The Wolf Of All Streets - Will Ethereum Lead the Crypto Bull Run? w/ @DEGA_org | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

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Is everyone on this panel coming to Austin in the next couple of days? James, I know you're going, Dave. I know you're going. Chris, you're a Texan. Are you going to go come meet us? Man, I don't know. I've got to, it's right down the road. I'm going to try and be there for sure. I'm a Texan, but I'm still in Puerto Rico. It could be worse. Hey Scott, I, I RSVP'd for that event

and took care of the financial part, but I don't have the actual logistics. Could you just DM me where the hell it is or is it on there someplace? Yeah, James is here. He's the real organizer of this amazing event. Yeah. Hey, Dave, great question. There will be signs

in the lobby of the Hilton. I don't know the name of the conference. Okay, no worries. No worries. I think originally we had booked, believe it or not, a team bonding Airbnb for CoinRoute, and now someone told me yesterday, Ian said yesterday, that they put me in the Hilton. So I don't know. One way or another, I'll figure it out. Perfect. Bring your friends. It's an open bar and it's going to be a lot of fun. If anyone's wondering, here's the soft pitch in advance. Pretty much everybody here is going to be in Austin for Consensus this week, obviously one of the largest conferences. And since all of us

have a functioning brain in our head, we know that Elizabeth Warren needs to lose the upcoming Senate election. And we get the opportunity to vote for John Deaton to do that. And if you're not in Massachusetts, you get the opportunity to send some money to John Deaton or come drink with John Deaton if you're going to be in Austin and help him to win that election. So we're doing a fundraiser slash party on Thursday, 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. in the Hilton Hotel right next to the Conference Center in Austin at Cons consensus for John. You can come hang out with James, myself, uh, Wendy O, David Silver, a whole group of people, um, and support John and, uh, you know, grab a quick selfie with him and hang out. Uh, I think it's going to be an absolutely epic event. So pretty, pretty, uh, pretty excited about that. Something we've been working on for a while.

So if you're going to be in town, James, maybe I'm going to search. Do you have a recent tweet? Is it maybe in your pin tweet? Because I'll put it up top. Yeah, I got it. I'm going to do that right now. Yeah, for anyone who hasn't met John or read his book or understand anything about him, I mean, he is an amazing, amazing man with a life story.

When he and I first talked about him potentially know, him potentially running, I, I, after having realized what, what he was, I basically said, you are, if central casting were to design someone who would be a perfect candidate for running against Elizabeth Warren as a moderate Republican, you would be it. A hundred percent. James, anything else we'll mention again at the end, but anything out? We'll mention it again at the end, but did I leave anything out there? No, the more the better. You know, if you're planning on coming, bring your friends. It's Thursday at 6 p.m. So you can come by and get a drink before you go out to dinner and hang out, meet John.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Music, drinks. It's kind of an anti-fundraiser. Nothing stuffy, nothing like traditional political. John is a different candidate, and this is a different kind of event. We're going to have a lot of fun. So everybody be ready. Ben, I thought you'd be on a plane. I'm on the way to the airport. What are John's prospects of actually winning?

I'm not being facetious. I'm actually asking because I don't understand the system and how it works. How likely is it that he could win? James, you want to take that? Yeah, he's going to win, and it's going to shock a lot of people. The conventional wisdom is that Elizabeth Warren has that seat locked up and it's a sacrificial lamb each go round that goes against her. But John is not a traditional Republican. There are many, many Democrats declaring support for John. There's a huge percentage of independents in Massachusetts. And if you have the right

candidate, Republicans can win. For instance, the governor, the last governor of Massachusetts was a Republican, and he won re-election by 20 percent. So it is possible if you have the right candidate. And John is coming at this at a very unexpected angle. He is talking to the poor, the working class, the kind of people and environment that he grew up in, very, very poor, on food stamps. That's why the title of his book is Food Stamp Warrior, because he fought his way out of really, really difficult, violent, drug-confessed circumstances to become a lawyer and a United States Marine. His life story is the story of the American dream. And the more people hear about it, the more excited they get about supporting him. I believe he's going to win and shock, shock the world.

And one of the recent polls before he decided to run was that they were actually trying to compel the ex-governor to run against Elizabeth Warren and take that seat. But he, I think, is in charge of the NCAA sports or something at this point, didn't want to leave his amazing job. But he would, like the polling said, he would have slaughtered her as a Republican in over 60% of Massachusetts. And if she does win, then is she gone from politics?

She's gone for now. She's gone for this cycle. She'll go trade stocks with Nancy Pelosi or go work for Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan, no doubt. Wow. Scott, quick question. We, wow, wow, wow. Hey, Scott, quick question.

We have to all rally together to get out. Yeah, unfortunately, if you're not a United States citizen, you can't donate, just for the record. Don't want to violate any campaign laws. But go ahead there, Carlo. Quick question. If I can make it to the Thursday function, can I get in even though I'm not going to the consensus office?

Yes, 100%. All right. I'm down. Count me in. Nice. See? See that? We're rallying the lawyers.

You guys can't bill us for coming, though. It's not okay. All right. Come on. I guess we've got to move on to the space. So, Ran, you're coming. You're traveling home from Monaco Grand Prix, right? I'm going to MemeCon in Lisbon, which is probably a sign of the times

that this year I gave consensus amiss so I could go to MemeCon. You see that? I'm probably showing you how the cycle is progressing. Yeah, money where mouth is. I'm going to find a lot more value at MemeCon than I'm going to go and listen. Look, I was at Consensus last year. I'm going to find a lot more value at MemeCon than I'm going to go and listen. Look, I was at ConsenSys

last year. I think it was a great event, but I find that conferences in the US because of the regulatory environment just aren't as exciting as conferences outside of the US. Yeah, I think that that's fair, especially last year at ConsenSys, you're being kind.

It was... ConsenSys was depressing last year. You're being kind. Yeah, consensus was depressing last year. You're being kind. It was literally like every booth was a lawyer or an accountant. That's usually a bad signal. I didn't get much value. And for me, it's a 36-hour flight. I just thought I could rather go to the Grand Prix in Monaco

and then go to MemeCon in Lisbon. And that, for me, would give me a lot more value. And that's the route that I opted to go with. Yeah, I have a flight in about two hours to head out to Austin. And I know Mario has a flight tonight from Dubai to head out to Austin because we're also doing something with RFK and interviewing him. And Mario is going to do a live spaces. So that's what he's coming out for.

But anyways, let's actually talk about the topic at hand. Will Ethereum lead the crypto bull run? Obviously, we had the surprise Ethereum spot ETF approvals last one point, almost 40% up 30 something percent. I mean, I throw it to the panel, Peter, I'll go to you, because I know that you've been an ETH justifiably an Ethereum skeptic. Does this change anything in your mind when you look at the chart and what's happened here? You think about it? Strong opinions weekly held. I mean, I got a significant buy signal one week ago when we came out of a wedge. And so, hey, I'm not going to fight the tape. Yeah, I mean, I'm still, I'd love to hate Ethereum, but I don't necessarily want to always be short Ethereum.

I'll be short if I get a sell signal, but I'm under a long signal now. I think Bitcoin, just buying time another three four weeks you know where we've gone you know halfway through uh i think the bull market cycle or half you know the halfway the having has always been kind of halfway in the from the low to the high so i'm still thinking 135 140 bitcoin september 2025 so but i think we have to drift sideways in Bitcoin and chop around for three, four weeks. Okay, that makes sense. Chris, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, you know, nothing's changed on my end.

You know, you and I talk about it every week. You know, Bitcoin's just preparing for that breakout, it looks like. Ethereum, man, strong move. You know, pretty, I mean, pretty clear technically it was going to break out. You know, you can't say, oh, yeah, we expected 20, 30 percent or whatever, but, you know, on the day or whatever. But, you know, the setup was there in the charts for the breakout for that. We saw uh bounce against bitcoin at a key level uh and so the theory and bitcoin chart uh looks good coming off that bounce

and so if we can get a little bit further on that i mean um i think bitcoin you know i mean i think they're both gonna go you know again i i've talked about it before i don't think we get all the rotation you know that we're used to. I think Bitcoin continues going up and all coins in and out continue going up. Ren, what are you thinking now with the change? I mean, we talked about a bit last week. You were kind of down on ETH, as I think many people were before this approval. How much does this change the situation for you? So I am going long.

I have gone long ETH and I've gone long a lot of ETH beta players. Lido, Pepe, a whole lot of others. In fact, my first show as soon as I get back is going to be on, I hope there's still Alpha, but it's going to be an ETH alpha show in terms of what to get into to play. I think this is just the beginning of an ETH run. I don't think it's the end of the ETH run. I think it's just, just, just, just, just the beginning. So people have looked at some of the ETH plays and, oh, they've run already.

I don't think so. I think that this is the beginning of the run. Yeah, I think so too. It's the first move. And I'm curious then, you know, we have the title, will Ethereum lead the crypto bull run? I think we had obviously a narrative that Solana was leading but if you really looked at it it wasn't dragging the market with it it was just dragging sort of the economy within solana with it we've seen in the past and doesn't mean to repeat this time but when ethereum moves there's obviously

a way bigger erc20 ecosystem that can be sort of dragged up, especially when you consider the layer twos. So I said this, yes, I said this, I think I may have mentioned it last week, but I'll mention it again. So remember that with Bitcoin, with the Bitcoin ETF, the only reason people buy Bitcoin is they buy Bitcoin because they want to invest

in the store of value, right? Sorry, one second. I'm just leaving the driver now. Dave, you can jump. Okay, go ahead, Rand, and then Dave. With the ETH narrative, it's slightly different. With the ETH narrative, remember that the people buying the ETF, the success of the ETF is the success of shitcoins,

if you think about it. Because the success of Bitcoin is just Bitcoin, but the success of the ecosystem around it is just an ecosystem of shitcoins, which I use a lot. I mean, I obviously mean altcoins. But anyone who said that they're not altcoin maxis and stuff like that. Now, without altcoins exploding, there is no ETH explosion because the success of ETH revolves around the success of the altcoins. And so I think that, you know, you can't have a scenario where only ETH runs. It's going to be ETH and then the altcoins. And so I think that, you know, you can't have a scenario where you own the

ETH runs. It's going to be ETH and then the altcoins. Do you consider base and alt? I can't hear Peter, unfortunately. Yeah, that was Carlo. He asked you if you consider base and alt. Base, even though it's not a token, it is still by extension, well, I think an alt, right? You basically got to buy the proxies on base. So you've got to buy the proxies like the meme coins, for example, Brett or the DEX, which is called Aerodrome. So that's how you invest in. Which by the way, I think is a fantastic buy. I'd love to hear Peter's take on the charts. But for me, Coinbase is the best betting crypto at the moment dave yeah i have a bifurcated opinion which is a way of saying short term you know intermediate term versus longer term i think that in the short term obviously it would be almost impossible for

me to believe that eth won't run toward the top of the Bitcoin ETH range, which is we're actually getting really close. We're at 0.056, almost 0.057. You know, get to 0.062 and you're kind of at the same level of outperformance that it was when it was below in this range. I think that that will likely happen before the ETH ETF start trading. So expect some ETH outperformance. I do think both have a chance to surprise to the upside. But, you know, looking at the relative is important. But the longer term, I think, is really, really interesting because what's going to get sold, if you look at the mechanics, if you look at what Bitwise and all the other ETF providers are going to be talking to their investors about, unlike Bitcoin, which has ran nailed it, they talk to them about a store of value, etc.

With ETH, they're talking about it as a global computer and more like how to value a tech stock early in its cycle and compare ETH's market cap to big tech stocks. And ETH's market cap isn't all that much smaller than a lot of the big tech stocks, maybe not the biggest. But what will also happen, because it's natural, is the researchers will start digging in at the underlying technology and comparing the ETH ecosystem with Layer 2s versus things like Solana and others. And I think there you will start to see a lot of really interesting rabbit holes going down. My guess is, and unfortunately, I timed it badly. I did swap some of my ETH into Solana before the ETF approval, not thinking that would happen technically. But I do think that you will start to see more and more research and discrimination in the ecosystem as more money comes in, not necessarily just into the ETF,

because obviously there is no Solana ETF yet. There is no XRP ETF yet. But I think people looking at technology will start to discriminate among alts. Now, base is particularly interesting. So I think a lot of people, I think Carlos' question is great. I think a lot of people say, well, if that technology is better, why do we need a native token? What can we invest in? And I think those are the questions, those are the rabbit holes that half of the world's investable assets have literally not been asking. And when that happens, a lot of things will take place.

Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. I mean, Carlo, what are you thinking? You've been pretty aggressively behind the scenes in the meme economy here. Do you think this changes much in your view? I think so, because I think opening up ETH to an ETF on the spot basis opens up all meme coins to that same possibility. That's the theory that's being floated. And, you know, to an extent, my theory is, and I certainly am not giving financial advice and act very responsibly on this theory but i

think if you allocate a small portion to certain meme coins that have the potential to go parabolic it is like buying eth at nine hundred dollars i mean it's just an opportunity to get a discounted buy-in on eth and if you then factor in the possibility of institutions getting into the meme action, then I think there is tremendous upside. Yeah. Could I ask Carlo a question? A lot of people have made the comment

that for more ETFs to be available, for more, which we'll call ETFs what they are, it's the equitization of tokens, people who only have money in brokerage accounts. There's only two ways that that money can go into the crypto ecosystem. One, which is the way it should happen but won't, is the SEC stops blocking brokers from offering tokens. And I do want to talk about that later. But the other would be more of that. Now, in order to do that, they need a futures market. And so the question really is, what do you think of the odds of the CME offering a variety of other clearly decentralized non-equity tokens as futures? I think the possibility is there because if you look at the recent tweet

by Coinbase's chief legal counsel, Paul Grewald, he actually suggested that indirectly, the SEC may have opened the door to ETH and other similarly situated tokens being considered commodities. So I think if that door is open, people start to test those limits, then I think that very exact outcome could happen. I'm doubtful that we're going to get, certainly not anytime soon, any other ETFs, personally. I think that's a David. Come on, a PeppyCoin ETF would be so much fun. Yeah, people would be calling it the PPETF.

But I'm sure it would be fun. But, you know, I don't think that's a market of meaningful size without CME futures, or at least, you know, the few people I've talked to. I mean, Preston, what's your understanding of this? Obviously, your lawyer doesn't know exactly the answer. But do you think that this opens the door to everything UTFs? I mean, I think a lot of projects are definitely going to try. So, but I'm not sure if that happens in the immediate future before the election. I think ETH had a lot of things on its, you know, in its corner that other projects don't, chiefly a lot of political support and a lot of institutional

support from companies and VCs in Silicon Valley. So I think also just a huge, huge, huge, enormous numbers of users. So they were able to bring a lot of political pressure to bear to make this happen. So what happens next? I don't know. But like conceivable, maybe there's an XRP ETF, if that ever gets resolved, or some other altcoin ETFs, a Solana ETF. I think a lot of that's in play. The question is who on the institutional side is going to try to bring it to market and when. Listen, Taylor, you obviously are at the digital chamber. You're working on policy. You're in D.C. every single day.

What's your perspective on this? And I guess maybe even a broader perspective on how we actually got here so quickly. I mean, we kind of obviously talked it to death last week, the massive sort of sea change in the political appetite to attack crypto right now. And I think we've all agreed that's probably why this ended up happening so quickly overnight. But is that an accurate assessment? And what do you think moving forward? I mean, I think everybody can feel the sea change right now in DC. There's been a track record even the past month of major bipartisan wins. And so I think it's becoming less of a partisan issue. And so the coalition is growing of folks and,

you know, you're going to see the momentum change with that um you know i think the eth etf the 19b4 approval was a long time coming i don't necessarily know that the vote changed that and you know the sec is still lawsuit with consensus so there's still a long battle to go for you know wide adoption um but definitely the sea is changing and the election year really helped with that and so i think we can see some, you know, big wins on the map. Do you think that includes any of this legislation that's currently on the docket? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we'll see if President Biden, you know, vetoes the SAB 121 legislation or fit, which, you know,

he obviously did not signal opposition to, which is again, a big win. You know, we'll, we'll see how it plays out, but I think lawmakers are starting to opposition to, which is, again, a big win. You know, we'll see how it plays out. But I think lawmakers are starting to realize that, you know, crypto is here to stay, and that there's 50 million Americans using it. And so instead of turning a blind eye to that, or sticking their head in the sand, they're realizing they have to regulate and have to legislate now. And so I think we're seeing the, you know, beginnings of that. What are the odds that FIT 21 passes the Senate? You know, if you asked me two weeks ago, I would have said absolutely none.

But FIT 21 in its current state, I don't know how that passes the Senate. You know, Senator Lummis and Gillibrand are standing firm by their proposal of the RFIA legislation they introduced a few years ago or about a year ago now. So, you know, we'll see how those two proposals play out together. But something in some form of market structure, I believe will have to pass sometime soon. So you think that they effectively incorporate elements of Lumos Gilla brand, probably some, find some other things that have nothing to do with this to add in and potentially get it passed even before the election. You know that we have a better shot of that now, seeing the bipartisan wins that happened the past few weeks that helps things move through the Senate easier. But, you know, like I said, Senator Lummis and Jill LeBron, they stand firm by their proposal.

So, yeah, I think we're going to have to see some sort of compromise on the table. You know, we really don't know what that looks like as of yet. But politics, I'm sure, will play into it. And so we're going to see things that are, we'll make it a not perfect bill, I'm sure. But we need market structure now. And I think that that's a resounding call from our industry. And so hopefully, we'll see that action soon. I'm mind blown that we're even having this conversation.

I know, a lot of us. Like you said, I mean, weeks ago, like and it's got to be even crazier for you. But like, in a million years, I know, you know, I was writing I was writing off the next six months. And as a wait and see, yeah, no, I mean, it was just an insanely weak for crypto. It's been awesome to see 71 Democrats come in the House to join us. You know, that has been a fantastic win. And I think, you know, now that they've had to actually vote and put the record on the table, we have a larger coalition. We may have had a larger coalition all along, but I think that this is really helpful. I think we had a larger coalition all along that was terrified of being painted with the Sam Bankman freed brush. People seem to forget that Democrats

for better or for worse were quite pro-crypto when it was Sam on the floor. And I think they just got burned terribly and it became probably very unpopular within the party to push that narrative. I mean, do you agree? Because it wasn't always this bipartisan. It wasn't always this partisan.

Oh yeah, no, 100%. And that really, he poisoned the well there and you muddied the water. That's really unhelpful when you have a major piece of legislation that he was working on with both parties. And meanwhile, fundraising for both of them, that, you know, makes everybody take a million steps back. And so I think, you know, a lot of them were doing it for the fundraising and didn't understand the technology.

And so for a lot of them, it made them take a few steps back and understand the technology and understand the benefits. And that's why we have a lot of great champions today. But unfortunately, it made a lot of people like Maxine Waters take a million steps back and become a large roadblock to passing legislation. Anybody else thoughts on the likelihood of seeing meaningful legislation before the election or just general thoughts on this kind of sea change i think biden has to throw some candy to the crypto uh support front because he is down bad what trump has done to him over the last week and it's evident in the fact that he's now ramping up efforts for crypto fundraising, I think he's going to have to break away

from Warren's influence and capitulate on crypto if he has any hope of trying to get reelected, in my opinion. I would add that the simplest explanation, follow the money, is very important. I don't think it's just crypto. I think that this particular SEC and this FTC have effectively, and the notion of taxing unrealized gains being floated, those trial balloons, are causing an avalanche of former

Democrat donors to turn to the Republican side. And that's an avalanche that former devil at you know democrat donors to turn to uh the republican side and that's an avalanche that they really need to stop and you know i don't think they can win if they lose all the big tech and and there's a large list and it's been all over the place but the three policies that they have floated which were all coming from the warren camp of the extreme left of the of the administration you you know, are all bad. I mean, I've said it before in this space and people outside of crypto should understand this. This SEC is the most unpopular SEC with Wall Street that has existed probably ever, certainly in the 40 years that I've been in the industry. And when I say unpopular, I don't mean they don't like them.

I mean, like absolute, you know, disgust with how they're they're destroying the industry. And it goes way beyond crypto on the market structure side. There's multiple losses, multiple. Forget the environmental law. I mean, it just it is entrenched. It's deep and it's it's incredibly clear. And this is a group of people who are 60 percent Democrat. And so, you know, when you see Stephen Schwartzman coming out against Biden saying that he's going to be donating to Trump, I mean, that takes a lot to happen. And that is exactly the issue here. So, yeah, we are certainly important because it's an easy issue. I mean, weirdly, it plays really well

with normies to say, hey, you know, you're stopping American innovation. That soundbite is bad, but it goes deeper than that. I would just say follow the money. A few more defections and I think Biden will act to pull the Warren people out. That's what Scaramucci has been saying. And maybe he will, maybe he won't. But if he does, then you might get something done this year, at least, you know, as a carrot to try to say, you know, hey, you know, we're okay. And if he doesn't, he's going to lose.

Hey, Scott, James here. A couple of things. First of all, this situation we have here is so unusual. The policies of the SEC have never been a voting issue for anybody. The closest comparison I can think of is there was a lot of criticism when they missed Madoff year after year after year, missed the warnings about Madoff, but nobody cast a vote based on that failure. This is really incredible that it has been elevated to the presidential level and appears to be a key issue. Secondly, on the international front, we've been talking a lot about domestic politics, but on the international front, there's, you know, a lot of discussion of BRICS and countries aligning with BRICS. But, you know, there still are a lot of countries that sort of take cues from the United States and the policy of the United States, particularly when it comes to financial markets and the financial system.

And a movement away from hostile to crypto, not to neutral on crypto, but to full-throated pro-crypto smash the accelerator down if Trump is elected, that would be significant from an international perspective. And markets discount future events and the likelihood of future events happening. And so I believe that in the month or two prior to the election, we could see the markets reacting to the likelihood or unlikelihood of Trump getting elected. Do we believe I guess these are two pointed questions. Do we think that Trump is truly pro crypto? This is to everyone. And do we think that Biden will come around to pro crypto? You think he'll just let off the gas on the enforcement and sort of let it become less of a pronounced?

Yes and no. So I know for a fact, because it was revealed to me. I think of it like a poker game. Trump has now made a big bet on crypto. And so now it's Biden's turn. Is he going to call by doing something to bring him on par with Trump? Is he going to fold and just cede this issue to Trump? Or is he going to see and raise, you know, and and commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht and do all sorts of. Yeah, that was a lot.

That was that was pretty impressive that he mentioned that. Preston, James, I'm not sure if you can hear Preston, but he was speaking. Yeah, I think I know for a fact that the campaign is looking at the circle. I didn't hear. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, that's why we we often have that problem where people can't hear each other. So just making sure. Go ahead, Preston. Yeah, so the campaign's been looking at this since about February. And basically, my understanding is that senior people for the next administration in various posts, including whoever's being

considered for the SEC chair and whoever's being considered for Treasury Secretary, are very technologically progressive, and tend to think of crypto in a very genuine way as being something which can secure American leadership for the next century. If we look in particular, at certain things that Trump has said in the past, so not in the last week, obviously, in the last week, we had both the Mar-a-Lago, you know, Pit Viper incident, where some kid in Pit Vipers asked Trump, if he was pro crypto, he said, Yes, the crowd went wild. And then you had what happened last night, at the Libertarian Convention, or two nights ago at the Libertarian Convention, which was when Trump basically came out with a wish list, right of crypto things that we've

been wanting for a long time, including some people, the release of Ross Ulbricht from prison. But before that, he's actually been trial ballooning this in smaller settings. So there was a Fox panel that he did with Tim Scott, where he said, actually, I think we should be leaders in crypto because we don't want China to take the lead with the digital yuan for international trade flows. So that's one thing that he mentioned. And there's another, he had one or two instances where he went on television talk or radio and talked about crypto as sort of a trial balloon to see what would happen when he said it. And so people who'd been following it pretty closely, self-included, said, aha, the message has gotten through to the campaign. You should start coming out as being pro-crypto. I also suspect that there's been some internal polling on both sides

where you have 50 million crypto wallet holders. And for the first time in history, a political candidate has started to speak to them. And so these people are starting to respond to polls by saying, listen, these guys are potentially in my camp. So whether Trump personally believes crypto is big or not, I think is not really the point. My understanding is that there are people who will be very senior in his administration who are very progressive on crypto. And so personnel, you know, if you believe the old maxim, that personnel is policy, there are true believers who are going to who if he wins, are going to be running the government. And that's, that's, that's enough for me me to be convinced that what he's saying is for real.

David, Carlo. Yeah, I think that you have to go to first principles here. I mean, Trump was ignorant about crypto. And I know that because I have all sorts of inside baseball conversations from the last administration. It was not antipathy. It was ignorance. They just thought it was no big deal. Let's not worry about it. And, you know, Clayton was the same way. And that's why a lot of things happen. But he's always, I mean, literally always been anti-government regulation. That was his whole, the biggest single policy of his last administration was cut to regulations for every one that you add. That is something that is at his core, probably second to his own narcissism. But the

fact is, is he cares about, he doesn't believe in big government. That has always been true. Whereas this administration, because of the people, I don't think Biden has any beliefs, but Biden allowed Elizabeth Warren, who is a big government statist who wants to control every single thing, wants the CBDC, is on record saying that. There is nothing that Biden could do save getting rid of purging all of the Warren appointees from his administration. That would lead me to believe no matter what they say, that the administration will be safe. I mean, if you think about Chokepoint 2.0, it was not done by official policy. If you think about the reason why the Bitcoin ETF was approved with cash creation instead of in-kind creation, the reason, for those who care, is because this SEC, without making any policy, just by telling FINRA what to do, has not allowed one broker-dealer to trade Bitcoin.

Not one is allowed to trade Bitcoin as a non-security designation, which, by the way, brokers can do commodities, but they won't allow it. And because of that, they didn't want the authorized participants to be excluded. That sort of subtle anti-crypto policy is embedded in this administration. So no matter what they do, it's a bigger difference. So I do think that exactly what Preston said, it personnel matters, as long as we have people who are statist, and are on the extreme side of that, it doesn't go anywhere. So no, I don't think Biden can do anything unless he literally purges all that influence, which, by the way, is why Elizabeth

Warren losing in the Senate is so important. Zach. Yeah, it's honestly, I think that's, you could argue it's bigger or clearly as big as the presidential election. Well, it must be made first. She's given us such hits as, she's such, yeah, she's given us such hits as Gary Gensler and, you know, White House chief of staff. Her chief of staff went to the White House.

It's crazy. Biden from losing her cabinet position and if she loses and he wins. I mean, it's really perverse. But but that is that is literally the importance of this election. They need to put her in a cabinet, not on a cabinet. Go ahead, Carlo. You know, I posed a comment to Scaramucci over the weekend because obviously he's dubious about this announcement.

And I sort of voiced that regardless of whether Trump follows through on any of these promises. You cannot deny this is incredibly foolish for crypto and for Americans who own crypto. And I got a like out of that comment. I would love to get Anthony on this panel to talk about this. But I think we need to go back a thousand feet here and just look at what this is going to do for the 2024 2025 crypto market. Because when you have pundits talking about these announcements, I think it takes us exponentially closer to retail coming into crypto. So I foresee that not only is this going to be an ever increasing political talking point, but I think it's also going to be an incredibly great thing for crypto. And it's

going to pump the markets. Yeah, when you take that 30,000 foot view, the fact that we can even have this conversation right now is absolutely astounding. I mean, that it's changed so much. I mean, we've all sort of been the crazy conspiracy theorists at the Thanksgiving table saying that crypto is going to become a meaningful asset class and a meaningful issue. And now, even if it's just for this sort of brief moment in time, it is the political issue that both of the presidential candidates are rallying around in different ways. If you saw Biden's fundraising letter, and I know that they send a new fundraising letter every day, and Elizabeth Warren's fundraising letter when Deaton announced, it's very, very clear that they're scared. I mean, Biden literally sent a letter

to donors saying, you know, crypto executives are giving, you know, millions to Trump and trying to swing this election. And I need your support and we need your money. This is not a joke anymore. So I think he's hiring a director of memes, which is so astounding that Biden's like like i i keep saying it's like you know the steve buscemi meme where he walks in with the skateboard and like hey you kids or whatever you know fellow fellow kids i mean joe biden you know is 400 years old and uh getting somebody to to meme on his behalf to try to win over this audience is just it shows how out of touch and lost they are and listen i think you realize he's a meme himself at this point.

Yeah, exactly. We're trying to see if Mario's on stage. Can you hear us, Mario? Can you hear me? Yeah, you're good. Oh, shit. Of course, it is glitching. Yeah, we do have Dago on stage.

Let me know when you're free, Scott, because I want to have that back and forth with Dago and focus on Web3 gaming. I met them in Costa Rica when I spoke there, so it'd be a good discussion. But yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow in Dallas as well, Scott. It should be a good chat.

We should do a two-way chat. Yeah, we're really excited, yeah. Yeah. Is it coming or not?