The Wolf Of All Streets - Wall Street Is Quietly Betting Bigger on Crypto

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

In this episode, the panel focuses on the growing divide between Wall Street's rapid adoption of blockchain technology and the political uncertainty surrounding the CLARITY Act in Washington. We explain why regulatory clarity is essential for crypto innovation, institutional adoption, and tokenization, while arguing that continued delays risk pushing the industry overseas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, good morning, everyone. Being late. Can we lose you, Dave? Sorry. Can you guys hear me now? Yep, yep. Cool. Thanks for letting me know because the light on my microphone is on the far side of me.

So if I happen to inadvertently hit the mute button on it, I don't see it. The thing that's interesting is in the space of a day, last night I was at a dinner for the board of Security Traders Association. And pretty much every firm is talking about tokenization, use of crypto, trading, the convergence of crypto and traditional assets. All of this is happening. And all of them are like looking at Washington and saying, what the fuck. And at the same time... Can anyone hear, Dave? Yeah, I can hear him.

Yeah, I can hear him too. Yeah, we hear you, Dave. Okay. Well, maybe you would drop down and bring back up, I think it was... Who was that? Regime, maybe. Yeah. No, no, I can hear.

You can hear me now? Okay, cool. So there's this interesting juxtaposition that pretty much, and pretty much all the major firms are pushing to be able to trade 20, you know, basically to trade around the clock, depending on whether the weekends or not, that, that's, it's probably three, you know, 23, five is what they're looking for. But also to be able to offer, like Morgan Stanley is crypto,

and the convergence of these assets together. etc. There's all sorts of really interesting development going on to make that happen, much of which has investment implications for both crypto assets and crypto firms and crypto-adjacent firms. At the same time, we have this group of morons in Washington who are so butt-hurt about Trump and what he did with the Trump of Melania meme coins that they're lying, and they're lying in such a way that's incredibly obvious. I mean, a kindergarten student could probably understand that what Trump did was completely legal and authorized by the Gensler SEC. And now they're saying that they need an act that's so much stronger than what we currently have. It's just, to me, it's just mind-boggling this

nonsense. And obviously, if all of Wall Street wants to see regulation, it'll happen. But the politics now are just toxic. Now, I am uniquely qualified, I think, to make these ridiculous. statements or to be this angry because, as you all know, or many of you have been listening to me, I was very critical and still am and think that the bull market was half as big as it was because of the Trump and Melania meme coins and all the grifting that pissed off half the country. So I have been very, very clear about this. I mean, despite, you know, my political leanings being more towards the administration than against it, I called that out as absolute corruption, absolute grift.

and something that should never have happened. And it's the kind of thing that there shouldn't need to be a law. Anyone who is in public service at all should know that this sort of shit shouldn't be done. And I would say it to his face. So that's fine. But the fact is that the politics are stupid. They will get resolved, even if it takes till 2028 to do it. But we're sitting in this ridiculous situation where who knows whether we're going to get a bill to understand.

And the other thing that's really interesting about this bill, and I'll be curious what people think, Tomer, I'm sure you're gonna agree with me, is I don't think Bitcoin, I don't think that while it may very well influence the short-term price of Bitcoin, because there are people who think it's relevant, I don't think any of the development going on in Bitcoin

is really important for this bill. The closest thing that happens that this bill does, the only thing it does that's really directly Bitcoin related is it will specifically allow people who use third parties to invest in Bitcoin, whether that's ETFs, which are somewhat protective, already or brokerages to have their assets protected in the case of bankruptcy, which is not a small thing, but it has no impact on self-custody. The BRCA, which now they're starting to reopen up

for software development, that does have some implications. But really, it's for most of crypto and not for Bitcoin. And so here we are on Crypto Town Hall, and we're trying to look at broadly, and it's being, it's being confused from externally. So I'm curious. I said a lot of stuff here, hopefully, and I didn't trigger one hand, which tells me I'm doing something wrong. Okay, Matt.

No, I was going to see if Tomer wanted to jump in first, but I think this has really become a political football, unfortunately. Yeah, there are some Democrats, I think, that want to do this. But when we're faced with the midterm elections, if they do vote for this, they're going to have to go back to their base and say, why did you vote for something that looks like you're supporting the administration?

And I really think, to your point, David, everything I just started the show was it was a great rip right there. Trump did the industry no favors with what happened. And if these Democrats, they really want to put an end to what Trump did, then pass the fucking Clarity Act, guys. Sorry for the swear word, but let me just be real here. Just pass the act and then that wouldn't happen. I'm done.

I'll land my plane. Sorry. There's nothing to be sorry about. It's a, it is, I mean, you know, I, I spent my whole life on trading. So dropping F bonds to me is no big deal. The fact is they are being fucking crazy. Gensler made meme coins legal. I think he did so in order to sabotage the crypto industry.

I mean, Trump took advantage of the law. So to make the argument that clarity somehow helps him when maybe it doesn't curtail that activity enough for their taste, but it's still a step in the positive direction. And the other thing that really pisses me off, and Carlo, you're the lawyer here, so I'm about to trigger you, at least I'm going to try, is people need to understand that the Clarity Act or anything Congress does sets a direction. It does not set the magnitude.

It does not do the specifics. Those rules are written by regulators, and effectively, the longer it takes to start the clock on getting the regulators to get things done, the longer the grift will continue. And so it has a direct representation. And so saying, well, it doesn't say you can't do X. That's bullshit. It doesn't have to. The whole point of Chevron deference was to not need it.

And now that that's gone, regulators need to be able to show that what they're doing is within congressional intent. And then they have to go through the Administrative Procedures Act to show that it has a positive cost benefit. You trigger me. But am I wrong? No, you're not wrong at all, David. In fact, I've been observing over the course of the week that you're starting to see the usual suspects from the Gensler-Biden era, the people that would generally get called out to testify, the scholars, the people who apparently have knowledge. The morons, you mean? Well, I won't go that far, but you're getting the usual suspects.

I have tried to challenge every one of those, excuse me, Matt, fuckers. to a one-on-one debate with moderation, and none of them will accept. Yeah. Because in every case, I would make them look like morons. Because they are. They're talking from ignorance and from a book. Yeah. And that's the problem.

And what they're talking right now is a narrative, which is disingenuous on two levels. Number one, you're absolutely right. In the absence of legal clarity, you're left with ambiguity. Ambiguity is a breeding ground for more consumer fraud. for more risk and for the likelihood that this entire asset class will leave the United States. So it hurts the consumer. It hurts America and it hurts crypto. The second prong of this argument that is really disingenuous is that they're trying to now equate

support for the Clarity Act to somehow be support for crypto fraud and indirectly support for Trump's abuse of crypto to profit and to line his own pocket. Now, while there can be intellectual debates about what he did and whether there should be hearings on it and so forth, the irony of this is is that they're suggesting that we have, we need bigger, stronger, more robust guardrails on crypto to protect people from what Trump did, but they have nothing in the way of an alternative. Their suggestion is leave the status quo, which is basically the conditions that enabled the very thing that they're criticizing. Trump for doing. So I think the odds are, in my opinion, honestly, my opinion, improving on the passage of this because I can smell the desperation and the fear in the air. And I can also see that the big institutional players are starting to arm twist in back doors. They're publicly stating that they support this thing. And it's going to be detrimental to their reelection odds if the

crypto lobby starts to go after them and ads and say that they opposed something that was so obviously good for the country and that if it doesn't pass is going to leave us behind in what is inevitable. The tokenization of everything and the trading of all asset classes on chain and we're going to fall behind Asia, the Gulf states, Russia, China, and even South America at this rate, if we don't get our house in order and pass meaningful clarity. Wanted to rant. Yeah, no, but that, but that, but it's absolutely right. What just happened?

I thought I tried to post something. I tried to quote you. And I don't know if I did this wrong. Yeah, whatever. Well, I'll try it again later. I wanted to get the link to the space. Although that was a really good rant. I mean, ambiguity breeds fraud and corruption and clarity is its antithesis.

yet the Democrats are all lining up to support ambiguity. They'll never say it that way, but that is the truth. And I think that's a great way to rhetorically explain the stupidity. I mean, they're trotting out people like former Secretary, Labor Secretary Reich, who is, oh, my God. I mean, I'm surprised his IQ allows him to walk and chew gum at the same time. He sounds like much a moron. But, you know, these are people who basically want crypto to go away. They want digital assets to die.

They want the existing system that they can control better to happen. They're sort of like the people who say, well, AI is bad, so we're going to ban data centers, and somehow that's going to make AI not exist. I don't even understand the thought process, not understanding that every single firm understands that there's superior technology that could be used. Anyway, Amatoa, I think you're first, and then Matt, I see your hand again. Carlo, thank you for all that, guys. Good morning.

That was great. I wonder, Carla, if you have any insight on this, but one of the things that it feels like we may be saying is that a lot of these big enterprises institutions have already been doing the buildout to embrace these rails, assuming that there is going to be some kind of legislative clarity, in some kind, whether it's the Clarity Act or not,

some kind of regulatory greenlight that's going to allow the tokenization and digitization of finance, And it feels as though there's been so much already invested in this from these institutions that we're getting a little bit of this sunk cost fallacy where now they've got so much on the line themselves that they have to get more involved. They have to be more public in voicing their support. And they can't let this big bet that they've made go by the wayside because some politicians want to get stuck on a mean coin. I agree with you. I agree with you. In fact, I brought this up a couple of weeks ago that there's two ways to approach this.

You let the legislation pass. You let the regulatory framework drop just like they did with the Genius Act. And you have guardrails and you have legal clarity. Or you watch the Clarity Act fail over partisan nonsense and bickering. You stay in a regulatory gray zone and the SEC steps in and creates safe harbor and so forth, what essentially you have said is what I have framed as crypto is either going to have to live on the Clarity Act or it's going to have to become too big to fail such that if there is no legal legislation clarity that comes out, that it's going to be so big and so important that

the next administration is going to have to wrangle with the fact that they can't regulate it by enforcement because it's too big to fail. And if they chase it offshore again, they're actually doing a huge disservice to the country because every other country is going to trade 24-7 on blockchains. And if we don't get our shit together, we're going to lose the opportunity we have to lead on this and chase the innovation offshore again. So I agree with you. I think the big players have built the internal infrastructure. They're prepared to deploy. They're just waiting for legal clarity. If they don't get it, they're not going to stop. I mean, some of them, Carlo. I mean, I think it's important.

Like, let's be specific. The CME, and I like the people on the digital side of the CME quite a bit. There's some really good people there. But the CME leadership is they're fighting. They're still trying to stop perps from, which are much better. I mean, let's be very clear. Perpetual swaps for the use cases that are used in the financial side, not now agriculture, agriculture they need definitive dates.

But outside of agriculture and places where there's physical deliveries for all cash-settled products, perpetual swaps are a far better product than dated futures. They are dramatically cheaper to administer. They create far less socialized risk. To the extent that you want socialized risk or credit to be to do it, it puts it in the hands of the brokers who are in the best available place to handle the credit rating of the people who go there. They're just better products, and it's a technology-enabled product. And the CME is trying to deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect, and fight that still. That's the funny part. The funny part is clarity is not needed for the CME to get their heads handed.

The only thing that's really needed for the CME to lose this battle is for Trump to actually agree with Schumer, who finally proposed some candidates to get a full CFTC to start getting a regulatory slate. because the CFDC, CILA agrees with what I just said, whether he says it or not. You know, it's very, very clear. That's the one organization who is fighting. The banks, the banks, inside the banks, they've always been this way. There have been people at all the major firms for years who have been working and building. Most of them, and I know several, right?

You know, they go through fits and starts. They won't finally push the, you know, fire the starters gun until their compliance department says you're not at risk. And that's what you have to understand. There's all these, it's multi-level process. But generally speaking, you're right. Anyway, I see Matt and Amatea. Matt, is that a new hand? Yeah, no, yeah.

Just a quick thing. Man, you guys are bringing it today and Carlo as well. Great conversation here. In the event that we don't get clarity, I'm kind of seeing a little bit of research already is that it looks like the SEC and the CFTC might be looking at a fallback. I think it was back in March of this year. They both issued a joint interpretation creating.

I think it was a common token thing. So my thoughts, I'd just ask you guys, does this give us a little bit of time if we don't get clarity, if we see the SEC and the CFTC try to move forward and giving us some kind of guidance? It's an interesting answer. I mean, Paul Atkins came out literally yesterday and said exactly what you just did, which is, look, we're going to go ahead and we're going to start regulating. And they can do it. You know, it just, but the problem is some people are going to say, yeah, well, cool, but remember the Loper Bright case, they're going to say they didn't have the, without congressional statements, you know, potentially it could get unwound by a new administration, particularly if they can pass legislation, you know, wiping it away. Because let's say you get a Gensler too, and he says, I don't like this. I mean, you know, Atkins is in the process of eliminating or not following through or not passing or reversing several of Gensler's very activist things. there's nothing that's going to stop the next SEC chair from doing that. That's the fear, Carlo, I specifically, you should address this. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, because that's the problem. If you don't get legislative clarity on the books, then you're at the whim of the administration

and who they seat as the next SEC chair. And this is actually being actively litigated in the Supreme Court, testing the powers of the president to take out certain administrative heads before their term expires and whether he has the executive power to do that, if you have a flip of the White House in the next election cycle, then you risk that very paradigm shift. It's harder to undo legislation because it requires new legislation to reverse the existing legislation. It's easier to come out with different regulatory guidance,

depending upon which way the political winds blow. Dave, there is another story that I think is important to make, mentioned if I could today, which dropped last night, and it does have implications for crypto. I'd like to put it up in the nest. It is the announcement by the Russian government that they are bringing charges against founder of Telegram Pavel Durov. This is a continuation of a story that we talked about previously, where France had attempted to do the same thing to Pavel.

And the implications of this are very big, because as we know, we know, we know, we know, we know from what's been reported by the news outlets, Russia has clamped down on several social media outlets, limited access to these outlets in Russia, including encrypted communication platforms. And in this particular case, they're charging Pabble with sabotage terrorism and extremism behavior, serious charges. He enjoys dual citizenship, and he's protected under the UAE right now. he has an international arrest warrant at this point from the Russian government. And this could have a very chilling effect on founders of social media platforms, especially those that offer encrypted communication, hint, hint, X, Elon, because Elon's had these very same worries when he travels internationally.

He's been threatened by several governments in the EU to be prosecuted or litigated against for this behavior. So now, will the UAE protect Pavel? Will they refuse to enforce extradition or an attempt to capture Pavel and bring him back to Russia? And how is the United States going to side on this? And if this should ever extend to a U.S.-based company where the Russian government, for example, should bring similar charges, how will the U.S. side on this? There are several implications for this because what we're doing is, number one, we know we're criminalizing people for creating platforms that can be facilitated to commit these crimes. That's one issue. The second issue is we're talking about social media and communication platforms, the things you say in one country,

potentially exposing you to prosecution in another country, and whether their long arm can reach you and bring you in for that. So now, Pavel has to worry every time he travels internationally, wherever he touches down, is he going to be the subject of that extradition warrant for his arrest? And this has big implications. And of course, Pavel's telegram trades a token, so it definitely has an overlap in crypto. Well, the interesting thing is that didn't the Russian government the day before effectively say that they believe they need to regulate crypto and make it more mainstream in Russia? Yep, they did. So, I mean, effectively, what they're saying is the technology.

the trading, all this other stuff, we need to get our, you know, we need to embrace it. But, you know, you're a totalitarian dictator. We don't want anybody to be able to communicate without us being able to see it. I mean, those are not, they're not inconsistent, right? I mean, I don't, not saying I like it. I mean, we all know I'm a free speech absolutist. I actually hate it. But I don't think it's all that surprising, do you?

No, I'm not surprised by it. I'm just concerned by the broader implications of it. and what precedent this could set. Well, look, our government, what we did, I'll be, look, I'm not defending Putin here. Okay, let's be really clear. I think this is a really bad thing. But people in glass houses, I mean, you know, Roman Storm is sitting in prison for writing code that other people used for bad stuff.

Meanwhile, no one at Apple is in prison for iPhones being used by terrorists or, you know, child pornographers or whatever. I mean, it's just, governments around the world will pick and choose who they go after in order to keep what their own version of what their power is. And the most classic response to this, Dave, that I think is worth mentioning, Pavel, I guess through Telegram's official account, after this story broke, the Telegram official ex account posted a picture of Pavel shooting a big middle finger at the camera. So you kind of have the indirect response from Pommel, who is not afraid of a fight, but taking on the Russian government is certainly scary. Well, he better have a food taster.

I mean, I don't want to put it any other way. I mean, you know, you can do whatever the hell you want to do. But there are certain fights that they're probably not worth picking and others that, you know, whatever, you can. And the world is a crazy place, you know, but expecting a time. totalitarian government to embrace free speech seems, seems kind of misguided. I mean, Europe is worse in a way because you do expect it, right? You know, and so that's why the France case is such a big deal. You don't agree?

No, I do agree. I was very troubled by what France did. They essentially lured him into that country under the invitation of dual citizenship and then tried to pull the rug on him and prosecute him. And that's definitely concerning. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, you make some interesting points. I just think that it actually dovetails with the story that I saw, which was that the

prosecutors, you know, not union, whatever, association is now trying to say that they need to relitigate or rewrite the BRCA component of the Clarity Act. BRCA was a separate bill for those who don't know. It's the piece in clarity that makes it clear what the liabilities of developers are. and aren't. And that is an extremely important part of this act that doesn't get, you know, to now really hasn't been in the political zeitgeist, but clearly is, is important. And, you know, to someone who, you know, ran a software company, he's been a developer, although I was a crappy one, you know, and understanding, you know, how important it is. I mean, you don't want to chill

software developers because someone comes up with a use case. That's not legal when they use it. And that is, there's some huge implications of that. And singling out crypto is probably the wrong way to do it because there's plenty of other pieces of software that can do, you know, that can do things that are considered unsavory, right? And so it's a really bad, slippery slope problem. And that's why so many people put so much effort into the BRCA part. I mean, you know, Sean, I saw you give me the emoji.

I know, I am assuming you agree with that statement. Yeah. Okay. You can unmute when I add. Yeah. Yeah, at FRAX, you know, we're a stablecoin issuer. And so we've been developing in D5 for over five years. So that part of clarity specifically is very important to us.

Genius was very important for establishing like the first leg of stablecoin adoption. But clarity is really needed to take it to the next level from a market legislation standpoint. And that brings up the single most important point about clarity that is just that just needs. needs to be hammered. I mean, Senator Lumas has been hammering this, but it is, on the one hand, clarity will be the first step toward actually regulating and correcting the abuses that the Democrats are complaining about. But on the other hand, it also will provide founders and innovators that are, that are the ones who have been unfairly targeted or pushed aside, you know, the one that, the good stuff that you want people to be developing, give them the clarity to not have to employ,

a ridiculous amount, the ridiculously expensive armies of lawyers and compliance people to build. I don't think that the average person understands the choices that founders have to make. You know, the question that do you raise, if you're raising $10 million to develop a product, do you need to raise 20 to have $10 million worth of legal fees

in the bank to protect you? And by the way, those numbers are not crazy. They may actually be understating the legal side. And when you tell people things like that, they go, wait a minute, you can't expect to spend 50% of the money you raise on lawyers, except for that's actually exactly what happened. And most firms basically said no. And that's why we have such large crypto companies dominating the landscape because disruptive competitors couldn't afford to play the legal games. And it's actually counterintuitive to what you would think lawyers would want because I've written extensively about this too. And I've said, look, I'm a criminal defense lawyer.

I part of my practice, I defend crypto crime. I probably have a vested interest in the Clarity Act not passing because the ambiguity actually creates potentially more business for me. But that's the opposite of what lawyers want. Lawyers want legal clarity because at the expense of that legal clarity, you continue to see consumers get victimized. You continue to see the crypto industry go overseas and offshore. And that ultimately is bad for everyone.

So the very people that you're talking about that get these massive retainers to try to read through and parse through what the hell the regulatory framework looks like and whether it's safe to build, a lot of those crypto lawyers would absolutely prefer to have legal clarity and to not continue to have to sit with clients and say, well, it depends. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a bit, you're sort of right, but I don't underestimate the fact that a bunch of, there are a bunch of attorneys. I won't name them. I won't name the firms. really their practices got crushed because they got overly aggressive with safes and other sort of things. And so if you have clear understanding, I mean, most rules, when the CFTC and the SEC writes the rules, there will be enough ambiguity to keep lawyers employed. I have no issue, or I'll take the other side of your bet all the time because I've seen it. I mean, I've had arguments

of it with the lawyers many times when I was running brokers. So, you know, this stuff happens. But generally direction, I agree. Marizio. Yeah. On this one, I think from a political point of view, and I'll caveat that I'm Venezuela, so I've seen a lot of betrayal and politicians being politicians for a very long time.

But I think it always goes back to incentives, right? And so if you look at both parties' incentives and the Republican side, you have the incentive of keeping the support of the crypto lobby, which played a big role, in the presidential election. And that incentive to support that particular party, which has been more beneficial for the industry

than the previous administration, I don't think that goes away if clarity doesn't get passed before the midterms, because I think it almost has no choice but to continue to support the party that's been driving the proposal, right? And even after the, so that gets the Republicans to support

that they need going into the midterms. even after the midterms, regardless of how things play out, whether or not clarity gets passed, they sort of keep dangling the carrot to have to support them going into the next cycle, which is two years from now. And I think from the Democratic side, they're seeing, like, even if they pass clarity,

the chances of them actually rallying support broadly from the Republican Party, who was the one that drove this legislation, is also small. So it's almost like there's no incremental benefit to them benefit or moving to pass this. And there seems to be no, at least I'm missing something, like no real direct immediate benefit for the Republican Party to rush it

because they're still going to have the support anyway. So unless I'm missing something. To be fair, well, let's, look, I'm going to go real deep conspiracy here, but it's not really all that much of a conspiracy. The public data is showing that the Democratic National Committee is broke. Now, they've lost a lot of their funders, and frankly, it's not coming back. you know, and I'm not going to go through the reasons why, but if you have any knowledge of what's going on on the fringe of the Democratic Party, you can understand that 50% of the donors, the Democratic Party, are thinking about donating to Republicans and certainly not even considering donating to Democrats anymore until they repudiate the people who hate them.

And that is a very big deal. Now, why is it a big deal? I'll tell a story. So I was talking with about two years ago with two people, two lobbyists, one Democrat, one Republican, both friends, kind of funny, and their jobs were to help the DNC and the RNC coordinate money going to candidates and going to senators and congresspeople, and they use that as part of their whip process, the WHOIP process that is how they get Democrats to vote as a block, Republicans to vote as a block, and they would hold the money over their heads saying, if you don't listen to us and vote with us, we're going to take the money away. The DNC would control that. And the DNC was way better at doing that than the RNC.

Well, the DNC is broke. They have absolutely no financial incentive. The senators and Congress people have no financial incentive to line up directly with the party. And that is a very big deal. So now you have these people who look at the crypto lobby. They see what's going on. They don't want to go into a campaign where they can be outspent by their competitor by four, five, or six cents. Ask John Deaton what it's like to try to win an election when your opponent has six times the amount of money.

And that's a big deal. Understand, that's why I think clarity ultimately happens because I don't think that the younger Democrats can afford to stand and stand with Elizabeth Warren, who doesn't need the money at this point anymore, but has it anyway because she controls it. Anyway, I think I've triggered a few people here. I don't know who was first. I think Jamie was first and then Matt. Yeah, hey, Dave. I think it's a great point.

You know, also to that, I mean, regardless of our political infighting, too, you know, there's the understanding that blockchain rails are coming either way, right? So better the U.S. rules in the dollar leads it rather than other countries who are already moving forward with their own, you know, legal framework. You know, so that's the political motivation. The other side is the institutional motivation. You've got BlackRock who wants 24-7 tokenization for all securities. We all know that stable coins and tokenized securities are going to supercharge everything. And then, you know, moving money faster and cheaper with near instant settlement,

you know, obviously, you know, there's nothing more important than that. And we don't want to be analog while the rest of the world is digital. You know, the other thing that you brought up was about meme coins, which is kind of interesting. I mean, you know, I mean, there's no way that these. aren't securities. I mean, regardless if they're classified as securities or not, I mean, we just saw a sailor dilute, you know, MSTR by 1.5 percent, right? Real small. But he had to disclose it, you know, and but here we are in Mean Coin Land where you can basically, you know, devs can drop 10, 20, 90 percent of the token supply on the computer on their community without disclosure.

And so it makes no sense. So, you know, I think this is back up. Here's the problem. And this is what I've been saying for seven years. And that is that the regulatory process created this thing inside crypto that said being a security is a death sentence. So if you're called a security, it's death. Why is it death? Because securities can't be, you wanna IPO, you wanna list a security,

you're talking millions of dollars and a year plus of time. Whereas if you have a token, that's a utility token to this, it's considered not a security. for whatever reason, the Howie test, forget the why. You can get it listed immediately at very low cost. And so the notion was we'll do anything we can

to not satisfy the Howey test. And then Gensler comes out and effectively says, well, digital collectibles and meme tokens are not securities, knowing full well that the crypto community will then say, okay, great, we're gonna make everything like a meme. He said governance tokens are not securities as long as they don't pass through economic value. So effectively, what he did was he said, you could create shit as long as it has no reason for existing other than people being momentum oriented.

And so that's what happened. Whether or not there should be investor protections and disclosures, the answer is yes. The answer is it should be. I've said that all along. And that's where it gets interesting. And that's what clarity allows for. And so to me, it's about we have this old framework. I mean, Grand Cardone was on a space and he talked about, you know, IPOing one of his, is his projects, funds, et cetera, companies. And he said it was like $20 million plus to do so. If it was a token, you know, maybe it would be a million. Maybe it would be half a million. Maybe it would be less. It depends. And so we need to fix this. And you need to fix it across the board. And so that, but you're right, Jay. I mean, there should be disclosures.

You shouldn't be able to dump supply. You shouldn't know what the economics are. Those are all right. Anyway, I think I saw Rajiv with a new hand. And then, Mauritia, if I'm getting it right, I could be wrong. Yeah, no, great space, Dave. I really appreciate being here. Very insightful.

I think one thing, you know, I'm totally fine if, you know, dunking on Democrats is okay. No, I just want to be clear. Look, I have no love for either party. You know, this is just, just that there have been a bunch of Democrats who have said a bunch of really stupid shit on this topic. This is a dumping on the specific ones who have said really stupid.

Like Chris Murphy. Chris Murphy literally threw up all over himself. No, I hear you. Another thing I'm noticing is like I feel like the Clarity Act has also been delayed because I think banks are still playing catch up. They still don't have the infrastructure in place to really implement crypto on their end. So they're trying to, and I get it. I'm not just saying it's just the banks.

But the banks are going to refuse to be left behind. So, you know, I've been testing the system here and there. I'm just like, okay, let me see if I can onboard X amount of money from crypto to the banking system. And it still triggers a red flag from time to time. So there is a banking inertia to crypto that needs to go away. to catch up. They need to put more resources towards crypto development on their end to improve their rails for the infrastructure. Otherwise, crypto is going to continue to trade sideways, which is really unfortunate. So, you know, I think take it as a blessing. I've always said,

like people have said, oh, and the Fed and things like that. I'm like, make the Federal Reserve your friend, right? So when things are cheap, buy them. And when things are cheap, buy them. And when things are expensive, start looking to kind of sell into that strength, that bull strength. So I take it as like an opportunity to accumulate assets that are, I believe, valuable Bitcoin Ethereum and look at other systems that are in place. But I think a big part of the Clarity Act delay is the banks and they want to hide that accountability as well. I think there's certainly truth there.

I think there's certainly truth there. I saw some hands just to go up and go down. Jamie, I still see your hand up. I think Maurizio, your hand was up first. Yeah. Kinds of post-hand, Dave. Okay, cool. So a quick question on the bank comment,

and Dave, you and I had this chat before, but clarity doesn't really change anything around the Basel 3 rules, right? So even if, no. It doesn't mean the banks would immediately be able to start playing in this field, right? Like, they would still need the Basel 3 changes, no? Well, it depends what you mean. So it's like, okay, if you're talking about using Bitcoin as collateral and holding it on your balance sheet, on balance sheet, yeah, you're right.

They can't do that. I mean, well, they can, but it's punitively tracked. If you're talking about enabling businesses that are off balance sheet to be able to trade across crypto rails and traditional rails simultaneously and being in, able to hedge and trade a coordinated book. Well, no, then it's not true. So let me give you a simple example. So one of the largest growth sectors in crypto, for those who aren't paying attention,

is trading traditional assets, whether it be commodities like oil or gold or silver or indices, et cetera, on platforms like hyperliquid, right? The firms who can trade the other side of that are ones who can trade those assets on traditional rails as well as on crypto rails. And handling the collateralization and the risk, et cetera, on that is something that could be done by technology. I mean, CoinRoutes is doing a lot in that space and happy to express it for anyone who needs a technology solution that can do it.

People when they see what can be done technologically are like, wow, we could be in this business. Now, right now, only the people who are the most technologically sophisticated firms can. the banks will be able to do that once their compliance department says, yeah, we're not going to get in trouble for having our London affiliate having a account on hyperliquid. Right. You know, and some do and some don't. And when you go to cross books, because people share books 24-7. So there's a lot of stuff that clarity will allow.

You know, a lot of firms are not making investments in the crypto world until the Clarity Act passes because they don't want to be. potentially liable for the companies that they're buying doing something that might violate a future rule or a future regulation or enforcement. So there's a lot of stuff. It's not just about capital rules. But you're right. The capital rules are a big deal separate from clarity, undeniable. Does that help, Mauritio? Yeah, no, that helps. The only other comment I'll make is I think, you know, there's a spectrum within the banks, right? Like we work with a few of them. And what I can tell you from the sort of capital perspective is a lot of them are sort of experimenting with off-valent ship vehicles, SBVs, etc.

To dip their toes. And I think that the banks that are wanting to participate, they're finding the ways. The ones that are waiting for extreme clarity, well, they might be the ones left behind. But I do keep looking at them, and they are a big player in the ecosystem. And I think paying attention to where they're placing their chips can tell you a bit about where things are going. But there's definitely some that are coming into the space, regardless of clarity or not. they're finding the ways yeah no there's no doubt i mean i just told you i sat at at a dinner and i

talked to people and every single firm has is approaching it very similar very similar to what was happening at the end of the 90s with regard to using the internet and using electronic trading it's very very similar uh and so you know i think history will rhyme again for that exact reason anyway i see reggie even jamie with hands up no still virtual hand Dave. Sorry, my hand should be down. I don't have anything to say. Well, you can you can never tell on this happens. It's one of the things that it's, I would say it's an endearing bug, but it's, you know, when you're hosting, it's a pain, it's a pain in the ass. But I mean, you know, to bring this back to full circle, the real question, you know, I'm curious, you know,

so we know that Wall Street is working on all of this stuff. We know that that Congress is doing what it's doing. We understand that there are people in the government who want control more than they want anything else. The real question is, is all of this at the same time as there's still fear that the Federal Reserve is going to hike rates? And by the way, I will tell you, I would be beyond stunned to see a rate hike and liquidity draining out of the Federal Reserve, even though 30% of the people think that's going to happen. But whatever, is this just the, the is this the next month or two as this plays out? Is this the final opportunity to get into, you know,

assets that are going to become clearly valuable? That's really the question. Or is this the calm before everything just melts back down to zero as some of the bears would like to say. We're towards it. That's really the question. And, you know, we're here, you know, it's a Wednesday in the middle of the summer.

I'm curious, anybody having any thoughts? I mean, my point, my view is from a Bitcoin perspective, I think this is accumulation time. From a crypto perspective, I think there will be winners and losers. And I think that we'll see how those develop. And I think that the winners will be spectacular winners. And the losers will be spectacular losers. And I think that that's kind of the lesson of markets.

And so distinguishing between that is going to get is difficult. And we'll just, we'll leave it there. I can't tell if there are any hands up right now. So if anyone wants to wave or whatever, jump in on that one. I saw a bunch of emojis on that. But anybody have an opinion there? I'll chime.

Looks like Mauricio had a hand up. Yeah, I'll chime in just because, again, I think I've come here a few weeks, you know, for the last few weeks, talking about how we're sharing the flows that we're seeing in Lennon in terms of the positioning that people are taking. And my view has not changed.

I continue to see a lot more. more people take, I would call it, proactive positions or office positions, accumulating, basically, taking on new positions as opposed to asking about downside protection. A lot of people are setting themselves up for the upside. Again, it's one operator in one vertical or one niche, which is Bitcoin Back Loans. But what I'm seeing takes the boxes from the previous accumulation stages. and the book has been incredibly resilient. Things are, like, you're starting to see green shoots everywhere on the data.

So for me, I'm feeling optimistic. Anybody else? Because, you know, it's, to me, seeing how all this plays out, I don't want to be hyperbolic because I don't think that any particular week or any particular day is necessarily going to be the day or the week that things change. But the one thing I will say, because I was having a conversation yesterday about risk and how to understand and how to price risk. The most important thing to understand when you're looking at this market is just because the trailing 30 day, 60 day, 90 day volatility is low doesn't mean it can't change almost instantly. when there's actual news, actual stories, actual things that matter.

And that's something that becomes really fascinating. The one point that I will make about this, and by the way, this is in both directions. So, you know, we were talking about risks, and I made the point that, well, let's just take one asset, oil. You know, the likelihood that oil is going to move more than a few percentage points in a day, single digit percentage points in a day, is extremely low. But what happens if on the one hand, you get Carg Island blown up? You know, oil could double. And because there's no liquidity at that point, right?

It disappears. And on the upside, what happens if, you know, something major goes on in terms of rates or, you know, what we saw at, you know, in the pandemic with Bitcoin, you know, when the Fed just turned on a liquidity spigot? said, you know, and I don't think either of those two things are going to happen, but you could see it double, right? Literally. And, you know, it could happen almost immediately. And these are the sorts of things that people don't price risk. Now, why am I saying this? I'm saying this because when you look at a lot of these markets, the lower the volatility for the longer period of time, the more it is a

coiled spring. And that spring can move in either direction. It's not, this is not a bullish statement or a bearer statement. This is just a statement of that the longer that we stay, the longer that we where volatility is really low and people start saying, well, this is a new normal, the more it is that you could get big moves. And this is true in every single financial asset. Like I've been looking at Korea the last few days. A lot of people probably have. You know, despite the carnage, Korea has still outperform pretty much every other asset this year.

And so like everyone's saying, oh, well, everyone's bankrupt. Well, it depends. If they bought it in June, yeah, they got. crushed. If they bought it in January, they're still doing well. They've given up half their gains or more, but they're still doing well. And so you have to understand that these things, these huge moves happen because people keep seeing monodirectional or no volatility. And I think a lot of that is happening in crypto. I think that there's a lot of assets like that, you know, in both directions. People just assume, well, it's here, it's stable. It can't fall or it's here, it's stable. It can't

really rise or run one away from me. But it can't. I didn't trigger anybody with that, Jamie. Yeah, no, I think, you know, to your point, I mean, when you're unsure of who the winner is exactly, I think being broadly placed with a larger market cap projects that have like significant partnerships and established network effect will likely find a place, you know, as the total market cap expands. I mean, we saw, you know, we were watching it with the equity markets. Kind of same thing with the AI and tech sector. Yeah. So investors just may have to be less concentrated until a clear winner, you know, is kind of

taking the lead, you know. So I think this is a lot of unknown regulation. There's a lot of advancement. There's a lot of things that are changing over this last couple years that, you know, I mean, you think about it last cycle to be, to have the kind of opportunities that are in front of us now. we had to go very low market cap to get the returns, which also brings a lot of risk. I mean, where we're at now, you can do this with a lot of large caps and have a lot less risk

and still get a lot of potential returns. So I think it's a good opportunity for people to consider that. And I'm certainly thinking that we're heading that direction, and it's going to go very well as soon as this thing kind of gets a little bit less unsure, maybe the four-year cycle, We got a couple months left for that, so that phone will can get out of the way, you know, because it's there. It's like a lot of it regardless, right? Yeah.

I mean, look, I will make, the only prediction I will make that I'm absolutely confident is at some point in the next five years, there will be, we will reach a tipping point. And every single market is going to trade utilizing some elements of what we now consider either blockchain or crypto technology, whether that be hyperliquid style, you know, hybrid, you know, being able to hold your own collateral and have it be locked, you know, open source, you know, defy, which is, you know, et cetera. You know, there's a lot that's going to go on, but the market structure is better. People who trade get better results. It is far cheaper to hedge. The margins keep getting coming down and down for the providers, which is great news for the investors.

Whereas in the traditional world, there are so many areas where there's just incredible expense. And I could list those and we could go through it. But it's just what does this mean to investors? It means that when there's clear economic value being created, there will be new winners and losers. And we've seen it every time we've seen a major technological shift in Bonance, there are new firms new things that come out that are that great gain value and volumes go up and efficiency goes up and that is going to happen with or without the u.s with or without clarity the real question

is will it happen will the u.s keep its lead because the u.s has a massive lead in terms of efficiency of settlement clearance and and you know trading uh around and and that has helped the u.s. economy and the u.s could lose it it's that simple will it i actually doubt it. I think we'll get our shit together. But, you know, I guess we'll see. Matt. Yeah, I think the real red line in the sand for me is when we look out through the end of the year, it really is the Congress, I think, if I'm not mistaken, they end this 119th Congress, January 3rd of next year. So any legislation that hasn't passed both chambers by then dies. And then it's got to be reintroduced. That means the new bill introduction. That's a lot of,

and so I don't think that these people, God bless them, that have put a lot of work in behind the scene trying to get this to the one yard line. And I'm, I hate that reference because as a Seahawks fan, I still have PTSD from Super Bowl 49 about the one fucking yard line guys, run the fucking ball. Get it in the end zone. Beast mode, baby, beast mode. Right. I think, and I'll land my plan on this is I think maybe if we don't see this here, we could

see it maybe taken up in a lame deck session of Congress after the, those November 3rd midterms, because then you've got some senators who are, who may be defeated and they might vote more freely. You know, clarity could be paired with. larger financial services or year-end packages, but I really think that that deadline, though, at the end, when that 119th Congress ends on January 3rd, we will see something done by then. I just, I really think they're not going to let it. I don't want to prognosticate. I just think that once you-

That's why I'm here, Dave. I prognosticating. No, no, no, no, there's nothing wrong with it. I think you may be right. You may be wrong. I don't know. What I will say is the tide has turned in terms of the number of organizations that are willing to, fight, you know, basically be, you know, the Luddites, the ones who are putting money to defend

their archaic practices. That tide has turned. There are too many firms who now realize that, that better to embrace it now than get crushed later, right? That's what it feels to me. Now, I could be wrong, but that's certainly my read from the ground. And that, that I think is a very big deal. I mean, you're never going to convince community bankers that it's a good thing for them to have to change their business model. You're not going to convince them of that. Now, Carlo will convince a few of them, and those will do very well in the future, right? But the majority, people, you know, if you ever, you know, the book that talks about this the best, and it's not the book, because the book itself is redundant, but the first chapter is brilliant, and the thesis

this is brilliant, is Clayton Christensen's innovator's dilemma. And that's what's going on here. And so firms kind of know that the smart ones know that disruptive technology is coming and they need to embrace it. I think that they're becoming more and more in the majority. And that equates directly to money donated to Congress and that effect goes directly to votes. And we may hate the fact that politics is all based on how much money and who donates it and the fact that our leaders are for sale. but for now that's the truth. Pisses me off to think about it, but it's true, right?

It's like my grandfather used to say anytime any new technology comes down the road, you can either be the steamroller or you can be the pavement. Which one do you want to be? We're seeing that answer now. You mean, from Larry Fink to Fidelity, that everybody who was traditionally opposed to this asset class are now coming out and full throat supporting the Clarity Act. That tells you that the tide has definitely turned in.

Yeah, it feels like it, which means that, that we'll get there. It's just, it is, there's nothing harder. One of the great, one of the absolute, my favorite pieces of advice that I was given from one of my mentors in trading who came out of O'Connor, who I discuss, I actually discussed this in my book, which is now written and is going through the publishing queue with all the stuff they've done. The editing is already done. So now we're in indexing and typesetting and somehow that's going to take till February before it hits bookshelves. But the piece of advice is in trading, sometimes the single hardest thing is to do nothing and wait for an opportunity where you have a clear edge.

And a lot of people get tripped up on that and decide they have to trade and go in and out and pay transaction costs and fees and whatnot when they have no edge. That edge is coming. It just may not be here right now, right? That's really the point in time. So, you know, markets can move quite a bit before things are clear. I think that if you have a long enough time horizon and you aren't levered, that this is a great time to accumulate.

Sean, I think that's a new hand, right? Yeah, I just wanted to add, we've been talking about tokenization a lot, and I wanted to give some more color on the stable coins and programmable money side of things. DoorDash recently announced that they're adopting stable coins, and I think that might have confused a lot of people why a company like DoorDash would adopt a stable coin. But if you look at the broader programmable money financial stack, you could see a company like DoorDash monetizing their entire ecosystem to offer, for example, loans to their dashers or to their restaurants based on their work that they do on a regular

monthly basis and give them financing based on that. So I think what we're going to see is that every company that has existing distribution will essentially be able to become a fintech within their distribution. And that's unlocked by blockchain technology, programmable money, and stablecoins. And so these are going to be the leaders who show this sort of capital efficient new business model. And others are eventually going to follow that model as well. The main lesson is one that, you know, defy is more efficient and unlocks these new use cases. And then the second is that owning distribution with the end user is everything.

And we see that with, you know, X launching X money and all these different use cases. I think that's exactly right. I don't even anything to add to that. I'm sure, you know, Carlo probably would. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Shooting a DM, Sean, I know we just followed each other, but I'd love to continue the conversation offline. Yeah, I mean, look, there are many things in,

that have been developed in the world of crypto that are going to revolutionize and make things more efficient. You just talked about a very big one. I would go, I will go broader and say that every single financial, advancing activity on Wall Street is going to be opened up to more competitive, more efficient methods. And that's a very big deal. But you're right, the leading edge is probably going to be

when people can have stable coin methods that can give users things like chargebacks in a more efficient way. Because right now, and Gary, who I see as a listener but isn't up here, could talk about it. I mean, you know, all payments, the entire payment world is controlled by a few firms and like Visa MasterCard dominantly.

And it's, it is amazing how expensive it is. How many people are going back towards cash. But when stable coin rails, not debit cards, you know, become possible, then the adoption is going to be incredibly fast from merchant point of view. As long as consumers get the ability just to not have to worry about cash and they're running shorts and they can just swipe, you know, tap their phone. and at the same time, it's going to get widespread adoption. I mean, you're absolutely right, Sean.

I mean, I feel that. And we can talk about whether and how important different features are, but the amount of profit that's being made by Visa and MasterCard for owning that oligopoly is huge. And the amount of efficiency when you put that back into the companies and the people who are using them is going to be a big deal. So I agree with you completely. I mean, Matt, your hand up there, you want the last word?

No, man, I can't take the last word. I'll let somebody smarter than me land. I'll just respond to what you were saying, Dave. Earlier, you were talking about compliance being like the moat and being extremely expensive for other people to break in. And so the reverse of that is when compliance is no longer the moat, then, you know, having the best products that serves the end user the best, having the best capital efficiency so that users benefit, that becomes the focus, which is what it should.

be. And that's not to say that the market itself will become more risky. It's just that the cost of compliance and the cost of breaking past these network effects goes down when you have this distributed ledger technology with block. No, I agree with you. I think that's exactly right. And that's kind of the holy grail that we all want. I mean, there's multiple holy grails in crypto. That's one of them. And the other one is sound money and self-sovereignty and et cetera, et cetera. So we have a few. But the truth is it's all about a better way of doing things. You know, bearer bonds were made illegal, right, for a bunch of reasons. None of them are necessarily intrinsic to the notion of people shouldn't be able to hold what they own,

but there were a bunch of reasons. Blockchain technology changes that. Everything that you just talked about is true. There are a lot of these things. And every single one of them scares somebody. And that's why it gets debated. And that's why it becomes a political football. There's, you know, you could go up and down the line and talk about who's scared by

what, but that tells you a lot. Because, you know, there's a lot of vested interest to fight against, you know, new technologies. It's just there always has been. There always will be. Rajiv, new hand? Yeah. And well said, guys, I would say one thing also that's, you know, holding up probably the Clarity Act as well is the crypto-trilema that still hasn't been solved.

You know, I think a big thing is security. So you have totally on board with individual ecosystems with companies in terms of programmable money. But the thing is there have been so many hacks. So crypto confidence, I'm not saying is at all-time lows. I'm just saying it's not at all-time highs either. I think a lot of people need to find a way to ensure that, you know, I know that the Clarity Act has devoted terms. in there. I think there's a $150 million fund for, you know, going after criminals,

crypto criminals, but at the same time, how do you prevent it in the first place or, you know, it's not obviously going to be zero, but it has to drop considerably as well. So this is not me trying to muck it up for the Clarity Act. I'm just saying this is probably one of the delays as well. No, yeah, I agree on that. I think you're right in the sense that there are people who say that, But the fact is, once you have a clear regulatory framework, then you can debate what the best rules are. Right now, there are no rules. And so criminals are taking advantage of the fact that there is diffuse enforcement and no ability to do that. And companies don't even – think of it this way.

If you're a company and you claim to be able to prevent a particular hack, and you get hacked, now you're liable. Right? So you have to be able to disclose what you're doing. But even that disclosure, there's no rules about that. So companies are reticent to operate in that space. And that, of course, makes it harder. And so I don't think it's ambiguous. I think that becoming a legitimate or legitimized regulated industry, I mean, look, a lot of regulation is counterproductive. I'm not going to tell you that anything other than that. But some allows for companies to try to innovate in that space. Because, you know, right now, yeah, there are, there are, there's no way for most investors, unless you do really deep dives to know the difference between the various defy protocols and what security measures are taking or companies that are that are offering stuff and what they're doing. I mean, I still remember when, what was it, uh, quadri, what was the name of that, that one with the, the Canadian. Quadriga.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I still remember this, this shit. I mean, there's no, nothing stopping anything to happen. today except for critical mass. People learned that the best way to protect themselves of it being hacked in their crypto accounts is to play only in the biggest of the big, because figuring they're too big to fail and they have insurance. Now, that's not really an answer, but that's what happened.

In a world where you understand, you know, what the disclosures are, what the meanings are, and what people are doing, it gets better, and then the market can start to figure it out. And so I don't think it's the Clarity Act that's relevant for that. I think it's the market needs to. There are things that the market will do. And when people are no longer choosing based upon jurisdictions or using VPNs or whatever, then they will end up safer, right? When you have to decide to, if you want to trade something and you decide that the only way you can do it

is by using a VPN and claiming that you're living in wherever, you're going to be taking more risk. And that is happening now. There's no two ways about it. That may be the last note. So anybody else have any final thoughts? Otherwise, we'll see you on Friday and enjoy the rest of your week.