Unchained - Unconfirmed: Want Crypto in Your 401(k)? It's Finally Possible -- With This Provider - Ep.245

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

ForUsAll recently announced a new product that will allow cryptocurrency investments to be made inside 401(k) retirement accounts. Jeff Schulte, CEO of ForUsAll, discusses why putting crypto in a 401(k) is such a game changer, how this differs from Bitcoin IRAs, and more! Show highlights:  how bringing crypto into a 401(k) with ForUsAll will work what “guardrails” ForUsAll is placing on investors who choose to invest in crypto the tax advantages of purchasing crypto within a 401(k) whether ForUsAll is offering a Roth IRA why nobody has offered crypto within a 401(k) before now what differentiates a crypto 401(k) from a self-directed IRA what are the fees for the 401(k), who it will be available to, and when it will launch how security and keys are being handled why ForUsAll is not offering every token available on Coinbase how ForUsAll is determining which cryptos will be available to trade  why offering crypto ETFs through a 401(k) may cause problems regarding the fiduciary risk of employers what new crypto features ForUsAll is excited to roll out   Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unchainedcardearnfeb2021  Tezos: https://tezos.com/discover?utm_source=laura-shin&utm_medium=podcast-sponsorship-unconfirmed&utm_campaign=tezos-campaign&utm_content=hero   NEAR: https://near.org     Episode Links   Jeff Schulte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffschulteproductmanagment/    ForUsAll: https://www.forusall.com/ + https://twitter.com/ForUsAll401k    Coinbase partnership: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coinbase-teams-up-with-401-k-provider-to-offer-crypto https://fortune.com/2021/06/10/coinbase-crypto-401k-roth-offering-forusall/ https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/108034/coinbase-forusall-401k-advisor-crypto-retirement-accounts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how the marketing names in crypto are reacting to the week's top headlines and gets the insights keep on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the June 11th episode of Unconfirmed. This is the last episode of Unchained before the five-year anniversary next week. Thanks to everyone for listening to my show. these last five years, I really appreciate you all supporting me, and I am so grateful for what this fun side project has brought to my life. TASOS is smart money that's redefining what it means to hold an exchange value in a digitally connected world. Discover how people are reimagining the world around you on Tazos. The crypto.com app pays you up to 8.5% interest on your Bitcoin. Get $25 when you download the crypto.com app with code Laura. The link is in the description.

NIR is an open source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications, overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low cost, and climate neutral blockchain protocol. Learn more at N-E-A-R dot org. Today's guest is Jeff Schulte, Chief Executive Officer of For Us All, a retirement investment platform for small businesses. Welcome, Jeff. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. This week, your company made an announcement that will surely be interesting to my crypto audience.

Tell us about your news. So we're very excited to have announced that we've launched cryptocurrency into the 401K. This is something that we've been working on for a while, and we're thrilled to finally have the word out. And so what does that mean for employees at companies who use for us all as a 401k provider? Yeah. So let me back up if it's okay and just start by just saying why we even did this. in the first place. Over the last few years, there's been an absolute revolution in the financial services world. And we've seen institutional investors like Harvard, Brown, Yale making use of

cryptocurrency as part of their endowments. 60% of all professional managers actually now say that cryptocurrency has a role to play in their portfolios. Average Americans mostly invest and get exposure to the market through their 401ks. And nobody was making this available. So we have now brought cryptocurrency into the 401k. So here's how this will work. Employers that have our 4Sall brand of 414K, their employees will be able to log in. They'll have their traditional mutual fund options right there. There'll also be an option for cryptocurrency. And they'll be able to transfer part of their balance over to the cryptocurrency window where they can buy and sell tokens, ETH, Bitcoin, up to 50 different cryptocurrencies available through this, through the

window. They will also be able to set it up so that every time they contribute to the 401K, part of their portfolio or part of that contribution will go directly into Bitcoin if that's the way they want to set it up. So we're really excited to bring access to cryptocurrency into the 401K. And it's not just access. We've thought very carefully about how we provide the guidance, education, and guardrails to help people make good, prudent use of cryptocurrency as part of their portfolios. And when you say that, what do you mean?

Well, there's educational content available. What is cryptocurrency? How does it fit into a portfolio? Common pitfalls to avoid that's delivered via online and through webinars. And then there's guidance. We believe that as part of a diversified portfolio, it may be appropriate to have somewhere between zero and five percent in your retirement portfolio allocated to cryptocurrency. And we'll help people figure out where they fit in that spectrum.

but there are also guardrails. And in this, I say, I mean that there's a limit to how much will let you transfer over into the crypto window. Right now, that limit is at 5%. So people will be able to transfer up to 5% and be able to contribute on an ongoing basis up to 5%. And should the portfolios grow, as we expect they will, and the position exceeds 5%, there's proactive monitoring and alerts that goes out and encourages them to rebalance, lets them know that their crypto position has exceeded what we think is a prudent threshold. And it might be a good time to rebalance into the traditional mutual funds.

But it won't force them. So if it ends up as some of my listeners have told me, where their crypto portfolio ends up being, you know, something like 90% of all their net worth, it won't kind of force that rebalancing? We're not forcing rebalancing. It is a self-directed crypto window. So in the end, the individual will make the decision whether or not to sell that position,

but we will cap how much they can put in there. And if it goes to 90% of their portfolio, well, we think that's an extremely aggressive position to take. And we would strongly encourage them to take some of those gains and rebalance them into their traditional funds. And what are the advantages to buying crypto in a 401k as opposed to just keeping it in a regular crypto account on an exchange or with three? drawing and putting it in your own hardware wallet. Yeah, well, so there's a lot of real good reasons

to do this in the 401k. And let's start with the people that are already investing in cryptocurrency. The obvious reason that people use 401k's in the first place is for the tax advantages. And many people don't realize this, but in a 401k, you can put in money on a pre-tax basis, which is what most people do. You can also put money in on a post-tax basis, a Roth contribution. So you pay your taxes at the moment that you've earned the income. It goes into the 401k. You can then invest that into cryptocurrency, among other things. And at that point, you've already incurred the taxes. All of the gains are tax-free, even at retirement.

When you take that money out, it is tax-free. So it's a huge advantage to be able to reduce and mitigate your tax liability. And I think that that's not just on the taxes. What we've seen in the past when there was some periods of extreme volatility and there was people would buy a position, see it go up, sell the position, roll that into something else. Let's say they sell Bitcoin, they put that into ETH. They've now incurred a big tax liability. If that ETH then goes down, they may sometimes have to sell at a loss to cover the tax liability that they had. So in a 401k, all of this goes away. The tax issue is solved. So that's

one. But here's the second thing. And that is we believe, well, we know there's a ton of people that are what I will call crypto curious. And for them, the ability to use their 401k to dollar cost average in, in its small incremental ways, get help and guidance, not have to open up another account, not have to worry about keys, not have to think about which platform I should be with, simplifies this tremendously. So we think this is actually a huge step for bringing more and more people into the crypto ecosystem. And just to ask about the Roth for ONK, as far as I understand, I don't think that's a super popular option, But is that something that all the small businesses that use for us all can offer to their employees?

Absolutely. Yep. So that's a standard part of all the 401K plans that we work with because we do think actually it isn't as well utilized, I think, as it should be. It makes a ton of sense. And when you're dealing with something like cryptocurrency, it's even more important to consider. Now, we don't provide tax advice, but it does make a lot of sense for a lot of people. and we think that it's unfortunate that perhaps it's not more widely used. Yeah, and just to draw that out a little for people,

if you qualify to have a Roth account, then at that time, it's because your income is below a certain thresholds. And so one could imagine, you know, you would be in a lower tax bracket. And if the crypto assets were to go up in the same way that they had the last few years, then, of course, yes, the tax savings by the time you withdraw the money would be trim. phenomenal. And frankly, that's one of the things that prompted us to really explore this, is we were talking to a lot of people in the crypto community that we're doing incredibly difficult, trying to find ways to help mitigate some of their taxes. And when we talked about

maybe being able to do this in the 401K, the response was incredibly enthusiastic. Yeah, that makes sense. So up until this point, why haven't most Americans been able to invest in crypto assets through their 401Ks or why have most 401Ks not provided it? Well, so the 401k industry, Laura, is notoriously slow moving. And so it's just, it's, I do believe it's inevitable. I think that we will see this more and more. But there's really a combination of two things that you have to get comfortable with. There's regulations and then there's integrations. And you know, on the regulation side, 401k world is governed by a body of laws called ERISA. It is a very specific set of rules that give a lot of people pause.

We worked very, very carefully to make sure that we understood exactly how within that framework, we could do this. And it's very clear that we can. And so we were able to solve that. But the second is that most foreign providers simply don't have a cryptocurrency platform to work with. So what we had to do is we partnered with Coinbase. So we're using Coinbase for both custody as well as for transactions. We've integrated that into our 401k platform. And maybe one of the reasons we were able to do this so quickly is that we've been building integrations with 401K providers and platforms and payroll companies for the last several years. So we're not a traditional 401k company. We're a 4NK tech company doing the integration was therefore very much in our in our

DNA. So bringing Coinbase in, integrating it with the 4NK platform, we're able to provide something that nobody else is. All right. So in a moment, we're going to discuss other comparisons when it comes to retirement accounts. But first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. With over 10 million users, crypto.com is the easiest place to buy and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies. Grow your crypto with crypto.com earn, which pays up to 8.5% interest on your Bitcoin and 14% interest on your stable coins. When it's time to spend your crypto, nothing beats the crypto.com Visa card, which pays you up to 8% back instantly and gives you 100% rebates for your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 by using the code Laura.

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So there have been a few Bitcoin IRAs that have also come out in recent years. How is the Alt 401K different? So that's a great question. I say that the Alt 401K is different from self-directed IRAs for a couple of reasons. I mean, it's two, maybe two or three primary things. A self-directed IRA is a great vehicle, but that's for an individual. And there are limits to who's eligible and how much you can contribute to that. But mostly that's a great solution for a person that is proactive to go out and find it and take advantage of it.

The 401K allows you to contribute substantially more to it. It's available through your employer, and therefore it's a lot easier and more accessible for most people. I say the other key thing is in the 401k world, we are providing institutional pricing. So the costs of what you can, the cost of this through the 401K is substantially less than the self-directed IRAs that we've seen out there. So you can contribute more at a lower cost and this is maybe the most key thing. With the 401K, you can do the ongoing contributions with every paycheck. And that's just not something that you can do as easily in a self-directed IRA. So we think those are some important differences.

But I have tremendous respect for the folks that are also doing this in the self-directed IRA world. and hats off to them too. And so one thing that listeners have heard me talk about is early on, I had been pitched a Bitcoin IRA and the fee on that was 15% of the assets that you transferred over. And that really struck me as being outrageous, frankly. So what are the fees when it comes to the Alt 401K? Yeah. So first of all, for the employer,

there's no extra fee. For employees that choose to use it, there's a 1% platform fee per year. So that's 8.3 basis points a month. And then there is a 50 basis points transaction fee. So we've worked really hard to try to keep the costs, we think, very low and competitive. And we think that that's part of the reason that I'm doing this in a 401K makes sense, institutional pricing. And so who is this available to? Is it available only to employees that companies that use for us all as their 401k service provider? Today, yes. It's only available to companies that choose to hire for us all as their 401k provider.

We're thrilled to see so many people doing that. You know, 60% of all the people we talk to have said that they want to have cryptocurrency as part of the 401K. But certainly we are looking at how we can expand that. And we have some exciting plans in the future that I'd love to come back and talk to you about some other time. But right now, the alt-4-1-K, is the only place to get this.

And so how many companies is that and how many employees does that cover? So today we reach over 70,000 employees across hundreds of different companies and we'll be turning this on for our customers starting in July. We expect that we'll see broad adoption across all of them. When you went to create this, was it because you were seeing demand from those companies or was it just you were looking to service what you believe will be upcoming demand? It's really a combination of both. I mean, I'd say a really big part of this was just observing what's going on with professional and institutional investors. And I'd say that part of the reason it started the company in the first place was to give average Americans some of the same access and help that the professionals do.

That's really why the company's been called for us all. It really came out of that ethos. So when you start just looking around and what's happening and you recognize that people like the Yale endowment are putting well beyond, I mean, they're putting 50, 60, 70 percent into alternative investments. And then you look at what's going on in the 401K. Oh, and part of the reason they're doing that, Laura, is the pool of publicly traded companies, which is what the mutual funds are all invested in, has been shrinking over time. There's actually fewer publicly traded companies today than there were 10, 15 years ago. So you see the institutional investors, they're doing this. They're making good use of this for a good reason.

That was one of the first clues. The second is we started talking to employers. And as I mentioned, 60% of all the employers we talked to said, I want to do this. And they wanted to do this for a whole host of reasons. But we also started talking to the employees. And employees also said, I'm extremely interested. In fact, you look today, 49% of millennials are already using cryptocurrency. And they're asking us, why can't I do this in the 401K?

Frankly, it was everywhere. I mean, the real question is, why hasn't anybody done this before? So once we started seeing all of those pieces, and it just reaches, well, okay, you have to figure out how you do it with the regulations. You have to figure out the technology. You got to put, but we could do all that because of what our background is. So it was really a combination all around. expect that over time, the interest in demand for cryptocurrency will continue. I mean, this is,

to me, we have crossed the Rubicon. It is absolutely irreversible. And there's going to be some, I think, really key benefits to incorporate into the 401K. We're the first. We expect that this will become commonplace over a period of time. 401K industry doesn't move that fast. As I'm sure you know, the saying goes, not your keys, not your coins. How is the security for these crypto assets handled? So we are, there's no separate account that they're creating. And there's no keys that the folks have to keep track of. It's all on the Coinbase prime platform.

Assets are held in cold storage, except for those moments when they're being traded, in which case they're briefly moved into a hot wallet. So, you know, when we were looking at who the potential partners were, security was clearly one of the key things we had to evaluate and making sure that we could do this in a way that was both really simple, easy, and convenient, but also extremely secure. It was critical. So you're starting with 50 cryptocurrencies on offer. How are you determining what to offer and how will you determine which new ones to add? That's a great question. So we're certainly not making. making everything available.

Not everything on Coinbase will be available. One of the roles that we play as a fiduciary to the 4-1K plan is to review and evaluate and monitor which tokens, cryptocurrencies, will be available in the 401K. We have an investment committee that has a process that they run to make that determination, and it really comes down to a combination of factors. In the end, though, I would say part of it is market cap weighted, part of it is coin utility, things like Doge will not be available. So we're clearly applying a screen in a subset.

And then we'll evaluate that on a quarterly basis and make determinations as to what to include going forward. And can you elaborate on that? Why Doge? Because I was going to ask you if you were going to offer Doge. No, it's a question that comes up a lot. I mean, this would be a better question for some folks of our investment committee to answer. But when you look at Doge, I mean, this is a coin that clearly was created as a novelty. It's a meme. It's got entertainment value. So it's not something that we think is appropriate.

Now, what we're looking at is, you know, this developing a screen that that is a very sort of objective in nature. And when we, when we when we apply that certain like, as I said, novelty tokens like Doge, they just don't make the cut. Despite how big that market cap might be today or how popular it is, there's a level of prudence that we have to exercise. over 401k portfolios. And, well, just out of curiosity, so would you allow trading in something like GameStop or AMC or whatever the new, you know, and I, or I guess trading is even in the word, but. No, no, I have to say, are we going to allow trading in Game Stuff and AMC?

So any of these sort of mean stocks. Right. No, we're not doing that right now. Not through, well, that's not what we're talking about. Really, this is, you know, the crypto, the alt window. And I should elaborate. The alt window, I call it that because it starts with cryptocurrency, but we do anticipate adding other types of alternative investments over time.

It is not, we're not catering to every whim on the internet. There's an appropriate use of cryptocurrency in the 401K world. And the job of the investment committees to make sure that we apply a screen that protects the employees. as well. And so if a Bitcoin ETF and other ETFs representing other crypto assets came out, how would buying those differ from holding these assets directly in a 401K and which do you expect would be more appealing to investors? So this is a good question. So a Bitcoin ETF or a cryptocurrency ETF at some point, someone will get one of these things approved and it'll become an option. But I think there's a couple of issues with what we've seen anyway.

The first is that many of the ones that you even just mentioned focus on one, you know, truly a Bitcoin ETF. What we've seen is that there's a real interest in being able to hold a diversity of altcoins. So we wanted to make sure that they had a choice. That's part of why we decided to work with Coinbase. The other is that what we've seen so far is some of these products do have an issue where they're trading at a discount to their nav. and they're quite expensive.

So we believe that that's a reason why in some cases these products are perhaps not the best option for employees at all. But I think really the key thing is it has to do with the fiduciary risk. And when you, the 401K that we're providing with a cryptocurrency window does not increase the fiduciary risk to the employers. When you choose to make an investment like an ETF available in the 401k that's a fundamentally different decision for the employer than choosing to make an alt window available.

Making an alt window available is what's called a settler decision. It just means it's like an administrative decision. Making a mutual fund available, that's an actual fiduciary decision. And because of that, we think that most employers are going to prefer a solution where they're not taking that fiduciary position. Does that make sense? Interesting. I don't know if I fully understand.

the distinction. I mean, one, they're both going to be available, but you're just saying by virtue of the fact that the ETF is focused on one crypto, is that what the fiduciary decision is? No. What I'm saying is, I'm sorry, let me attempt to say it slightly better. Choosing to make a mutual fund available in the 401k is a fiduciary decision. When you choose to make a fund part of the lineup, that's a fiduciary decision. Choosing to make a mutual fund available in the 401k, choosing to make a self-directed crypto window available is a totally different type of decision. Exactly. And so by making this a self-directed window that the employees ultimately choose to use helps reduce the risk for the employers.

Really, it's a different type of decision. And so that's one of the reasons why we think that this is the right approach for retirement plans. All right. So you've kind of hinted that you have deep, have. plans to go deeper with crypto, can you give us a sneak preview of what those other crypto features might be? Well, what I will just say is, sure, there's two things that I think we're very excited about today, what we're going live with provides education, guidance, and help for employees. We will be introducing a solution that we can actually manage it for them.

So if people want exposure to crypto, but they don't want to make the decisions as to exactly which coins to buy, we will have a managed solution for them. then, you know, I think what we really look at is there's really, it's about trying to provide access as broadly as possible. Today, we're very excited to make this available through the Forthol 4-1K. I think we'll be looking at how we can go beyond that and possibly being able to make this more broadly available without having to switch your 401k plan to us. All right. Great. Well, I look forward to seeing your future news. Thank you so much for coming on Unconfirmed. Thank you very much for having me.

Don't forget, next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. TASOS lets you easily exchange smart money throughout our digital world. A self-upgradable blockchain with a proven track record, TASOS seamlessly adopts tomorrow's innovations without network disruptions today. Because of this adaptability, engineers, conservationists, entrepreneurs, collectors, game developers, and artists from around the world are building, creating, and using Tazos every day. Discover how people are reimagining the world around you on Tezos. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. First headline, El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as legal tender.

On Wednesday, El Salvador passed a bill that would make Bitcoin legal tender within the country. The decision comes only days after President Naive Buckele announced his intention to send such a law to El Salvador's Congress via video message at the Miami Bitcoin Conference and just, hours after posting the proposed law on Twitter. The Bitcoin law regulates Bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender and makes El Salvador the first country to adopt cryptocurrency in such a manner. In addition, the new Bitcoin law would allow for tax contributions be paid in Bitcoin, exchanges in Bitcoin without capital gains tax, prices to be expressed in Bitcoin, but accounted for in USD. With more, in Article 7, the bill mandates the acceptance of Bitcoin for goods and services, saying, quote,

economic agent must accept Bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service. In Article 8, El Salvador effectively backs the risk of accepting Bitcoin as payment by offering its businesses instant convertibility of Bitcoin to USD if they wish. As Preston Byrne, a partner at Anderson Kill Law pointed out on Twitter, El Salvador is dumping his dollars for Bitcoin by providing a means for merchants to accept BTC but receive USD from the state. While groundbreaking, the El Salvador's Bitcoin move did catch the attention of the International Monetary Fund. According to Reuters, an IMF spokesperson told reporters, quote, the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender raises a number of macroeconomic, financial, and legal

issues that require very careful analysis. Next headline. BlockFi's valuation has skyrocketed 11x since last August. BlockFi, a crypto lending platform, is finalized. a Series E of around $500 million at a valuation of nearly $5 million, as reported by the information. The new financing will be led by Third Point Management and Hedosafia, along with participation from existing investors. BlockFi has seen its valuation grow exponentially this year. The latest funding is nearly a 70% increase in valuation from the lending platform's Series D in March, which raised $350 million at a $3 billion valuation. Just last August, BlockFi had been valued at $435 million.

In other funding news, Ledger, a crypto wallet provider, raised $380 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion in a Series C led by 10T holdings. According to the press release, Ledger currently secures 15% of the world's crypto assets. The new fundraising will allow them to expand its hardware solutions to defy and enterprise capabilities. Next headline. Federal officials recovered BTC from Colonial Pipeline attack. The Department of Justice announced Monday that they had seized 63.7 Bitcoin of the 75 Bitcoin that Colonial Pipeline had paid as a ransom to Darkside, a hacking group. In May, the initial ransomware attack triggered a temporary shutdown and an East Coast gas shortage in multiple states in that region.

The DOJ press release explained, that, quote, by reviewing the Bitcoin public ledger, a law enforcement agent was able to track multiple Bitcoin transfers to a specific address for which the FBI had the private key, or, quote, the rough equivalent of a password needed to access assets accessible from the specific Bitcoin address. The wording from the DOJ instigated a round of rumors that the U.S. government had hacked DarkS. Bitcoin wallet to recover the Bitcoin, a feat theoretically impossible without holding the the private key or owning a quantum computer. DeCript speculates that these rumors helped spark Bitcoin's 8% decline on Monday. While it's unclear how the Bitcoin was specifically recovered,

it is likely that U.S. authorities were able to track the Bitcoin addresses and transactions to a specific identity or crypto-custodian in the U.S. The attack on Colonial is just one example of what seems to be a trend in ransomware attacks funded off by Bitcoin payments. A Thursday Wall Street Journal article reports that JBS, a meat packer, paid $11 million in Bitcoin last week to shield its plans from further disruption. Next headline. Bitcoin Miami was wild. Last weekend saw 10,000-plus Bitcoiners descend upon Miami to join in on the largest Bitcoin conference in history. Aaron Griffith of the New York Times penned my favorite description

of Miami's vibe during last week's conference. Quote, for a few days, the city was a raging fireball of finance, technology, and joyful anarchy of unfathomable wealth and desperate striving. There were certainly fun moments. For example, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami's opening speech pitched Miami as the Bitcoin, blockchain, and mining capital of the world. Representative Warren Davidson described the Fed as doge-coining the U.S. dollar, adding, there's a benefit to scarcity that the doge-cointers don't apparently get, nor does the Fed. Speaking of Fiat, cake wallet

sponsored an entire dumpster with Venezuela's national currency, the bolivaris, an inflation spectacle that many bitcoiners decided to take a selfie with. However, Bitcoin 2021 was not all fun and internet money. There were a few contentious moments

at the conference, usually centering on the topic of Bitcoin maximalism. For example, Max Kaiser yelled, Fuck Elon, we're not selling. before hugging Micro Strategy CEO Michael Saylor on stage. Eric Voorhees was booed for saying Bitcoin Maximum is bullshit after another speaker was cheered for saying Bitcoin toxicity is, quote, absolutely necessary. Floyd Mayweather was also booed after saying another crypto could someday be just as large as Bitcoin.

Next headline. Solana raises $314 million. Solana Labs raised $314 million via a token sale led by A16Z and Polychain, ranking amongst the largest token sales for a blockchain protocol. The raise was suggested earlier this week by Decrypt, which reported that Salana was looking to raise anywhere between $300 million and $450 million. Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko intends to scale the protocol saying, quote, the next phase is onboarding a billion users. That number would undoubtedly make Solana a staunch competitor of Ethereum in the race to become the Defi ecosystem. Solana is already known for its low fees and fast processing times. The blockchain says it can process up to 50,000 transactions per second, which dwarfs Ethereum's 13 transactions per second.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX and Alameda Research, an investor in Solana, believes, quote, it's a blockchain that has the potential to support a defy ecosystem with world-scale activity. Next headline. Square looking to build wallet and mining solutions. As part of Square's Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative, the financial services company will partner with Blockstream and invest $5 million to construct a solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility. Together, they plan to publicize details about the project's economics, along with the metrics associated with mining Bitcoin. According to the press release, the project is designed, to one, raise awareness that Bitcoin mining can be done using renewable energy.

Two, provide a proof of concept for a 100% renewable energy mine at a scale with operational cost and ROI transparently made open to the public. In related news, Squares' CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Square is considering making a Bitcoin hardware wallet, with the designs being made entirely open source to the public. Among the key characteristics of a Square hardware wallet, Dorsey emphasized mobile access, finding the balance between simplicity versus security and layer two support. Next headline. Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks out against crypto.

During a Wednesday Senate hearing on CBDCs, Senator Elizabeth Warren was very outspoken about, quote, the dangers that cryptocurrencies pose to the U.S. economy, citing cyber attacks, ripoffs, instability, and environmental concerns in proof of work systems. On Twitter, she wrote, cryptocurrencies promised to solve the problems in our banking system haven't come to pass, but Congress and federal regulators can't hide out in how crypto will go away. It won't. It's time to

confront these issues head on. However, she admitted to seeing the promise of a crypto solution, just one regulated by the U.S. government. She wrote, quote, digital currencies offer a lot of potential advantages over cash, but they need to be secure, stable, and accepted everywhere. A digital currency issued and backed by the Federal Reserve could provide, the advantages of cryptocurrency without these risks. Ironically, she also mentioned that legitimate digital public money could help drive out bogus digital private money, which qualitatively is the same thing bitcoiners say about the U.S. dollar. Next headline. This week in Bitcoin and China. Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging platform, has suspended the accounts of more than two dozen

crypto influencers. The suspension started at around 10 o'clock UTC on Saturday, with Waybo users reporting that as many as 25 accounts of crypto influencers or media outlets became inaccessible. The Shanghai province banned cryptocurrency mining on Wednesday, stating concerns over energy use. The block reports that major China-based fool saw hash rates drop between 11% and 30% on Wednesday, while two of the main non-Chinese polls remained steady. On Wednesday, China's Ministry of Public Security announced it had arrested roughly 1,100 individuals for laundering money through cryptocurrencies. The launders allegedly charged between 1.5% to 5% to convert criminal proceeds to

cryptocurrencies, though the total amount laundered was not provided. Time for fun bits. Perhaps leveraging the current Bitcoin Mania in El Salvador, by the way, this item is called volcanic mining. Perhaps leveraging the current Bitcoin mania in El Salvador, President Buchali wasted no time moving on to another Bitcoin topic, mining. Less than a day after securing Congress's approval for the Bitcoin law, Buchali has instructed LaGio, a geothermal company in El Salvador, to allow Bitcoin miners to use the country's volcanic resources as a way to produce renewable

mining power. Via Twitter, Bucheli, Bucheli, says that engineers are already making progress on the project, as they have already, quote, dug a new well that will provide approximately 95 megawatts of 100% clean, zero emissions, geothermal energy from all volcanoes, and are, quote, starting to design a full Bitcoin mining hub around it. To sum up a crazy week, Lena Seych, editor and managing director at the BTC Times tweeted, Saturday, he reveals plans to make Bitcoin legal tender. Tuesday makes Bitcoin legal tender. Also Tuesday, thanks of Volcano-powered Bitcoin mining. Wednesday starts working on volcano-powered Bitcoin mining.

El Salvador is moving toward the Bitcoin standard at maximum speed. And to end the weekly recap with a recap, here is a full description of El Salvador's Crazy Week as tweeted by Lee Wallace, UK. So yesterday, Tuesday, Nick Carter started a Twitter space out of boredom while making pork chops. A couple of hundred of us jumped in and talked about the Bitcoin law. Then Caitlin Long found out the law was being voted on in Congress live while we were talking. Then Juice F. Buceli entered the space, the brother of the El Salvador president, and chatted with us PLEBs. More Bitcoiners entered the space, including Jack. Nick joked about getting

the president in the space. Plebs tweet at Naeem Buckeli. Nyeb Tle enters the space. 22,000 plus people enter the space. Nick, A. Pompliano, Caitlin Long, Alex Gladstein, and others discuss the law and share ideas about Bitcoin adoption. Pomp asks Naeep about mining Bitcoin in El Salvador. Naive suggests possible volcano mining options. Bitcoin law passes 66 of 84. Naeem leaves the space, not before telling Nick he is the boss by presidential decree. Nick allows Naeem to leave and gets back to John.

changing the lives, and get back to changing the lives of millions. Nick closes the space and goes to bed. I'm not sure if the pork shops got eaten. All right. Thanks for tuning in. To learn more about Jeff and Forrest All's Alt 401k, be sure to check out the links in the show notes. And heads up, everyone. The Unchain newsletter has switched from a weekly news recap to a daily blog in order to keep up with a crazy pace of crypto news. Each morning, you'll get four to five quick headlines, a crypto meme or two, and a few recommended reads. Head over to Unchainedpodcast.com, and the sign-up for the email newsletter is right on the homepage.

You can also find the link in my Twitter bio. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yun, Mark Murdoch, and Daniel Ness. Thanks for listening.