Unchained - Caitlin Long on Why the Fed’s Rejections of Custodia Bank Seem Politically Motivated - Ep. 687

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Custodia, established as a special purpose depository institution in Wyoming, aimed to offer secure banking services for the crypto sector. Despite meeting state requirements and taking extra steps to demonstrate its commitment to safety, Custodia’s application for a Fed master account was met with delays and ultimately denied in an unprecedented 86-page report. In this episode, Caitlin and Michelle explain why they believe the Fed’s rejection was politically motivated, how this relates to Operation Choke Point 2.0, the appallingly small number of American banks owned by women, where they are in their lawsuit against the Fed, and what this case means for the future of crypto banking in the U.S. Show highlights: 00:00 Intro 01:52 What Custodia Bank is and how it got started in Wyoming 06:04 How Custodia got into a fight with the Fed to get its master account 09:58 How the dual banking system works in the U.S. and the differences between Custodia and traditional banks 18:15 Why Custodia filed a lawsuit against its own regulator 24:33 Why the Fed denied Custodia its applications and Caitlin’s response to the criticisms 29:57 The political coordination meant to “intimidate” Custodia, according to Caitlin 42:43 The amicus briefs that were filed in favor of Custodia 48:48 Caitlin’s reaction to the Fed’s enforcement action against Customers Bank  53:35 Why Caitlin says that it’s “abusive and corporatist” that the SEC is granting exceptions to big banks 56:03 Why so few banks are owned by women and whether this played a role in Custodia’s denial 59:25 The next steps in Custodia’s case and whether a stablecoin is viable for them 1:05:21 Whether the elections are going to impact the case Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot Token 2049 Mantle  Guests: Caitlin Long, Founder & CEO of Custodia Bank Previous appearances on Unchained: Why Caitlin Long and Meltem Demirors Are Worried About Crypto’s Future in the US Caitlin Long: Why Avanti Will Be a New Kind of Crypto Bank Michelle Kallen, Partner at Jenner & Block Links Timeline PerkinsCoie: Federal Reserve Issues Final Guidelines for Master Account Access CoinDesk: Crypto Bank Custodia Sues Federal Reserve Davis Polk: Crypto bank sues Federal Reserve over delay in master account application Fed’s 86-page report of its denial of Custodia’s membership  Custodia’s response to the Fed report Custodia’s amended filing Judge Scott Skavdahl’s order to dismiss Davis Polk: District courts refuse to order Federal Reserve to grant master accounts to Custodia Appeal Custodia’s appeal notice Custodia’s appeal filing Amicus briefs for the appeal Bitcoin Magazine: The Federal Reserve, Custodia Bank, And The Battle For Sovereignty Paul Clement on behalf of the Digital Chamber and Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) Don Verrilli for Blockchain Association State of Wyoming Americans for Prosperity Foundation Members of the United States Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee Former Sen. Patrick Toomey Customers Bank: CoinGeek: ‘Crypto’-friendly Customers Bank hit with Fed Reserve enforcement action Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I actually talked to somebody who was at the table, who I won't disclose that person's name during that process. And explain to me what has become very clear as time went on and we see the rest of the crackdown on the crypto industry. This was all politically motivated. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto nine years ago and as the senior editor of Forbes was the first main chain reader reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the August 13th, 2024 episode of Unchained. Get ready for the world's largest crypto event, Token 249 Singapore, September 18th to 19th.

While Gis Sreeny Boston, Richard Tang, Arthur Hayes, and 300 others will hit the stage, joining 20,000 attendees. Visit Token249.com for 15% off with the code Unchained. Link in the description. Mantle's M-Eath is now the fourth largest LST with $1.3 billion in TVL. M-Eath offers holders cumulative incentives and airdrops, in addition to native ETH POS yields. This includes exclusive rewards like Eigen and Cook. Check it out at m-eath.mantle.xy-Z slash campaigns. Pocodot is the original and leading layer zero blockchain with over 2,000-plus developers.

And the Pocodot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem, making it faster, more secure, and adaptable. Perfect for GameFi and Defi to build, grow, and scale. Join the community at pocadot.network slash ecosystem slash community. Today's topic is custodias lawsuit against the Fed. Here to discuss our Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodio Bank, and Michelle, welcome, Caitlin and Michelle. Thanks so much.

Good to be back. Thank you. So this is a somewhat long saga. So we're going to start with the basics just to walk everybody through to make sure, you know, they all understand what's going on. So let's just start with your initial goal, Caitlin, before all of this happened. Like, what was your initial intention and vision with custodia, you know, and how it would work and how it would be different from other banks? Well, going back even further, what did the state of Wyoming want to accomplish? It was solving the debanking problem that hit this industry during the first operation,

tow point, there were a lot of companies that lost their bank accounts. In fact, actually, going back, Tether was created in large part because one of the banks got debanked by, I believe, Wells Fargo back in 2016. So there's a lot of history and a lot of water under the bridge of law-abiding startups not being able to bank. And if you don't bank, if you can't bank in the United States, you're not a business because the IRS requires you to remit your withholding taxes electronically through a bank. So that's the backdrop. Wyoming was trying to create a type of bank charter to serve this industry. And what was it solving for? The FDIC was the instigator of the first Operation Chokepoint under Marty Greenberg. He's still there. And here comes Operation

Tock Point 2.0 to fast forward a little bit. But what Wyoming was solving for was a type of bank charter that the Fed would recognize that wasn't necessarily FDIC insured. We, we, the Wyoming banks can be if we choose to be end custodia applied, but not surprisingly, FDIC insurance was not available for us. So that was what we were trying to solve, essentially durable banking, somebody who was going to fight for this industry. And we're still fighting. It's not over yet. So Michelle, I know you come into this story later on, but you probably we have your own tale of how it is that you even got notice of this industry and came to be in this position. So can you give us your backstory? Sure. So I was in between jobs,

leaving government and joining private practice. And a friend of mine who works at a crypto company was having a conference. And so I just joined her to support her at the conference. And the more I learned about the industry, it was soon after the Supreme Court issued its West Virginia v. EPA decision where the court talked about the major questions doctrine. And as I was learning more about this emerging technology, it seemed like the major questions doctrine was a fit for navigating, regulating, regulating the industry. And so like the con law nerd that I am,

I kept going around to people saying, have you heard of the major questions doctrine? And I think I came off a little crazy to some people. But it's been interesting then to kind of see the law evolve. and now it really is a hot topic in the industry. And we're seeing a lot of overlap between administrative law issues and constitutional law issues that are just hot in the appellate and constitutional world generally really be key to the evolution of the law in the crypto industry.

And so Custodia's case was one of the preeminent cases addressing some of the legal issues that are important to the industry. And so I had an opportunity to represent the blockchain association. and some scholars in an amicus brief in the district court and then have had the privilege of representing custodia on appeal to the Tenth Circuit. All right. So now, obviously, Michelle, even though you came later into the picture,

I know you're familiar with the ins and outs of everything that's happened. So we're going to now fill in the steps of, you know, how it is that you guys came to this point in your case. So, you know, back when, you know, Caitlin set out to solve these, issues. What were the steps that you thought it would take to build custodia? Like what were your plans at that point? Well, back then, the Fed and Wyoming had a friendly relationship and we didn't expect to be in litigation. We knew it was possible. But keep in mind, this was 2019, when the Wyoming Speedy Charter, special purpose depository institution went live. And Cracken was the first to apply.

Then Custodia, we were then called Avanti, applied. And then two others applied. pretty much every single large fintech has kicked the tires and has been around, has come to visit Wyoming. Some of them contacted me when they were here in Wyoming. So this is being heavily watched by a lot of people who are interested in getting access to the Fed itself to be able to bank directly at the Fed as opposed to having to rely on a partner bank, which is what the fintechs have to do today. Just as an aside, Europe has these e-money charters that are charters for fintechs to be able to bank directly, for example, at the Bank of England. So the U.S. is behind the curve on this, requiring that all fintechs have to bank through a bank

as opposed to bank directly at the Fed. And the markup on the services can be as high as 100 times. And that doesn't even take into account the risk that your bank might debank you. that's happened to custodia twice. And the platform fees that the banks are charging because it's so expensive to do the tech integrations. When we lost one of our banks, incidentally, it impacted a million and a half lines of our code, just to give you a sense of how disruptive it is to have to change a partner bank. But we applied, we got the charter in October 2020 and immediately applied for a master account. Like I said, Wyoming and the Fed were friendly back then.

And then the wheels started to get gumbed up. And what came out later was it in the spring of 2021 that the anti-crypto group at the Fed was ascendant. And they were able to slow everything down. And the Fed proposed a new set of guidelines for access to the payment system. And that's when things started to really go haywire. In fact, actually, if you look at the discovery evidence, it does look like the, the, but if there was, there was a discovery evidence that there were no showstoppers for Custodia's application with the Fed in January 2021. It was all friendly and it

was all swimmingly moving ahead and then it got slowed down. And then fast forwarding another year, FTX happened and then Operation Showpoint 2.0 happened. And it's very clear in retrospect, Custodia got caught up in that. But we did everything. thing we could and have continued to try to work with the Fed. But there have been factions. It's well-known factions inside the Fed that don't want any private crypto companies to exist and they're trying to kill us. And unfortunately, they have control right now. And that group wants a central bank digital currency. And then there are factions at the Fed who were big supporters of what we were doing, who really appreciated that we were trying to go up the middle of the fairway, who appreciated

Wyoming's work with the Fed. Wyoming had more than 100 meetings with the Fed getting this set up. So obviously in the wake of FTX, it all went haywire. What we know through lawsuit discovery is that Michael Barr had a meeting two weeks after FTX failed about custodias applications. And Michael Barr is... He is the vice chair for supervision. He is a Warrenite, an Elizabeth Warren clan member. And so, right after FTX, right when the Biden administration made this big move, very much coordinated by Elizabeth Warren, we've been told Michael Barr was the one who decided to deny custodia. There was a meeting about custodia in right before Thanksgiving 2022.

And then the first draft of the denial memo appeared right after Thanksgiving 2022. All right. So let's just back up to that piece about Wyoming because I just want to make sure people understand the dual banking system in the U.S. and the role that state charter banks typically play. So can you just, you know, can one of you explain that? Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that. So, you know, we have this federalism system. And as someone who comes to the practice of law from both state and federal government, it's something I've lived as well. We have, often there can be a focus on on federal laws and federal interests. But the states, particularly when it's, particularly when it's,

comes to banking play a very important role. And the banking infrastructure that we have and Congress's laws routinely respect the idea that banks can be both state chartered entities under state law or nationally chartered banks under federal law. And so we even had a Supreme Court case this term that emphasized the dual banking system and the state's roles in chartering banks. Custodia is a speedy chartered bank under Wyoming state law specifically designed to create a bank charter that helps account for some of the unique features of a bank that is involved in the crypto industry. And so under the dual banking system, that system both designed by Congress and that's kind of been reaffirmed time and again by Congress allows banks to either choose to be state charter.

and then have their primary regulator be a state regulator or be nationally chartered, and then their primary regulator be a federal regulator. Yeah, and as far as I understand, that system also lends itself to innovation in the sense that I think a lot of the state chartered banks tend to be more innovative, which custodio is a great example of. And I wanted to also ask, you know, you did say that you had applied for FDIC insurance, but as far I understand. The business model for custodian would be actually to back every dollar. So why is it that you wanted to apply for that? Well, in the beginning, we didn't think we needed it. So, Laura, you're right. If you're not

lending, why would you need insurance? Because if you're going to hold 100% of customer funds in cash, which is exactly what we are doing, that's publicly disclosed and available to confirm, then why would you need insurance? Insurance is really there for banks that do traditional. additional maturity transformation and take credit risk so that if their loans default or like happened last spring, there's a run on the bank, but they own longer term assets that they have to sell out a loss because interest rates have changed, then the solvency of the bank is in question. That's not what happens with the Wyoming Special Purpose Depository institutions. They, by law, cannot lend and have to sit in cash.

and other high-quality liquid assets. In Custodias case, we are in three-month and lower T-bills 100%. So, long story short, we shouldn't need insurance. But why did we apply? We did it because the Biden administration has been, again, like because of the different factions, has flip-flopped. Originally, they said only FDIC-insured banks could issue stable coins. And Custodia had proposed to issue a digital token as a bank.

and of course we didn't have FDIC insurance, and they set that up knowing that Marty Groomberg at the FDIC would block everyone who tried to do that. So it was a perfect catch-22. It was making it look like they were making policy progress, knowing full well that the person in charge of the FDIC was going to block any bank who tried to issue a token. It's fascinating how it's evolved, though, because now we've seen JP Morgan issue a token.

We've seen State Street come out and say they're going to be issuing a token. So some of the biggest players are out there saying they're going to do this. Meanwhile, the upstarts, to your point, Laura, the state chartered banks are being blocked by the federal regulators. There is absolutely an arrogance among the federal regulators who look down on the states. We think the states are hillbillies and don't know anything. And that's actually the opposite from what I've experienced in terms of technology. And there's a very good reason for that.

the states typically have in their mission statement the safety and soundness as well as economic development, whereas the federal regulators only have safety and soundness in their missions. And so they're naturally going to be opposed to anything different. And oh boy, have they been opposed to anything different in technology? We see it, not just in crypto, but in FinTech as a whole. This Biden administration is technophobic. I saw that word today on a tweet. I think it was Austin Campbell's tweet,

talking about how technophobic the Biden administration has been, and it's true. All right. And then so one other kind of like basic thing I just want to make sure the audience understands is there were two steps that custodia was taking with the Fed. One was to apply for access to the payment system, and the other was to apply to become a member bank.

So can you just explain those two steps, you know, why it was both of those steps that you were going after? Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question because it lends to some back, some further background. We were so eager to bend over backwards and do whatever the Fed wanted us to do. And we got back channel feedback that we should apply to become a Fed member bank from the general counsel of the board of governors in Washington, D.C. And so we did. That would have made us federally regulated.

We had no problem with that. And we told the Fed from the very beginning that it was on our, roadmap to become federally regulated. And so we, we again, had we become FDIC insured or had we become federally regulated by the Fed itself as a Fed member bank, then this whole question of the dual banking system would have been moot. We never sought that fight. We literally did everything that the general counsel of the Fed, who's the one directing the litigation against us in this lawsuit, we did everything that he backchanneled that we should do. We did get back channel feedback when we applied for FDIC insurance,

that it was a good move. And we all knew what the answer was going to be. But again, we just bent over backwards. And I will say that that continued. We've bent over backwards continuously to help the Fed. I warned them about bank runs at Silicon Valley at signature and Silvergate. It was obvious to me because those banks, were sitting with 10 cents in cash to back demand deposits that could all be withdrawn within

the span of minutes, you've got to be in 100 cents in cash to back demand deposits that could all be withdrawn in the span of minutes. And then also, they didn't know it at the time, but I was getting evidence of probable crimes committed by FTX to the FBI the summer before the FTX failed, right? So, I mean, there are good people in crypto who are really trying to work with regulators. And the sad thing about what the Biden administration has done is that those of us who fall in that category have been skewered the most by the regulators. And I've said before we're using the phrase in Wyoming, shoot the stallions to scatter the herd.

That's the tactic that the Fed, the FDIC, and especially the SEC as well, have taken by going after the ones who tried the hardest to work with the regulators, we were the ones who got hurt the most. Well, well, yeah. I mean, in a way, we've seen that with, you know, people like Coinbase. Exactly. Yeah, our companies, I should say, because they're clearly, you know, one of the ones that from the start has been very buttoned up.

So I then just wanted to give the timeline. And you had sort of outlined this, but just to really show people like, you know, this is what happen when. So in June of 2020 is when you sent your business plan to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In October of that year, you received approval for the special purpose depository institution bank charter from the Washington, Wyoming State Banking Board, not Washington. The day after that, you applied for this Federal Reserve, the access to the payment system. And so I just want to note here, you know, I'm talking about the year 2020. So this, you know, was two years ahead of the FTX collapse. And I think they, in most people's minds, that's what set

off Operation Shoke Point 2.0. But, you know, all of these events happened before. In January of 2021, Tara Humston, who's the Kansas City Federal Reserve's head of supervision and risk management, told you there were no showstoppers with your application. And then in the spring of 2021, the Federal Reserve Board proposed new guidelines for applicants to payment system access. And after the public comment period closed, you applied then to become a member bank. And as far as I understand, that it wasn't a necessary step, but you were just doing that to demonstrate your commitment to safety and soundness. And then in January of 2022, again, so here, you know, it's like you're getting green lights.

And in January 2022, the Kansas City Fed informed you in a letter that custodia meets the legal requirements for obtaining a Fed master account. However, you know, this brings us to the lawsuit. So in June of 22, you finally filed this lawsuit against the Federal Reserve for unlawfully delaying the decision on your application for a master account. I'm sure suing your own regulator is not something that you ever expected to do. So can you talk a little bit about what it was that led you to do that? And Michelle, you can also weigh in on, you know, what it is that could compel a company to do that.

Well, what happened was that the application that we filled out literally said five to seven business days to process the application. And by that point, it was almost two years since we had applied, certainly two years since the Fed knew that the application was coming and had the opportunity to provide us feedback. And it was very clear that they were undergoing delay tactic after delay tactic after delay tactics. So we felt like we had no choice. there was absolutely no progress. And the only thing that ever made the Fed move was either threats of litigation or actual litigation. And I know we can talk about this later, but the Fed tends to do things tied to deadlines in the application process or in the lawsuit. And they have a history of doing that. And why do you think that they didn't answer you for that whole period rather than

just rejecting you outright? Well, again, I've seen all the discovery. And I can only talk about what's public, but it is public that there was a desire. There were communications between Lale Braynard and Esther George, the president of the Kansas City Fed. Lail Braynard at the time was vice chair for supervision of the Board of Governors in D.C. That they wanted to buy some time, quote unquote. So they wanted to slow things down. And the back channel feedback, because Wyoming's politicians were very active in talking to

the Fed at that time. The governor had been on the Kansas City Fed board previously. So he knew all the people and was making phone calls. And Senator Lomas, of course, was very active with trying to get the charter recognized, not just not for us at all. It's just for the for all the players. But so there were multiple phone calls that went back and forth. And there's a lot of evidence in the public disclosure of that of the Fed governors telling Wyoming, this is coming, this is coming. There's one piece of evidence that references the speedies being waved through after the guidelines were enacted. So there was definitely on the part of the Fed a dangling in front of the Wyoming officials that, hey, you've done everything right. The feedback was really good. And the speedies

were going to be waived through after the guidelines were enacted. But that's not what happened. And Michelle, do you want to add anything? Yeah, so I guess it's interesting because leading up to a lot of this, and soon after the Monetary Control Act, which is the law that's the focus of the litigation, that was passed in 1980, the Fed continually recognized that the Act required all depository institutions have access to the services that were set forth in the Act. And so the form that Caitlin mentioned that said that filling out an application for a master account should take five to seven business days, that aligns with the way that the Fed itself has interpreted applying the Monetary Control Act and giving access to master accounts. That was always understood to be a process very similar to opening a bank. You just kind of fill out a form that shows your baseline eligibility.

and then you get access between five to seven business days. And so the creation of these guidelines and tiering banks based off varied perceptions of, whether they're federally insured or whether they're nationally chartered or state chartered, that's all quite new and was happening while Custodia's master account application was pending. So the experience that Custodia experience and the experience of various speedy banks is unique in the sense that before this time frame, the Fed itself recognized that a master account application process was a very simple process that only required baseline eligibility. And so all of this kind of the change in the administrative structure was happening at the same time that Custodia's application was pending. All right. So then next in this timeline is that in January of 2023, Federal Reserve Board wrote up an 86-page report

detailing its denial to custodia to become a member bank. So this is just, you know, one of that part of the process, you know, not the other half. And it had a number of criticisms of custodia. Here's just some examples you can add on for any others that you'd like to address. But for instance, they call one of them the financial factor and they say that the fact that custodia plans to, quote, focus on a narrow sector of the economy being the crypto industry, they say, quote, this presents heightened illicit finance and safety and soundness risks. So that was one. There was another questioning the compliance regimes for the Bank Secrecy Act and Office of Foreign Assets Control saying they didn't seem fully developed. Another one even saying your business model didn't seem viable. There's, they also talked

about what they called, quote, a lack of relevant banking experience and bank-specific risk management experience among custodias board of directors and management team. So, you know, I don't know if there's any other ones that stuck out to you. That's just a smattering. But what is your response to their various criticisms? Well, a couple of things. I actually talked to somebody who was at the table who I won't disclose that person's name during that process. And explain to me what has become very clear as time. went on and we see the rest of the crackdown on the crypto industry. This was all politically motivated. The 86-page order was the longest order in Fed history denying any applicant by a long shot.

The longest one in the entire 115 year history of the Fed prior to that was three pages. And ours was 86. That tells you something right there. But what I found out was that it was entirely about crypto. And they were backpapering the file by saying all those things. And Laura, there were a lot of inaccurate things in that order that the Fed refused to correct. We actually filed a complaint with the Fed's Inspector General, which of course went nowhere. And they refused to correct the factual inaccuracies in that order. So it's nuts. What happened? That was at the beginning, it was very confusing to us because we didn't know Operation Choke Point 2.0 was in full swing in retrospect. Clearly, that's what it was. Yeah, I actually myself, you know, I'm in an 86 page document,

so I'm not going to pretend that I read every last sentence, but I did skim parts of it. And, you know, something that I noticed was they mentioned the, quote, absence of deposit insurance coverage at Custodia, which, as we just discussed it, because you're not a lending institution, it didn't even, wasn't even necessary. But, Then it said it could, quote, increase the firm's risk of runs and contagion. And there was like a little footnote. And sorry, they added that the crypto industry is highly susceptible to runs. And then they wrote as recent events demonstrated.

And there was this footnote. But when I looked it up, it referenced a section of a report that was all about Tara Luna, Celsius and Voyager. Yeah. And I was just like, it's such a different. These are completely not related. Correct. Yeah.

models to what to what Custodia is doing. Of course. So, yes, just even, even in the little bits that I read, I did notice that there was a kind of a mismatch between what they were saying and what the backup evidence was. Staggering overreach and they refused to correct it. And, you know, candidly as time has gone on, here's what they expect it. We were surprised by that. When we got denied, we were surprised because we were making lots of progress.

We knew we had to do a second exam. We didn't make it on the first try. That's not unusual. I know of one bank that the Fed gave three exams to. Most de novos get two exams. And so not having not having made it on the first try, not unusual for a bank that's just forming for the first time, especially doing something different. So we were in good stead and then all of a sudden just got blindsided by that. And it's now, again, very clear. There's another, I'll give you another obvious mistake. They thought we were a crypto exchange. We're not a crypto exchange, right? I mean, how could they say that? Well, we know how they said it, because, again, somebody who was at the table told us our original sin was we were associated with Bitcoin,

period. And everything else they said about us was just backpapering the file. But it was all about our association with crypto. One of the interesting things also that was noted there is the kind of a discussion or a suggestion that there's a lack of banking experience among the leadership at Custodia. And I'll let Caitlin take the lead in explaining how extensive her background is when it comes to banking. But that was a place that, you know, particularly recognizing how few women-owned banks there are in the country as a whole to suggest that custodia's leadership does not have sufficient banking experience is pretty interesting because Caitlin and her team have significant significant banking experience. Yeah, that's indeed the case.

And, you know, for example, two of our five directors had been on four different bank boards between them. So to say that there was a lack of banking experience when that was true, Again, it seems very clear that the people who we were talking to who did the exam were not the people who wrote that report. The people who wrote that report, and I've gotten lots of back channel feedback from various people at the Fed. The heads of supervision at the Fed, very senior people, are very close to Elizabeth Warren and her staff. And that's who wrote that report. So they were writing for an ends justify the means outcome rather than for something that was remote, fair, equitable, and respectful of custodias due process as an applicant.

And the other piece that comes out regarding due process is the press was hounding us. So both the Fed and the White House were leaking. And we got, we got, it's now in writing and this has all come out in the lawsuit, that Bloomberg, because we were refusing to return their phone calls, they finally put it in writing saying that we've been told that, the applicants at the Fed and OCC with pending applications that are connected to crypto are being asked to withdraw their applications or they will be voted down. And that we got, that email, we got two days before the Fed vote on our membership application. And we did a lot of phone calls

back and forth with the Bloomberg reporters. They were very clearly getting fed information from both the Fed and the White House. By the way, that's illegal. But stop and think about the due process of that. The two federal agencies with multiple applications in front of them were coordinating to get those applicants to withdraw. Now, the other applications did get withdrawn. We didn't have a choice but to fight. We had nothing left if we didn't fight. And so we did. And keep in mind, we already had the lawsuit. Part of the reason that I think they came, they tried to intimidate us that way by using the press threats was because they were trying to intimidate us into withdrawing the lawsuit. And then the Fed board voted two days later and magically the vote came

out exactly as Bloomberg was told two days in advance that the vote was going to come out. We were going to be voted down. What does that tell you about process at the Fed and leaks at the Fed? But then the following Monday or Tuesday, Senator Dick Durbin attacked custodia on the Senate floor. What's crazy about all this political coordination and clearly using the press to try to intimidate us was that we'd never met any of the people involved. And I've never met Dick Durbin.

Nobody at Custodia had ever met Dick Durbin. We were told by a whistleblower who approached me that weekend after the Custodia denial who had done it at the White House, a guy named Barat Ramamerti. I'd never met Barat Ramamerti. How were we on his radar screen?

Well, I looked him up. Lo and behold, He ran economic policy for Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign in 2020. And it is now, there have been a lot written subsequently. It is now acknowledged that he, Gary Gensler and Marty Greenberg and Michael Barr were locking arms and going after the banks in Operation 2.0 as well as all the crypto companies through the SEC and going as aggressively as possible. And I asked, there were multiple whistleblowers who came forward. I asked that first one, why did the Fed participate? This is supposedly an independent agency. Why were they coordinating like this? And why were they working with the White House like this?

And his response was that they were perceived among the federal agencies to be too open to crypto. And that in this post-FTX scrum where the Warrenites were ascendant and some of the pro-crypto people at the White House had left for independent reasons, and so there wasn't anybody to counter Barat Ramamerti at the time. Again, this is what I've been told. And it's been confirmed by multiple people. And so the Fed had to prove its bona fides because they were afraid of losing jurisdiction to the SEC. And that shooting custodia was the first thing that they had to do.

There's another interesting angle that's related to something in the news. The then-Vice chair of supervision, Lail Braynard, who had been, we thought, friendly to the whole idea, idea of this Wyoming charter. I was told she read Wyoming's 752 page supervisory exam manual. Her reputation is she's a detailed person. And I believe it. I've been on a couple of panels with her. And she was moving to the White House at that time. And the last thing she did at the Fed was to vote against Custodia's application. And that was all connected to all that political, you know, Washington, D.C. mess.

We got thrown under the bus for political and career reasons. All right. So we're going to talk about kind of the latest in this saga, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Join 20,000 attendees for the world's largest crypto event. Token 2049 Singapore,

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Think big, bills bigger with Pocodot. Join the community at Pocodot.network slash ecosystem slash community. Back to my conversation with Caitlin and Nichelle. So this brings us to April of this year, which is when a district court sided with the Fed saying that the Federal Reserve Bank doesn't have to grant master accounts to legally eligible depository institutions, that it allows them to implement the guidelines issued by the Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Board. it sees fit. And it even says that they can apply stricter scrutiny to state chartered

depository institutions, at least if they have, quote, novel charters, which would, you know, probably is the category that they're putting custodia under. So tell us, you know, what your plan is at this point. And I, this is also, I know, when Michelle comes in. So, you know, tell us kind of where you guys stand right now and what your plans are. Well, I will say a lot of observers, and you saw a lot of the commentators in the space talk about how surprising that decision was, because Custodia had been winning up until the final decision. And I'm going to hand it off to Michelle now. Yeah. So, I mean, there were initial, there were two motions to dismiss brought before the decision that that's on appeal now that in a lot of ways when Custodia's way,

the district court rejected some of the framing of the Fed and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and allowed the case to proceed through discovery, and then only after discovery granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. At that point, adopting a lot of the theories that the court refused to adopt earlier in the case. So it was pretty surprising to see the district court decision come out the way it did. Some aspects of it directly contradicted earlier decisions in that very case itself. So for example, there was an effort to frame the To Me Amendment that talks about just essentially recording denials of master accounts. And the defendants argued that that is an indication that there is flexibility and discretion for them to deny master accounts.

And so the district court earlier in the case rejected that framing of the Toomey Amendment, but then adopted it later in its decision when it dismissed the case. So there were all kinds of surprising aspects of the district court decision elsewhere. The district court relied on policy reasons to adopt a certain framing of the Monetary Control Act. And so as someone at the time who was involved just as an amicus, not yet representing a party, the district court decision seemed pretty surprising. So Custodia decided to appeal and filed a notice of appeal. And now the case is briefed by the opening brief.

We filed on behalf of Custodia a little over a month ago, and we're waiting on the appellees, the defendant's briefs to come in in a little bit. We will file our reply and have oral argument and hopefully get a decision relatively quickly, hopefully. But now the case is, you know, full on in the midst of an appeal. And so this was around the time that Caitlin hired you, and we did, you know, get your background. But another, well, that she hired here was Ian Gershengorn. And so can you tell us a little bit about his background as well? Sure. I'm happy to start. And then Caitlin, if you want to chime in about what you found compelling about Ian's background. But so Ian's background is, he served as acting Solicitor General under the Obama

administration. And so if this case, for example, goes up to the United States Supreme Court, we would anticipate that the U.S. Solicitor General's office would step in. in, they tend to take on most matters involving the federal government in the United States Supreme Court. And so had this case come about while Ian was at the Solicitor General's office, he would likely have been involved on that side of things. And so he really has expertise knowing how the federal government works, constitutional issues, and he's the head of Jenner's appellate practice and is a fantastic lawyer. So it's been really fantastic to work with him generally, case specifically, he has more robust federal experience. I have a little bit, but my solicitor

general background is on the state side. And so with a case that involves the Fed and the federal government, but also the dual banking system and state's interests and state interests and chartering banks, it's really fun to be able to work in this setting with a combination of kind of myself coming at things from a federalism angle and Ian really understanding things well from a DOJ U.S. Solicitor General angle. So Custodia also recently had some amicus briefs that were filed on your behalf from some big name lawyers and a really bipartisan set as well. So why don't we just talk about who some of these people are and then we can also, and then actually you can also give some of the arguments that they mentioned in their briefs. Sure. Two other solicitors general.

We now have three U.S. former solicitors general in addition to Michelle, who's the former Solicitor General of Virginia, involved on our side in the case. And what's so interesting, as you're alluding to, Laura, is it is bipartisan. And the two who filed amicus briefs typically would be opposed to each other at the Supreme Court. And they were both on our side in this case, referring to Don Verrilli, who was Obama's first Solicitor General and Paul Clement, who was Bush's Solicitor General. and the two of them have faced off on some of the most famous Supreme Court cases, for example, the Obamacare case. And what's so interesting is, just as an aside before I come back to those two, they've worked with Ian as well.

Both Ian and Michelle have incredible win-loss percentages in their appellate backgrounds, and including Ian at the Supreme Court. When I looked at his cases, I didn't see that he had ever lost a government controversy case, a complex controversy case at the Supreme Court. So he's well known for winning. The biggest case, I think, in his portfolio is the Oklahoma case for the Native American ownership of land, which was a very famous case a couple of years ago. But the three of those guys together, those former Solicitor's General and Michelle, the win-loss record is just incredible of all of them. And Don Verrilli wrote the amicus brief on the debanking issue, which we talked about,

which Wyoming is trying to solve. And Custodia's living that. And just today, there was another big announcement related to that, which we can, as suspect, come back to. But Paul Clements, Amicus Brief is really interesting. He picked up something in Michelle's filing pertaining to the appointments clause. And this has been something that historians have said for a long time and some of the biggest critics of the Fed have pointed out. The regional federal reserve banks are owned by the banking industry.

and their boards are controlled by the private sector. These are not government officials. And yet, if they're doing government business, does that comport with the appointments clause? And I'll pass the baton back to Michelle because the Trump immunity case was an appointments clause case. It's a very hot area of the law in the Supreme Court bar. And as Michelle said, the custodia case with all the recent decisions, including the overturning of Chevron, and the major questions doctrine. The dual banking system was just reaffirmed.

The SEC had its wings clipped, and the Fed has had its wings clipped at the end of this most recent Supreme Court term on cases, respectively. It's lining up to be one of the most interesting cases that's next in line to test some of these decisions. So, Michelle, back to you. Yeah, so it was really exciting to see the amount, the robust support that Custodia received from the amicus

briefs and the timing was fascinating because I think it was in between the time that we filed our opening brief and the time that the amicus briefs came in, which is seven days after the brief that they support, the Supreme Court issued the Loper Bright decision that overturned the Chevron doctrine. And one of the lawyers, the lawyer who filed the appointments clause brief was the lawyer who argued that case. And actually, in his oral argument, mentioned the crypto industry. And so it's been really fascinating as an appellate lawyer and someone who's been interested in the crypto industry to really see the level of involvement and interest from an appellate standpoint that's really grown over the last couple of years. And the timing of, you know, one of the

major themes of this Supreme Court term is skepticism of administrative agencies. The Supreme Court overturned in the Loper Bright decision, the longstanding Chevron doctrine, which was a doctrine that called for courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The court also issued a decision that kind of called into question some of the internal mechanisms of agencies in the Jarkacy case, and that was an SEC case. And then there was a case called Corner Post, where the Supreme Court held that entities who are newly subject to agency regulation, can be within the statute of limitations under the Administrative Procedures Act to sue, even if it's for longstanding regulation.

And so there have been this trio of decisions of skepticism from the Supreme Court of administrative agencies, one of which is this Loper Bright decision overturning the Chevron doctrine. And so to have that kind of come out right in the midst of filing these briefs, where our case really is about the extent of agency power, it really seems timely. And then to have these just rock star lawyers coming in to support us from an amicus perspective and folks who themselves were involved in these cases, it's really exciting to see this level of support. Yeah, and I find it interesting that Varelli, who, as you mentioned, was Obama's Solicitor General,

basically, you know, sided with the crypto industry saying in his brief that custodius application, quote, got caught in the current of federal regulators' aggressive coordinated efforts to debank the digital asset industry. So he's very clearly kind of substantiating the allegations that Operation shook point 2.0. It did exist, you know, was being used against the crypto industry. And so I did want to also reference the fact that we happen to be recording on Thursday, August 8th, which is the day that Customers Bank, which also services, crypto companies, was hit by an enforcement action for digital asset and dollar token activities. And Caitlin, I saw you tweeting about the timing of this. So, yeah, can you talk about what you're reading into the timing of this action? Another Fed special, very coordinated, very political. Seriously, the Fed, there was a meeting today with Rokana and White House officials and the crypto industry with the Harris staff. I don't know if it was campaign staff or White House staff, but it was a crypto reset meeting, a kumbaya meeting to try to get the anti-Harris.

subtle sentiment shifted in this industry, which is, as an aside, interesting because 61% of crypto voters in the United States voted for Biden. And so this should have been a constituency, and it skews younger, which definitely skews more democratic. It should have been a constituency that would have supported Harris, but this incredible crackdown, which anyone looking at it would say this is unfair, this is abusive of government power. And I'm talking about not just custodian situation, but broadly in the industry. And, you know, the SEC refusing to define what a security is and give any guidance as to whether ether is a security and all of the morass of this, plus all the debanking that Don Varelli made reference to and the evidence in our lawsuit uncovered.

This is all coordinated, folks. And so the Fed released this enforcement action against a bank that's favorable to this industry right at the start of that Roe-Connor meeting. I feel so badly and it's so appreciate Roe and Wiley Nicol and some of the other prominent Democrats, Ritchie Torres, who've been helpful to our industry and trying to bring this Warren crowd back from the very far left and trying to moderate the stance. And they've been skewered by their party and they're getting skewered by the Republicans. And so, you know, some of us are stepping up and saying, we're really grateful to you. But to have the Fed do this, now, was it a coincidence? Of course not. If that was the first time the Fed did something that was timed against something that was a deadline

like that, then I would say, well, it was a coincidence. But remember, we know that the heads of supervision and regulation at the Fed are very tied to Warren. The staff, the career staff, talk to Warren allegedly every day. So therefore, this kumbaya meeting, which we know Warren was opposed to, she's been speaking out against it. And then all of a sudden the Fed comes out with his enforcement action. Enforcement actions take weeks, if not months before they're announced. So the Fed could have announced that at any point in time. And for them to announce it in coordination with the timing of that meeting, it's not a coincidence. And I'll give you a couple of examples. The Fed finalized those payment system access guidelines you referred to earlier on the day before its response

was due in our lawsuit filing. So there has been things like that that the Fed has done. They very clearly timed things. And the coordination, again, we were talking about on the denial that was coordinated with the White House. There was a White House anti-crypto statement that came out at the same time as the Fed's denial of custodia, literally at 11 a.m. Eastern. All coordinated. So if the Fed didn't have a history of doing these things, then you might say, well, it was coincidental, but it was not coincidental. This is the Fed sending a message to the banks. Don't get into this space. We don't want you there. And this is interesting because, again, Michael Barr is the head of supervision of regulation and the senior career staff underneath him.

Barr was appointed by Warren. She had to clear all of the financial services appointees in the Biden administration. And then the senior staff talking to her staff every day, it's obvious where this came from, folks. And if Harris gets reelected, that's probably going to stay in place. The interesting question is if Trump or Kennedy gets elected, will that stay in place? And what power do they have to remove or reassign some of those senior staffers who are very clearly using power, I would argue, abusing power to try to kill the crypto industry. Yeah. One other thing that I, you know, just needed a call out. So this obviously involves the

SEC, but it's all very similar in terms of the topics here. Because this year we've seen this major fight over the SEC guidance, staff accounting bulletin 121, which requires banks to keep the fair value of the crypto assets that they custody on their own balance sheets. It's basically a rule that's so onerous as to be impossible. But interestingly, in July, Bloomberg tax broke the news that some banks and brokerages, not crypto companies, are being granted exemptions to this rule. And the reporters wrote, quote, several large banks that have consulted with the SEC staff, starting in 2023, got the green light to bypass the balance sheet reporting by ensuring their customer's assets would be projected in the event of a bankruptcy or failure, which is so

fascinating because, you know, the custodium model also would be something that does that. So what is your reaction to the granting of these exceptions? Well, since you called out Bloomberg, there's Bloomberg again that gets the leak, okay? You tuck back in the back of your mind. But I did actually go digging and talk to people who are in the know, very, very reliable source that a New York, at least one New York bank did get approved by the Fed to provide digital asset custody and given the exemption by the SEC on SAB-121. Again, in the context of what the Fed did to custodia, holy cow, where are the corporatists? I challenge the progressives here.

This is such a corporatist thing that the SEC is doing, giving the big banks a special advantage over the crypto-native companies? It's the same thing the Fed did to custodia. Meanwhile, Bank of New York Mellon is green-lighted to go do digital asset custody, but the crypto-native company coming through the state system gets stymied. It's just wrong. It's abusive. And it's corporatist. And I would think that that would be the opposite of what the progressives, what the Warrenites want. But apparently it's not. Watch what they do, not what they say. It's very uncomfortable because it's not what you would expect. And it's just, it's frustrating to the moderates who look at this and say, that's hypocritical. It's not right. Yeah, it does seem the exact opposite of what a progressive

would want to do. One other thing that I just had to call out, because when I was doing the research for this, I was so beyond shocked. You know, I heard you talking about this on some other podcast. I just need to call up these statistics. And we did, we did allude to this earlier. But I guess out of more than 4,400 banks, only 18 are owned by women. Correct. And I heard to, so then I looked up, I think 23 are owned by African Americans. Is that? No, I think it's seven. It's even it's, it's fewer than women owned banks. So I heard you say seven. But then when I, when I was researching, I think I came across 23. So, um, so we'll see. But, but the point is, even if you ask that all up, Even if you add those two numbers together, assuming there's no overlap, if you add them all up,

that doesn't even make a single percentage of all the banks in existence, which is just bonkers. So I just was so curious to hear your thoughts on why you think this is so appallingly, shockingly small and how you think this might have played a role in your case. Well, I don't know if it played a role, but Michelle alluded to this earlier, where they talked about the experience of the management team. Hell, I was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, a Fed regulated bank. And I mean, that apparently doesn't count. And as I said, two of our five directors had been between the two of them on directors of

four different banks. And yet we had limited banking experience. That kind of language I've called this out before is the kind of language I would have expected, you know, a White's only country club to. use as justification for denying someone who wasn't white to apply to it. I would have thought we would have moved past this decades ago in the United States. But apparently we have not. It is a club. And just look what happened. I would have thought, and I actually in the Inspector General report that we filed, which went nowhere, unfortunately, called this out,

that this is the kind of stuff that people who may not look like the average bank owner who want to form a bank, when they see this, it discourages them. And I'm aware of others. There's someone who was on our board who happens to be of African descent, who is a U.S. citizen. He was born in Africa. And he was doing something completely different. But he actually got some of the same kind of thing. And we were comparing notes at one point. I don't want to call him out because I think what's happening is the experience of anyone who comes with anything different and who looks different. And it's wrong. And there was another exception that I saw here, which is you've been tweeting about how the state of Texas is the only state to have its own Fed

Master account. And I wondered why you thought that happened in terms of it being the only state to have that and what it would mean for your case if Wyoming also had one. Well, Wyoming looked at getting one because of that. And in fact, actually, it did talk to Texas because Texas had one. And then it turned out Tennessee had one as well. And California, the Texas officials shared that California contacted them because they want a Fed master account. What is all this saying if you step back? The Fed picks and chooses winners. And it's just arbitrary.

Yeah. So now let's talk about, you know, what could happen in your case. And not only that, but I did also want to. to ask about how this recent overturning of Chevron deference affects your case going forward. Michelle, can you talk about that? Sure. So our case is a clean statutory interpretation case that arises from the Monetary Control Act of 1980, and it's a question of what that language means, and the language is very clear and unambiguously is unambiguous. And so Chevron used to come about when there was ambiguous statutory language, and it stood for the idea that in the case of ambiguous

statutory language, a court will defer to an agency. Our case was never a Chevron case because the language of the Monetary Control Act is unambiguous. It says that all Federal Reserve Bank services covered by a fee schedule set forth in the statute shall be available to non-member depository institutions. And so that language, because that language is unambiguous and clearly says that all of the services and the fee schedule, which are themselves contingent on a master and receiving a master account, shall be available, meaning must be available to non-membered depository institutions like custodia. And as an aside, both Congress and the Fed all along understood that language to apply to all depository institutions. And so because our case involves just plain statutory text that's

unambiguous, this case was never a Chevron case. And so as a clean legal matter, the overturning of Chevron deference is not directly at issue because this wasn't a Chevron case. But I do think the themes coming out of this Supreme Court term, the skepticism of administrative agencies is very much relevant because even in non-chevron cases, there has been kind of an approach by courts to generally respect the position that agencies are coming from and generally kind of presume that they're coming at things, that they have an expertise in their areas, including on statutory language. And so to the extent, you know, you read the district court's decision and it's very deferential to the federal government there, the theme coming to. The theme coming

out of this Supreme Court term is definitely one that's much more skeptical of administrative agencies that is in many ways in tension with the district court decision that we're contesting here on appeal. Especially when the agency has changed its interpretation of the law, which is what the Fed did here. And so if you're victorious, what is your kind of most hope for outcome or outcomes? We just want a master account. That's all we've been after. We want to operate a bank and serve this industry and fulfill the mission of making sure there are durable banking services for this industry by people who understand it, by people who know how to be law-abiding and how to comply with all the anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing and OFAC sanctions requirements

on this space, I will say we have a clean compliance record. When I read what came out today, I was, you know, candidly, I was looking at it saying, Wow, this is interesting. Some of the banks that got into this space allegedly didn't set up good compliance systems first. We did. It cost us more money. It cost us time. But what we have is more durable as a result. And like I said, had we been given a second Fed exam, we would have, I'm confident, made it. That was where we were. But then the politicization intervened. And I did also want to check in on your plans to offer a stable coin. I think that's also. So come up against stumbling blocks. So where are you on that? Well, the Fed won't permit anyone in the

banking industry to do it right now. And so since we're dependent upon partner banks, the partner banks won't approve us to do it. So the Fed has stymie in our business plan. So it's really funny, Laura, because you talked about that they questioned the viability of the business plan, but they created a perfect catch-22 where they're not letting us do our business plan so we can't even test that. We would have been able to be profitable. I mean, look at it. look at Hap Tether is one of the most profitable companies ever. And certainly our compliance staff would be, is probably even bigger than theirs right now because we are, we are, and that's not a knock on them at all. That this is, a U.S. Bank has heightened compliance requirements and heightened

risk management requirements. And that requires people and it requires investment in technology and and it requires time. And we've made all those investments. Every time an enforcement action comes out, we do a case study on it internally and look at it and talk about it with our board, talk about it with our risk management committee to see what we can learn. And, you know, I stack us up pretty well against what has come out. We are far in advance in my view of what the banks that got into this industry have done because we've been really careful. I don't want anything to happen that would cause the folks that are coming after us to say, see, I told you so.

We're doing our darned us to make sure that that doesn't happen, which again, coming back to, you know, the SEC going after Coinbase so hard and the Fed going after us so hard, the ones that are trying the hardest to be the cleanest, to keep our nose clean, that are not pushing the envelope on the law are the ones who are getting skewered. What does that tell you about the ethics of this administration right now? All right. So last question before you go. How do you think the election might affect your plight with custodia, if at all?

Or is it just in the hands of the courts at this point? Well, I don't know. Certainly if Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is overruled, and that is going to require taking some of the senior staff at these banking agencies who are philosophically aligned with the Warrenites, and reassigning them, then I think we can get some fairness. And it took some time, by the way, after, and again, this is what's so interesting about Don Verilli. I'm not making a political statement here.

I try really hard to be a political and to support people who support this industry from both political parties. But when Don Verrilli came in, he was in the Obama Justice Department when Operation Chope 1.0 got started. So for him to come and write the debanking amicus brief was especially important for, for that reason as well, because he was making a stand against that and for the due process of law and the equal application of the law to law-abiding companies. And I think most people expect that and will respect that. So we were especially grateful to have that support. And if somebody moderate gets in, right, and if Harris decides, even if she is elected and she decides to moderate, then I'm optimistic. And again, so that's why I shake my head that the Fed released this

enforcement action right during Roe Kana's meeting. I feel for Roe and the folks who were organizing that meeting because they're up against some pretty powerful interests who don't want to see them succeed. And I think all of us who are moderate, who are fair-minded people should want to see them to succeed and want to see this entire crackdown rolled back, regardless of which political party is in control. Michelle, do you want to add anything? Sure. So I think, you know, coming at it from somewhat of a federalism angle, there had been a lot of a focus, as for litigators and constitutional law people, there was a lot of a, there was a lot of focus on vindicating rights at a federal level. And so whenever there were kind of civil rights litigation, at least on the

progressive side, there was a lot of a focus on federal courts. And I think with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and other recent decisions at the Supreme Court, progressives have been taking a closer look at state courts and looking to vindicate civil rights on the progressive side in state courts. And so as someone who's come at constitutional law from state government, it's been really refreshing to see a focus on states and what states can do. And so this is come from a state court perspective, but then thinking about state, the dual banking system and states serving as innovators when it comes to bank charters. Historically, states have really served that role and have been at the forefront of innovation when it came to banking. I think in

some ways we are seeing people be more open to the idea that states can be innovative, whether it come from an issue of vindicating civil rights in state court versus only federal court, or really thinking about states being innovators in other spheres like the banking system. And so it is really interesting to think about the interplay between states and the federal government. A lot of the briefing in the district court, and there are some cases that are raising similar arguments to the custodia case in other courts of appeals where briefs have been filed, where the Fed really focuses on framing state chartered bank as not federally regulated, as if to suggest that if a bank is not federally regulated, it is not regulated at all. And that's simply not accurate. Those banks

that are state chartered are state regulated. And custodia is regulated by Wyoming and has a great relationship with its state regulator. And so I think being attuned to this idea that states can really fill in a lot and can be innovators and can do a lot of meaningful regulation is something that a lot of people are relatively new to. I think even coming from the political left where there really has been a focus on things from a federal standpoint, it's interesting to see that interplay from the dual banking system here. So we'll see if there's an openness to the idea that states like Wyoming and other states can really be innovators when it comes to technology. And the speedy charter in Wyoming, the charter under which custodias is chartered,

is an example of that sort of exciting innovation that a state can do. All right. Well, you guys, this has been an incredibly illuminating episode. Thank you so much for sharing. Where can people learn about each of you and your work? Custodiabank.com. Contact us at info at custodialbank.com. and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn,

or me, at Caitlin Long underscore. I'm also on LinkedIn. And I'm on LinkedIn as well, and my bio and information is readily available on Jenner's website. Perfect. Well, it's been a pleasure having you both on Unchained. Thanks so much, Laura.

Thanks so much. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Caitlin and Michelle and custodias lawsuit against the Fed, check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with Alfred Mathe. Piltured, Wanda Ranovich, Megan Gavis, Pamma Jimdard, and Marka Curia. Thanks for listening.

Unchained is now a part of the Coin Desk Podcast Network. For the latest in digital assets, check out markets daily, five days a week with host Noel Atchison. Follow the CoinDesk Podcast Network for some of the best shows in crypto.