The Wolf Of All Streets - Rep Warren Davidson: Firing Gensler? | Hinman Docs | CPI I CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Rep Warren Davidson joins Crypto Town Hall to discuss his effort to fire Gary Gensler. Crypto Town Hall is a new daily Twitter Spaces hosted Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading 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.

While we're inviting people up, probably worth talking about the inflation numbers. Yeah, exactly. What was the result? I know our space crashed. Literally a few minutes before the numbers. It's horrible. I know. But what was the result? The year-on-year inflation is 4%. The expectations were 4.1%. The last reading was 4.9%, which means that inflation is now coming down at a very, very, very fast rate. The interesting part around the inflation numbers is that if you look at how long it took,

it took 11 months for inflation to go up from 5.3% to the peak of 9.1%. It took that 11 months. And to come down from 9.1 to 4.1, which is 1.2% lower than the 5.3, took it 12 months. So what we're realizing is that inflation is actually coming down way faster than inflation went up, which is a very positive sign. And we are heading very quickly towards the feds target of

of two percent let's say very quickly relative to how quickly we're heading before we've also had 12 months in a row of inflation declines which means that you know if the feds role if the fed if the fed's job was to decrease inflation and i don't think we should start commenting about how they got there in the first place but if their job was to increase inflation. I don't think we should start commenting about how they got there in the first place, but if their job was to increase inflation, they've certainly done a good job. They've reduced inflation in the span of 12 months from 9.1% to 4% year on year. There is still inflation, but it is coming down. The Cleveland Fed forecasts that next month, it's going to come down as well to about 3% or 3.2%. So, I mean, very, very, very encouraging inflation numbers.

The result of the inflation numbers is that there's now 98.8% probability. Sorry, it's just changed. 95.3% probability that the Fed's not increasing interest rates tomorrow. And, of course, we're going to be live here tomorrow. The three amigos are going to be live here tomorrow doing a space. It's a very long space tomorrow, right, Scott? What did we finalize for tomorrow? I think we're going to be spacing for like 19 hours.

I think we're just going to do a 47-hour marathon so that we can get a single number on FOMC. Exactly. Pretty sure. Yeah, it's got to keep up the hype on the front and back end, obviously, for these very important numbers. We do have good speakers. We have Nouriel Roubini coming on. I know Nouriel is coming on. He's always good value.

We've got some good speakers coming tomorrow. He loves Bitcoin, so I'm definitely going to ask him about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, inflation numbers. How did the markets react, Ryan and Scott? Well, the markets, the traditional markets were really expecting this. So, I mean, you are getting them at half a percent. But you know what?

Something that I covered on my show when we covered this inflation, which is probably worth talking about is, if you look at the NASDAQ, the NASDAQ's up 40% this year. So if you look at the NASDAQ since the 1st of Jan, the NASDAQ is up 40% this year, which is, it's a serious number. You've got the Nikkei up about 30% this year.

So there is a massive, massive, massive bull market in equity markets. I know people are talking about, you know, that it's a bear market or whatever equity markets are in a massive massive bull market again um also today there was news that china is considering uh stimulus which may put more liquidity into global markets so i mean you know you can you can sit you can sit back and you can ride this narrative of how bad things are and how bad the economy is or you can say, the market's actually looking right through this.

And if, again, you take the Nasdaq, Nasdaq's up 39.09% year-to-date, which is a big number. It's a massive number for the Nasdaq. It's almost like the Fed should be using leading data instead of lagging data to make their decisions. I mean, we'd still be here if the Fed had stopped tightening six months ago but i guess that's topic for another day as we approach having warren david a few minutes i mean look i think like listen the fed got itself into a pickle when the money had to be printed and the stimulus checks had to be aggressive rate tax, but whilst keeping people employed.

I don't know how much better job you could have done than what Jerome Powell actually did. I think you're allowing them to spike the ball and celebrate this touchdown a little too early i don't think that you can claim that they've done the job yet if we know what could be still be coming for commercial real estate in other places i'm not a doomer but just because inflation has come down now does not mean that six months from now the cuts that they did in the last few meetings are not going to wreck the market uh i think by then they will have a tool at their disposal, which is the ability to reduce interest rates from 5% or 5.25% back down. At least now...

They're not doing anything unless the stock market crashes. It's not going to happen. Maybe. I mean, listen, if tomorrow they don't increase interest rates, is that a pivot? No, that's a pause. Isn't a pause a pivot? I mean, if you're increasing and then you pause?

No, it's a pause. Going back to using an easy money would be a pivot, and I don't see that happening immediately. Scott, you've become very skeptical. Why is that, Scott? Hold on. Why? Because it's a pause. A pivot implies going the other way.

And by the way, if you look historically at pivots, if you look at the way that this happens for all those who are massively bullish on the stock market here, you get the yield curve inversion. Then eventually, because something breaks, the Fed pivots. Then the stock market bottoms. Every single cycle. So if you do think this is a pivot or a pivot is coming, then based on history, almost every time you should be expecting for stocks to put in a new low. Let's get a look. Hopefully other guests are more optimistic. Alex, William, Eleanor, David, Meltem, anyone else have more optimistic expectations from the Fed?

No one has more optimistic expectations. Nobody has. Everyone's on Scott's boat of pessimism. I'm not even that pessimistic to be clear. I'm just telling you what's happened in history. And a pause is not a pivot. But look at. Okay, no, you didn't want to get into this round. But I

think if we look at what caused the decline in the inflation number, it wasn't driven by food and housing, right? And I think there's a difference between the CPI print and whatever the inflation number is that's published. I think it's very unfortunate that we live in a time where there is just very low trust, generally speaking, about the official published numbers. But if we look at what caused the decline, the decline was primarily driven by energy price declines. And so I do think it's interesting to observe that inflation is not coming down equally in all sectors. And it's certainly not coming down in the sectors that matter most to people's perceived

wealth and their spending habits. Consumer credit card debt is still at an all time high. We look at household sort of credit very high. And so I think, you know, if you're in the position of the Fed, the Fed has repeatedly said, if you listen to what and Treasury, right, Janet Yellen has said, Jerome Powell has said, they're perfectly happy to destroy the economy. And they're perfectly happy to harm American workers, if that means getting CPI in line. And they're perfectly happy to harm American workers if that means getting CPI in line. And if you look at, you know, the the jobs numbers prints, unemployment is incredibly low, labor markets still incredibly tight. So I think we're sort of in this uncanny valley. And, and,

you know, a big OPEC meeting last week as well, there's sort of a lot of gaming going on within OPEC within oil prices. So I'm not as optimistic. I think prices, if you look at the way people are experiencing inflation, you know, people are going to the store $100 that you'd spend on groceries doesn't buy you the same amount, rents are rising. So the cost of living generally is rising dramatically, I don't see that coming down. And again, with with so much money in the system, it's just hard to see a world where like that that core when you strip out energy is actually going to decline. So I don't know if I'm as pessimistic as Scott, perhaps. But I just think that this reduction in inflation is not felt equally across all categories. And I do think that some of these categories, particularly energy prices, can be manipulated if we look at the utilization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or SPR and just some of the gaming going on within OPEC. In particular, the Saudis cutting production. And there's a lot of interesting sentiment looking at oil going into peak demand season this summer.

So I'm just approaching it with skepticism. I don't see why the hikes would stop just looking at the overall landscape because inflation is still 2x over target. Job market's still very tight. And I just don't think we're at the achieved end state. Yeah, to be clear, guys, I'm not so pessimistic. I'm literally pointing at the data from the past. A pause that I do not believe is a pivot. I think that that's generally consensus. It's literally pausing. Pivot implies

going the other way. But if you look at history, that pivot precedes the market crash. That's what happens. I'm not saying that will happen this time. I'm not even pessimistic. I just can only look at the data that exists. And just quickly, Senator Davidson, you're in the audience. We've sent you through an invite via DM and I've sent you, you should see it on your screen as well. Just make sure you use your phone, that with your phone and you'll be able to come up on stage. Be good to have you. And while waiting for Senator Davidson to come up, Scott, maybe give us a bit of an overview of what's going to be discussed today and what the Hinman docs are. Sure, I can do that as he comes up. Obviously, we're going to be respectful of his time and dig right in. There's people on stage who are much more qualified to discuss the Hinman docs than myself. Obviously, this is what people in the Ripple case have been waiting for, as Brad Garlinghouse said, for 18 months, which will be effectively when Hinman, the SEC, deemed Ethereum a not a security, which should be precedent to many that will be the same for Ripple. I find it interesting, though, that the narrative around the Hinman docs release now is more around people's belief about Ethereum than it is about Ripple at this point. People are very excited that it could effectively give us some clarity on what is happening with Ethereum.

Of course, I mean, there is just an insane amount of news and things happening at this point. We just want to obviously focus on the SEC Stabilization Act and Congressman Davidson as he comes up here. Ran, I mean, you reported on all of this stuff earlier today. I mean, what's really impacting the market here for you? What thing are you looking at the closest? Everyone, I guess. I just obviously want to wait for Congressman Davidson? I mean, look, as I said, I think if it wasn't for the SEC's attack on crypto, then I think Bitcoin would definitely be over $30,000.

Because the markets are running, we're in a bull market, there's more liquidity coming in. I mean, it would be a clear road to end. I think I agree, Ran. I do want to interrupt because Congressman Davidson is here. I'd like to welcome Warren Davidson, the United States Congressman from the great state of Ohio. First, I have to thank you very much for giving us your time and for your pragmatic approach to our industry. I have to tell you that personally, I've probably used your quote, Hotel California rule for crypto that you used in that congressional hearing about a thousand times. It's probably my favorite quote ever,

and I reference it almost daily. So thank you for that. But obviously you're here today because you proposed the SEC Stabilization Act, which would see Gary Gensler fired and the agency reconfigured. I'd love if you would tell us more about the act, why you proposed Gary Gensler fired in the agency reconfigured. I'd love if you would tell us more about the act, why you proposed it and your desired income. Yeah. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me on. And, uh, you know, it was really, really nice to see pretty good crowd of people in this, uh, Twitter spaces. So, uh, some folks, uh, uh, hadn't seen for a while. So great to connect the, over the, over the space and, space and some folks that probably I haven't ever met yet. But thanks for promoting this and allowing me a forum to join you all today. Look, I think

we all know we have a Gary Gensler problem, but Gary Gensler's abuses have highlighted that we also have a structural problem with the SEC. And essentially, it was originally treated as a commission. And with the way Gensler's doing everything, we really have commissioners that it's nice to read a good Huster Peirce dissent every now and then, but she has no power in the organization. We have an overly strong chairman and he's a super activist. So if you look at the abuses, he's proposed on average two new rules per month. It's the biggest rulemaking process at the SEC since Dodd-Frank passed. And Dodd-Frank was a major overhaul post 08-09 financial crisis. So it makes sense that they would be writing rules after that. The only thing that happened recently is Gensler became chairman and then he started this whole period of activism. And not only did he do the rules, but he put inappropriately short public comment periods because, yes, he doesn't care what anyone thinks. He doesn't even care what the impact on the market is. He's got an agenda and he's very anxious to implement it. A lot of these things are unworkable and they're unlawful.

They're outside his scope. The ESG disclosure mandate is an example. And wherever you stand on ESG and all the things that it does, if you're going to make a major overhaul to reporting requirements in capital markets, it should be a law. It should go through Congress. It shouldn't just be an overly zealous chairman kind of imposes his will on the entire capital markets of the United States. Frankly, 50 plus percent of the world's capital invested is in our market. So it's really bigger than that, than just U.S. investors. The Hotel California rule that I cited, you can check in anytime you like, which is a little change to the quote, but check in anytime you like, but you can never leave. You're never going to get approval. And kind of the other part of that is you've essentially committed to an endless discovery period where there's not going to be resolution. And you're just a captive to the SEC at that point. He's got unworkable proposals for overhauling the equity market structure. He wants to change things like payment for water flow that have

improved retail investing. And if that's one of the themes for sure, it kind of goes with his claim that somehow he's protecting retail investors. You can't just ban people and say that's investor protection. It's actually harming the retail investors. It's harming our capital markets. And, you know, we have to rein that in. His proposed custody rule is essentially all but a ban for crypto. You know, certainly anything that self-custody. I mean, and people that want to ban self-custody

are essentially saying they don't trust you with your own money. They want to have you have your money in the hands of someone else that they can control. And so if they can't kill crypto outright, they're at least trying to make it account-based so that it's not able to achieve its real potential, which is very disruptive to get rid of all the intermediaries. If you have peer-to-peer permissionless transactions, which is the vision, then look at all the intermediaries who are disrupted. And frankly, they're pretty happy with some of Gensler's work to kill this innovation. And then lastly, he's front-running, I said Congress, but really just about everybody. He's front running treasury. He's front running,

you know, others to try to get out ahead of efforts to provide the clarity. And we've got legislation in Congress finally that is bipartisan. And he's trying to make sure that he gets out ahead and kills as much as he can ahead of that legislation taking effect. So, you know, we know we need to get rid of him. So what does the bill do? He's a commissioner, but he's elevated as chairman. So I suppose he could stay on board as a commissioner, but he would be one of six commissioners, three Republicans, three Democrats. And essentially, if there's not consensus, then they can't really change things. They could hire an executive director that would handle day-to-day administrative functions, but that position would be powerless except from the power given by the commission. I think the last thing there is just

to be sure, no former chairman can be the executive director. So that would preclude Gary Gensler from being the chairman. So that's what we're trying to do. And frankly, depoliticize it. And that's why I hope we can get some Democrats to be on board with the bill. Some of them like it, but they're reluctant to kind of buck the administration and kind of the cartel that Elizabeth Warren and crew have imposed on the financial services space. So you talked about front-running Congress, you talked about front-running the Treasury, and to all the other speakers, please remain muted. You talked about that, but many pundits have pushed back in defense of the SEC, saying it's the job of Congress to legislate on the status of crypto, whether or not these assets are securities or commodities. So this lends to the idea that the SEC only has one tool. And when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Is it actually Gensler's job to offer clarity on which assets are in fact securities? Or does some of that actually fall on Congress? Yeah, I mean, it's fair. I thought, look, I started working on

Financial Services Committee in 2017. And I tried to get hearings about the ICO market back in 2017 so that we could propose some sort of bright line clarity as to what is the security and what isn't, what's the process for registering. I thought we would be able to do that in 17. 18 was going on. I still couldn't even get a real hearing, but I was a pretty junior guy. So I was like, okay, well, we will have a meeting anyway. And that's when we had in September of 18, the meeting that produced the Token Taxonomy Act. So that bill was done at the end of 2018. We tried working all through 2019 to get it. But if you look at how much damage is done in the market, all the bankruptcies, frankly, all the harm that's been done to retail investors through failures, a lot of that

could have been prevented if we simply passed the Token Taxonomy Act in 2019, which is longer than I thought it would take. But we still haven't passed anything like that. So you look, part of this failure for the market is Congress's. But when you look at what Gary Gensler is doing, he's doing selective enforcement on the one hand. So, you know, he reaches a settlement with Kim Kardashian for promoting an unregistered security, which was Ethereum Max. But then he didn't engage in any kind of enforcement action to shut down Ethereum Max because they've got an unregistered security. So it isn't even a coherent enforcement strategy on the one hand. And on the other, he's hyper-aggressive in rulemaking proposals.

And where's the rule that makes it clear? I love the CEO of Kraken. It was like, oh yeah, I should have clicked that register here button that's so easy to do on the website. We had a hearing. He still will not answer whether Ether is a security. Look how long Ether has been in the market. So he's willfully withholding clarity. So there is a burden for Congress to correct that. And I think we will get around to that. But I think his abuses have highlighted the other thing Congress needs to correct is we need to get Gensler out of the chairmanship and we need to get a structure that doesn't leave that organization vulnerable to a similar set of abuses. So what's the path for seeing the SEC Stabilization Act become law and how long

would that theoretically take? I mean, I think it would obviously have to get through the Senate and the president, which seems challenging. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to say it's a layup, but my hope is we'll get the bill noticed for a hearing. That's the way the process works in Congress. You notice it. So then there's people, some of the questions will then be based on that bill. And then hopefully as a result of noticing it for some hearing in the future, we'll move it to a markup through the Financial Services Committee. From that point, we try to get a vote on the floor of the House. So in general, members of the committee try to make amendments in the markup during the committee process, and then members of the rest

of Congress offer amendments on the floor of the House. And then, okay, let's say there's a couple of amendments that make it palatable. Then the hope is Sherrod Brown, as the chair of Senate banking, would take it up. I wouldn't get my hopes up, though. Sherrod Brown hasn't moved a single bill on any subject the whole time he's been chairman of Senate banking. So he's basically just provided cover for Elizabeth Warren over there. But the hope is that you look at the market, just look at, and we were like almost 4 million views on this tweet yesterday, just announcing it. So there's a lot of appetite for something along this line. So I think everybody's spent years being frustrated by inaction, you know, frankly by Jay Clayton as well, but also kind of very much so by Gary Gensler. So the public, look, it's a republic. If you can

keep it, we the people can keep it, not just Congress. So hopefully my colleagues in the House and my folks over on the Senate will take note and start moving this legislation. Senator Hayes, it's Ron speaking. I have a question for you. So Gary Gensler was an MIT professor. He lectured a series of courses on blockchain. He developed those courses himself, which means that he obviously had a passion for the technology. And if you listen to his attitude around blockchain technology from those courses,

and I've listened to about nine or 10 hours of stuff of his on the web, he seems to have changed his tune since he got into the, the, uh, the SEC. What do you, what do you think this, I mean, it feels like we're not ready to, not really hearing from Gary Gensler. I'm keen to hear what your views on it. Well, motives are always hard to ascribe, but I will say when he was named chair of the SEC, I also took note of his past and his course that he taught at MIT. And I was hopeful that he would provide, you know, the clarity that was possible through rulemaking at the SEC and that he would be collaborative and coming to Congress and saying, look, I can only go so far.

We need you to support a law that does X, Y, Z. Like, I think that would be an effective chairmanship. And I was hopeful that he would be the kind of person that would do that. So, you know, it's not that he's, it's not that he, you know, there are some people that don't get the implications of certain policy positions. Gensler is not one of those people. He gets the implications. There are some people who, when they think through the implications, they say, well, there's some unfortunate trade-offs here, but on balance, it does good. That's not Gensler either. Gensler is for these policy positions because of the implications of the policy positions. Now, why? That's the harder part. But you have to say, given what he's doing, driving him, he is designing these things,

he's designing his own actions. He's for them because of the implications. I know that we're wrapping up momentarily and we respect your time. I just want to know what we as citizens can do to help support this act. And I also want to just make a quick point. I think quite a few people in the crypto community have become single issue voters. And I'm curious as to your thoughts as to whether we're a large enough part of the constituency to actually impact the upcoming elections. Yeah, you know, one, I think, what can you do for sure? Get engaged. I think a lot of people in this space haven't been incredibly political. Definitely the saying that's relevant there,

you may not take an interest in politics, but politics will take an interest in you. People in this space that just want to run their businesses or launch their innovation or even participated in it as retail investors are finding that politics is wrecking what they care about. And so, you know, the solution is to get engaged and you can get engaged at every level. Part of it's just like, you know, following, we've grown our followers at Warren Davidson on Twitter, you know, quite a lot over this issue and other issues in this space. I probably ought to launch a different Twitter handle just so I can get my regular constituents. I won't say this is like the biggest issue in any one congressional district, but, you know, that's the way single

issue topics go. And, you know, I started working on this because it was one of the topics that wasn't already taken. You know, when you come in as a new guy, you find that, oh, well, somebody else is working on this bill, that bill, the other bill. You're like, well, what's still open? Well, new stuff. And so this is just one of a range of issues I picked up. But a lot of our following has picked up there on it. I just say, make sure that you try to reach out to people that represent you and get on their calendar, call their offices, write them letters, but especially get on their calendar. Because when you get on someone's calendar, some staff member will do research,

they will prep the member of Congress or legislature, Senate, whatever, even, you know, any way you can participate in regulatory feedback, just stay engaged on it. And then I think, you know, the other thing in the nature of politics, a lot of it takes money. And I've been encouraged by people who've built some of these fundraising programs out there and they're starting to put money behind races. And there were people that were talking to me about running for Senate to try to take out Sherrod Brown. I'll admit it was tempting or is still tempting. But I'm really passionate about what I'm doing in the House right now.

One of the things I learned when Paul Ryan was speaker is the minute you say you're not running for reelection in the House, all your juice is kind of gone. I mean, he was speaker and he still kind of lost input on all kinds of things. And I just really feel like I need to run through the tape on some of these issues. You know, this is just one of the ones that we're working on while we have the majority right now. So it'll have to be somebody else that takes out Sherrod Brown. And I think that would send a big message for one, because he is the chairman of Senate banking. But two, there are three states where the Senate hangs in the balance. West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana all have Democrats in the Senate right now. And if we flip two of those three, control of the Senate goes to Republicans. And I think that's hard because a lot

of people in the space might think of themselves as Democrats more than not. But Elizabeth Warren is kind of atypical of your average Democrat, particularly with respect to this space. And so she's incredibly hostile to it. I think it sends a strong message if we can somehow pull that off. And the big things in campaigns, there's money, message, and work ethic. You got to find the people that will have the work ethic and the message. And a lot of people in the space maybe can help with the money part. I think it's fair to say that we've got your back and everybody here is excited to see this push forward and willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. So thank you very much for your efforts and for your time.

And we will be tracking it very, very closely. All right. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. And God bless all of you. Great success to everyone. Take care. All right. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me and God bless all of you. Great success to everyone. Take care. Thank you, Alex. I saw that you tried to lift your mic during the talk there. So obviously you had some thoughts. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, Congressman Davidson, if you're still on, thanks for all the work that you're doing to push the agenda forward and to help our industry. I think that there was a couple of things that he said that I thought were kind of interesting, that perhaps even and I think are trying to sort of wrestle back some control of how we govern and regulate this new industry and asset class and making that something

that's based on some kind of new law or legislation. I think there is a mischaracterization that the D.C. is kind of divided along party lines and to be sure like i think republicans in general are more uh favorable to the industry than than democrats um but we know of you know people there's the there's the blockchain caucus in in the senate there are uh congress people like richie torres um in the house who you know are democrats and are very supportive and i thought that was actually really refreshing what what um congressman that Elizabeth Warren is atypical of your average Democrat. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but I do think that she is an outlier. And I think that there's an opportunity here to build a bipartisan consensus to try and create a lasting, durable

regulatory and policy framework for this industry. And I'm a Canadian, so I've kind of got an outsider's perspective on this, but I really hope that the U.S. gets it right because most of the world is not waiting, right? There are 33 countries that have either enacted or developing new laws for crypto. You know, Europe passed its Michael Laws. Hong Kong is opening up recently. The UAE is spending billions to attract entrepreneurs. And even we saw last week, you know, the government of Beijing talking about

Web3, though, as we discussed on last week's show, maybe overstating how keen they are on Web3, and that Web3 might be Web3 with Chinese characteristics, right? But even still, we're seeing a lot of, you know, nobody's waiting for the US to sort this out. And I think my concern is that unless, you know, there's some kind of change in how the government approaches this, that the next era of the web, web three is going to be built anywhere but the United States. And I think that would be a shame, because I think that the you know, the US has lots to offer. There's been a lot reported recently about the offshoring of talent and capital. And, you know, it's a decentralized industry and technology in the world today is more flat than ever. And there's no reason for people to necessarily be based

in any one place. So governments are competing in a marketplace for regulation and for capital and so forth. And I think that there's an opportunity here to maybe turn the tide. But I don't want to sound too too Pollyannish because I think that it's going to be kind of a difficult slog here in the next little while. David, I saw you had your hand up before as well. Bailey, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to ask the congressman about the GBTC situation and getting some relief there for GBTC shareholders. David, from what you've looked at, how much could this act actually impact something like that?

Not really at all, because it doesn't require any sort of action. It just requires clarification from the SEC that GBTC can do file for Reagan relief today if they wanted to. And I was just wondering if he had made any kind of decisions around his view on that. Got it. made any kind of uh decisions around his view on that got it melt them i know when uh when congressman davidson came up he said some of you are familiar faces and friends uh i think he was referring to you right uh look um i think congressman davidson and i have certainly you know shared shared our views um and obviously, gosh, it feels like a lifetime ago, five years ago now, when I testified, you know, in the Libra hearings, we had some banter and, you know, he said shit coin in Congress. And that I think was a very funny moment,

very hard not to laugh. But look, I think Congressman Davidson has sort of been on the mark with many of his criticisms. And I'm happy, you know, we have incredibly engaged, you know, political leaders like him. Luckily, Chairman of House Financial Services as well. We have Tom Emmer. We have Cynthia Lemma. So we have a lot of people on the Hill who have taken the time to really try to understand what's going on in the industry. I think what doesn't help us is there are a lot of sensationalist headlines. And unfortunately, you know, it's, you know, when you have a digital asset that settles with finality, it's just a hotbed for fraud, because it's very easy to defraud people, unfortunately. understand how aligned the ethos and sort of the underlying principles of Bitcoin and more broadly, the cryptocurrency Web3 space are with like foundational American values. So very grateful that you know, we have folks like him putting their reputation and their social capital and their political capital on on the lines. Great to see it is an election year coming up. So we'll see what impact that has and how this issue plays into conversations going into election season. But it certainly

has been great to see. And I hope everyone here will do what they can to contribute, whether it's going out and voting, contributing to campaigns, just going out and speaking to people on the Hill. Staffers are a good place to get started. I know there are a lot of people in here who have been doing that work, but it takes a lot of effort. But I'm happy to see that people are taking up the cause. Let me ask a quick question. Sorry about the background noise, but he did talk about a movement.

I think, Alex, you mentioned it, that it's leading to a movement in Congress in support of crypto and freedom. Are we really seeing that? Could that change the course of regulation for crypto over the next few years? Well, a lot of people talked about a bipartisan consensus around this industry last year and even the year prior. There was a few different points at which people from both sides of the aisle came together. I think that the, frankly, I think the collapse of FDX kind of obliterated that bipartisan consensus in the short term. I think a lot of Democrats were caught with mud on their face having taken, you know, campaign donations and kind of changed, not changed their tune, but in general, I think the pendulum has swung

far more to like a shoot, first ask questions later approach. But what I'm suggesting is that, you know, maybe if there's a silver lining to this whole SEC thing, that it's going to reset the conversation and that the fact that the SEC is taking the approach that it is, has raised eyebrows from lawmakers on

both sides who view the prerogative of setting new rules for an emerging industry as something that should be Congress's responsibility rather than the regulator, and that maybe this will cause a renewal of the bipartisan consensus. Because ultimately, unless it's an election issue and unless it's something that constituents care on both sides of the bipartisan consensus. Because ultimately, you know, unless it's an election issue and unless, you know, it's something that constituents care on both sides of the political spectrum, I'm not sure that, you know, whatever laws are working their way through Congress will see the light of day. Look, I'm, like I said, Canadian, not a U.S. constitutional scholar or anything like that.

But my hope is that this event will cause a renewal of the consensus that I think a lot of people were really hopeful about, or the bipartisan sort of viewpoint on this industry that did exist in the last couple of years. William, go ahead. to be realistic in that the only thing that's going to make a difference at this point is if there is going to be an actual ruling at the end of these lawsuits. That's going to make a difference. In the meantime, we're just discussing things and we know that the Congress is going to be slow to enact these bills. As we all know, there's been 84 of these bills that have been discussed. There are lots of hearings. There's another one today. But moving from a hearing to an actual

bill that gets voted is not going to be an easy thing right now. Unfortunately, I think the SEC has a bit of an advantage right now because they are more nimble and they can fire on these lawsuits one after the other. And we are now on the defensive. I think the best thing we can do as an industry is to talk more about use cases. I've said this before. There's a lot of too much finance currently in the blockchain, and that invites a lot of attacks. We need to talk more about what are people doing with the blockchain that is not just about trading.

And I would say one last thing that could be a bit controversial is that there's going to be a new wave of entrepreneurs that's going to emerge in the US. In spite of the regulatory headwinds, you can do Web3 with tokens and be compliant in a way that you bring utility to the token before you make it tradable. And that is going to be the new wave of entrepreneurs that we have to expect.

Hey, I actually, John Deaton, I see we've got you here. So it's a good opportunity and one of the redacted sealed documents was the infamous Hinman speech. which said Bitcoin also, but really highlighted that ETH wasn't a security. There were 63 emails, 52 drafts to the speech, and there was give and take. But those were all sealed. Ripple fought for two and a half years, seven court orders. The SEC fought tooth and nail. Even there was a third party, Rosalind Layton, who's a Forbes contributor, sought to intervene to get these published. And the judge ruled that what could be sealed and what couldn't be sealed.

And this relates to all of the evidence. Evidence that Ripple won it sealed, that she said, no, that's fair game. Evidence that the SEC won it sealed, such as these Hinman documents, no, that's fair game. That's all being released today. So there's going to be tens of thousands of documents that are being filed that are unsealed. Right now, what we know is that the Hinman emails have been published and released, and they're still being processed. And, you know, Ripple, Stuart Alderody put out a tweet, a thread summarizing, this is the evidence that Brad Garlinghouse said was going to shock people about the behavior of

the SEC. And as far as the Hinman, I made a prediction. And the prediction was that the emails would go to the fair notice issue that that ripples brought not the substantive underlying whether or not xrp was sold as a security under howie but i said that the conflict and him in violating 18 usc section 208 which he did unequivocally would be further highlighted and that for sure was you have the the Office of General Counsel saying, yeah, I don't think you should put ETH in there. I don't think you should do that. He interestingly said, you shouldn't do it because it's going to limit our ability to say otherwise in the future, which is what we see. So that's good news for ETH. You've got the General Counsel of the SEC

saying, hey, if you say ETH's not a security, it limits us in our optionality in the future. And that's where we are today and why you see, even though Ginsburg may think he's a security, he's never come out and said it. So there's that. And basically what I said about highlighting the the Trading markets director Basically warned this Speech is going to cause greater Confusion In a market that's already Confused and so Hinman ignored those things

And he included East And when you look at the Conflicts if you want me to spend Two three minutes on that so I can Prove to people that this isn't a fucking conspiracy theory, this is a monkey could prove that he violated 18 USC 208. I can do that. Have at it. Two, three minutes.

Go. All right. Jay Clayton's Farmer Sullivan and Cromwell. Joe Lubin did a fantastic job in hiring Sullivan and Cromwell attorneys as soon as Clayton was appointed, made one the deputy general counsel. And basically that guaranteed a meeting. December 13th, 2017, Joe Lubin and ConsenSys meet with Hinman and they discuss an alliance. The general counsel of ConsenSys the next day, December 14th, I got all this proof on my site, says to eight meetings were made with Hinman and the ETH folks, including Chris Dixon at A16Z. Jay Clayton went to Chris Dixon at A16Z and said, put a memo together. Lowell Ness, their attorney in crypto, wrote a memo, gave it to Hinman on March 26, 2018, met Hinman two days later on March 28, 2018,

and they offered a safe harbor for ETH, and only ETH, the only token that was listed as someone who should be given safe harbor. And then there's this meeting that continued to happen. Then on June 11, that's's when the general officer general counsel says you shouldn't put ETH in and Hinman ignores it. He says, well, we believe ETH is sufficiently decentralized, but I'm going to talk to Vitalik and see if he confirms that. Now imagine going to Brad Garlinghouse or Joel of David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple and saying, hey, we think it's sufficiently decentralized. Is the XRP ledger sufficiently decentralized? Of course,

they're going to confirm that. And then the speech was given. Now, what we learned is that when he gave the speech, Hinman was being paid, not retirement income people. He was an ongoing profit sharing partner. The better the firm did, the better he did. In addition to his retirement that year, he made $1.8 million in profits. There, his firm, Simpson Thatcher, was a member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. That per se should prevent him from giving the speech, okay? But those ETH investors, A16Z, okay but those eth investors a16z and all of them joe lumen consensus all of them helped write the speech their attorney said his speech tracked it this sufficient decentralization that's not in howie and these intra emails have the trading markets director the office of general

counsel saying you're making up law bill that's got nothing to do with howie you should not include that but he ignored all that and gave the speech and where is henman today he's with the guy john john let me can i ask you john can i ask you a quick question very very quickly because i want to go to the other panelists how will that impact what will this drop these henman docs how will they impact the market how will they impact the case what does it mean for the average crypto investor the average crypto project well i think it helps east and east holders like me i'm an east holder uh that that okay uh this is going to help it helps dragon chain because they were erc20 token and they're being prosecuted right now governed by the ethereum blockchain

and so it helps that it's going to help coinbase because it shows that there's this issue that there are conceding at the fcc that's already a confused market and the speech is going to even make it more confusing so it's gonna it's just sorry i'm the dumb one here john so it's actually it's going to help the argument of all these tokens being securities that's no longer an easy argument to make based on this drop. Is that correct on my way or someone? You can still make the argument, but let's say where it helps ripple,

right? For example, is that if the judge says, you know, I find that when you sold XRP to this person or this institution in 2017 or 2018, that that constitute an investment contract. But now I'm going to allow you to argue to a jury that you didn't have adequate notice because the market was in such

a disarray and the SEC was giving such conflicting evidence. For example, the Office of General Counsel said that if a promoter owns tokens, like pre-mines that that's not really relevant yet bill hinman's speech he said it is relevant and also the judge and library found that the pre-mined owned by library was relevant but you got the office of general counsel saying that it's not relevant so it it marks everything up and it allows stronger arguments. And so, but you got to understand the speech is irrelevant to the judge's analysis, right? It goes to fair notice. It goes to bad conduct. It goes to the SEC couldn't even make up their mind.

They could trade XRP up until March of 2019. How can it be a security if you're allowed to own it as an SEC enforcement lawyer? So it goes to all those issues and that's what's going to help. So Bruce, I want to go to you, just kind of summarize for us all. We've gone through the discussion with Congressman Davidson.

We've seen the, you know, Tab Scott mentioned about the movement in Congress in support of crypto and putting the pressure on Gensler and the SEC. We're talking now about the Hinman Docks. We've seen the cases against Coinbase,

against Binance as well. We've seen Binance hit back yesterday. Not sure if we're going to cover that briefly, Scott. And obviously, Brian Armstrong became public about his concerns and a bit more critical of the SEC relative to his criticism previously or lack of criticism previously. He's a bit more critical of the SEC relative to his criticism previously, or lack of criticism previously. He's a bit more vocal now. Putting all this together, Bruce, obviously

we're seeing a fight. We're seeing also the movement in the East and what Hong Kong is doing. And we've had one of the, I think it was one of the members of Congress, whatever, I can't remember his name, speak positively about crypto and encourage crypto companies to go to Hong Kong. Putting all this together, Bruce, how do you look at everything? How should the market respond? How should the long-term investor respond? How should the VC, the average VC respond to all this?

Well, you know, the world has makers and takers. You know, there's a bunch of people on this stage who make stuff and build things. And then there's people like Elizabeth Warren who take things from other people, and that's how they get power, by perpetuating a system that is run by force and violence, extracting wealth from the people, taking worker wages, taking money from people, and then using it to prop up a big authoritarian machine. And that's what we've seen throughout human history. It's a story as old as time, from the first time that the first caveman had a bat and could crack somebody else in the head and take their stuff. And that's exactly what we have now. It's just a more sophisticated version of it, where instead of the bats, they have court orders that are backed by people with bats and guns. Because if you don't follow these things, they're not suggestions. They are backed by force and violence.

And it's really- So what should we do? But Bruce, what should we do? Like I'm in this space, right? I'm an investor. I hold a bunch of ETH. I don't hold Bitcoin anymore. I probably should hold it again. I'm investing in all these different startups.

How should I respond to all this news? How should the startups listening to us respond to all this that's happening in the last week, trying to make sense of everything? You've got to go where people have done for thousands of years. You've got to march with your feet and go where there's freedom, where they have economic freedom. That used to be America. It was a great story.

Give us your poor, your sick, your tired, your hungry. Come here. It's the land of the free, the land of opportunity. This is where you go and pursue your dreams. That was a great, a great thing. It's just a fantasy now. It's long, long gone in the rearview mirror. So you've got to look, you can either hope, I'm kind of an optimist. I hope that America will once again be a free country someday. But right now you've got to look at the places where they do have economic freedom, places like the UAE, where they view businesses as an asset rather than a competition or something to be squashed, where they have dialogue. You know what John said, Gary Gensler doesn't care about dialogue.

Doesn't anybody find it odd that this guy, he's never been on a spaces. What is he so busy for that all of us have the time to talk about this, but the guy who's at the center of the whole thing just somehow is too important. You have a member of the U.S. Congress who just joined us, but Gensler so far has done zero interaction. He's never been to a crypto conference. He's never been to a Bitcoin conference. He's never been on one of these spaces. And the reason is because he doesn't care. We are not his constituency. He doesn't care about, he's not sitting there saying, gee, maybe I'll hurt this industry. Maybe I won't. He's sitting there. He has marching orders to crush our industry. And that includes Bitcoin. And any Bitcoiner who thinks this is good or who's cheering for Gensler

needs to go back to the basics and read Road to Serfdom and understand the basics. So let me ask one more question. And John, David, I want to go to you right after Bruce and Eugene. And the question I have for you guys is Binance's response yesterday, I know Binance hit back. I'm not sure if you've read through the response and whether they've got a pretty strong case. I haven't gone through it at all, so I'm pretty ignorant there. But before that, Eugene, we're in a similar boat, me and you.

We invest in a lot of these startups. I want to ask you the question is, what does that mean for us as investors in the ecosystem? And Bruce, before we go to Eugene, last question for you is, Gensler, if he's gone, does that change everything? Or it's not that simple? It changes it a little bit, but this is being driven. He has his marching orders from the administration and I would say from Biden, but Biden is an absentee president who doesn't know anything. I would quite bet you that Biden, if he was unprompted, if you asked him on the street back in the old days when we were free

country, you could go right up to the president and the press would ask questions. We don't have that anymore. But like you look at younger people can look at videos of Ronald Reagan and stuff. You had this amazing thing where the press would like shout questions to the president and he'd actually answer. If you did have that and somebody said, hey, Mr. President, who's the chairman of the SEC? I don't think he even knows. I don't think he knows. His mind isn't there. So he's not pulling the strings. Other people like Elizabeth Warren are. So unfortunately, even if you replace Gensler, it would probably help. It would probably help. But it wouldn't be the solution because you've got to solve the bigger issue of the administration itself and Warren and the Biden administration, whoever there is pulling the strings.

Eugene, question for you. And since Ryan is with us as well, what does that mean for people like us that are investing in all these startups? Well, I think it's kind of a bifurcation. So I think the game for U.S. startups in crypto, I wouldn't say it's over, but I would probably highly recommend new companies start domiciling elsewhere. Right. You know, places like the places that Bruce mentioned. I think the, you know, the SEC, the SEC has shown its hand. The administration has shown its hand. I think it's going to be a dark time for regulation for the foreseeable future. But on the flip side, you know, I'm currently in San Francisco.

I mean, you know, to push back a bit on what Bruce said, Bruce, I agree with a lot of your points, but the AI boom is really like centered here in the Bay Area. I'd say in the world, right? Maybe places in China, you know, might be a competitor. But, you know, I think for different kinds of industries, it kind of depends, right? America is still actually a bright spot for at least AI. But for crypto, I'm not so sure. I think, you know, I mean, even Coinbase is, you know, bought that Bermuda-based exchange, you know, just a few weeks ago. So I think we're seeing clear moves. You know, US-based companies like DYDX can't service American customers, right? It's just really, really unfortunate. So, you know, I mean, and talking about kind of land of opportunity, you know, kind of similar to the fact that, you know, basically the Senate golden

age, the golden age of the Senate in the 1800s is, you know, kind of what we kind of all strive for, right? It's why we're on these Twitter spaces, having open discourse, you know, the Senate of Daniel Webster, that kind of government, you know, 100 plus years later, doesn't seem to exist anymore. There isn't active dialogue. There's simply enforcement by regulation. I think we should all, you know, mourn that, you know, as folks who like innovation. So before going to John and David, just for their quick thoughts on Banas hitting heard today with the discussion with congressman davidson and uh the the expert the the anticipation of the drop of the hinman docs does that change anything at all for you no i mean i read whatever of the hinman docs i've already dropped i've read

what it is and i mean what what's your what's your what's your two what's your two cents well how would you summarize it for you if the sec say that Hinman was acting on his own accord, they're 50% right, based on what I've seen. Why? Because there was a lot of pushback from people in the agency about how he shouldn't frame things. And it seems like when he was in the speech, he framed it his own way.

Regardless of that, you know, he came out came out speaking i guess on behalf of the sec and you know he he was quite clear in he was quite clear in his messaging so yeah i mean i i think it's a nothing burger to be honest and i think that's why the price of xrp went up and went straight back down again i think it's i think it's a nothing big it's like you know i think ruple scored a whole lot of points that were unnecessary points, so to speak. I don't know. Just kind of like,

it was a big fight for a small prize. Maybe. So far, from what we've seen so far. Yeah, then my thought about Congressman Davidson's bills. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that there are people like him that are fighting for us uh but i am i hopeful that this is going to be the beginning of the end for gary gensler no i mean is it getting much support at all is it getting much traction at all

it's too early to say but it's way too early to say you know what i think this is i think this is a great opportunity to score some political points um But Warren Davidson's always been on the side of crypto. Tom Emmer's always been on the side of crypto. Two Republicans who are on the side of crypto drafted a bill. I think, to be honest, I can't see the bill really going anywhere or getting any traction. No bill goes anywhere. No bill goes anywhere.

Yeah. No bill goes anywhere with the current environment. So this one has even less of a chance, let's be honest. I mean, this is, we've seen, I believe I read that there's 20 pending acts of legislation regarding crypto that are sitting in some house right now collecting dust. Right. right now collecting dust, right? And Lemus Gillibrand, which was bipartisan last year, a senator from Wyoming and a Republican senator from Wyoming, Democrat senator from New York, of all places, coming together to try to even pass some sensible laws about stable coins has effectively gone silent. You don't hear about it, even though they do say that that's going to come

back around in the coming months. I think to your guys' point, this is largely a political move, political posturing. But that said, if people don't propose things, nothing even has a chance of getting. So just for the audience, as we prepare to wrap up, just let us know in the comments how bullish or bearish are you and what are your thoughts about the recent developments? We should have asked you earlier to give us questions for congressmen. I completely forgot. I do want to go quickly to john and david guys um to you know kind of final topic at least from my end is binance's counter of the sec's motion um anything interesting there at all i know it's going to be a long battle no the whole the battle itself in general is going to be long but in this case in terms of the the

motion to to freeze their funds for binance us That's going to be really quick. So any thoughts on Binance's response, their counter? David? Oh, you're talking about John Deaton, right? Yeah, John Deaton and David. Okay. I'll be quick. Listen, Binance came out with a response and said that their offer was to secure all assets of Binance U.S. customers, place the private keys in the hands of U.S. personnel, and provide for a full accounting of Binance assets. And so that seems reasonable on its face. The SEC, of course, objects because

they have an agenda, even though that does sound reasonable on its face. We're going to find out what the judge thinks because the hearing is today. And so we're going to know a lot more at the end of the day. Yeah, I think I agree with John. The Bidens came in, I want to say they capitulated, but this isn't a brief or this wasn't a response that was fiery in nature. This was almost total capitulation. They just almost complained about how they took a shot at Gensler for what Gensler previously said. But then they basically rolled over and said, look, we'll give the U.S. government the private keys. But more importantly, they said the TRO was already effective. They lost their biggest banking partner in the United States.

And that whether or not the motion is granted or not, they've already lost. And I think that was an amazing thing to see them concede up front because it's the truth. Without the U.S. banking partners, the TRO and the lawsuit worked for how and what's going to happen to Binance US moving forward. And where does that leave if Binance was a legitimate company and doing everything right, which obviously I don't necessarily agree with, they've already been screwed. The poison pill has already gone down and there's nothing they can really do moving forward. The SEC got what they wanted and now it's just a discovery battle moving forward. Alright, so to Matt Scientist, I brought you up because I know you were

at the offices of Congressman Davidson and spoke to a bunch of members of Congress. What's the sentiment like? Any interesting insight before we wrap up this space? Yeah, so I actually had already been planning on coming out here before all

this shenanigans blew up last week. So I guess kind of fortunate to be up here this week. It was really interesting. I met with Ted Budd's office, Richard Torres' office, Elisa Slotkin's, Will Timison, some of the House Financial Services Committee, and Senator Loomis' office, and then whatnot. Oddly receptive, to be really, really honest. They do. They actually, when you say receptive, what do you mean by receptive?

Like, do they give a shit or are they just being nice? They gave a shit, right? There was a lot of engagement. There was a lot of questions. Right now, for those that know me, I'm a big DeFi guy. I trade almost exclusively on decentralized exchanges. And so that's my realm, right outside of the centralized space. So that was my initial purpose of coming out here was to have that conversation with them and see where their heads were at with that. Right. Obviously, that changed after last week. Aaron, though, aren't those all of the Congress people and senators that are already receptive to crypto so those ones are already receptive right um and it was kind of why we went to them first but one of the big questions that i continuously asked

i was like what do you need from the industry what do you need from us what are your roadblocks like how can we get there what are you guys uh foreseeing as roadblocks um continuously one of them is the generational gap especially in the the Senate, which is senators are old. Okay. They don't understand this stuff. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, we'll wrap it up. Yeah, go ahead, Aaron.

Just maybe another 30 seconds. The generational gap is a big issue. They need some more education on DeFi. They want you all to come out there. They want you to get on their staffers' calendars. They want you to get on their calendars, and they want to have these conversations. That was a consistent thing.

Do that. Overall, the sentiment was good. Scott, you're the only one in the US, so pack your bags, man. I've talked about this before, but occasionally I'll just wake up one morning and get on chat gpt and uh write some random letter to a bunch of senators and congress people and then send it like a hundredth of a day i do it all i literally do it all the time

you're one of the coolest it's got you're one of the coolest and weirdest people i know in crypto so yeah well when you can't sleep, it's easy to be strange. Aaron, final quick word. Edwin Davidson, who cares about Warren? She is. Aaron, bullish, last thing, bullish or bearish? Quickly, because I know you've been with us since the FTX day. Bullish, actually. This is what we're seeing.

2 p.m. today, there's a committee meeting for the market structure bill. So pay attention to that I'm actually bullish as well I just think the US will respond positively seeing the movement in the east if they see China become more receptive to crypto and I think Russia I've seen some news that they're becoming more

receptive some bank SBR something it's the biggest yeah exactly hold on the biggest bank in the world. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Hold on. The biggest bank in the world. Do you know the news, though?

They allowed trading of crypto. It's some random Russian bank. I don't think it was the big one. I mean, the Central Bank of Russia is going to be stacking Bitcoin effectively. There was news a couple months ago that kind of quietly passed or will be mining it directly

from the Central Bank and the government. But the story there is you're saying that we will push back. That's not what's happening. What's happening is they are pushing back by against our aggressive stance. So we're the one that's opening the opportunity for the Russians and the Chinas of the world. So I disagree that under, I think we have a very clear direction for this administration And this regime as to what we can expect the only way I see any change here is if we get either regime change Or something major, but to be quite frank. I think that by that time Oh, so I just I just confirmed it is it is you're right it is spur bank That's offering crypto trading services.

Isn't that big news or am I overreacting? No, it should be massive news, but we all sit around and have a circle jerk about how important the United States is and that nothing else matters anywhere else in the world. Yeah, well, Bruce is probably smiling right now listening to you. But hold on. If we've seen the movement in Hong Kong being more receptive to crypto, I know we've got to wrap up, but just to say this final thing for the audience, Sberbank offering

crypto asset trading, and they're one of the biggest banks in the world, and they're definitely Russia's biggest bank. Considering those two facts, I would be surprised if the US allows itself to be left behind. And I know we like to be critical of the US. I just

generally don't think that will be the case. I don't think it's allowing itself to be left behind. And I know we like to be critical of the US. I just I generally don't think that will be the case. I don't think it's allowing itself to be left behind, per se. I think that the structure and manner in which Americans will be able to access the asset class will just be wildly different. Guys, I mean, you can buy and sell Bitcoin on Fidelity, right? If you want to talk about the path is going, it's going to largely be killing the crypto-native companies in favor of the Wall Street incumbents. And that is what's happening here. Bitcoin's not going anywhere. Bitcoin is going to Wall Street.

Maybe that's it. Great way to end it. Great way to end it on this point. For everyone else, I've got to tell you, if you want to work with us for incubation or you want to come on the show, hit any of us up, Ran, Scott, or myself via DM. Otherwise, we'll see you again tomorrow. And I don't think we'll do an urgent space when the Hinman Doc drops, Scott. I know you're geeking out over it, but your friend Ran says it's a nothing burger.

So I don't know, man. I'm split. So far, what you're seeing is a nothing burger. Let's put it that way. Cool. Bye, guys. Appreciate it. See you all tomorrow. I'll wait till next time. All right, Scott.

We'll see you. John, see you tomorrow, man. Bye, everyone.