaces down dot com visit to download your spaces today now in stable coins right in u.s stable coins um how does that work

right how does that i mean i would i would think it's a really heavy heavy like regulatory lift to get that done. A hundred percent it is, but here's the thing. You're going in, you're going into an era where you're not going to need the banks anymore because once you have options in the way of using your own wallet as your bank, you completely bypass the banking system. And if you can pay directly at the point of sale by tapping your crypto wallet, then you don't need the bank as the juggernaut, the intermediary. And that's my fees are going to go zero. Of course, I love that. And I see Vic from Cake Wallet here. And I, you know, I do, I do get that. But also get that most people just don't have the aptitude to even begin that process, right?

Most people, they just have their bank card. They just want something simple, right? So I don't know. It just feels to me like there has to be this adoption by banks around the world to it, right? And whether that's- I think it has to be adoption by consumers around the world through education. When they realize they can save money by doing this cheaper and faster, I think they're going to realize that they have choices.

and you have to make it easy for them to execute on those choices. I 100% agree. But if you're going to wait on the banks to make that easier, I think that's going to be a long wait because they'd rather drag it out and use their legacy system so they can continue to extract money from people. Yeah, really quickly, Vic, I know that you're here. This is here of Kuala.

I'm sure you've got some serious thoughts on that, what's happening. Yeah. I'd love to hear you here. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. I didn't want to butt in. But I think, you know, with everything you're saying now,

with banks overseas supporting stable coin deposits or even individuals holding stable coins and cake wallet, for example, I think the bigger picture of just dollarization of the world and going back to Elizabeth Warren and what she's doing with her 100 amendments, which almost seems like a filibuster than anything else. but I think the proponents could probably use all this

against Elizabeth Warren and her clan as an anti-dollar stance say, are you anti-American? Are you anti-dollar? Because this is what really comes down to, right? All these USD-backed stable coins, it's about dollarization of the world and having the U.S. dollar

continue to be the world standard, which it is. So I think that angle is quite interesting with just wanted to add that to everything you guys are saying um i have lots of thoughts on this i can go on forever i mean the other thing is should stable coins be in the same conversation and bills or or orders as as what i call true cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or or like coin or what the name or what have you um the fact that stable coins have have a central issue or it kind of goes against the whole concept of cryptocurrencies in general.

But that's a whole other topic we can discuss. It's a worthy one, though. It's a worthy topic, Vic, because I agree. I think there's an irony that, you know, Bitcoin was created as a hedge against Fiat and the killer use case of the underlying technology is a hyper-dollarization. Exactly. I think there should be two parallel conversations and maybe separate bills. But I mean, I know a lot of Bitcoiners say Bitcoin not crypto, but I'm actually looking at the other way around.

Yes, Bitcoin is crypto, but stable coins are not crypto because especially now, I think one of the topics you want to talk about is Arc by Circle. That continues to make it even more centralized and goes against the whole crypto ethos. So those are my thoughts on it. Yeah, I mean, there's one side that's using crypto and, like, to your point, and the other side is just plumbing for. improving the existing system. Well, plumbing, but one quick point, plumbing, yes, 100%, but it also makes it way, way easier for people who want to be in the original system to access investments that are, you know, Bitcoin and others, anything that's tokenized, anything that uses that plumbing becomes

far easier as opposed to being able to build walled moats. I mean, we literally live through four years of, you know, being shot at while trying to build. You know, and now you're talking about being able to be led into the system. Anyway, because this is a perfect conversation segue for you, Lou, because I know this is something you're very passionate about, and you are next with your hand up. You still there? Yeah, I just wanted to say, yeah, I was just saying that there is an assumption here in the roses.

Every time I'm here that the dollarization of the world, means that the stable coin dollars are going into treasuries. And, you know, Pether became the dominant stable coin in the world without buying a single treasury. So the idea that the only stable coin dollars are going to be in treasuries, I think this is what's going to be a much bigger opportunity is the kind of non-U.S. regulated dollars. Well, yes and no. I mean, Tether is the largest, one of the larger, They're higher, they have more treasuries than many sovereigns. I mean, they're a pretty large buyer.

That's why, you know, on Scott, if you're there, I mean, you had Mike Alfred on this morning. And, you know, he made the point of just how much access, Paolo from Tether had from President Trump. So obviously, it is kind of a big deal, right? Are you there, Scott? Okay. He must see, he's driving, so who knows. But it is, they're there. But your point, which is kind of right on the edge there, Lou, is.

We talk about hyper-dollarization, but we have these ridiculous rules in the United States. They came up with post-9-11, the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act and all these things that basically don't work to stop money laundering but create enormous amounts of layers. And that's going to be the issue. To hyper-dollarize, they have to figure out a way to allow people anywhere to use dollars. And that's not so easy, is it? Anyway, Adam, is that a new hand? Well, I just, it's interesting.

You know, I don't know, maybe we're on a path, you know, moving from, you know, what Dan's describing is basically purchasing through centralized kind of third parties, moving towards, you know, VIX, you know, model, which I think, you know, a lot of us here want to see, which is, I'm my own bank. I buy with, whether it's stable coins or Bitcoin or whatever, through my own bank. And I do think we're at that point where it's possible now. And I do know people who are living off crypto and not using centralized exchanges. But obviously, that is not. I mean, that is the 0.001 percenters are able to do that, right? Just because it requires just a different mindset, really. And I think in America, we've gotten spoiled with our banking system, frankly,

you know, where we lean on it so much. There's so much of this, like, you know, you can do, you can screw up so badly and still have nothing affect you. that it's really hard to give up and there's no reason to give it up. So I don't know, that's just where it feels like to me. We may have to go through another,

you know, decade of doing what... There are actually lots of good reasons to give it up, but... I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you at all, and obviously I don't disagree with you at all. I just think maybe that it's a process

that kind of humans have to go through, moving kind of through Dan's current process into like, you know, holding your assets natively and using that and transacting on cake wallet, right? I think that maybe just is something that takes a decade or longer to kind of play out. Yeah, I can't tell in terms of the hands. Vic, is that a new hand or an old hand? I got a hand if you're down. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, Vic, circling back to what you were saying,

I just sent you a DM with my PIN tweet, which is a link to what I wrote, Make Your Wallet, your bank, because I had to grapple with this very issue. And I get into a lot of Bitcoin spaces. and I talk with a lot of Bitcoin people who are living on the Bitcoin standard. And I always position it this way. For the average consumer, you've got to work in the economy that we're currently living in it. And it is a fiat economy. So that's why I came up with the notion of spend in stables, because obviously that is where the dollar is predominantly the world's commerce currency,

stack in sats with the savings that you realize in spending in stables and make your wallet your bank. Because I think the quickest way to onboard the consumer to actually taking possession and making their wallet, their bank, is by first integrating them into the dollar system through stable coins, because that's how you pay your bills. There's still not enough universal adoption at the point of sale of Bitcoin. But an easy pivot is stablecoins. And then how do you bridge that to Bitcoin? Well, you do a two asset strategy where you take the money you're saving and you pivoted into Bitcoin. And now that's how you onboard people into the real future.

Because again, the dollar, it's probably not going to be sustainable at the current debt level we're going in. And we're going to probably see Bitcoin become more of that reserve currency in a lot of countries as they get away from the dollar. So you're hedging yourself against that dollar collapse, but you're spending in the economy that exists now. Yeah, I 100% agree with you. And it's kind of like what Spark is doing or whoever's doing that.

the USDB over lightning. And I think that's a great use case for it, right? Where people can see their balance and think, continue to believe they're staying in the US dollar, but when they're transact or they can save in Bitcoin. So I agree with you. It's, you know, people see Bitcoin is completely volatile right now. And the simpler onboarding is to a USD stable coin. I'm with you there.

But I don't like it, but I'm with you. Yeah, I mean, it really... I'd argue, actually, that the simplest onboarding are central bank digital currencies. Yeah, you can say that. You can say that, but what do you think is going to onboard the majority of humans, central bank digital currencies? Yeah, I don't know. Someone just posted I was reading this morning that former CFT chairman Mossad, you know, said that behind the scenes, they're still working on a CBDC here despite, you know, Trump's opposition states saying that it's illegal,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, they definitely want it. Look, if you want financial control, it's the ultimate weapon. Correct. And you don't think Trump wants financial control? Well, for who? He's going to be. He doesn't want the Fed to be independent.

He wants, he wants, who says he's going to leave? He doesn't want to leave. We all know that. Yeah, well, father time will win anyway. No, look, I don't want to go through the conspiracy nonsense. I mean, there is this thing called the Constitution, and they're not going to be able to amend it. But it doesn't matter, right?

Because what does he care about? He cares about his kids and his family business. And is his family business? What's going to happen when there's a Democrat in the White House? Does he want a CBDC that can basically freeze his family business out? No, he doesn't. So I think that's the much bigger. At least they won't be able to, at least they won't be able to audit him.

Yeah, that, I don't even. I don't even know how to process some of that news. It doesn't make sense. So you're basically saying that we now have a family who can do whatever the hell they want, and it just doesn't make any sense, but whatever. I mean, we're in bizarro world, Scott. It's almost impossible. Anyway, you know.

It is crazy. That news is crazy. I was hoping not to talk about that, but okay, you know, you opened it up. I don't have to talk about it. It was just a grab. But the point of CBDCs and the point of AML rules, which are, which are self-defeating, all of that shit, if you end up in a system where the U.S. is trying to push the dollar everywhere to try to get the, you know, to keep their rates down, they're going to make the decision. That's what they're going to have to do. And there's just no other way around it, right?

I mean, you know, if you want, if you want everyone around the world to use dollars, then you can't have. proof of U.S. identity to use dollars. It's just, I'm sorry, but you know, you get choice A or choice B. There is no choice C where you can do both. I mean, it's not that I can see. I mean, am I crazy, Carlo? I mean, what am I missing? Yeah, look, man, AML is a huge boondoggle of record keeping. And, you know, banks can check off their compliance reports and do their suspicious activity reports. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really go anywhere. If you looked at the state, at the amount of actual prosecutions that have come from suspicious activity reports, it's pretty low.

You couple that with the antiquated currency reporting requirement of anything over $10,000 cash has to go through that disclosure form. This is all just outdated and, frankly, unnecessary anymore. If we're going to really move to seamless, fast transactions and throughput of money, especially when you layer AI agents on top of this, you're basically calling for the end of AML. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not calling for the end of anti-money laundering rules.

It's calling for the end of stupid rules that don't do anything, right? You know, it's like the data is so strong on this, that these rules haven't done a damn thing. That suspicious activity reports, all this other stuff. It's nonsense. I mean, you know, it's form over function. And the fines that banks have paid for doing things that they know. I mean, the reality is, if you're a bank and you take in, you know, somebody who just puts money in without a source of funds that makes sense, they do it.

I mean, they paid billions in fines. Yeah, but don't forget, they make even more in fees because even when those people get busted, the banks get to keep their fees. That's right. This is the way the system was purposely set up. You guys are saying the system is. broken it's not broken this is exactly what it's working exactly that's why that's exactly right oh i agree lou i agree with you completely i it's a feature not a bug i'm not saying that the system is broken oh my god these guys are doing i'm saying they literally set up something that was purposely

built to be self-defeating because that self-defeating rule creates competitive modes for the existing people in the system it's that is the most regulation that's what we're seeing with the clarity act stuff, right, with the banks. I just think that in this particular case, they're dumb. They really are stupid. Like, they think that banning yields for holding stable coins helps them. And the reality is it doesn't help them at all, maybe for, you know, a hot minute. But in the end, when you speed up everybody's investment options, they're not going to hold bank deposits. They don't need to. You know, it's just they won't people, the need will go away. So, yeah, but this notion, this is America, you know, what America.

America has come to, people say, well, we have a capitalist system and it's flawed. And it's like, well, we have a system that has some capitalist tendencies, but we have a crony system where big companies get to write rules that frees out smaller companies. It's capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. Yeah, it's sort of like that. I wish, I wish it's sort of true. And that's a pithy way of saying it's got, but that's what we get. That's why this executive order is such a big deal, because it basically is saying, okay, you guys have been, you know, the Congress, the people who are taking all the money from the banks are going to be like, wait a minute, they can't do this, except for the

fact is they can and they don't need Congress to do it. Better Reserve is independent. And so the federal reserve is going to allow it. By the way, at the same time this is all happening, didn't the SEC yesterday have rulemaking about IPOs that made it actually much easier? I know it wasn't crypto-specific. It will make it much easier for crypto companies to IPO. I didn't see that. I'd like to see that link that you post it. I'll define it. But that would be good. I will. Yeah, it's true. Like they, I can't find it. I can't. I'll find it. Yeah. I mean, I had a whole conversation with a senior person at the SEC fairly recently about the need to modernize IPO rules to, to cut the regulatory arbitrage between crypto and equities. And they get it.

that they and i was told with a smile we understand i mean this was not a a oh what do you mean this is a yes we understand that it can't if you've had grand cardona spaces he'll tell you it cost double digit millions to IPO he threw he throws at 20 to 40 million dollars well that's insane you know but is it also is it sane to have someone from who you have no idea who it is publish a white paper and put out an ICO with nothing behind it, you know, immediately before there's any business. I mean, there is a middle ground here, right? And that middle ground is probably closer to the crypto side than the current side. Because, you know, having some template for disclosure, some things that make sense that you could get done in three to six months of proof

without spending more than, you know, whatever, basic legal Zoom sort of stuff, probably makes sense, right? I mean, the cost of IPOing is insane in this country. It's one of the reasons that so many crypto coins exist, because crypto became a vehicle for people to, quote, raise capital, unquote, immediately. The fact that they don't give the, most tokens don't give their holders, rights, or economics, yeah, that's just a detail. is a detail in a casino

it's not a detail for investors though so you know we all know what I think about that when I talk about that all the time Matt is that an old hand before I know it's a new hand and I know we're getting close to probably wind this thing down so I'll bring it back to where we started and Scott made a really great point

about the Fed and Kevin Warsh you know coming into like kind of inheriting a shit show of a job but one thing that I don't think we've talked about yet or I haven't heard enough discussion is that if he can't beat inflation it looks like he wants to change the way that it's measured by by swapping core PCE for trim mean PCE. And that changes everything because I think like core is like at 3% and trimmed is closer to like 2.3.

Then that might give him the leverage or the cover that they need to reduce rates. Just curious, any of the other thoughts from folks on the panel about that. What's old is new again. If you look, go back in the history, anyone who followed a guy named John Williams back in the day did something called shadow stats. And so if you look at the definition of inflation, under Reagan, they changed it dramatically. Gee, what a surprise. And the markets took off

and they were able to do all sorts of things. I mean, it really depends. When you measure inflation, it depends what you're measuring. I mean, it is very, very uneven. It always has been. And so yeah, of course they're gonna do that. I mean, it makes sense.

I mean, you know, it's like, you know, Captain Transitory, who just left at the Federal Reserve is, you know, Trim Mean would have been better for them. But all that, but that doesn't help if it's long-term structural inflation. If it's oil prices are up and we're going to, because of X, Y, Z war, well, yeah, then it would help with that. That presuming it ends, of course, you know, who the hell knows. I mean, you know, it's almost impossible to watch the news that goes by and the statements that goes by to have any idea of what's going to happen in, you know, with the Iran conflict. And we don't really know.

I mean, there's two or three days from now, some last deadline. ends and Iran is saying, well, you know, there's all sorts of crap going on. And so making of that is tough. But you're right. You know, Matt, have you ever heard of hedonics? Do you know what that is? It's, it's just, I should not even, okay, so hedonics was in, this was what was started under Reagan, is they put substitution effects. So they had a basket of goods and services. And they basically said, well, if the price of one of the goods goes up, but you could substitute with something else, we'll put something else into the calculation. So, you know, there have been all sorts of,

and you can go back and read about this. Once you go down this rabbit hole, I've basically sucked up a weekend, if not a week of time, because you start finding out that they change ground beef to this or that. It really is something that's been put into inflation stuff. But what's weird about it is that lately they haven't done a whole lot. There hasn't been a whole lot of change. And that's why, because there's people like truflation or calculating things, you know, daily now off of their basket.

And who knows what they're going to actually end up using. But the truth is, is that changing the definition is a time-honored way of justifying the actions you need to take. Because I don't think, I think to your point, they haven't changed it in like 40 years, right? That's that to when Reagan went to what you're saying with the Reagan administration. Well, yeah, but that method, the change was to something that would be more dynamic. And so that's one of the reasons. I mean, look, if we took a quick poll, there's 20,000 people here. I will bet you that you couldn't find 100 people out of, out of 2000, that would think that

trust that the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data that that's accurate. I mean, the revisions in employment, I mean, come on. I mean, you know, it's like, this is all self-serving. I mean, who believes inflation is 2% when they go to the grocery store or they go to the gas pump or they look at their insurance bills or they look at their utility bills or whatever. I mean, God forbid you're paying for a kid's education, you know. I mean, whatever. Carlo, what do you think?

I mean, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. To try to nuance this by continuing moving the goalpost on what actual inflation looks like for the consumer doesn't match up with your checkout bill. But to bring it to bring it to what people on this. space care about. If you think we're going into a tightening cycle with reduced liquidity to hawkishly try to control inflation, I really, I used to live. I actually did have in my apartment in New York when I live there, had a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. I would love to sell you that

bridge. I mean, you can't possibly believe that. Yet, mainstream economists, if you look at the dot plots at the Fed, if you look at Bloomberg, they see. still predict more likelihood of rate rises and tighter liquidity. That's insane. And that's giving you an opportunity to buy assets that will do well in a positive liquidity environment cheap. And I think the bellwether for that is Bitcoin. And I will keep telling people that. And maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe I'll be the quote permable and I'm far from a permable, but I'm certainly a now bull who thinks that Bitcoin is undervalued by, you know, that doubling. would be closer to fair value than where it is today.

And I just don't understand why people seem to think that they're going to try to crush inflation by doing what Volker did. If they tried, it would be an absolute disaster. I mean, what would the federal budget deficit do if interest rates went up by a factor of two or three or four like Volker did? I've said this before, Dave, and every print cycle needs a catalyst, whether it's COVID, whether it's the banking crisis. There's so many they can pick from.

There's a massive global supply crunch about to come on board. The price of every single commodity is going through the roof. That would justify a print. There's the AI transition and the displacement of labor that could justify a major print. They just need an excuse because it's inevitable. They're going to do it. Yeah. Sorry, I was just clicking Jamie published posted.

Thank you, Jamie. Are you still here? Yeah. Yep, I'm here. Yeah. Thanks. I just saw your tweet. So now I have my reading material for right now.

Hey, Dave, the other thing that was interesting, I don't know if you saw earlier, like Jeff Bezos on CNBC was talking about the taxes, like reintroducing those points. So like going to your point, like as far as the inflation goes, like I can see kind of like maybe the, you know, stimulating the media to see how they react to the idea of the taxes and lowering that, you know,

trying to create some discretionary income. that way as well as going into the midterms, like how would that be with the voter base, thinking that that may be something that they get if they vote for the current majority that they have. Well, Bezos isn't going to like it, Jamie, when the solution to that is taxing the robots because that's where it's going, man.

If we don't have workers to tax, we're going to have to tax the damn robots. Well, the truth is they're going to have corporate, yeah, you're going to end up having to have rules on corporate taxes that those who imply humans, because arguably when corporate, before AI, corporate taxes were double taxation

because you're already paying, you know, all the people, all the labor that goes into it. But yeah, clearly with AI, that's absolutely not true anymore. And so that is going to change things. And the other thing Bezos won't like is if you really did want a fair tax system, then borrowing against your stock without selling it

needs to be taxable as the same capital gains rates. And capital gains are, Look, I personally think capital gain shouldn't exist, but as long as they do, providing that loophole is insane. If you are going to tax capital gains, then at least do so, having the loophole where you could borrow against it and not pay for appreciation is just wrong. You know, that's the Bill Ackman point. It's always been that way. Some of this stuff's going to happen. But when you start actually looking at how bad our budget situation is, like just do a quick down the rabbit hole on Social Security alone.

and see what would it take to balance the trust fund. You're talking about uncapping it and raising it by about 50% is roughly what you would have to do. And so, you know, that becomes a very big deal, right? You know, all these things. So we are in a much bigger hole than people realize. We think we are at just under $40 trillion. The truth is when you take Social Security and Medicare in,

it's closer to $120. That's $120,000. It's a big deal. Sorry to interrupt. I probably don't need to announce my departure, but I got to run. Thanks for having me on Dave. It's a lot of fun. I hope to be on the next one.

Yeah, well, we're running up against time anyway, but thank you for participating. I think the topic you brought up to one, we want to talk about more, not less. Excellent. So, in any case, you triggered me going about budget. I didn't want to talk about macro. But the point is, from an investor point of view, understanding what you're buying and understanding that the liquidity situation, they can't afford to be hawks.

So, I mean, it's too bad we don't have anybody on the other side of this right now, but so be it. Any other thoughts, people? Because we are three minutes from the hard deadline, but there's no reason to start down a new rabbit hole. Okay. Terrific.

So we will see you all on Friday at 1015, and let's see if anything changes. between now and then are we're still talking about the same stuff but thank you for participating and uh have a safe rest of your week