The Wolf Of All Streets - Major Win For Bitcoin And Crypto: Senator Hagerty On His Historic Stablecoin Bill

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

I sat down with Senator Bill Hagerty for The Wolf Of All Streets just one day after the Senate passed his groundbreaking crypto bill – the GENIUS Act. We talked about how this stablecoin legislation... could reshape the future of money in America and kill off any chance of a central bank digital currency. If you want to understand where crypto regulation is really headed, this is the episode you can’t miss. Senator Bill Hagerty: https://x.com/SenatorHagerty ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities! 👉https://archpublic.com/ ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Bitcoin #Crypto #investments Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 1:00 GENIUS Act Passed 4:00 Why CBDCs Recoil Americans 7:00 How It Got Passed 10:00 Warren’s 80 Amendments 13:00 Preventing CBDCs With Stablecoins 16:00 Stablecoin Impact On Economy 19:00 Market Structure Is Next 22:00 Race Against Midterms 25:00 Trump And Bitcoin Support 28:00 Vision For Blockchain Future 30:00 Final Thoughts The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 We have not let partisanship enter into this. We've just tried to deploy common sense. I don't think that it was unjustified to be concerned with Facebook having their own money. Politics are for a different arena, not for financial institutions. So I think the kind of people that are in this administration are naturally in love of freedom and therefore naturally understand Bitcoin. And it starts at the top because President Trump is on board. Right. and Bitcoin. It starts at the top because President Trump is on board.
Starting point is 00:00:23 Right. The United States is fortunate to have champions like Senator Bill Haggerty speaking and working on behalf of our industry. Just yesterday, by total chance, I didn't know that this was gonna happen when we had the interview scheduled, by total chance, the Senate passed the Genius Bill
Starting point is 00:00:39 with major bipartisan support. That bill was authored by today's guest, Senator Bill Haggerty. We talked about the entire process of getting the genius bill passed, what's coming in the future, the odds of it getting to President Trump's desk and being signed, but more importantly, the
Starting point is 00:00:54 future of the crypto industry in the United States. And after speaking with him, I can tell you that the future is exceptionally bright and we are very lucky to have him on our team. This episode is brought to you by Binance, the world's number one crypto exchange trusted by over 270 million users worldwide.
Starting point is 00:01:14 Start your crypto journey with Binance at Binance.com. Binance is not available in prohibited countries, including the US. Check its terms for more information. www.binance.com. Slash en slash terms. Senator Haggerty, it's an honor to have you on the show. We've been trying for a long time and it's an honor to have you on the show. We've been trying for a long time and it's kismet that it happened today because the
Starting point is 00:01:48 Genius Act passed the Senate yesterday. So we would have been having a lot of conversations about what could potentially happen in the future and now we can actually talk about the success of the past. So maybe we should dig first into that process and how that bill was finally passed and what's coming in the future for it. But maybe just start with the beginning of the Genius Act. Certainly, well, the beginning goes back a year or more in terms of our initial work, pulling things together.
Starting point is 00:02:12 We had text that was made available back in the fall of 2024. So the concept, the legislative language has been on the street for some time. We've solicited a tremendous amount of input from industry, those people that would be regulated, people that are able to inform us as to where the market's headed. Also a lot of input from the executive branch,
Starting point is 00:02:34 the treasury have been very helpful, particularly as we brought the legislation closer to banking committee hearing. But one of the critical things that had to happen was we had to have a change of the gavel here in the Senate. Sherrod Brown, who had been the banking committee chairman, would have never allowed this to come to the floor.
Starting point is 00:02:51 Senator Warren was the most vocal opponent of this, and she's the ranking member on the Senate banking committee right now. But with the leadership of Senator Tim Scott in the banking committee, we had our opportunity to bring this forward. And he and I and Cynthia Lummis, the three of us talked about what our priorities would be and this is the absolute number one priority for Senate banking. And if you look at the substantive legislation that's coming through, we had the Lincoln Riley Act very early on dealing with immigration and criminal activity associated with immigrants
Starting point is 00:03:21 here in America. But this is something that really opens up an entirely new market. It's just a different type of legislation, regulation will come from this. But the point is that we wanted to provide regulatory clarity for a market that we saw great potential. And I wanted it to happen here,
Starting point is 00:03:37 not overseas, not in other markets, but I wanted it to happen here in America. And unfortunately, what had happened in the prior four years under the previous administration is regulation by enforcement, anything but clarity. It had been very, very difficult for anyone who was even thinking about issuing or trading to find the rules of the road
Starting point is 00:03:59 for how that should work here in the United States. And the result of that was we were losing innovators. We were falling behind. And I don't think anybody wanted to see that happen. This isn't necessarily a partisan issue. This is something that if people take the time to understand where we're going, you want to see the American financial markets remain the most competitive in the world, you have to move into this arena. You can't sit back in your hands and let other nations take it. And if I think about what had been proposed and what the preference might have been, a central bank digital currency? Absolutely not. I mean, this is America. Liberty and freedom are in
Starting point is 00:04:36 our DNA. And a central bank digital currency just causes recoil for so many Americans. That's not going to happen because what that would allow, if you think about one central issuer who sees all transactions, can control all transactions. That's an invasion of privacy that we wouldn't want to see, but more important, it's handing control off to a government that we have already seen with choke point, choke point 2.0, the types of things that the government has been guilty of when an out of favor industry or an out of favor could even be a person, I think about what happened to Melania and Barron Trump getting debanked in New York. This is not what we want to see happening in our financial system.
Starting point is 00:05:16 Politics are for a different arena, not for financial institutions. So having the opportunity to move forward on a decentralized technology, I think, just felt right to me from my very personal sense of liberty and freedom. But also, I've been a business person my whole life. And I started out my career at Boston Consulting Group, then in venture and private equity. I focused on seeing new opportunities, opportunities that could be transformational, funding those opportunities, helping them grow. And this is an opportunity that's beyond transformational for us. This has so many positive implications. But what we needed was a regulatory framework here in
Starting point is 00:05:51 America that didn't exist. And where it does exist, I don't want to see our technology moving. The last thing I think we want is the type of regulatory framework they have in China. That is a central bank digital currency there. And the digital yuan is not the currency of preference for anybody who thinks hard about their own freedom. Do we want this move into Europe or other jurisdictions? I think not. I think we'd rather see the innovation happen here. So I'm thrilled that we were in a position,
Starting point is 00:06:19 the stars aligned, Tim Scott as chairman of the banking committee, John Thune as the leader here, allowing us to have the time and the space to put this on the floor, to debate it, to get a lot of input, both sides of the aisle. This is a very bipartisan bill, to get a lot of input and bring it forward
Starting point is 00:06:35 in a way that we actually could get it passed last night. Not that we didn't have a lot of hurdles, we had a lot of things thrown at us, and we can talk about that later, but we, at the end of the day, navigated this with 18 Democrats joining us. So I think it's something that we should be proud of as a nation. It's something I talked to the president about today. He is ready to sign it.
Starting point is 00:06:55 He wants to see it there on his desk quickly. It's got to move through the House of Representatives next, but assuming it gets to the House of Representatives quickly and in a fashion that doesn't have to come back to the Senate again, we'll get it to the President's desk very soon. Obviously, there was legislation proposed in the House as well, the Stable Act. And so I've had trouble actually parsing what the major differences are between those. I actually spoke to Senator Gillibrand about it as well, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it either.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Could that be a potential obstacle that there could be something meaningfully different in the stable act or a different view of how this should be legislated in Congress? Or do you think that this could be a relatively smooth process? I think it could be a relatively smooth process. Brian Stile, who is the author of that legislation,
Starting point is 00:07:39 a great guy, I work well with him. I think we're very close. We've been moving in parallel, if that makes sense. And I think he'll be very happy with the content of what he's getting from the Senate today. So I think we're in a good place there. I think the other question would be, do you want to append a much more complicated piece
Starting point is 00:07:58 of market structure legislation to it? And in my conversations with the White House, they're like, that's gonna that's going to drag things down. It certainly would allow a way out for folks that voted for this, but took a lot of pressure from major opponents like Elizabeth Warren. If it comes back anything different, you know, it's going to find its way to the wayspend pretty quickly. And just to put the politics into perspective, we just finished this vote last night.
Starting point is 00:08:24 We're very soon, meaning next week, likely to move into a vote on the reconciliation bill. That's going to be a wholly partisan process. I think tempers are going to flare. I think it's going to be rough. It'll take a while to get back to a place where we can work arm in arm and side by side on a bipartisan basis. But with this bill, this piece of stable coin legislation, the Genius Act, we have not let
Starting point is 00:08:46 partisanship enter into this. We've just tried to deploy common sense. And it's taken a great deal of education, a lot of work. But we've had great work at a staff level. And I've been very proud of our staffs working alongside one another. And at the member level, I couldn't be more thankful for the help, for example, of Senator GillibBrand and others on the Democrat side who really helped us make this a strong piece of legislation. Interestingly, she was one of the co-signers. As I said, I've interviewed her quite a few times, but even she in that first cloture vote voted against the act.
Starting point is 00:09:17 And there was some fear that something that seemed like a layup was going to become very, very difficult. So you mentioned that we could talk about the challenges with the process of actually getting this passed because it seemed like everyone was in alignment on stable coins and all of a sudden there was some disagreement and obviously managed to get it through.
Starting point is 00:09:35 So what was the process of sort of losing the Democrats that were on board and then bringing them back into the fold? Well, I think the challenge starts at the committee level. The ranking member, the ranking Democrat on the banking committee now is Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren is vehemently opposed to this bill. And at 1130, as I mentioned, we've had the text out
Starting point is 00:09:56 since the fall of last year. We've been negotiating back and forth across the aisle, getting ready for our banking committee hearing. At 1130, and the night before the hearing the next morning, Senator Warren's team unloaded over 80 amendments to the bill. Most of the amendments were toxic. They would have destroyed the bill.
Starting point is 00:10:14 And we spent close to four hours in the committee meeting with Senator Warren sending one amendment after the other, over the net, so to speak, to use a tennis analogy, and just serving them back with responses about why that wouldn't work, why this has already been considered and why this doesn't fit.
Starting point is 00:10:30 But it was a heroic effort by her. I'd say she's very talented to try to derail it in the committee. And at the end of the day, I didn't know where we would wind up with the vote. But what happened when it finally came to a vote in the committee, Senator Warren was able to hold five of the Democrats with her.
Starting point is 00:10:46 Five of her Democrat colleagues came over and joined me and all the Republicans. And we put this out of committee with the most bipartisan result of the Senate Banking Committee we've had in over a decade. So I felt very good about that. But I know that Senator Warren was not happy with it. I don't know what was said. But before the first vote came out on a Thursday afternoon after lunch, I know that there was a very rough luncheon on the Democrat conference
Starting point is 00:11:11 side. And even the sponsors like Senator Gillibrand came out and voted against this. And I don't know what the threat was or what the confusion was or what might have transpired, but they all came out and voted against it. That normally would be the kiss of death. You're in the abyss at that point once you've failed what is called cloture to get the document, to get the legislation on the floor of the Senate. And I just have to say hats off to Senator John Thune and again to Senator Scott, our
Starting point is 00:11:38 chairman, because they believed in me. They had enough confidence that I said, look, I need another week to fight my way back. This is an education process. I think people have got, I don't know what's happened, but I need a little bit more time. I think we can get there. And sure enough, it took some work, took a lot of work, frankly. But we wound up coming back over many objections, those objections having to do with things that actually weren't related to this bill at all. But political objections that kind of found their way in and I think as I could clear the cloud of confusion regarding those political objections and let my colleagues see that this was a very straightforward piece of legislation that's good for the American economy,
Starting point is 00:12:18 it's good for our financial system, takes us into the 21st century, more and more heads started nodding the right way and by the time we brought it to the vote again, we were in a good place. That makes perfect sense. I want to circle back to something that you mentioned before, which was central bank digital currencies. So obviously, being a Bitcoiner for a long time, we've been screaming from the mountaintops about the fears we have about central bank digital currencies for years. That seems to have gained a groundswell even politically over the past few years.
Starting point is 00:12:44 But how does the Genius Act specifically or legislating on stablecoins actually prevent a future central bank digital currency? Are there specific pieces of the legislation that speak to that, or is it just that generally getting ahead of it by allowing stablecoins in certain forms will basically make a central bank digital currency invalid or unnecessary? It's the latter. There's certain legislation that's moving around to forbid the United States to ever be involved in a central bank digital currency.
Starting point is 00:13:13 But with this stablecoin legislation, we just remove the perceived need. We're going to have a very high quality digital dollar, a means of transacting that is going to be efficient. If you think about what the change will be from the current clunky system that we have that was developed in the 1970s and 80s, you're going to have the ability to do almost instantaneous settlements. Compare that to a system that might take five or 10 days to clear. You've got counterparty risk in that system, meaning if the person or the entity
Starting point is 00:13:46 on the other side of the transaction were to go bankrupt before the clearing took place, you're in a rough place. If you think about currency risk, if it's an overseas transaction, currencies move on a rapid basis. If it is an instantaneous transaction, you take that currency risk out as well. And finally, if you think about your receivables being tied up waiting for something to clear,
Starting point is 00:14:10 you've got working capital tied up in a system that's just friction. And if you can take that friction out, you bring that working capital back to the company or the person that could deploy it fruitfully in the economy rather than just being tied up, you know, waiting to be cleared. So all of these benefits are actually very positive from a straightforward business perspective. You put the lens on of somebody who's an American and wants to see our economy thrive, this is going to create more demand for US treasury securities because these stablecoins have to be backed up dollar for dollar by either cash or much more likely short-term US treasuries.
Starting point is 00:14:44 That additional demand is going to actually lower the US Treasury's borrowing cost. That's going to have ramifications for our deficit. The amount of money we have to borrow just to fund the interest payments on our debt will go down. That's a positive result. And then if you think that the dollar dominance, the dollar as a reserve currency is important as a nation, this is actually going to perpetuate the dollar's position as a reserve currency is important as a nation, this is actually going to perpetuate the dollar's position as a reserve currency around the world.
Starting point is 00:15:08 Let's assume that this gets passed. Will this greatly affect the incumbent players in the stablecoin industry? Obviously, the biggest names are Circle, who went public last week, and Tether, who is not based in the United States. In favor of banks issuing these stablecoins. We're also seeing Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, Libra, once again, talking about reviving Libra, bringing back their own stablecoin. I guess what do you view as the landscape after this legislation clears?
Starting point is 00:15:38 Who do you think will be the biggest players? Do you think that anybody will be eliminated? What do you think that that's going to look like? I'll set Meta and Google aside for the moment. There's some additional language on that. But with respect to both banks and non-bank institutions, non-bank institutions like Circle, for example, or others that may be in existence or emerge,
Starting point is 00:15:57 we've tried to create a level playing field here. And we're not trying to advantage any one versus the other. But what we're trying to do is move, again, the US payments economy into the digital age. And so you can be a non-bank. The rules of the road are now clear of how you do that, how you issue. And it's something that I think will proliferate.
Starting point is 00:16:17 You can operate under a state-based regulatory system or under the federal regulatory system. And if you get to $10 billion or greater, the presumption is you'll come over to the federal system, but you can also ask for a waiver. And some states are very sophisticated. They can manage larger issuers. Other states will want you to move on to the federal system. But I think it's a clear framework, but one that's not overbearing.
Starting point is 00:16:39 And in this sort of environment, I think you'll see more issuers, new issuers, people who may be offshore, decide to create a subsidiary here or an entity here in the United States that can meet our rules. But again, the disclosure requirements are for private issuers, meaning not the central bank, not the Fed, not the U.S. government, but for private issuers to use a disclosure mechanism, a compliance mechanism to be able to issue rather than just absolute government control. With respect to entities that have, like Google or Meta, that would have a large amount of
Starting point is 00:17:13 personal data about people, a large amount of information about how their transactions might behave, there's an additional clearance that's got to take place that regulators have to be satisfied, that they're not misusing the potential competitive advantage that they have because of the incredible information advantage that they would enjoy because of their reach into other parts of a person's life. They can't utilize that, they can't force you to buy their services, to use their coin, etc., but it doesn't preclude them from doing it, But it does take an extra step to make certain that no surveillance takes place by those that, you know, that monitor your internet behavior, that
Starting point is 00:17:54 this doesn't become part of a surveillance mechanism, that it doesn't wind up being unduly advantaged, so to speak, because of the information advantage that these larger entities you just described might hold. I don't think that it was unjustified to be concerned with Facebook having their own money, even in the previous administration. So I do think it's justified to add extra rules, obviously, there. So you've said before that the US must lead in digital asset innovation, that we could risk ceding ground internationally with the Genius Act on the books now,
Starting point is 00:18:26 at least from the Senate, assuming that it's going to pass, do you anticipate Congress passing broader crypto legislation this session? I know that a lot of people are looking towards market structure, which you mentioned before, and even a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Those are sort of the other large ticket items on the docket, at least for our industry.
Starting point is 00:18:43 Yeah, you've done a great job of nailing it. And I think it probably goes in the order that you just described. With the momentum of the stablecoin bill, and again, the president's ready to sign this now. I think we move on this quickly. We've established the momentum. We see players come into the marketplace
Starting point is 00:18:57 and I think it becomes a very robust environment just around the stablecoin. Very positive step forward. The market structure component, there are a lot of questions that were raised, frankly, during the process of building the stablecoin legislation that are already putting us down the path on market structure.
Starting point is 00:19:14 The House has already done great work on market structure. I still have a lot of education to go, I know here in the Senate side, with colleagues like Senator Jill LeBran working beside me, she's been working on market structure, you know, regulation for some time. Senator Luz has as well. I think we can get there,
Starting point is 00:19:29 but I think the momentum that we established with the stable coin legislation really is going to help us. And the fact is that we have 68 senators that are now on the record with this first step into the arena. I think we're going to be much more inclined now to dig in, to roll up their sleeves,
Starting point is 00:19:44 and understand how we can broaden this into market structure regulation so we can bring much more of the ecosystem into the United States with regulatory clarity. And again, I don't want to be overbearing in terms of our regulatory approach. The last thing I want to do is preclude some sort of unanticipated innovation that I know is going to come from this. Because when you can imagine the intersection of this new technology, this new digital payment system with traditional finance, there are going to be a lot more great ideas that emerge from this. And I'm looking forward to seeing what that might be.
Starting point is 00:20:16 And I want to be certain that we are sufficiently hands off that we're not precluding that innovation from happening here in America, that the guardrails are limited and clear, but not overly prescriptive. That's been my greatest fear when looking at legislating this industry in general. It's good to know that that's on the radar because there's always unintended consequences in the future, things that you can't foresee
Starting point is 00:20:40 coming to fruition now when you're creating this legislation. That seems like an almost impossible needle to thread. Well, there's one good thing I would articulate and may seem obvious, but to some it may not be. And that is that we have a treasury department right now that is very much pro crypto that really wants to dig in and help us and work with us.
Starting point is 00:20:59 We have an SEC that again, is pro crypto wants to dig in and work with us. And we've got over three years of this administration to continue to advance the ball here. And I think that's a great window of opportunity when we've got an executive branch that's cooperative, a legislative branch that's already moving in the right direction. It's a real window for us to step up, to keep this momentum going. And I think put a great set of a great couple of pieces of legislation in place that really broaden this industry so that the United States yet again is number one in the world with
Starting point is 00:21:31 this piece of innovation. We mentioned three years, obviously, to get this done. But I think a lot of people fear that it could be far less if there's a change in either the House or the Senate at midterms. So is there an urgency to get it done during this session before everybody goes back into campaigning mode and raising money and trying to get elected and the chance that, you know, one of the houses could swing, which historically happens all the time when one party is in power? And I'm glad you brought that up because that's a clarification I should have made. In my thought
Starting point is 00:22:01 process there, I'm really thinking about the executive branch on the implementation side having three and a half years. From the legislative standpoint, we need to be moving on this as quickly as possible because it does take time for the executive branch to come in and establish the regulations that go along with this. There's a whole notice and comment period. It's a process. The first step of the process is the legislation. And that does need to be done within this Congress. And I think we can do it within this Congress. And then that allows us to then work with the regulators,
Starting point is 00:22:31 whether they be at the SEC, at the Treasury, at the Fed, et cetera, every place that needs to touch this. And again, as you think about market structure, it's gonna be broader, but that will give us the opportunity then to put in place the regulatory framework that makes this work. Getting market structure right seems very, very difficult. I think a lot of people in the industry look at it as defining what's a commodity and a security, but I would imagine that a market
Starting point is 00:22:53 structure bill also has to define how exchanges can operate, the separation between custody and customers and all the problems that we've basically had with this industry in the past. It seems like that's the place where if it's not extremely thoughtful and has people who understand it and the industry's contributions that things could go wrong unintentionally even. Well, I think one good thing to note,
Starting point is 00:23:18 and you've worked, it sounds that you've worked closely with Senator Gillibrand and interviewed her in the past. She's a very competent attorney from Davis Polk, one of the top law firms in the world, a securities lawyer. She's got technical expertise. I think that one would value having her and her team at the table. My own background, I've invested in insurance companies, reinsurance companies have served on their boards, I've invested in banks, served on their boards.
Starting point is 00:23:42 I was on the board of directors of the largest futures and commodities merchant in Chicago for years. So having those of us that have been in various parts of the financial markets that have some experience, I'm thinking about Senator Gillibrand now, on the legal side of it, as well as on the business side, that goes a long way in terms of creating the environment for us then to bring in industry experts. Because we have a, you know, nobody uses the term Rolodex anymore, but a set of contacts and people that want to be helpful on the outside, and I think we know how to listen to them.
Starting point is 00:24:13 And so all of that comes together in a way that I think is positive. And again, if we keep in mind that we don't want to be over prescriptive as we do this, but we want to put ourselves in a place where we can open on a legislative branch the right avenues and then have regulators at the Treasury, the SEC, the CFTC, et cetera, that are very thoughtful as well, that are there to embrace this and really fine tune it through the regulatory process will be in a better place. I can't help but smile when you describe it because I remember what it looked like much less three or four years ago, but even six months or a year ago for this industry. Now we have favorable regulators.
Starting point is 00:24:47 We have favorable, or at least Bitcoin and crypto proponents at the head of effectively every single part of the government, whether it's financial or not. I don't really know how that happened, but it does seem like the stars have aligned perfectly. It starts at the top. I had just in 2024, I recall, you know, being in meetings with President Trump and Bitcoin miners at the Bitcoin National Conference, but you know, I helped organize a group of leaders in the industry to sit with President Trump and talk through the
Starting point is 00:25:17 opportunities, the hurdles, etc. It starts at the top because President Trump is on board. And with that, you've got an executive branch that, you know, sees the opportunity. And again, these, the executive branch is populated now with people with real business experience. And I think that definitely helps. You know, I'm biased because that's my background. But I really find it much easier to work with a group of folks like that who do get it, who've been in the industry, maybe not necessarily every component that we would touch the market structure, but that it would have an appetite and an aptitude to address this.
Starting point is 00:25:49 As I've thought about it, I think you really just nailed it. I think the kind of people that are in this administration are naturally in love of freedom and therefore naturally understand Bitcoin and become Bitcoiners through the natural process without being forced. You know, I mean, with Bitcoin, once you really get it, you never turn back. Well, I think that we've moved in that direction. And for those of us, for those that are with us today and watching this, who were at the Bitcoin National Conference, they saw and felt the energy when President Trump was there. I was in Las Vegas just weeks ago, literally.
Starting point is 00:26:27 The energy is contagious right now. I think the momentum is really, really strong. That puts the United States in a position, again, to attract and retain the best talent in the world. I just have every confidence that as long as we don't get in the way of it, as long as we're not overly prescriptive, but we can provide certainty. We're going to see an industry thrive here in America like no other place on the planet. Let's just dig into that slightly.
Starting point is 00:26:51 Taking the 30,000 foot view, let's pretend there's no politics, no roadblocks, no obstacles. In your mind, what would the United States look like in context of a blockchain industry in five or 10 years if you were able to do everything that you wanted to? Well, one of the first things is that we're going to see stablecoin issuers become the largest holders of US Treasury securities, not China, not Japan. I think that's good for us as a sovereign nation. I want to see certainly our deficit curve down. I want to see our less dependent on borrowing as a nation, and that needs to happen post haste.
Starting point is 00:27:29 But in the meantime, people are going to hold our debt securities. That's going to go on. It has gone on for decades. It's going to continue to go on. Having a benign issuer like a stablecoin issuer doing that, I think, is far superior to having the CCP holding the keys. That's first and foremost, it's sort of a national security aspect of it, if you want to think of it in that way.
Starting point is 00:27:48 But as we move further, I think about my own business experience, self-executing contracts. If you're in the business of funding and supporting and being in the management team of a smaller company that's doing business with one that's much larger, if you've been through the experience that I have, it's not an unusual situation to have completed all the requirements of the contract and they get retraded at the end because the other side has the power and the ability to do it. If you had a self-executing contract, you don't have to worry about that. As you complete the various components of whatever your contractual obligation is, you
Starting point is 00:28:20 get paid. You just think about the friction that that takes out of the system in a way that most people may not be thinking about it because they're thinking about the currency components of this, but there's so many other things that could be done on the chain. If you think about tokenization and what that might mean for ownership and all types of assets, I think it's just fabulous where this could lead. And I'm just ready to take a step back and watch what happens when traditional finance embraces this.
Starting point is 00:28:47 And I've already seen it begin. Just met today with the CEO of one of the top financial institutions in America. They are embracing this. It's going to happen and we're going to see some of the best minds in the world focused on this now, creating new products and new opportunities as a result of it. And what that means is that the United States remains and continues to be at the cutting edge of innovation in financial markets. That's where I want to see us.
Starting point is 00:29:10 It's pretty wild when you talk about these institutions utilizing the technology. The DTCC itself, which is clearing obviously for assets, is working with blockchain technology and testing it. We know that'll be the future. Even the most dismissive CEOs in the world Like Jamie Diven at JP Morgan JP Morgan recently announcing that they're gonna have tokenized bank deposits and they're using Their own coins for cross-border transactions. This will be I don't know how investible it will be for your average American If there's a way to make money on it, which is what so many people care about. But this will be the underlying technology that powers everything.
Starting point is 00:29:46 And as you eloquently described before, it makes things more frictionless and more decentralized. I mean, there's going to eliminate those third party toll collectors in between in all of these transactions and all of these different facets that we're using it for. Well, what you just described, every aspect of what you described benefits from one thing, and that's momentum. And what we did yesterday by passing this bill
Starting point is 00:30:10 establishes momentum that I think will be unstoppable. We get this to the president's desk, that momentum's gonna continue, we'll get to market structure, we'll get to every other piece of this, and I think we're gonna see amazing things unfold here, and it had to start and it started here last night. Well, we're very fortunate to have visionaries
Starting point is 00:30:26 like you championing this industry and passing legislation. Congratulations on getting it done. I can't imagine how stressful and difficult that was. And I hope soon we'll be having a conversation about how it's been signed into law and the progress that's being made on market structure. Senator Haggamy, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 00:30:44 Good to be with you. Thanks.

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