The Wolf Of All Streets - Trump Vs. Biden. Will Bitcoin Decide Who Wins The Election? | Dennis Porter, Satoshi Action Fund

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

Dennis Porter, CEO & Co-Founder of Satoshi Action Fund, is dedicated to advancing Bitcoin adoption in the USA. As the fall elections approach, the debate over Bitcoin is heating up, with both Biden and Trump seeking to leverage their positions on cryptocurrency. Will Bitcoin play a decisive role in this political battle? Dennis Porter: https://x.com/Dennis_Porter_ Support & donate to Satoshi Action Fund: https://www.satoshiaction.io/ ►► Sponsored by iTrust Capital Invest in Bitcoin, Crypto Assets & Gold with Your IRA Using iTrust Capital. 👉 https://bit.ly/itrust-scott ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities! 👉https://thearchpublic.com/ ►►OKX SIGN UP FOR AN OKX TRADING ACCOUNT THEN DEPOSIT & TRADE TO UNLOCK MYSTERY BOX REWARDS OF UP TO $60,000! 👉https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code 'TENOFFSALE' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►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 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 #Satoshi Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:30 Working on the Bitcoin regulation 3:10 iTrustCapital 4:08 Which States support crypto 6:25 National level 7:40 Self custody 10:40 Executive order 13:24 Trump 16:27 Sab121 20:00 Trump & Bitcoin 27:25 RFK 32:00 Sam Bankman-Fried 34:50 Is CBDC a threat? 41:35 Stablecoins 46:15 Total government oversight 50:20 Satoshi Action Fund 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.

You know, liberal friends, a lot of my progressive friends that are Bitcoiners are, you know, agreeing with Trump for the first time ever versus agreeing with a Democrat. Trump is the leading candidate to win and he is endorsing Bitcoin. And then all of a sudden the Democrats went silent and completely against. Who are the number one buyers of Bitcoin in the world? It's dollar holders. So if you're thinking about building a business, build it here in America. So we have something to brag about to the lawmakers. It seems you've been largely successful in effectively every state where you've started to get them introduced. I absolutely love that. A year ago, the Bitcoin and crypto

industries seemed likely dead in the United States. The SEC was attacking effectively every company. We had not won any cases in court and we had very little hope for positive legislation. Oh, how times have changed. Now, Bitcoin is one of the main issues being discussed in the presidential election for 2024. Zooming out, I would have never imagined this to be the case, but here we are. But we have people who have been working on these issues politically from the very beginning. Dennis Porter from Satoshi Action Fund is one of my favorites who's been getting laws passed at the state level for years and obviously is working quietly behind the scenes to make sure that Bitcoin is safe in America for years to come. You've been on an absolute roadshow, state by state, passing Bitcoin legislation. Talk to me

about the logistics of that. How do you get in touch with the right person in each state? How do you start to actually make headway and speak to the right senators and congresspeople and governors, get them to care, and then actually start to get these laws passed? Yeah, I mean, it's been an absolute whirlwind. I remember not that long ago, I was doing another interview with you, and we were talking a lot about what we were going to do. And then we went on to actually accomplish it. And we've learned so much along the way. To answer your question, it really just comes down to making those phone calls and finding people that have maybe a lawmaker in their network. All the time, we'll get folks reaching out to us now saying, hey, I've met a lot of lawmakers in my time in my state gentleman from Pennsylvania, just the other day, got on a call with him.

He's like, I know three state senators, right? He's going to help us try to get them on board with what we're doing and help us to be able to, to be able to drive this thing forward. And so oftentimes we just, I can't tell you the exact like path from beginning to end, because it's so different all along the way. Oftentimes it's very difficult for us to know, like, or tell her for us to know, like, or for me to tell you or communicate with you the exact way that a policy gets introduced and passed. But ultimately we find a lawmaker, we pitch them the idea,

and then that lawmaker decides, okay, yeah, I like this bill. I like this concept. I am going to introduce the policy. And then from there, we go through the committee process. And then we go to the House, the Senate, we got it both done on both sides. And ultimately the, if we're lucky, the governor signs it into law, which is what we're waiting

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That's bit.ly slash itrust--Y slash I-T-R-U-S-T dash S-C-O-T-T. You have to try this now. It seems you've been largely successful in effectively every state where you've started to get them introduced. Is that true? Or have there been states where you get these bills introduced and just no momentum and we don't really hear about it? Yeah, I mean, we've been in 20 states this year. And, you know, so a lot of those bills ended up either getting only introduced or through one house or through just the Senate, through one chamber, I should say. And they don't ultimately get up, get passed into law. But the vast majority of bills that we work on, it's a two year long process. I mean,

take the state of Oklahoma as an example. That was the state to pass our core piece of policy into law, the first one in 2024. We had two in 2023. They were the first one in 2024. But we started working with them the year prior. And so we are very much in the mindset that the vast majority of these legislative efforts are going to be a multi-year process. And are you doing effectively the same legislation in each state? Have you sort of come in with a boilerplate for what you think is the most basic, important legislation you need to get passed and you push that? It's the right to mine has been largely one of them, correct? Yeah, right to mine definitely was our core piece of policy in 2023. That's the one we passed into

law in Montana and Arkansas. And then this year we decided to add some things to it because we thought, well, this is going really well. The price of Bitcoin is going up. The market's improving. The momentum is increasing. And the viewpoint from lawmakers is improving. And so we added things like protections for self-custody, protection for node running. We also tech neutralized our approach to consensus mechanisms. So all consensus mechanisms are broadly protected within the legislation now. And so we've called that one kind of like our digital bill of rights or our Bitcoin bill of rights. So it's an expansion of it has all the right to mine stuff in there. It's an expansion of right to mine.

And that is the one that we're pushing for the most part in every single state. Now, there are some changes like we have our ETF efforts that we're doing where we want to see state pensions invest into the Bitcoin ETF. We also have some nascent energy bills that we're trying to run. But the vast majority of it, you're right, Scott, is all trying to make sure we get this core piece of policy in to protect the digital asset and Bitcoin ecosystem broadly. Why focus specifically on the states? Or are you actually making an effort at the national level as well? Well, I like to tell people, I think the state work across the country is a national level, right? We are a nationwide state level organization. Uh, what we believe is that when we pass good policy at the state level, that ultimately that policy will impact federal law.

You don't need to look much farther than the cannabis industry to see exactly how this can play out. You know, they've gone state by state since 2010. They've had a ton of success. In 2012, they started with Washington and Colorado, and then they moved on to the rest of the country. And now 75% plus, even red states, right? Starting the blue states, moving to the red states,

and you see a lot of states coming on board. And now, because there's so many pro-cannabis states out there, you see them moving to take marijuana down the schedule at the federal level. Ultimately, I believe that marijuana, because of the state work, the state work that has been done, that the cannabis industry will ultimately be, you know, become legalized in the country. And I believe that we're on that same exact path with Bitcoin and digital asset policy. We started in the red states. We got to just like the cannabis industry did to start. And now we're on that same exact path with Bitcoin and digital asset policy. We started in the red states. We got two, just like the cannabis industry did to start. And now we're pushing that

policy across the country. And it's our hopes as we continue to drive forward that the federal level will ultimately act as a reaction to what's happening at the state level. I love that you've added protection of self-custody among the others. But quietly, it seems that the battle for self-custody has really, really materialized here in a way that many people didn't expect. I think nobody's necessarily surprised at the SEC or this administration coming after the Uniswaps and the MetaMasks and consensus, things like that. But I think that a lot of Bitcoiners didn't expect that to trickle down to Bitcoin. And now when you start to read what's being proposed in the legislation and the words coming out of Elizabeth Warren's mouth, it seems that they don't want anybody to be able

to self-custody anything. Now, my view is that that's a very vocal minority of the government, but still very vocal and very powerful. Yeah, that's actually absolutely right, Scott. It's something that, you know, we, before all these attacks started to take place, we were thinking to ourselves, we're predicting that these attacks would be coming, given the direction that we were headed in. And so we were right in the way that we were approaching it. We do see attacks coming from Elizabeth Warren's office. We also see in the

samurai case, the way that they were writing about like why they were prosecuting them was very concerning. And especially with regards to like how they were talking about peer to peer transactions, which is something that our bill does protect to some extent, but we even plan on expanding that even further to protect peer to peer transactions. I mean, they're basically saying you don't even need to hold the money to be considered a money transmitter. I'm like, well, that's the whole point, right? Is that you're taking the money and you're moving it somewhere else on someone's behalf. That makes you a money transmitter business or a money service business. They're sort of saying now and try to argue that that doesn't even need to happen.

You don't even need to possess the money. So really kind of scary and very worrying approach by the federal government in the way that they're going after Samurai, the way that Elizabeth Warren has been going after Bitcoin and digital assets broadly. hoping that long term we get federal action out of this. And just as a quick note there, there is not just the cannabis industry. There's many movements throughout American politics that have succeeded at the state level. Women's suffrage is a huge one. You know, the women's right to vote, like all of that came about at the state level. And we want to see more, more and more and more state action take place, especially as D.C. becomes so divided and so difficult to get anything done in Washington. You know, I joke that, you know, Washington, D.C. is where your dreams go to die. And that's why we need to go back to the states, use that laboratory of democracy to be able to get things done. In fact, Bloomberg did a whole article on this in 2015. They did a

study showing that when you see a flurry of action take place at the state level, that 90% of the time plus results in federal action. So we're following that playbook. We're going to stick to it. And long term, we believe that because of our work that we are going to impact federal policy. Yeah, the samurai case is exceptionally interesting. I mean, we've seen effectively in the last few months, at least sort of mentions or not direct attacks, but you can tell what direction they're heading from. I think DOJ, FBI, certainly the SEC, certainly the CFTC, the White House. I mean, this is very much on the docket. And it kind of seemingly goes back to that executive order from Biden, which we thought was maybe a positive for the industry.

Like a year and a half, two years ago, we said, everybody get your ducks in line. We need some answers here. Well, none of that was positive in hindsight. Yeah, I think I remember back now the only one big positive I remember from it was they did say that Bitcoin mining can be good for mitigating methane emissions. So I was like, all right, we got one in there, right? Winner, winner. I was glad to see that. But generally, yeah. But there was a sentiment that like, oh, the White House is talking about this. Great.

We're going to get some sensible policy. Didn't go that direction at all. Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, there was a darker side to the executive order. And I wrote a piece about that when it first came out. That was very troubling. Of course, there were great things to cheer about. The fact that they were even talking about Bitcoin and digital assets broadly was, I think, a positive sign, although the order itself was not. That being said, that order could have been much, much worse. I mean, there were folks on the ground there that I was chatting with that helped write that order.

And they were like, you guys don't know how close it came to being so, so, so much worse. So glad that it was only as bad as it was. And also glad now that we seem to be turning a corner when it comes to the way that not only Democrats, but Republicans are looking at Bitcoin, given the way that Trump has come out and is endorsing the technology. You're starting to see, I think, a shift in the way that people perceive this industry and the way that they perceive Bitcoin and crypto single issue voters. Now, for the first time ever, you have well, he's actually the leading according to the betting markets right now. Trump is the leading candidate to win. And he is endorsing Bitcoin. And so 55% on Poly Market and even a 50-45 spread, I think,

on more traditional polls. So, you know, it's when you do the math, that's like a 22 percent lead on Polymarket. But I think that's skewed to the crypto echo chamber, who we know probably have a bias. I'm sure. I mean, but even if you go to the non-crypto betting markets, you can see that he does have a lead. And it's like incredible to see. So you have the leading presidential candidate endorsing Bitcoin and pushing back on CBDCs, which is something actually that we also have had some work in doing as well at Satoshi Action. We think it's important to make sure that people have access to what we would call public money, so to speak, like digital assets, and stay away from things like CBDCs, which seek to completely remove any sense of privacy whatsoever.

A lot to unpack there. So I want to ask you a question specifically about Trump, and then we can go, I guess, deeper into the level of Bitcoin in national politics, which I think is astounding if you actually zoom out that this has become a key issue in the presidential campaign for 2024, which I think it undeniably has. We talk about how the leading candidate for the presidency is bullish and talking about Bitcoin and has really embraced it. Do you think he is the leading candidate right now because he has embraced it? Are we a large enough constituency that we've seen that spread dramatically widened since he took this pro-crypto stance?

You asked a great question there. Are we a large enough contingency? I don't think it's the fact that we are large necessarily. I think it is how powerful we are. Previously, you had mentioned that there's a small but powerful contingency pushing against digital assets. I think we're a little bit bigger than that contingency. But in retrospect, in kind of comparison to the rest of the issues out there, I don't think we are necessarily bigger, but we are absolutely a hot topic issue, hot button issue. And you see a lot of money in this space. Now people are also, we're at all time highs and waiting to go higher. There's a lot of capital getting ready to flow into supporting a candidate. I think really also it's the divergence between the two candidates that we see right now. You have one administration, the one in office right now, which wishes to suppress Bitcoin and digital assets, won't even let SAB 121 repeal take place.

They won't even let one little tiny victory take place whatsoever. And then on the other side, you have a presidential candidate, also a former president, who is hoping to give a voice to this community. And so it's, even though myself, I'm from Portland, Oregon, you know, it's like, it's a very strange place that we found ourselves in where a lot of my, you know, liberal friends, a lot of my progressive friends that are Bitcoiners are, you know, agreeing with Trump for the first time ever versus agreeing with a Democrat. And that's really the fault of the Democrats alone. I've spent a lot of time myself

personally trying to educate Democrats, trying to educate progressives, particularly ones that are in office. And I've had some good success. But at the end of the day, you know, Republicans are really leading on this issue. Ultimately, I do push for and I will sustain all efforts to encourage people to make this a bipartisan or nonpartisan issue. But at the end of the day, like, you know, Republicans really are winning out this vote. And I do think that because of the fact that Trump has become so vocal, it's not like he's just getting like a single issue voter group who is, you know, really, really bent on supporting their issue. It's one that's like extremely loud on on Twitter, on social media.

And like I said before, one that has a lot of money to throw behind candidates. And so certainly I do believe that to some extent, the support for this issue is definitely putting Trump in a better position to win. I mean, these are, as I mentioned, there are voters in this space that are far, far left that might vote for Trump for the first time in their lives. And that sort of like would be unthinkable previous to Bitcoin as an issue. The amount of attention you get for a mention of Bitcoin is so disproportionate to the amount of people who care about it or how small it is. A media mention of this goes so much more viral than it should based on, to your point, how many of us there are or how important this actually is to

your average person. It's just smart political strategy to come out in favor of this, especially when you have an opponent who's so against. Sab 121 is the best example. That was really, I feel like, the Biden's administration's opportunity to pivot a bit, right? And we've seen some softening rhetoric. But when you have Chuck Schumer and nine other senators going against Elizabeth Warren, who sat on the floor and tried to get the vote completely blocked and they go against her right in her face and then over 70 Democratic Congress people completely bipartisan, completely, you know, really not a controversial piece of legislature at all. Right. I mean, legislation at all.

And he preemptively says he will veto it and then follows through and actually vetoes it. It just seems insane. Also, if they actually want to control this asset class, they should have allowed SAB 121 because it would have put Bitcoin custody in the hands of trusted financial institutions like State Street and BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs. It just makes absolutely no sense. It shows how utterly scattered they are. I mean, that's a great point, especially that comment at the end there. You know, even the banks at this point were supporting that SAB 121 bill. I mean, lobbying for it. Everybody was in favor of it to the point where you even had, you know, Chuck Schumer, like you said, supporting the bill. No, I was even talking to folks that were doing a lot of the groundwork on this legislation. And they told

me they had they were surprised that he came on board. So you do see, I think, a significant turn of events taking place across the entire space. I was just talking to a gentleman earlier today who was there on the ground with Trump as they were bringing all the Bitcoin miners in to talk about the future of this technology. And you just, he was just saying, like, it was just wild to be in the room and to, to see the shift in the way that this was being talked about and at the highest, absolute highest level. Um, so yeah, I do agree that we should have, uh, Biden didn't do himself any, any justice, any service by, service by vetoing SAB 121. So there's some theories that he was like, it needs to be done in FIT 21, which FIT 21 does also eliminate the SAB 121 problem. So we'll see.

I'm not going to hold my breath, but I would love to see, obviously, long term. The ultimate goal here is to see both sides advance this issue. I've said for a long time, we need to get away from this world where we're fighting over whether or not we should do Bitcoin or digital assets. And we need to move towards a world where we are fighting over how we do Bitcoin and digital assets, because there will be some big fights that will take place politically over how we utilize this technology. Same with how we utilize the internet, right? Net neutrality, that was a huge fight, but they weren't fighting over whether or not the internet should exist. They were fighting over policy on how we should advance forward. We need to get to that place

with Bitcoin. And I think with Trump endorsing this technology, we've come a much, much, what is it they say? A small step for mankind sort of situation. That's where we are right now. And I think that things are changing rapidly and it's going to be very interesting to see how far we go this year. Okay, so we have the presidential election. Obviously, we both agree that this has become a major topic and probably bigger than it maybe even should be because of Trump's embracing it. I want to go kind of candidate by candidate and ask, well, your opinion and what you're

hearing. Are people viewing Trump's new interest in Bitcoin, knowing he was dismissive about it in the past, as a political maneuver? Or do we think that he's been legitimately orange-pilled and understands this? Or did they just see there's an opportunity to gain a lot of votes and steal a lot, I think, from the Biden side? And we'll go one by one sort of through them. Yeah, in a Trump situation, I think there are folks absolutely working time over time to to fully orange pill Trump. You know, I wrote an article about this back in 2022 saying, you know, mission critical orange pill, the orange man. It was very clear, at least to me at the time,

that we were not going to see a Biden administration become positive towards the technology, which is unfortunate. I think the Biden administration has done a very big disservice on this issue, particularly for the Democrats in general, right? Now that he's suppressed the ability for Democrats to be able to be leaders on what is really a technology that can unlock a lot of opportunities for those that want to see a more progressive policy movement take place in the United States. You know, Bitcoin and digital assets are amazing and incredibly powerful technology. We're banking in the unbanked. We're providing financial services to folks that have been left out, marginalized, discriminated against. You literally can't discriminate with Bitcoin.

That's like the perfect situation. You can do remittances to families back home. It really, truly is a technology that can help Democrats achieve a lot of the things that they've wanted to achieve for a very, very long time. So it's so unfortunate that they're in this situation. I blame it more on others. I don't think it's directly a Biden issue, but it is his administration at the end of the day. And then with Trump, again, going back to him, I don't necessarily think he has been orange-pilled yet. We shall see. But at the end of the day, he is what I like to call in a position where he can benefit from this technology, whether or not he is favorable, actually truly favorable towards it himself. And maybe that will lead to something better along the way. Let's take Naeem Bukele as an example down in El Salvador. Theoretically, I can't say. i've not had a personal conversation with him let's assume though that he doesn't care

about bitcoin at all that he doesn't even care about the technology and it's all just for his own like you know growing his own country or growing his own political power um even though if that's true he is still doing really good things for Bitcoin. Bitcoin has this very odd ability where even if you're doing things for your own personal self gain, you end up actually doing good. It's a very backwards court sort of way to view how people operate around an issue. Typically, we don't like to see lip service. We don't like to see people faking things or pretending to like things. But if they are willing to actually push Bitcoin forward, and even though it's for themselves, it does ultimately help the issue move forward. It does ultimately help the technology and everybody who's a part

of it. And so I think that's why you tend to see, even though you tend to see world leaders jumping on board with the technology at a rapid pace, whether or not they are super pro Bitcoin themselves or orange pilled themselves. I don't think we'll ever get like another Senator Lummis. But I do believe that, you know, there are some things that people can gain from this technology just by getting out there and supporting it and saying that they're endorsing it and they're going to they're going to push it forward. Now, on the Biden side, I think it's pretty clear.

I don't think I need to go too far down that road. Like there's really not been a signal whatsoever that they have. They've tried to signal. They've tried to signal a thawing. We have recent news. Yeah, there was like that. But then he's going to consider accepting crypto as donations using Coinbase Commerce. The irony of that when his own SEC, very politicized SEC, no matter what anyone says about independent agency, is literally suing Coinbase. And the donations would be largely assets viewed as unregistered securities by his own SEC that would be donated to his little campaign. But it seems like they've attempted to signal that they're at least backing off the attacks.

But then when push comes to shove, you get the veto, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's where we are right now. And so I don't know to what extent the rumors are true with regards to accepting crypto donations. I don't know if that's been fully confirmed, but I have seen the news on that. And I have seen some people trying to float the idea that the Biden administration

is going to move away from Elizabeth Warren. I've even repeated those rumors myself. But yeah, but we still are waiting on confirmation. Like at the end of the day, where's the proof of work? Where's the real result? You know, we can hear rumors all day long and all week long and all the way up to the election, but you need to see real tangible movements, I believe, from we, you know, we need to hold our elected officials and people that wish

to be in power. We need to hold them to account if they're going to, you know, rumor about something or whisper about something. They need to move out of the shadows and start actually taking real action. This is something that I've promoted for a long time. You know, back in the day, it was all you had to do was put Bitcoin in your bio, you know, and you got, you know, as elected a leader, you'd, you'd get tons of people supporting you and ranting and raving. This was just mere years ago, even if they literally hated you yesterday. Yes. Yes. Even if they hated you yesterday, you put Bitcoin in your bio, all of a sudden you are part of the accepted crowd and you're going to get, you know, 10,000 likes, you know, you introduce, you could introduce, then it moved on to, you know, introduce a bill and you would get 10,000 likes. And then people are like, well,

that didn't get passed into law. And now we're in a world where bills are actually getting passed into law at the state level. And then we were, then we transitioned to that same program to the federal level, you know, putting it in your bio, tweeting about it, then introducing a bill. And now legislation is actually making progress. We're going to go through that same exact experience with a president and presidential candidates. First it's's in the bio, then it's tweeting about it and you get tons of likes, right? Trump is getting all over the media for tweeting about it right now. But what we need to continue to push for is we want to see real results. We want to see real effort. So if the Biden administration wants to get in the game,

it's not that hard. There's tons of Bitcoiners out there that'd be more than ready and willing to help them. I'm sure there's a ton of progressive Democrat Bitcoiners in particular that would die to be spending time with the Biden administration, helping them to come around on this issue. So I'll pause there. That was a lot. But at the end of the day, I think generally we are very much heading in the right direction. And I'm excited to see what a Democrat in the crypto space. They're dying watching what Biden is doing and trying to support and pushing as hard as they can to their credit to try to change that. But they all hone in on Elizabeth Warren, I think, and everybody does. And maybe her influence will start to diminish. I don't even say Biden anymore. I just say the

White House, because as you said before, we know it's not really him. But, you know, her chief of staffs are in the White House. She's the one who gave us, you know, legendary hits like Gary Gensler at the SEC. And now that we're getting a replacement FDIC chair and others, it's her people that they're trying to put in. So like you said, we need to see it before we believe it. But I think actually, you know, the John Deaton, Elizabeth Warren race might be more important than the presidential race at this point. You know, and I've been supporting John pretty hardcore. Before we move into any of that, I want to also talk about RFK. He was the first sort of candidate to really come out, I think, in favor of Bitcoin, show a pretty comprehensive

understanding of it. Trump sort of has seemingly been stealing the fire from that pro-crypto side of RFK. In fact, I think a lot of RFK's advisors are just moving on over to try to get themselves a seat at the table with Trump. Maybe they'd go back if RFK showed a bit more momentum. But where do you think he stands? Maybe you could even say, I don't think the guy's a chance, so it doesn't matter. But he was the first one who put this on the national stage vocally, I think, in the presidential race. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, he was also the very first presidential candidate to accept donations via the Lightning Network, something that I helped

the campaign with in the past. And so I agree. He deserves a ton of credit, absolutely, for being the first person, the first presidential candidate really that has a good shot or decent shot to put Bitcoin forward on their platform. He spoke at the Bitcoin conference. Same with Vivek as well, who was the first Republican presidential candidate to accept donations via the Lightning Network. But yes, it's hard to say. I think we're in a very unpredictable time, which has really been a big problem for the United States. Presidential elections are extremely unpredictable, the economy is extremely unpredictable. What's going to happen with the dollar is extremely unpredictable. What's happening in the wars overseas is very unpredictable. So I would love to see us move towards a more

predictable world. I think Bitcoin will help usher that in with 10-minute blocks and a perfectly finite, scarce supply that can never be changed, help people plan for the future and think for the future. But on the, but in the case of RFK, I think that ultimately, you know, it's very unpredictable in these presidential elections, what can happen. We've seen it time and time again. I think he sits in the spoiler seat right now, but he could end up moving into a, could move into a world where he becomes more competitive. I think he needs to get on the debate stage. If he gets on the debate stage, then he has a shot.

If he doesn't get on the debate stage, it's, you know, it really, we're, what are we talking about now here? We, we, if you're not on the debate stage, then I don't think the American public is going to view you as a viable candidate. Um, now there's some people pitching some pretty wild theories out there, but the moment you're pitching wild theories to me, usually I'm kind of sort of like, you know, I'm thinking you're in the single percentile, which is not good when you're running as a presidential candidate. What's the tipping point for you where you get enough states that

you don't have to be the one selling this to every state? Enough of them see what's happening. They see the groundswell and they start passing this kind of legislation on their own. That's a great question. In fact, that's already started happening. We've had lawmakers just introduce our policy because they see it in other states and they go, I like that. Let's just introduce it over here. And we had nothing to do with it whatsoever. And not only is it lawmakers, other think tanks. So you have what's been mostly so far center right think tanks, although we are working on some center left ones as well, but center right think tanks that operate at the state level, they just do their own state. They don't do anything else.

They have picked up our issue. In fact, two of them, our policy became their core issue near the end of the legislative cycle, where it was the only thing that they were really working on. So that is incredibly exciting to see because we really want to position ourselves long term as the idea generator, the idea generator, the policy generator, going and being active in every single little state with a state chapter. Although in theory seems like a great concept, it's much better, I think, to some extent for us to sit back and to say, hey, Texas think tank or Tennessee think tank or Oklahoma think tank or Oregon think tank, you are the brand of your state.

You should get behind this legislation and put it forward. And when they do, it adds a lot of oomph to our ability to get things done because like it or not, people love to hear from people that are from their state, that are from where they are from. You know, if you fly in, Dennis Porter, the previous podcaster, Twitter influencer flying in to tell them what to do, although I could be pretty convincing, is good. But they love to hear, lawmakers love to hear from people from their state. They love to hear from their constituents.

They love to hear from local think tanks. And so we're trying everything we can to advance that strategy to get more think tanks and more nonprofits that are politically engaged to support the policy efforts. So yeah, it's a great question. I don't talk about it enough, but we have seen states copy the work that we're doing without us being involved whatsoever. Got to love that. That's amazing because it's such heavy lifting to do what you do. You need that sort of, I think, virality for it to just start happening everywhere. Now, back to, I guess, Elizabeth Warren and Biden, or let's just say the aggressive stance taken by this

administration against the crypto industry, not let's just say the aggressive stance taken by this administration against the crypto industry, not necessarily just Bitcoin, the crypto industry as a whole. I've heard a lot of sort of theories about why that would be. Most stem back to Elizabeth Warren, of course, and her relationship with the banks. That's one. Number two, and she said it out loud, is the CBDC that you've mentioned before, a central bank digital currency, that is effectively clearing the path for us to eventually have that, which would obviously mean more control of the money for the government. I think that is a very compelling argument. John Deaton openly says that that is

Elizabeth Warren's goal or the goal of this administration. There's a third one that people aren't talking about as much anymore that I still think is the biggest one, which is Sam. Like Sam Bankman Freed just screwed everybody, right? And there was this long period of time, it's been a year and a half, almost two years, where you just couldn't come out pro-crypto because you had so much egg on your face as a result of Gary meeting with him and Maxine Waters. But people forget. Now, I don't think Sam was doing a good thing.

I don't think he was pushing good policy, but it was Democrats that he was publicly meeting with who were at least visually or the optics were that they were the ones pushing crypto legislation forward. And then all of a sudden, the Democrats went silent and completely against. I think most of this is Sam's fraud. Yeah, you know, that's a very, very good point. Oftentimes, it's not just lawmakers. When anybody goes through like a, you know, a public lashing over who they've partnered with, they kind of do everything they can to distance themselves from that. And so, unfortunately, I do believe, I don't know to what extent broadly, but there was certainly a level of impact that SBF and the fraud that Sam, you know, sort of pushed forward, that it did have

a very negative impact on a certain group of lawmakers, not just Democrats, but predominantly Democrats that that were impacted. And it's so unfortunate because, you know, he had a big dollar signs on him everywhere he was going. And and that's really, you know, kind of goes into one of the bigger problems we have in D.C. I won't I won't get too much into it here, but it's really just the amount of money that it takes to campaign finance, the amount of money it takes to get elected, you know, and that's what causes lawmakers when they see big dollar signs go up, they, they go chase it. Um, because you need millions of dollars to win a small little congressional seat. You need hundreds of millions of dollars to win a U S Senate seat. You need billions of dollars to win a presidential

election. So I won't get too much into like how we're going to solve that problem today, but that is part of why I think so many folks immediately were jumping on to, you know, team SBF and they got burned by it. And now they're having to distance themselves as much as they can from SBF. And I think that to them, it's like doing it at all costs. Like we need to even distance ourselves from Bitcoin and digital assets, which really is unfortunate. A hundred percent agree. And I agree with you fully that it has led to some of the, I think, negative viewpoints from Democrats on this issue.

Is the CBDC angle a real threat presently? I think we all agree that it's a amorphous threat of the future. We obviously see what's happening in China. Other countries, they're trying to adopt it. But in the United States, we've even had Jerome Powell come out and say we have zero intention of a central bank digital currency from the Fed that's not even on our radar. Is that the final boss here for sort of Bitcoin and policy is that they're trying to clear a path for eventually a central bank digital currency? You know, they say one thing and then they do another, right? You see a lot of actions

take place where central banks will say, we're not really interested in a CBDC, but then they have test pilots going for CBDC. So it's, yeah, yeah. So it is, is one of those things, again, where it's like, you know, judge people based on their actions, not their words. And central banks are very seemingly very interested in central bank digital currencies. Now, maybe they're just doing it to, you know, check it out and take a look. But, you know, I would, if I was a central bank, you know, I would be trying to make a CBDC because it dramatically expands my power and my ability to control the monetary supply and monetary policy. So I do think we need to be careful with regards to how these things roll

out. Now, at the end of the day, I've told this to people and people think I'm kind of like heretical when I say it, but I don't mind necessarily if one central bank wants to use a CBDC with another central bank, like that doesn't really bother me. What bothers me is when they, you know, the theoretical forcing or mandating of the use of central bank digital currencies on the public, which is happening, they're moving that direction in China. And there's a reason why they want to expand the control over the populace through the monetary supply, because they want to be able to, you know, fine tune and tweak the way that we operate and that we behave. Like it's at the end of the day, this stuff is going to result in an absolute obliteration

of privacy. It's going to give them the ability to turn on and off how we use our money. They might say, well, here's your money, but you got to spend it by next week, or you can only spend it on these things. Or one of my greatest fears is that they'll say, oh, you're supporting this political party? Oh, you can't support that political party. So there's theoretical upsides of a CBDC, but by far and away, they are overwhelmed by the vast majority of downsides, which is this grotesque expansion of power at the highest level of the monetary system,

which will result in the ability for someone to come in one day that isn't politically aligned with you and use that power against you. I think that's the one thing that we need to, we continue to not learn very well in the United States over the last 50 years is that when you say, when you come into power and you say, oh, I'm going to add this power to the federal government because I like the ability to be able to do X, Y, Z, it'll help me be able to accomplish my goals. The next administration, they might use that power to do the exact opposite thing that you're trying to do now. So we always have to think very carefully when we want to dramatically expand federal power or power at the very top of the food chain in the monetary world.

Centralized systems don't need more power, right? And it's the most glaring, I think, example of that. As you said, there is a theoretical world where a CBDC is just digital cash. I don't believe any government would do this with the temptation of that power that you described, but with the right administration and the right intention, which may not exist, it could have major privacy protections built into it.

It could be a great system for transacting faster and cheaper, right? Like a stable coin, something like that. And to your point, if that's central bank to central bank and they just want to transfer money cheaper and faster with their own currency, great. It's all the things that you described that are just terrifying. And I don't trust any government or politician, not because I have a tinfoil hat on. It's just too much power dangled in front of their face. And those people are running to the PM office because they want power.

It's just, it is what it is. I agree. I think there's something to be noted here too with regards to how the current monetary system works. Like, you know, theoretically, people will want to say, oh, the U.S. is like we want to create our own central bank digital currency and make it available to everybody across the world are looking for how to move away from the dollar system, which is really is the swift system. We always say the dollar system. It's actually the financial rails that the dollar exists on that are the true power. It's the ability to sanction anyone at will. You know, we did this to Russia.

We basically yanked them out of the financial system. We've done it to other countries in the Middle East. And so I think a lot of folks are looking for how to get away from that sort of environment where they can't even, you know, have the ability to pay their bills if the United States deems them to be an opponent, which has been a great power for the U.S. It's our foreign policy, you know, superpower that we can do whatever we want with it and be able to, you know, suppress our opponents without going to war. Very powerful tool to use for foreign policy. But I think people are becoming more and more aware of that, and they're wanting to move away from that system.

So CBDC would be like an expansion of that program and that type of system. In my opinion, I think we're more likely to see broadly expansions of stablecoins across the world. I think we're going to see a US stable coin expand dramatically on the foreign side. And also domestically, it's pretty clear to see who those two might be. And then as people get onto the dollar stable coins, they're also going to be turning around and going, oh, what's this Bitcoin thing that I've seen go up constantly against the dollar? And I've said this for a while too. I ask this question to people. They always say, oh, I don't like the Bitcoiners. you know, that I don't, I don't

like stable coins. They're not Bitcoin. Well, I always say, who are the number one buyers of Bitcoin in the world? It's dollar holders. Dollar holders are the biggest buyers of Bitcoin in the entire world. The reason why is because the dollar actually gives you some level of stability and ability to plan for the future and invest in the future and save for the future. But it's like debased enough to where you like, you don't want to like hold onto it for too long. Um, and so, you know, take that in comparison to checking account, it's your savings account. It's yeah. Take that and compare that to, uh, you know, any sort of fiat currency out there in the world today. And the vast majority of fiat currencies are so horrible for saving in and the financial infrastructure in a in a state or a country is so bad that people don't have the ability to truly save. And so they never even able to use Bitcoin.

And so I'm a big fan of I would say a big fan. I'm just a big believer in the theory that we're going to see this dollar milkshake theory play out where everybody's going to move on to the dollar one way or another. And then as we move on forward with that program, more and more people who are on the dollar are going to end up buying Bitcoin. Sorry, a little bit of a rabbit trail there. No, I love that. I thought it was an interesting point. No, and listen, so you take Tether, obviously they're one of the largest holders of US treasuries, larger than most nations. Wild. Number 20. Tether, stable coins, right. Stablecoins are hyper-dollarization, right? I mean, they help the United States government proliferate the dollar.

People don't realize this. A lot of Bitcoiners want to deny it. But listen, there's objective facts worth discussing. And in most places where there's hyperinflation or people have problems with the banking system, they're not rushing to Bitcoin now. They're rushing to dollars. And Tether has given them the ability to get those dollars that they would have had to go buy at a premium in cash on the black market for some shady guy with a machine gun.

Now they just do it on Tron. That's where people in countries with hyperinflation are running to protect their money. Bitcoin is a superior store of value to the dollar. But for 99% of the world, the dollar is the superior store of value to the dollar, but for 99% of the world, the dollar is the superior store of value to whatever they have, right? So, and Tron, they don't know what their stable coin is or what rails it's using. Their friend says, download this wallet so I can send you $7 and it's cheap and fast. And the dream on Tron, I think now 57, 58, I don't want to misquote it, percent of Tether is on the Tron now of that $110 billion market cap. But to your point, most importantly, that should be viewed

as a gateway drug to Bitcoin, just like everything else in crypto. I understand the hate that shit coins or whatever you want to call all of it gets from Bitcoiners. But if we're doing objective facts, if we look at the past cycle, the majority of people who are onboarded into this space, one way or another, came through NFTs and dog coins, right? And a lot of those people, we hope and believe, found their way to Bitcoin. Probably more, a lot of people got destroyed.

I don't want to deny that. But a lot of people found their way to Bitcoin through that back alley, probably more than old people who like watched podcasts like this and went, Bitcoin's an important asset. I need to store my value, which is true. But there's a lot of ways for people to find their way to Bitcoin. There's so many different ways. So many different people have found their way to Bitcoin. Every time I talk to someone, it seems to be a uniquely different story. But there are some that are, there's a general overlay on a lot of ways that people get in, which is through some other token, through some other coin. And ultimately, I think my biggest argument for the stablecoin thesis, and again, this

is not something I'm running around saying I believe is a good idea. We're not banking ourselves in stable coins. Yeah. I don't own any stable coins. So it's just like looking at like the direction of where the world is heading. People want dollars. There's extreme demand for dollars all across the world. 90% of the global economy operates on dollars. When I went to the Republic of Georgia, been there a couple of times now, the central bankers there, I was able to speak to one of them. He said 99 99 of their loans are done in dollars like they can't even get people to use the local currency and so there's this hyper demand

for dollars again it's long term uh bitcoin wins but in the transitionary period it's good for people to get away from unstable currencies and move to one that's more stable because that gives them the ability to actually save and plan for the future which means buying bitcoin Bitcoin. Because if you're going to save in something, there's no better technology in the world to save in than Bitcoin. Yeah, I absolutely love that. I just think that stable coins are net positive for the space. I think that's a way to kind of wrap up that topic. And honestly, I would rather see stable coins proliferate than a central bank. That's exactly right. I'll take Circle and Tether all day over a Fed CBDC.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is just going to be what happens. I don't really see a world where CBDCs win. I think they're up against a lot of political headwinds in the United States. And also that other countries are not going to be interested in. I'm like, I'm not going to want to take, you know, the Chinese CBDC or the, uh, the Russian CBDC or anybody's CBDC. Like, I'm just not interested in that. Um, I'm much more interested in, in having private money or sometimes I go back and forth where I say, call it private or public because it's, it's publicly available, but it's like private, it's not government money.

So, um, yeah, I'm much more interested in seeing CBDCs proliferate and allowing people to have access to, to digital assets broadly. I mean, you're seeing this just take place right now, right? You said Tether is the 20th largest holder of U.S. treasuries in the world. And to some extent, Americans are benefiting from this because they are working to help prop up the U.S. treasuries right now, right? The economy could, in theory, be much worse if it wasn't for stablecoin issuers buying up U.S. treasuries, because China certainly is selling them, as it has been selling them historically for a long time now. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the last one that I was sort of talking about,

the theories for why this administration may be so anti is that they're in bed with the banks, right? And we've seen sort of the interplay, these conversations between Elizabeth Warren and Jamie Dimon, for example, on the Senate floor, where it's clearly like a panned and planned conversation where they just basically annihilate Bitcoin. If I was in power, I would kill it and blah, blah, blah. But meanwhile, JP Morgan's offering it to their clients

and they have JP Morgan coin for cross- cross border transactions. I mean, is this just really about something that's a threat to the banks and them trying to crush it so that their banking lobby doesn't get offended? I mean, it's in my opinion, I do think you going back to something you said really earlier with regards to Elizabeth Warren. I think she's a big fan of having total government oversight because she believes that these corporations will take advantage of people. I get it. Listen, like corporations, especially corrupt corporations, have historically tried to take advantage of consumers.

And so she views herself as like, you know, trying to protect consumers. But I don't think she realizes that what she's doing long term is actually going to hurt consumers and their ability to access the technology in a safe and effective way. If you really, really want to help consumers, you should be coming up with a massive education effort to try to help people understand how digital assets work, how to tell the difference between something that's a total scam and something that's not, and then also how to transact in it, how to use it, because that's where a lot of problems are rising up as well. People don't know how to use the technology. They run into situations where they don't know how to spend it and they lose it or they misplace their hardware wall because they didn't know they needed to keep the backup phrase.

Right. So that would be my message to lawmakers. If you want to help protect the consumer, focus on education. I couldn't agree more. So listen, as we sort of come to the end, is there anything I missed, anything you're working on? I definitely, at the end, I want you to tell everyone how they can support and help. But are there any topics we may have missed that you think are important right now for people to be paying attention to? Absolutely. There is one that I think folks need to pay attention to, which is this debanking issue that we've been going through over the last several years, Chokepoint 2.0, as it was dubbed, and I'll keep it very high level. But the basic premise is that

there is a problem that Satoshi Action has identified, we put a paper out, it's on our website. If you go to our policy section, you look up debanking, we have a whole policy paper on what the problem is. And also, we are working towards what that solution is as well. And we ultimately believe that states have the ability to play an important role into being able to protect not only the crypto industry, but the broader, you know, space where people are, you know, politically marginalized in the banking space. You know, we have the cannabis industry, you have gun store owners, even reproductive rights and abortion clinics, like they have this issue as well on the left. So our policy essentially

says that states need to start working towards getting their own bedmaster accounts, and they need to have their own banks so that they can compete against the federal system because the federal system is too powerful, too big, and they're pushing people out of that system. And it's unfair, and I believe that it needs to stop. And so we're going to be fighting to make sure that that changes, and we'll be working in states like North Dakota and and hopefully texas maybe some others as well as wyoming um to be a digital idea ford i giggled they need to get their own master accounts states yes but i just giggled because custodia obviously which is going to be like a fully backed bank caitlyn long of course unable to do yes right so well caitlyn um yeah this is the part of the story for how this came about. But Caitlin's

efforts were part of the reason why we were like, wow, we really need to get in here and apply some pressure to make this thing move forward. And then Caitlin Long ended up introducing our paper at the Wyoming Select Committee hearing there for digital assets in Wyoming. So very exciting progress. Like I said, I won't get too deep into it at the end of the show. It gets a little technical on the banking side, but we do believe that the dual banking system is where the crypto industry will find a foothold at the state level,

and they'll be able to survive and thrive into the future without worrying if they're going to be kicked out the next day because some federal regulator doesn't like what they're doing. Yeah. How can people get behind Stochi Action Fund, what you guys are doing? How can we support you?

Do you take inbound calls from people who have a political politician friend? Do they need to send money? What can we do? Yeah. I tell people there's three really big ways that you can help. One is to get directly involved by volunteering, helping us to meet folks that would maybe make a difference for us, showing up at some events that we do. Two is of course, to, to, to support us financially. We are a nonprofit. So 100% of our support comes from our donors. And so we are able to expand our operations when our donors get behind us and believe in what we are doing. You know, we have a corporate track. We have a, we also have an individual track. So if you're, you're a company that wants to get help and policy support, we're not only a great resource, but we can pass things into law. And then if you're an individual

who really believes in Bitcoin and digital assets, and you want to see this country be a leader on that technology, we of course have a way to get you involved there as well. And then the third one I tell people most importantly is build a Bitcoin or digital asset business here in the United States. If they don't see a Bitcoin or digital asset business to promote in a state, then I have nothing to show the lawmaker. And it really sets us back. So if you're thinking about building a business, build it here in America.

So we have something to brag about to the lawmakers. Amazing. At least maybe we can bring back some of the people who left. Yeah, that's also the plan. Long-term, here we go. All right, man. I absolutely love what you're doing.

I applaud it. I thank you. Man, I didn't know you'd be able to get it done when we were first talking about it years ago. You were always very confident, but it seemed like a very ambitious mission. And clearly, it's happening. And as a result of your efforts, and I think just the industry pushing forward, we're in just such a better place from almost every perspective, certainly than we would have imagined a year ago when it seemed like the industry was done for in the United States. That's right. Well, thank you again for having me on.

And it's great to catch up and see the progress that we've made since we last chatted. And I look forward to coming back on when we end debanking in the United States. Love it, man. Thank you so much. I look forward to following up when we've got 10, 12, 15, 20, 25 states on board. There we go, Scott. Thank you again.

Thanks, Dennis.