Unchained - Why Gary Gensler Will Likely Be Out as SEC Chair No Matter Who Wins the Election - Ep. 680

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

As the 2024 elections approach, crypto voters are a real bloc that could be a deciding factor in what looks to be a tight race.  In this episode, Sheila Warren of the Crypto Council for Innovation and Justin Slaughter from Paradigm discuss the significance of Trump appearing at Bitcoin 2024, promising the crypto community pretty much everything on its bucket list, the Democrats’ seeming pro-crypto shift behind the scenes, and the game theory around Gary Gensler’s future (likely not at the SEC).  Plus, they cover the significance (and likelihood of passing) of the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Bill proposed and to be introduced by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, what would it take for Kamala Harris to show that she truly is a crypto-friendly candidate, and what the Democrats would have to do to undo the damage done by Gensler and win some of the crypto vote.  Lastly, they explore the potential impact on the SEC of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine. Show highlights: 00:00 Intro 02:08 The significance of a US Presidential candidate, Trump, embracing Bitcoin 04:59 What Justin’s and Sheila’s takes are on the Democrats' sudden shift towards embracing a pro-crypto agenda and whether they can catch up 15:03 The key factor in Trump's shift from giving crypto platitudes to making substantive promises that top the crypto community’s wish list 20:21 How significant crypto could be in influencing the election, particularly in swing states 23:52 Whether Trump would even be able to fire Gary Gensler as SEC Chair, as he has promised 33:23 How the dynamics between Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris differ from the relationship Warren has with Biden 42:48 What could happen with the SEC Commissioner if Harris wins the presidency 50:34 The meaning of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the US 57:55 How JD Vance's status as a Bitcoin owner could influence crypto voters and whether Harris could pick a pro-crypto VP 1:05:43 The chances the Democratic Party adopts a crypto plank, and what it might include 1:09:9 Whether there’s a chance a crypto bill could be passed this year 1:14:49 How the Supreme Court's recent decision to limit agency power by overturning the Chevron doctrine could impact the SEC's approach to crypto regulation 1:20:45 How Harris can establish a new stance on crypto while distancing herself from Biden's administration, without appearing disloyal 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 Guests: Sheila Warren, CEO of Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI)  Justin Slaughter, Policy Director at Paradigm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one, since Donald Trump made the second, Gary Gensler, is saying it would be a tragedy if Gary Gensler was forced to step down. The silence there is definite because it's that old story, right? You know, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, when everybody else is saying, I want him gone. And no one is saying you can't do that. It's very hard to stay. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no high 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, Forbes, was the first Maysham meterporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the July 30th, 2024 episode of Unchained.

Pocodot is the original and leading Layer Zero blockchain with over 2000-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 crypto as an election issue here to discuss our Sheila Warren, CEO of Crypto Council for Innovation and Justin and Justin. Welcome Sheila and Justin. Thanks, Laura. So good to be back. Thanks, Laura. Good to be here. We are coming off a historic weekend in which former president Donald J. Trump addressed an audience at Bitcoin.

2024 and pledged numerous things to court the crypto vote, including the firing of Gary Gensler on day one, if he's elected, shutting down Operation Showpoint 2.0, coming up with crypto regulation in the first 100 days, defending the right to self-custody, creating a framework for stable coins, and even more stuff, which we'll get into, you know, the number one of those being the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But I just wanted to like just talk about this moment. What did you make of this monumental shift to see a presidential candidate so strongly courting a crypto and specifically a Bitcoin crowd? I want me to go first. Okay, sure.

You know, I would say crypto has arrived. I mean, I think that's probably the in a nutshell way to put it. I think that in terms that whoever scripted Trump, I think nailed the messaging. I think that was sort of the crypto wish list point for point for point with some flourishes, which we can talk about. for sure. And I have certainly follow-up questions, which no one got to ask, right? Of course, as it was a keynote address. But I would say what's been really interesting to watch is the evolution of former President Trump from a candidate who I think we can just be very honest, sort of said some words that were words, you know, about crypto. And now at least seems to

rhetorically have an understanding about the deep policy issues that do face this industry and have face this industry, to be fair, under the Biden administration. So that is quite an evolution over not that long a period of time, although I would contextualize that to say, what is time in this particular election cycle? I mean, every few days, we have some historic unprecedented announcement. So, you know, I suppose it's a time when things like this are all are very possible. And wait, just to clarify, are you talking about the evolution from when a few years ago he said he didn't like Bickhwin. Are you talking about even just specifically from May when he literally said, if you like crypto, vote for me? I was talking about May to now, but we should, I assume we're

going to go back into that history because it's highly relevant when you talk about the slate, you know, that we have here, including down ballot ticket items. But yeah, I mean, absolutely, to go from a time when he was a anti-cryptide, I think those words are anti-crypto words, the ones you just said, right? And then getting to May where it was like, hey, yes, I'm your guy, who knows what that means to really quite detailed specifics, point for point, about what that might mean should he take office again. Yeah. And let me just add to that. So obviously, I'm a partisan Democrat. The partisan views I'm expressing here are mine. They're not a position officially of paradigm. But, you know, time moves fast in crypto. Time also moves fast in politics. Weeks are like

years in other spaces. And I think you really see over the last couple of months in the last couple years how crypto has arrived in politics. The idea that crypto would be this central to the election this year, even a year ago, would have been seen as laughable. And it's because of how many people are voting with their wallets, how many people of the American populace, we think it's about 20% in our polling, say they own crypto or like crypto, that it really has become a key touchpoint of this election cycle. I mean, I'll note, as a Democrat, I don't like saying this. Donald Trump has an amazing ability to understand what can motivate voters. And I think he sees the appeal here,

which is what's leading Democrats to need to catch up. Yeah, well, let's talk about that because what was so interesting is on the very same day that he spoke at the Bitcoin Conference, the Financial Times reported that the Harris campaign was seeking to do what it called a reset with the crypto industry. And then also there were, I think it was like 28 Democratic Party officials,

candidates, and state legislators also wrote a letter to DNC chairperson. prison, Jamie Harrison, asking the party to adopt several planks in the Democratic Party platform to embrace a pro-crypto agenda. And so it was kind of, it was so interesting, but let's talk about that. You know, what was your read on what's going on there on the Democrat side? Like, do you think they're too far behind? Like, do you think they have time to catch up? Like, is this, like, has, you know, the last three and a half years of the Biden administration just shot them in the foot? Or what do you think they can do here? We're going to delve into this a lot, I suspect.

Yeah. Let's pay the bulk of our time. The way that this really unfurled, and I know this from having been in the Biden admin at the start of it in 2021 at the SEC, the Biden admin has stumbled to being anti-crypto. It wasn't an active choice by Joe Biden and the vice president, certainly. It's just a series of errors by accident over time. The thing about that letter that's really notable is it's filled not just with members, but with rising stars. Not only people already in Congress like Richie Torres, like Josh Gottheimer, but Maggie Goodlander, who's in. an incredibly talented candidate and former Biden White House official in New Hampshire. Colin, I believe Sarah McBride in Delaware as well. I'll double check on that.

A number of people who will be the heart of the Democratic Party over the 2020s and 2030s. And this goes to where we are, which is the Democrats are behind. They have clearly seated this so far, but it's not too late to catch up. Kamala Harris is a brief chance to reset Democrats' position on crypto, which I think she seems to be looking to do. Of course, as Sheila and I I've written about, you have to match words with action. You can't just say in a glossy way. I like the crypto. It needs to be paired with, and here are some concrete steps I want to take to fix this relationship. And one other question I want to just throw in there on top of what I already asked is just like, how much of it do you think is the Democrats, like, actually

really understanding that crypto is truly a cause that voters care about and how much of it is simply election politics of just like, let's go after every vote we can. I think those things are highly related. I think that they are going after, to use your language, crypto voters, because they understand that crypto voters are a significant voting block. So you can't decouple those two things, I don't think. And I don't know that you should. I think that's sort of the point.

The point is that it's not just that there are people out there who own cryptos or people out there who own crypto who polling shows are active voters. and that connection, I think, is really important. So, but I have so much to say about this. So I think we have to contextualize what is happening here. And I think it's really easy for people to miss, crypto is notorious for missing context, but also missing nuance. So let's kind of try to lay this out.

We have 100 days left in this campaign, okay? We have, I believe it was 10 days ago at this point, eight days ago. I don't know, I mean, very, very, Justin, you correct me, eight days, I think, since President Biden announced he was no longer the candidate. it and endorsed Kamala Harris. She has had to spin up a campaign apparatus in an unbelievable, a remarkably short period of time, which means convincing some of the Biden apparatus to come over to her to have key messaging on points. The fact that crypto is even a discussion topic such that it's leaking to the press in this period of time, given what that campaign is

facing, is extraordinary. It is, it is, frankly, I'm shocked. I'm shocked that this is happening this fast. And I think you have to look at this. Like, what are the things she needs positions on? Well, Democratic Party plat pillars, right? She needs to have positions that come out strong on immigrant, half-flex immigration. Israel and Gaza is a very third real issue in the Democratic Party right now. These are topics that require her to have nuance, to have the correct distancing, if any, from the Biden administration. All of these things have to be thought through. And she's doing this in an absolutely record pace. And this is unprecedented in our lifetimes for sure. And I believe in it. American history to have this kind of thing happening so quickly. So I think you can't just look at,

this is a rhetorical flourish. I think you have to say anything that is leaking to the press as a topic area of deep consideration is something that is being taken extremely seriously within advantage of the campaign. Now, is she in kind of the May posture that Trump was in of kind of the like, sure, hey, yeah, but that turned really quickly and this can turn even more quickly. So I think people shouldn't count out that this is rooted in something that's going to turn into policy positions, because I do believe that's where this is going. I really want to echo that. So it's not often appreciated. Presidial campaigns are super tankers. They are multi-thousan official employee endeavors costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars across numbers of states. They have to

spun up basically, even in a normal situation over about 12 months, 18 months. Harris literally had to parachute in effectively to their Wilmington headquarters, which is still where the Biden campaign he knows, is going to have her be because, of course, that's where it's built on Monday. This wasn't just, though, Kamala becoming part of focusing on crypto over the last few days just randomly. This is in the first week of all the topics to focus on. This is the one that's getting a disproportionate amount of exposure in particular in the news. That speaks volumes, I think. It really does show the importance of crypto that they understand this is something that matters. And it makes sense, right, because a lot of the values of crypto, the radical decentralization, letting people

are on their own data, preventing, you know, big tech Goliath, being more powerful, are democratic values. I often like to think that part of the issue with crypto and Democrats is Democrats don't realize yet how pro-crypto they actually are in their hearts, in part because they just haven't had the time yet for the opportunity to really learn about it. And now we're having a crash course But the good news to what Chila said, it's rare to see someone in politics stick their toe into crypto and then not go full tilt on it very quickly. We've seen that in all of interviews we've done with members of Congress. It usually starts in a very innocent way. A family member told me about a cryptocurrency in particular.

I learned about the various blockchain apps from a friend. And then they've become over a few weeks and months, wow, this is amazing. It's going to change our economy. This can increase wealth for people, increase competition. It does all these things. And I'm optimistic. The same trajectory will happen for Harris, but it remains to be seen. The window is there, but it's short.

We actually wrote a piece really outlining exactly how crypto and the opportunity it presents is really aligned with progressive values. And then we also, just to put a fine point in this, we've been doing these Twitter spaces with Democratic members of Congress where we asked them about their origin story into crypto because I think it's really emblematic and helpful for people to hear how many different ways and different past people. come to it. When they come to it, they really arrive. And so I think that's important. The other thing I think is important to note is that in Vice President Harris, we do not have a member of, you know, we don't have an octogenarian, just to put it bluntly. We have somebody who, that age difference does make a difference. She grew up at a different time. She grew up at a different way. She thinks about tech differently. Her generational orientation towards tech is different. Not to mention, she is a Californian who has been tech adjacent for a long time.

her brother-in-law is the CLO at Uber, right? She had funding in her Senate campaign from a bunch of tech companies. So she has positive feelings about technology to begin with because of just the state she represented when she was in the Senate, because of her experiences in San Francisco, et cetera. So she's coming at this. The learning curve is going to be that much faster because she doesn't have any sort of confusion or bias or whatever you want to call it to overcome the way that I would argue Trump did in addition to Biden. The other thing I want to say is I want to want to go back to something lower before I lose it. There's this rhetoric happening now about how three and a half years the Biden administration were terrible. I just want to remind people,

when I took the job of CEO of CCI in February of 22, shortly thereafter, the Biden administration issued a neutral to positive executive order that really instructed, if not ordered its agencies, to go in and do a thorough exploration of crypto. And that was not coded to be for the purposes of killing it. It was really, we all took it as in, I remember this call so well, because I was so me to the job. We all took that as really indicating an openness to this. And it really is the events of November 22 that changed course. So this idea that the entire the administration was super anti-crypto is just not a true narrative. It really differentiated and started to turn. I would not say the Biden administration was overwhelmingly pro-crypto, but I would also say nobody was in 20, you know,

2021 or 2022 or 2023. And let's not forget, I think, the steps backwards that we took under the Trump administration before that. So a lot of things changed in that 2022 to 2023 timeframe. And I think it's just important to talk about, you know, the difference that's there. I want to actually make one point we can delve into here. I firmly believe that to understand the future, we have to understand the past, including the recent past. I've increased him in thinking the key year was actually 2021, which maybe we can delve into because I do think that is the beginnings of how we got here in a surprising way. It's often forgotten now. The Trump Treasury Department had a midnight rule on wallets that was a very bad rule, and the Biden admin stopped it and pulled it back early on. But over 2021, you started to

see more negativity from certain parts of the Democratic Party, including from Senator Warren, including from Gary Gensler. And that then led to, I would say, the schizophrenia of the current Biden admin, where you can find people who are pro-Crypto and Biden-Admin, and you can find very, very anti-people who are, you know, against crypto and the Biden-Demann as well. Yeah. And just one, a couple of things I want to say for listeners. So, Sheila and Justin know, this episode came together very last minute because we had a last-minute cancellation. And so when I booked you to you, I actually was not aware that you were both Democrats. And I was thinking we we're going to get like a just a neutral analytical stance on what's happening in the state of,

you know, crypto as an election issue in D.C. And it's not a bad thing that you both are, but just to clarify that. So there, I think there's going to be elements of the show where, you know, you'll have to be like in that neutral. Like, this is just what's happening mode. And then obviously there's the other mode where you're talking about from your stance as people who are invested in one side or the other. But I did actually want to go back to the, to what happened where, you know, as Sheila mentioned, in May, Trump only, you know, just randomly said a few things to say, like, just please vote for me if you're into crypto. And then now suddenly gave this very substantive speech that really hit at the core of what it is that crypto voters wanted. And, you know, you referenced how Kamala appears to be in this moment where she or her team are studying up on how to do at least something very similar or, you know, or at least study whether or not they should or, you know, something.

But the point is, I was wondering, so how is it that you think that Trump went from kind of just, you know, saying some words to get the vote to offering up promises that are really at the core of what the crypto community wants? Like, what does that take? Engagement. I mean, it's actually the same thing that I think is the number one opportunity for Vice President Harris. He really engaged. He had events at Mar-a-Lago. He did fundraisers and learning events in San Francisco in the Valley. my understanding, and this is all, you know, reported from the news, is he put a lot of time and effort into this, and a lot of people in the industry also,

but also we found there's data that shows a lot of Republican voters really like Trump. We did a poll of Republicans in a paradigm where we found that even of never Trump voters, a small percentage of them found that learning that Donald Trump, like crypto made them more likely to vote for Donald Trump. You know, politicians follow the data and the voters, and I think Trump is doing the same.

same thing, which hopefully Harris will as well. Yeah. Well, I also think that Trump has a bunch of people in his circle who are really passionate about crypto. I mean, Vivek Vibhak Ramoswami, right, who early on really picked this for a variety of reasons, I think, as an issue that he could differentiate on and leaned into that is a inner circle advisor of former President Trump. I think Senator Cynthia Lummis, you know, spends a lot of time with, who's one of the biggest allies of the Bitcoin community and of crypto more broadly, spends, a lot of time, you know, with the campaign talking. There's a number of people I'm just naming two who are kind of known names that I think are, have been passionate about these topics, about our

topics for a long time and who we count among our strong allies. I also want to just say, Laura, literally my job is to work with everybody of all political stripes. And so we work with far left progressives all the way to far right people that would call themselves MAGA. And I think the goal is to exit crypto from being deeply partisan and take it to a place where we're past partisanship, right? We were at a nonpartisan place for a long time for most of the existence of Bitcoin, certainly. Then we are in this area where it was hyperpartisan. And my hope is that by the time the election comes around, if not sure they're after, we can move past that because the reality is that crypto is a tech. It is not partisan.

It should not be partisan. Everybody should be supported crypto. Justin wrote this lovely turn of phrase where he was like being anti-cryptos, like being anti-toaster ovens. That's the world we are trying to get people to. So it's not about personal politics. All of that is distinct, I think, from what the ultimate goal I believe should be, which is exiting crypto from the political process, where everyone's goal, regardless, is to land appropriate, fit-purpose regulation that cements the importance of this. So cements the understanding of its importance, and that indicates the permanence of that importance through fit-for-purpose regulation legislation that makes it easier to build United States without constantly jumping traps that you don't even know exist,

which is kind of the world we have under Garrick-Gensler. This is really important that even for members of Congress who are Republicans, they often say we don't want this to become another partisan issue. It is a joy as a Republican or Democratic member of Congress to get to work on an issue that's not hyper-partisan because so many issues are in politics. And the idea of actually getting to legislate, you see members just have, you know, glee in their eyes that they can actually work with everybody across not just the aisle, but the spectrum, on something novel for the first time in some cases in their careers.

It's been decades since we did a major bill on technology policy. It was also done an election year. It was the telecom act in 96. This is a chance for people who've never really done major bipartisan legislating to get to do that about, about something neat, something that the young voters care about, something that voters, especially of color, care about. And I think it's amazing as an opportunity, but it's also a risk. If we've become a partisan industry, even Republicans say sometimes they worry about that,

because then it will fall into the same patterns that have pervaded so much of modern Washington and I think turn people off politics in a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah. I've always also said, I feel like being against crypto is like being against the internet. And, you know, people love the internet. So let's actually, though, now just really talk about, you know, crypto as an election issue and talk about it in terms of real numbers and real voters. So and by that, what I really mean is the number of crypto. voters in swing states. You know, I have seen sometimes when I've been tweeting about, you know, this or that politician in crypto, sometimes people will tweet back at me. They'll be scoffing at this

idea that crypto could be a factor in the election. So how much do you think crypto really is a factor in terms of perhaps swing in the election? And by that, what I really mean is in those swing states. It does matter. So obviously there's a poll by a different company against DCG that found 20 percent, a significant percentage of voters in the swing states think crypto is a major issue. I think it was 20%. I think it was 20% as well. The number of 20% keeps popping up. And it was DCG, yeah. It is definitely the case also that in our polling, about 20% of voters in swing states also on crypto. I've seen that. It's pretty much evenly distributed around the country.

And some people are like, well, you know, that's okay. But, you know, how many people, you know, care? I mean, I own a, I own, you know, half of an ether or something that doesn't change my vote. I said, well, we looked into this. And we found that something like 7% of registered voters own more than 1,000. in crypto, only 32% of registered voters own more than $1,000 in stocks. When you get to that level of ownership, it's amazing to think about, right, the idea of the general public all owning stocks and all, but not not owning crypto, it's wrong, right? We're 15 years old and we're rapidly approaching the level of ownership of many people in traditional markets, which have existed for centuries.

So when you get to that level, people really care. That's a significant part of ownership. And then 1% of voters, we found it, own more than 10,000 in crypto. These are people whose livelihoods are built into it. I think that is a sign that a significant number of people and the millions will care. And I will remind everybody, I'm a hardcore election junkie. I don't know what's going to happen. You can look at Nate Silver for that.

But in the last two presidential cycles, the marginal swing state, which was Wisconsin, was decided by about 10,000 votes. This is a game of inches. If you can gain free 30, 40, 50,000 votes in a swing state, that's the margin of error. It's the margin of victory. That's the presidency. It's the world. And that is why I think this is important, even if you take the smallest, least, generous view of crypto. Yeah, I just want to double down on that too because I think it is really

important to note, like in, you know, in the 90s or whatever, the margin we're talking about here would not have been a dispositive margin. We were in a different time. This by all accounts is going to be an extremely close race. That is even more true now that you have Vice President Harris as the candidate than when you had Biden where those numbers were trending at the opposite direction. These numbers and every word tracking this daily are moving, you know, closer and closer. especially if you put the RFK Junior factor and then they get even closer. So any issue that has differentiation is an important issue in this particular race in a way that is, again, I wouldn't say it's historically completely unprecedented because we've had a number of tight races in the past.

And we all know that obviously since starting back in 2000. But this is no different. And so this is emerging. And I think the multiple polls have now shown, including a poll paradigm, did the poll DCG did some other polling. Others have done some polling we've done that indicates that it is meaningful for sure in terms of moving the needle. Okay. And so let's now talk about the actual promises that Trump made. And there are probably ones we could agree on that generally these are ones that are broadly wanted by the crypto community. And so then we can focus on some of the others. But just let me know if my spider sense about this was right. So to end the anti-cryptocrucate, we try the Biden administration and fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler, shut down operation chokepoint 2.0, establish a crypto-presidential

advisory council to design transparent regulatory guidance within the first 100 days, which to me means just finally making sure that we actually have crypto regulation, defend the right to self-custody, provide a framework to enable the expansion of stable coins, ensure the U.S. is a Bitcoin mining powerhouse. So would you agree that those are kind of like ones there's not much to discuss on? I think those are uncontroversial in terms of being wanted by the community. I just queer, and I've dined to ask Justin this, I haven't had a chance yet. This whole firing Gary Gensler thing, right? So yeah, I think people certainly want that. I would say that's probably number one on the wish list, but like, I don't, I don't believe that's

how this works. Yeah, I was going to ask you, can he do that? Can he do that? I'll just start by saying there is a norm that administration changes the chairs of agencies step down, but it's not a, to my understanding of this, it's not a rule. They kind of do that as a courtesy. for the next president, but they don't have to do that. And so query in this type of unprecedented action, what would happen if Gary Gensler's like, nope, I'm good right here, not going anywhere. Yeah, it just happens. This is complicated.

So hang on. First off, we also note, Republicans and Democrats are a paradigm. We just want to win. So now noting that to the start. So here's the deal on the way the SEC actually works. So the way the SEC works is there's five commissioners, right? And they all are selected for terms and end at certain points. Gary's term currently ends in the middle of 2026, but there's a wrinkle.

The person who's the chair serves in the pleasure of the president. At any time, the president could say, you know what, I don't like the current chair. I want to name someone else the chair. It basically never happens, but it is a existing cudgel. And I should note, I'm only talking to the SEC or every other commission has its own unique rules, but many of them rhyme to this. So the basic situation is that on January 2025, if Donald Trump's president becomes president at 12.1 p.m., he can that day say, Gary, you're fired. You can be a commissioner if you want, but I'm going to make Hester Purse or Marquey to the chair starting today. And here's what that

means in practice. There's about 5,000 people who work at the SEC. Of those 5,000, 4,950 report to the chair. And then each commissioner gets about 5 to 6 staff of their own and kind of they can talk. to usually the general counsel. But that's it. If Gary Gensler ceases to be the chair on January 20, 2020, 25, he goes from having the entire building his beck and call to having five people report to him. He is still a commissioner. He gets an equal vote, but he no longer has the power to direct the staff or to actually set the agenda. It is a tremendous loss of power. There's a reason that almost every person who ceases to be the chair of an agency or commission leaves within a year, because it is difficult to move from being a master of the universe to having

enough people, not enough people to staff a Starbucks at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Well, okay, so then I have to ask you guys, because you probably saw that Cameron Winklevoss called on the vice president, Kamala Harris's team to get Gary Gensler fired now. He tweeted, quote, you and your party retired Joe Biden as sitting president, he meets from the campaign, which means you can definitely retire Gary Gensler before November. Show us what can be. Of course, some people were responded, unburdened by what has been. But anyway, so if Kamala Harris's team really wanted to have a reset with the crypto industry, as the FTA reported,

then isn't it true that the fastest way she could do that would be to get Gary Getsler fired by November? And if so, what do you think is the likelihood of that? Let's be clear about this, right? She's not the president yet. If Joe Biden had resigned, she could do it today, theoretically. She is not the president. She still does not have the White House and the power of the presidency. She could ask Joe Biden,

Joe Biden could tell her to jump in a lake. Here's what this actually means, though, in practice. It is very rare to have same party transitions in part power. It's happened basically twice in American history since the First World War. It was 1928 when Herbert Hoover took over for Calvin Coolidge, and it was 1989 when George H.W. Bush took over from Ronald Reagan. So I went back and looked at this today. in 1988, a guy by the name of David Sturdivant, Ruter, was the chair of the SEC.

He'd been appointed in 1987. By September of 1989, he was gone. And the reason for that is that even though H.W. Bush had been the vice president for two terms of the Reagan administration, his policy had been, it's a new admin. I'm going to ask everybody to reapply. No one's job is assured. This is the real crux of the question, because one thing that comes. Kamala Harris can do is to say, I want new blood at the SEC. That alone means she could say, I'm going to point someone new. She has made indications of this in other spaces. There was a little

notice article in crypto. I think it was the Wall Street Journal, where Harris said they're not going to extend the tenure or the terms basically of NASCAR advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense, I think Lloyd Austin. The idea being, look, it's not the Biden admin term two. It's Harris admin term one. I want my own people. So the same thing can be applied to domestic finance. Kamala Harris could say, I want someone new at the SEC. I want someone to come in who has fresh ideas, so we have fresh insights. And at that point, she has succeeded in saying Gary Ginsburg will not be the chair anymore.

Because if you want a new chair of the SEC, that means Gary Gensler cannot be the chair. Okay, okay. So, all right, because I'm sure you guys saw at the Bitcoin conference that when Trump said that on day when he would fire Gary Gensler, the crowd. was absolutely crazy. And he was shocked. Yes. You could, he probably had never gotten such a huge response from a crowd ever in his entire life from the way he. I think he thought it was a throwaway comment, which is why he repeated it. But you also, I also thought it was so funny because up to that point.

Wait, wait, Sheila, did you watch the video? Because he, he repeated it because he loved the response that he got. Yes. Yes. Of course. I was watching it. I also think prior to that, he hadn't, he'd gotten somewhat of a lukewarm response, right? I mean, because the remarks he made about crypto, again, I think landed really, really, as we started off this competition, extremely well. It was like a punch list of what people want. But a lot of his other remarks were kind of like, well, it was just a sort of a tepid reaction. And I think some of the things he says in other arenas that get all these cheers, really people were like, I don't really care about that so much. I'm trying to think examples right now. But there was a whole lead-up, just kind of. of his crypto segment of the of the speech where people were just sort of not into it but then this thing happened he mentions he's in a fire gerry gunsler and people lose their entire minds i mean it was really it's actually quite funny i thought and then he repeated it because he wanted it

that he is a performer right he enjoyed that reaction um but i agree with you you can see that the surprise was very notable i do not think he realized the uh the response that that would get so he got he kept saying I didn't know he was that unpopular. He said it twice and he was like, wow, wow. It's really funny. I mean, I think, and then of course he went into comments that I find racist about Elizabeth Warren. But look, he basically name-checked arch nemesis one and two of the crypto industry, namely Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren. Okay. The other connection that I, I think, should be made here in terms of what's going to happen with Gary Gensler and, you know, why can't Kamala fire him? Well, she's not his boss to be very.

clear about how that works. She is not his boss. As Justin noted, President Biden would have to do any firing or make any changes because he is he is the president. And she, again, as just noticed, she could make that suggestion. He could tell her that's for your term when you're president, you do whatever you want, but I'm president and I'm doing that. Who knows? Okay. But the reality is she does not have the power to make that change herself, even for a change that she had articulated that she wanted. So let's, let's land that. But I also think what is the worst kept secret in Washington, there's many badly kept secrets in Washington, but among them is that Elizabeth Warren calls a lot of the shots on economic policy in the Biden administration. That is not the case for a

Harris administration. Kamala Harris did not strike a deal Elizabeth Warren to get elected, and she is not going to strike a deal. So I want to pause on this point because I thought it was so, like, eye-roly, how people were like, oh, Elizabeth Warren so quickly endorsed Kamala Harris, like, that means they're cronies and this and that. And I was like, it's exactly the opposite. She endorsed her so quickly because she understands that that power that she has in the Biden administration in the White House is waning. And Kamala Harrison, Lizzo Warren, are not long-lost besties. That's not a thing. And there is no deal that gives Lizith Warren a line of empowerment into, again, what a future Harris administration would look like.

So if anything, I think what you're seeing is the recognition that Elizabeth Warren had better think about some of these changes that. might be afoot and how to position within that. And so if Harris wins the presidency, then what could happen in terms of the SEC commissioner? So a lot depends upon whether there's an open slot. So the way the SEC works, right, is we talked about this, there's all these commissioners. And they each have their own term that ends basically once term ends every year. So the current term that's up is Carolyn Crenshaw. Yeah, there's five, thank you.

Current term that's up is Carolyn Crenshaw. And she's currently up for renomination before the Senate Bank. banking committee. That was supposed to get a vote. This week, it's been postponed. In a world where she's not confirmed for the election, mostly she's not, it becomes a question of whether Harris will want either to have her confirmed or instead to keep that open so she can nominate her own person. That's the slot that would be available for at Harris' SEC chair. She could, you know, nominate someone either through Biden in the lame duck or in January on her own and say, this is my chair. I wish Gerrigans are all the best, but it's time for new leadership of the

SEC as part of the new administration. And that person could be anybody. It's why in many ways, one of the most important questions of who runs the SEC is whether or not Crenshaw gets confirmed before the election. Okay. And when you say it got postponed, so it'll happen in September then? Well, here's the way it works, right? The way this process goes, you have a hearing in your committee, and then you have what's called a markup, which is a vote in the committee. And then you have a you go to the Senate floor. And she's had her hearing, the voting committee is what's been postponed. That's going to have in September now. It's probably going to require a party line vote, which is tough. But then it's a question of when you get the time on the Senate floor. Time is the most precious

resource in politics. You can only vote on one thing at the time in the Senate. You can't like stack things and have five different votes. So they have to spend very precious time on Prince Shaw to get her confirmed most likely without Republican support. So she probably only gets confirmed after the election. And the real question then for Harris will be, does she allow Crenshaw to be reconfirmed, which means that the only people who can be the chairs as a Democrat are, Gary Gensler, Carolyn Crenshaw, or Jaime Luzeraga, we've all been voting for all these anti-crypto things. Or no, I'd like to pause on this so I can have my own person come in, and that's the slot I want to be the new chair. Oh, and because, so the vice president, they have some way in on the Senate, right? So she could actually stop that. Or am I wrong? And she can, she cast tie-breaking votes. So she has a say, but the real potency, though, is that this is so complicated. Every time a new president takes office, there's this thing called the transition. The transition is what exists for both campaigns for president when they're not the incumbent. So like in 2016, Donald Trump had a transition project and Hillary who had a transition project. They both started around the summertime. I remember being in the office of the Clinton transition back in 2016 when the Olympics were on in Brazil. It was about Dindon, the penguin was the big story of the day. So like those go forward until um the election and then they literally return their phones each side the night of the election and the side the wind gets to come

back. This side goes away. So Harris will now have her own transition project, which will be discussing how to staff a Harris admin. Trump has a transition project. And these are the questions they'll be asking themselves. Okay, we have all these nominations at the SEC certainly, but everywhere across the government that are up, do we want to let them go through, which are Biden to fix? Do we want to pause them and consider them, or do we want to say, no, we want our own people kill that. And the decision on how the Senate works is not Joe Biden. It's Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader. He controls the Senate floor. As the Democrat, he is in charge of deciding when to put someone up for a vote. And it's very, very precious time. So in the end, if Harris wins, it's not Joe Biden's

call of whether these nominees go through. It's hers with Chuck Schumer. Oh, and he's pro-crypto, or at least he voted pro-crypto in one of the first. of those votes recently? Chuck was one of the people who voted for repeal of SAB 121. It's the first time I think he's ever voted to repeal a Biden-Nab rule ever. He is increasingly pro-crypto-pilled, as I understand it, in part because crypto is very dominant in his home state of New York. Chuck Schumer loves New York business. He, I think, wants to make New York a headquarters of crypto for the globe. So that is a benefit. We also have a great, obviously, other junior senator from New York and Thirsta Gillibrand. That's right. So what I think is interesting,

here. So Commissioner Crenshaw, I think we can expect that this would be, it was always going to be a very partisan vote because these votes are usually very partisan, but query whether she's actually even going to have support to get a nomination, to get her renomination, rather, across the line, now that a lot of Democrats want to see a little bit more pro-crypto rhetoric at a minimum, right? And her voting record on crypto is not great, as Justin pointed out. So it's an interesting question about what this means for that nomination, which is hanging at the moment. And as Justin also said, it really is Senator Schumer's call, you know, what goes forward and what, what moves. And so I do think if you have a future President Harris, Harris administration, I think it is actually quite likely that there might be a hold on that to say for her to have at least time to consider, is this the person we won or, you know, or do some discussions there or whatnot and think about the makeup of the SEC.

And some of that's going to involve what we talked about previously, like what is current chair Gensler's position going to. be like all those kinds of things. Like is he going to stay as a non-chair, you know, all of that. It's all moving parts. And this is something that, you know, those who understand the how arcane this is have been paying some attention to, I think, in our space and something that Justin and I have talked about actually at some length is how to think about gaming all this out. But look, the one thing I'll say, Laura, is that as with Commissioner Crenshaw, we're just in a time where there are a lot of unknowns. And this change, you know, a week ago, eight days ago, really has put a lot of things up in the air. And I think that's what I'd say,

right? Like if we were to talk two days from now, I'm going to have my views and I think Justin's use too, that are ever evolving because I think polling data that we've seen that was about Biden, Trump is just not accurate. I also think some of the down ballot races are changing. Like, that polling's going to change because we're expecting different turnout now because it's a Harris campaign. So all of these things are no longer really indicators of what's going to happen moving forward because we're in a completely different. It's like we were playing, you know, backgammon and now we're playing croquet. It's like a completely different thing. And so we don't have the predictability, the predictive metrics rather that we had,

that we had going into this as a week ago. So I would just say jumping on Justin's comment about Chuck Schumer is that it is interesting if he wants to make New York the center of crypto for the globe because in the U.S., at least, New York is, like, behind in the fact that it's so restrictive what you're, or like, it's probably, it's one of the most restrictive places in the country, if not the most restrictive for crypto users. And yet it kind of already is a crypto capital. People want to make it a crypto capital. So anyway, okay, we will first take a quick break to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible, but we will be back very soon to keep this conversation going.

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Joe Biden in his bones is a foreign policy president. This is what motivates him. You see it. He lights up. There's a reason he did that big NATO press conference to show he was back with it when he was still fighting for his candidacy, because that's what he gets. He's never been someone who's really animated by domestic policy, let alone Finrag. And so there is kind of been a situation, this admin,

where Warren has had a disproportionate amount of power. That said, right, to Sheila's point, Warren was a late endorser. She was one of the last people fighting to keep Joe Biden in the race, which I think speaks a lot of what she understood as where her interests lie. The Harris-Worn relationship is more fraud.

I should know. Here's a little fact that you're, Readers may not know. Back in 2015, when Joe Biden was debating to run for president against Hillary Clinton, he did that. This was reported a meeting with Elizabeth Warren about her being his VP and the argument being that we could together take on Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden's always had an affinity for Warren that I think is not fully appreciated on top of the fact he does not focus on her issues. Harris is her own person. She's not someone who's like wants to only be a foreign policy president. She wants, I think, to have a say on everything across the board. And that means, you know, not turning over swaths of the admin to the senior center of Massachusetts. I also really think it's notable. There are ongoing discussions and Democratic politics in the press and private about who needs and gets to stay. No one, since Donald Trump made the second Gary Gensler is saying it would be a tragedy if Gary Gensler was forced to step down. The silence there is definite because it's that old story, right?

you know, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, when everybody else is saying, I want him gone and no one is saying you can't do that, it's very hard to stay. Oh, wow. Okay. So this leads me to my next question because so earlier you said, if Trump is elected, he could on day one appoint either has to purse or Mark O'Yeda. But do you have a sense of who he might want to head up the SEC? And then similarly for Harris, do you have a sense of who she might want to head up the SEC? it's too soon to say. I mean, what I can tell you right is if Trump wins, you cannot name someone as the acting chair who's not currently a commissioner. So it would mean that he has to name at least initially, um, Hester or Mark as the acting chair unless they can do a really rapid confirmation. The way this usually works is that when you become president, when you take over, you name one of the current commissioners acting chair. You start a nomination process and you have your full time chair in place within about three to four months. Sometimes that acting chair is asked to stay on indefinitely. So for Harris, it's a totally unknown situation because against the same party situation.

You could, if Harris wins, start the confirmation process in the lame duck. They could be in and confirmed by January 20, 2020, 25 because it's, you know, you still have a Democratic Senate. So I have no idea. That's great. Polymarket is great for this. You know, I love markets. I love prediction markets. I look, someone should start a market on who the likely people are.

Well, do either of you, yeah, have a preference? Between Hester and Mark? No, no, no. Generally, both under Trump and both under. I'm not going to endanger personal relationships and pick between Hester and Mark. I like them both. I've worked with them both. On the Democratic side, I'm not going to endanger.

There's a lot of great candidates out there, I will say. And a lot of great pro-crypto candidates. Sheila, what do you think? I mean, I think it would have to be somebody new would come through a confirmation process. And I think the question would be how, and here's where it gets tricky, Laura, right? Because a president can nominate whoever the heck they want, but they have to get through a confirmation process. And so this is where it really matters who was sitting in those seats in Congress that's doing the confirming, right?

And how quickly are they going to let somebody through or not let somebody through or all of that? And so I do think that we'd have a split. And again, all these things are razor-thin margins. I don't think anyone's expecting a blowout on. either side, like, you know, red or blue. I had called this in 22. And I was really, as I recall, the only person in crypto policy who said, I don't think it's going to be a red wave. I think we're going to get a split. And just remembers this. We're in this room of 30 people. Everyone started me like, I was crazy. And I was like, I'm telling you, I really think this is going to happen.

So I think it's going to be very, very close and really too close to call. And so I think you're going to have to have a pro crypto or at least crypto neutral or open, you know, kind of person. because you have enough Republicans, again, this is a partisan issue at the moment, you have enough folks, I think, that would be doing the confirming that would have that as a requirement or want to see some openness to that. So in either world, I think you wind up with somebody who is a more open candidate. Speaking more bluntly than I think Justin will be able to, because I have never worked at the SEC and I have zero desire to ever in a million years.

For the record, no, not. me, will never be me. But there are a lot of people. This is called a shirt of statement, folks, is when you say, I will not serve if nominated and I'll resign if I'm confirmed. No, please no. But I think it's very unlikely you're going to see Gary Gensler in the chair seat regardless of who wins this election, because he is such a polarizing figure for the Biden administration. And because it is normal and it is acceptable for Harris to make changes, she's already indicated changes in what is core to Biden's administration around as Lloyd Austin, you know, others, Tony Blinken, folks that Justin, who are incredible public servants who've served

for a very long time or highly qualified. But she's trying to show breaks there. So it would be shocking to me if we didn't see a different share. The difference, I think, is going to be Gary Gensler's appetite to stick around. I don't see Gary Gensler being a person who it's so interesting to kind of game this out psychologically, right? And her I'm just completely waxing speculatively, you know, because not everybody can do the Nancy Pelosi move where they take a step back. They're not leading the thing, but they're still there. And I have to say, I think that's, it's really unusual. And so is Gary Gensler person that could be a regular commissioner and not the chair and be okay with that? T. Leaves probably say not so much, you know, but I think in a Trump

administration, he would cling to that seat rather than letting somebody else get confirmed, whereas in a Harris administration, who knows what might happen there. I don't know if you have thoughts, Justin, but it's interesting to think about that, right? the reason Sheila's being so polite to me is this may not be well known. I worked on Gary Gether's nomination. When I was Director of Ledge Affairs, I was the Sherpa for him at the SEC at the start of the admin. I know life is full of surprises is what I will say. What I do think is really important to note is there is a pro-crypto majority in the Senate now, and it's because, again, the voters are increasing pro-crypto, you know, 30% of non-white registered voters on crypto and 31% of Hispanics and 33% of

African-Americans. You can't as a Democrat, therefore, be anti-Crypto in the same way you could even four or five years ago. So I think anyone who gets the Democratic nod to the SEC, if they want to get confirmed, needs to be pro-crypt. I'm not saying they can, you know, will be like, you know, maximal, you know, what I might like, but they at least have to be pretty positive about it to get through a narrow Senate or even Republican Senate, as they should, right. I mean, I think the thing that I would say is not lost upon people in democratic politics is this crackdown, this campaign hasn't worked. There was a pitch that like, you know, oh, Gary will handle it. Gary's going to, you know, deal with it. The industry is stronger than ever. We're winning in court. We won on Ripple. We won on grayscale.

Even it looks like they had, we have partial victory in the finance case, you know, in the motion to dismiss. it's like and these are all among democratic judges so the whole pitch of this is all under control it's failed why then you would keep up a strategy that's not working to me is the definition of insanity so even you know among people who i think are not super pro crypto but neutral is like negative they're like yeah you're right this this isn't working it's time for a switch and that alone i think is the biggest change in democratic politics you know not as not as important as the fact that the voters themselves and Democrats are really learning, but understanding that we have to do something different, that is a skeleton key that really unlocks real change. Yeah. Okay. So I would love to ask you

about you being a shirber for Gary Gessler, but I'm not going to do it because we're at 43 minutes into this episode. We have not talked about the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, which obviously we have to talk about this. So this was a promise that it, I mean, it had been kind of floating around as a rumor beforehand, but both Trump and then Senator Lemmas, who, expanded on this, talked about this strategic national Bitcoin stockpile or reserve. And, you know, Trump promised that the government would take the bitcoins that it has in possession and use that to kind of cede this. And Senator Lemmes, she said she would introduce a bill, whose goal would be to establish this with having one million bitcoins in this reserve that would be used to eventually

pay down the U.S.'s debt. So interestingly, I happen to hear Mike Novagrats on Bankless and Borning, who said that he actually thinks this makes a lot. less sense for the U.S. government to do than it does for another country whose currency is not the reserve currency. But I was curious for your thoughts on what you, you know, on this notion of having a Bitcoin strategic reserve. I think it's interesting, right? I think it is the case people don't appreciate this. There's a, that we used to have gold reserves in this country and we've gotten rid of them. We have a strategic well reserve, which is useful as a means of reducing price spikes. The exact mechanics of it matter. As I recall, when Trump mentioned it is a key key.

note, he actually said he was simply not going to sell anymore. He was going to hold. Because every time, right, people don't appreciate this, the government seizes Bitcoin in a criminal matter or certain civil matters. It then has to find a way to sell it. This gives us a lot of humor because, of course, the exchange they used to sell that is Coinbase, which the SEC is currently suing. So the U.S. government is using a, you know, company that is being sued, you know, by the SEC. But the basic question of how you do it, it's one of those things, though, that I really want to underscore. The real importance of this is it's a good novel idea to consider. And I think while the mechanics matter, it shows you that people are thinking about

crypto creatively. Bitcoin is a store of value. It's a store in many ways of computing power, of electricity. Understanding that, I think, leads to interesting proposals. And you start to get a real movement then to further crypto-pilling members of Congress. Yeah. So I just want to pause on what I find, like the comedy of the U.S. government establishing that it wants to be a Bitcoin whale, I find like just noteworthy and hilarious on many levels. So Justin touched on some of this, right? Like, how is that you going to do that? What would be the mechanism? Where are you going to hold it? Like all of that I think is very, very interesting. Well, yeah, but wait, Sheila, it actually

already is a Bitcoin whale. It is. That's the point. But being so open about that because usually the U.S. government is pretty coy about that fact, right? But being wide open about like, this is a thing, let's double down and go even bigger, you know, kind of thing. I think it's just, again, it's just, you have to laugh. You have to be it on the joke. It's just, it is funny. It's funny. That's the thing, though, right? There's a concept in politics called the Overton window, which is that when you're shifting, it's about the nature of what acceptable modes of debate are. One thing I really love about this proposal is it shows we're shifting from like, should crypto exist to, crypto is going to exist, how much pro-crypto should we be. That's right.

Which really speaks to the improvement we are making inside D.C. in the country as a whole and gets us closer to the idea of, wait, you mean you're anti-crypto? You're anti-toaster? Like, you know, in the future, it should not be surprising that there are differences of opinion about how pro-crypto to be, but the idea of being anti-crypto should hopefully become like a flat earthers view, basically. I think we're very close, if not there. And I think, I'll box check a note on that point, is the only person who's been effective

at being anti-crypto is Gary Gensler. Who else has been effective at that? Elizabeth Warren's tried to get a bunch of legislation through. It hasn't worked. Her most recent attempt immediately died. I mean, we helped with that. But a lot of, you know, just immediately died. So he's the only person that's been effective because of the nature of the role.

No one else has been effective in being an anti, all this anti-crypto army business is like, where is it? Like, where are these, you know, random people who are anti, I just don't. It's like the ex-r-RP army. It's the soldier of one, Gary Gensler, right? and like some people who've been like sort of co-opted by him as many cases at the SEC reluctantly because he's their boss. So leaving that, I think, to one side, I think the fact that we are having this conversation and by we, I mean like the broadest we, right? Like that there is going to be a conversation about this.

And I do think that Senator Lomas, probably regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, might seek to introduce this bill. That would not surprise me, right? That's going to be more about the makeup of Congress than about the president, although the question will, be if that bill went through, would President Harris sign it? But I think that President Harris would have to take that very, very seriously. And I think you do have the votes to get that, you know, potentially out of a committee. I think you could get it through a markup. I think there were all those mechanisms of how you would do it are complicated. But I don't see it. I think the point I want to land in addition to what Justin said, which I agree with,

is that I don't, I did not hear that as a sort of idle puff point, right, to kind of get praise and out of adulation and votes. I actually took that, or pandering, let's call it. I actually took that as a serious policy question that I do think has legitimacy. And you could argue it 10 ways to Sunday. There's pros and cons to this that I think we're familiar with, right? But I don't know if that's a good use of our time. But I think the point politically is that that is real. And it is something that depending on the makeup, again, of a variety of different bodies,

you could see that being debated, if not in a committee, then on the floor. Or being something that grows and gets crafted and over time becomes policy. So wild, right? Pretty wild. Yeah. And actually, one other thing, which I just wanted to know is, so I agree that both symbolically and also just from a very straight on kind of financial diversification kind of perspective, it's probably like a good idea. However, it's the details where people might get tripped up. Because in addition to Mike Novogratz's comment earlier, I did also see Eric Wall tweeted, hey, wait, that's not Bitcoin. Yeah. He was a lot. Like that the US government has, he was like, that was Bipan-Ex-Hat Bitcoin. He was like, that's my Bitcoin. So, yes, the details would need to be worked out. But, Justin. This is the thing, though, what I think is the most important thing Kamala Harris can do, which is take crypto seriously. When you take crypto seriously and don't just dismiss things out of hand, you're really engaging with the space for the first time, considering how you want to regulate it. That is the number one thing the Biden admin has never done.

They have never had a roundtable with crypto executives the way they have. with AI executives. It's public, at least. They've never come up with principles for how to really regulate it. The EO, which was a good EO, was largely about doing reports. The number one thing Kamala Harris needs to keep doing and to build on is to take crypto seriously and say, I'm not going to think of this as like, oh, I'm checking a box. I'm just, yeah, sure, I accepted crypto for my campaign.

It's like, no, I believe this is going to persist. I understand that. It has utility. I take this seriously. we have to deal with this. That's what's been missing from the Biden admin, in part because even Gary Ginsler, I think, has never, for all his discussions of being an academic, taken this space truly seriously. And that has been the missing piece, this entire admin. Yeah. So speaking of people who take Bitcoin seriously, we have to talk about J.D. Vance,

because now we finally have a true bitcoiner on a presidential ticket, which, I mean, it's just crazy. I'm sure people have heard he has something around a quarter million dollars worth of Bitcoin. His policy stances on this go back to 2021. So before FTCS, like he published a statement opposing that amendment to the infrastructure bill, he said basically it would be like a backdoor ban on Bitcoin. More recently, this past winter, he introduced a bill to stop Operation Chokepoint 2.0, which obviously, again, is something. that is squarely within what the crypto community, it's not even what the crypto community wanted so much

is just that would, that would just create a level playing field for crypto. It's just a purely, it's like hardly pro crypto so much as just like neutral crypto is, I think, the way to put it. So, you know, how much do you think that changes things for the crypto voter to have somebody who, I mean, let's just be honest about this. Like Trump is nearly 80. J.D. Vance is in his, 30s. He's an actual bitcoiner. So, you know, how do you think that changes the calculus for these crypto voters in this wing states? Massively, right? Because this is technology where touching it is believing it. This is not something you can really understand until you have a wallet, until you've owned Bitcoin, until you've done a swap on you to swap. I think this lets him

speak about it organically. And it's what I would encourage the Harris team, too. Don't think you can just issue a policy paper, right? It's important to be meeting with development. on the campaign trail, have an advisory council even on the campaign trail. You don't have to wait until you're elected to have a bunch of outside advisors. This is what people want to see, not telling, but showing. Yeah, I have a different perspective on this. I mean, I certainly do not dispute JD Vance is a true bitcoiner and a believer in that dates, you know, back pre his ascension, if you will. I actually think Trump was already there with crypto voters. I don't know that Vance added anything that was missing. I think what was added was,

the specificity around the policy, but I actually think that Trump would have gotten there from other advisors anyway. I also don't think that Vance, that Vance's crypto stands or specifically as Bitcoin stance are the reason that he was selected. I think that was about doubling down on the MAGA propositions more broadly, you know, some of the product 225 stuff or the disavowal there, maybe not, who knows, the immigration stuff. I think that, you know, the sort of reproductive rights stuff or lack thereof. I think that is actually why Vance was selected. And I do think that, the Bitcoin stance is convenient, but I don't think it was dispositive. That's just my personal view from things I've heard. And like I say, I think that is because Trump was already there. He had already,

before he selected Vance, gotten the attention and attracted the crypto community and those donations were coming in. I did not look at this, and I wish I had now. The distinction in donations pre-imposed the selection of Vance as the running mate. But like I say, I think it just is a doubling down on positions that were already perceived as being held. Now, for Harris, very different. I do think her, I don't even know who this person might be, and none of the candidates that were talking about, at least in the press, are this person. But if she were to pick somebody who were a sort of known bit-o-bino-cropo person, a fanatic, if you want to call it, because many of us are, I think that would be massively different because she's not seen as having checked the box,

if you will, the way that Trump had prior to the selection. So like I said, I haven't slightly to protect upon it. But yeah. But are there a candidate? Because I feel like the main candidates are like, so unfortunately, I don't know all their first names. So I'll just do last things. Yeah.

Bashar Shapiro, Cooper, Mark Kelly, um, Buttigieg, Whitmer. I don't think are any of those pro-crypto? I like the only one that I remember, Jared Polis for sure, because he's already even bit on my show, the Colorado governor. Maybe Pritzker. I don't know about Pritzker. Mark Cuban was bandied about briefly, but like he's, I mean, the one thing I will note is some of those officers have the states or elected officials have signed bills on Bitcoin and crypto. We looked into this. But none have taken really strong stances. But I kind of think the VP pick as a red herring. The real question I have is whether she hires as her key economic advisor, someone who owns crypto. Yes. You know, that isn't. That's true. The VP pick is powerful in that it is symbolic.

But, you know, there's a reason it was once called, I think, worthy of a warm bucket of spit by then-bice president. I think it was John Garner and Janice Garner. The basic problem with the VP is you're as powerful as the president lets you be. More than anything else, I'd like to see someone who's senior at the National Economic Council who really into crypto because then they understand what needs to happen to let this industry flourish. And who would be at the top of your list? That's a hard question.

Sheila, you know, I guess you don't want to serve that job either. But that's, right now it's held by Lail Brainerd. I, you know, it'll be open question who Vice President Harris who's elected wants for that job. But if there's someone there who really is pro-Crypto and understands it has worked with crypto, that would be hugely beneficial. And I would say it's important for either party. As good as the VP is of the president is, the staff really make the buildings run. and it's important to focus on where the real power lies.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, like, if I'm just going off the top of my head, then, like, Jared Paulus, Rokane, Ritchie Torres, those are just, like, very obvious Democrats that come to mind. Wiley Nichael. Oh, Wiley Nickle. And not running. Okay. No job in January. It's true.

No job in January. And a great guy. Super lovely person. Okay. Okay. So, and this would be, what was it? And to be on the economic, it's national economic council. They decide the economic policy for the White House and the entire administration. It's not confirmed. You can literally pick whoever you want for it. It's very, very powerful. And they, but they could signal it by having them as an advisor and they're okay.

Yes, absolutely. And I think Justin makes exactly the right point, which is the vice president. I mean, look, there's a reason that Vice President Harris's views on crypto are not known or forms, because that was not part of her slate. She was not given any authority or even a line to go and engage on those topics. Like, that was not what she ever did. And so the idea that A, she could fire Gary Gensler to go back to that conversation, or the idea that she was somehow the directive of President Biden on these topics. This is not true.

She was doing a lot more foreign policy type work. Because, again, as Justin noted, foreign policy president entrusted her with a couple of very complicated negotiations, that that was in her purview. So her going in and immediately differentiating on that in the ways we've discussed on the show already is really, really telling and quite powerful because that's a place where they were much more aligned because she was carrying out the Biden administration's agenda in the foreign policy. She had nothing to do with the economic agenda. That was set by the National Economic Council, which she had really nothing to do with. So she's coming at this pretty clean. And that's kind of the point we're making.

All right. So now let's then talk about what's next up on this. crazy election campaign schedule, which is, of course, the Democratic National Convention and the platform that they will be unveiling. From this letter that the pro-Crypto Democrats sent to the Democratic National Committee, what do you think is the likelihood that we will see a crypto plank in the Democratic Party platform? And what do you think it will contain if so? So it's hard to speculate, because this all happens in private. But it should have a pro-crypto for position because, again, the Republicans have now have a very appropriate position in their platform.

So if you want to, you know, at least fight the Republicans to a draw on this and to reset, you're going to need something in the platform. The way it works, I think, is that there's about 20 people who sit on the platform committee and they do it for everybody else. It usually gets stitched up in the week before the convention meets, which I think is August 19th or so. But, you know, this is all fast moving, right? We've never had a situation where you had a major party nominee drive. drop out three weeks before their convention. It does not happen in American history, literally.

So we're in unprecedented times. Yeah, but he should have done it like a month before, but anyway. The whole thing is it's like, what is this timeline? I mean, it's so bananas. But I would be very surprised. I'll say it more strongly if there weren't some mention of crypto in the platform. I just think at this point, it is so obvious that that is needed. I think the question is, what does that say? And is there time to pull together, you know, what, what, what they think that position should be, right? I think at a minimum, I expect to see something, just acknowledging the existence, right? And I think we're going to see the death knell of this narrative that crypto is somehow going to go away or it's, you know, it is useless. I think that's just going to be gone.

I don't think it's realistic to expect to see pillars in the platform that are very specific. And so I think it's going to remain to be seen what form it takes. It may be that it's just captured in almost like a throwaway type of thing. But I'd be very surprised if it were site, if the platform were silent completely on the topic. The other thing I'll note is it's really, I think, interesting how, and I think a lot of people gloss over this, but not a single speaker at the Republican National Convention mentioned crypto or Bitcoin, not one. And I went back to the likely suspects in case I missed it. They didn't do it. And it was at Bitcoin, Nashville, that Trump, you know, came out so strong and said all these things, right? But it was not mentioned at the

convention. The Democrats, who knows? There's all kinds of folks speaking at the Democratic National Convention. And I think on stage, again, if anything, it would be a glancing mention at most. Who knows? Who knows what might happen there to try to level the playing field, et cetera? So look, my only viewpoint at this point in time, and this is such a moving thing, 40 hours from now, Laura, we could talk again and I have a different view. But right now is that anything is possible and everything is in play. And I think the fact, like I'll go back to what I said earlier, the fact that not even a week or maybe barely a week into this campaign's existence, like literally it's existence. Harris as a Canada is a week old as a concept that there's

significant outreach happening and consideration of the topic of crypto policy is it is just absolutely extraordinary. And I think we cannot underestimate what that means and why that might be the case, right? They're not engaging on every single topic. It's not like they have, like, infinite hours and infinite staff. That is a choice that's being made by the campaign, and it is a very telling choice. So how it manifests, I don't know, you know, we'll see. But like I say, nothing would surprise me at this point. Okay. So one other kind of lever that could be pulled between now and the election is the possibility of having crypto legislation passed either before November or I guess we could even just extend it to the end of the year.

Kristen Smith of the Blockchain Association said recently, I think it was on the chopping block, that there was some chance that we would see crypto legislation passed in Congress this year. Obviously, there is Fit 21. Debbie Stavino and John Bozeman, I guess, are working on some revised version of Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act. And then there's also the Stable Coin bill that Angela Brandon Lemmas have put forth. What are your thoughts on how likely that is? It's hard to say right now because, like, to break it down, so there was supposed to be a markup of the Stamina-up Bozeman bill this week.

We're recording this on Monday, of course, the 29th. That's been postponed, according to press reports into September when they're back. It's hard to pass legislation in an election year. The telecom act I mentioned in 96, that was the last time they did major legislation in election year, and that was enacted into law in some of the present, like February. So it speaks well of how important crypto is becoming that we're getting this much attention at this late part of the election. But it means everything's in high flux. There's two sessions left.

There's a September session before the election, which is very short. It's like three weeks. And then there's this six-week period after the election. And what happens in the election informs what you do in that second session? If Donald Trump wins, he may want nothing passing because he may want to be involved in negotiations. So, like, there's, it's, it's everything's up in the air. Um, there's also all these packages. At the end of every year, you have to pass all these must pass bills and you can literally stick things into one of them. They're on like terrorism financing and on, you know, funding the government. So a lot of

things are in flux right now. Something could pass. It's hard to say again, this is a great place for Nate Silver to give us a prediction market on this. Um, the real takeaway is, I think, that Congress is focusing so much attention on this. Right. Well, running for office. That does not usually happen. These sessions right before the election are usually dead. All you're doing is voting on like naming post offices, not discussing how to, you know, restructure a major growing part of the economy. Yeah. Last time I came on, Laura, we talked about fit 21. And, you know, again, I'll just know we were instrumental in getting that to be a very bipartisan vote in the House, shockingly bipartisan by anyone's standards, including mine.

I thought we'd get in the 20s in terms of Democratic votes when we got 71. And that effort is then being, you know, was picked up again in the Ag Committee and the same. Senate, part of that effort rather because it's the ad committee. And I think the bottom line now is that you're just chasing days on the calendar more than anything else. So we weren't surprised to see the markup slip to September. I think it's just days on the calendar. And these are complicated topics. So it's a matter of not just political will to get it done. It's a matter of like what else comes up that has to be addressed during that three week, that really stub kind of term, the substation you have in September and then in lame duck. And again, in lame duck,

it really becomes like, what are you trying to shove into what vehicle? And that's, the vehicle is like, as a term that's used, right, to talk about these must pass bills. A lot of times they contain these riders. They have a lot of stuff attached to them because they have to pass that is relatively not controversial. So it would not surprise me to see a stable coin bill attached to a must pass because I think it's fairly non-controversial what a stable coin bill would contain at this point. It's not to say there's not devil. in details, that's always the case. I think some of the market structure stuff has gotten a lot more airtime and attention. But who knows? It's, again, it's a super changing, moving thing. And I do think if

you had something that happened at the Convention, the Democratic National Convention in August, which is before the September term, that was a very strong indication of a party level momentum around this that is going to shape and change how September is viewed. Whether that is fair or not, that's just how the game is played. That's how it works. So I think the thing the takeaway is that this has become over the course of this term a very bipartisan effort. And there's been tremendous effort by Democratic staffers, Republican staffers in both chambers to really try to move something here and get something done because I think they understand the importance of it. And that is not just about the election cycle and the sort of politics. It's also, I think, people understand this topic well enough that you can have meaningful conversations.

And so all the education, so many of us were doing, you know, starting with this new terms, and 20 to get a bunch of new folks that came in, a bunch of freshmen congresspeople that came in, that education is bearing fruit because they get it. They get why it matters. They have positions and points of view on some of the details that you wouldn't expect them to have had and they wouldn't have had without that education. And it's just, it's a little unfortunate. The timing is where we are at a presidential election cycle, which is the most complicated cycle of all. But, you know, that's just the hand we were dealt and you play the cards, you're, have. And I think we're holding a pretty good deck at this point for this Congress to get something

done. To tie it all together from what the Kamala Harris reset on crypto is to what Trump is, you know, working on to the legislation, the single most precious resource in politics is time. It is the one thing you cannot make more of. You cannot regain lost days and lost weeks. And it is all coming together in a really surprising fashion. It also, I think, is what's motivating to go back to the beginning of the conversation, the Harris team to move quickly because they don't have time. It's less than 100 days of the election. This is something where they have to move expeditiously.

They're going to move at all. All right. So now that we've spent all this time talking about like the SEC and Gary Gunsler and all this stuff, I do have to ask you, there is like kind of, I don't know what to make of it. Maybe it's a monkey wrench. You know, we have this overturning of the Chevron doctrine

by the Supreme Court. And I wondered what you thought that meant for the crypto industry. and just the importance of the SEC going forward or just, so what will things look like? Or is it already struck, since it's already struck, like what does it look like now? Like, how does that change all this? It changes it a lot.

I mean, the basic story of the last few years in the Supreme Court is that there is a significant conservative majority cracking down on reducing the power administrative agencies. Their basic pitch, and it's you see it with the Chevron case, Loper Bright, you see it with case that happened a few days later called CornerPost, which also reduced the ability of administrative agencies to avoid being sued. The Supreme Court is trying to reduce the power of the administrative agencies versus Congress. They're trying to refocus attention on Congress.

This means that efforts to engage in really aggressive regulations or enforcement actions without clear statutory approvals are disfavored. They're going away. This, in theory, should increase the focus on the need for legislation and reduce the ability. of agencies to do the kind of crackdown on crypto we've seen. Will Gary Ginsler understand that in the short term? It's unclear. The courts move slowly. But it's definitely evidence that the Supreme Court is looking very skeptically at aggressive actions like the SEC. I like to note, in fact, back in the oral arguments on that Loper Bright case, crypto came up. The arguer for Loper Bright

was saying, when they said, you know, what's an example of where the Chevron doctrine has harmed congressional powers through legislation. He said crypto. There is a head of an agency that used to teach it a major university in Boston and was saying, I really understand this space. And now he's trying to stop legislation. This is how the Chevron doctrine hurts policymaking. And the justice has believed and agreed with that argument. So in many ways, there is a direct tie between the campaign of the SEC against crypto and Chevron getting struck down. That more than anything else should be a signal to you of where this is going and why the courts are not going. to agree with the current aggressive theories of the SEC chair.

Yeah, and that was Paul Clement who made that argument, who's a longstanding advocate for the shrinking of administrative agency power. And so this was kind of like, and I think it's really important to look at Loper Bright and Corner Post together. I think a lot of folks look only at one and not the other. And so the curtailment, I think, of the power of the executive branch is really significant. And we're only going to see how that plays out over the course of the next few years, because, of course, these things come through, you know, come through courts, and that takes time.

So a couple of things I think on this. It is beyond ironic that at the moment when, you know, if you had a new Trump administration, clearly the goal there is to expand the powers of the executive office. And you have this counterpoint to that, depending on your politics, you favor or don't favor. But it's just, again, you can't make this stuff up. You can't even write these scripts in this timeline. It's wild. that's happening. I think you are going to have a Trump administration pushing against those boundaries and saying, well, no, actually, maybe we were just kidding.

We actually want more of that power to make decisions about things without having to go through Congress. You also have, again, as I noted, no matter what the outcome is here, it's going to be a very close Congress, and those margins are going to be very slim. So you're going to have to have bipartisan agreement or some level of buy-in, even however, you know, mild or deal-making is more likely what you're going to see. We'll stay silent or vote on your thing if you want, you know, whatever it looks like. It's going to be some heavy horse trading there to get anything across the line. I will remind you, this is a house that could not elect a speaker for multiple. I talk about us all the time because it is so emblematic of the problem. So the idea that Congress is suddenly going to come in with all of these beautiful and

elegant solutions to all of this and get it across the line and that's going to be efficient. I mean, that is not a thing. It's just not a thing. So I see a world in which potentially everything winds up going through the courts because there is no clarity. So one of the reasons I will just say that I feel an urgency to. get legislation across the line now, you know, as much as we can, is because I don't know how all these things are going to interact. I don't trust we're going to have a Congress that is

motivated to get anything across the line like we have now. You know, you have like it certainly in the House, you have the chairs of financial services and ag who are extraordinarily motivated and got a bill through, right? And a, I would say, a comprehensive bill through. So like I say, I am always a person who believes, you know, bird in hand is worth two in the bush. And in my view, we have an appetite right now. We have desire. We have wherever that desire comes from, I'll take it. I don't really care.

If it's desperation, if it's, you know, wanting a legacy. Who cares? The point is, we have a lot of folks in Congress who want to get it done and can get it done. And we don't yet have the sort of, it's a bit of greenfield what Loper Bright and CornerPost are going to mean. Like, people are still kind of getting their heads around that. So we have a window to really get something done here that could land us in a place of clarity, at least some clarity on some topics, which is better than no clarity on no projects what we have right now. So this is kind of where I'm coming from in the urgency that I feel to move forward with legislation,

because I just don't know what we're going to get. And anyone who's honest is going to tell you they don't know either. And what I don't want to see is yet again, crypto is stuck litigating everything and spending millions and millions and millions of dollars, getting things through the courts to get rules established like we've had to do because of the SEC, right? That is a possible world that we might enter simply because of the way all these different factions are going to play against each other. Yeah, I feel like I'm hearing part of the speeches that you're probably, or part of the presentations you're probably giving to some of these different members of Congress. But anyway, okay, so I feel like we've probably covered most of

just all the things, you know, that we had to cover that happened recently. And then all the things between now the election and even stuff beyond. However, there is one last juicy question that I have to ask you, which is, we've talked about how Harris has to demonstrate her kind of pro-crypto credentials to attract that vote, how important that is, especially in the swing states, blah, blah, blah. However, she has been part of the Biden administration. So how do you think she can both distance herself while not kind of throwing her boss under the bus? Like, do you, what do you think is her best way to do that?

think the thing is to stress that I'm a new president. I mean, it's about the future, not the past. It's literally, I was part of the Biden administration. Crypto has really grown over it. I want a new path in part because I see the value of crypto is pro-America, pro-American interest, pro-competition, pro-innovation. It's one of those things where because the Biden admin has been hostile but schizophrenic, there is a real opportunity here. The gateway is open for her to say it's a new day, it's a new step. It also lets her, I think, establish this is not another continuation of Biden's presidency, but is the Harris administration. So it benefits her overall message to do this. It also helps her, I think, express moderation being pro-business.

And do you think something that swing voters will buy, or do you think they will lump her together with Biden? I think that's the thing, though. If she, her team wants to not be lumped in with Biden, it's taking a new position that he's never done. Joe Biden's never said the word crypto in his life in public. It's worth noting. This is, it's easier to see. this than to say, you know, I'm going to, you know, change how the Inflation Reduction Act is implemented. This is new territory because of this. Can we just acknowledge that Biden is not exactly the technical, the technological president? Okay, he's the foreign policy president. Okay, this is the same gentleman who walked into a roundtable of AI executives and was like, I really should probably

get my head around that and then just kind of was like, uh, maybe later, you know? So I think there, I don't even think this is hard, Laura. I think that it is, he was so not focused on technology and on crypto as a president, as a person. I know, but, but Sheila, what I would say to you is you know those things because you are a DC person, but every day, I'm not, but it's just going to be like Biden Harris. Well, so I think, I think that's, I think the real question is, is, are people going to buy it? Like, that's the real question. Because I think doing it is not hard. I think she's going to do it. She's already done it on issues that are, I would argue, wearing my, as an American hat, are important to really literally everybody, namely, you know, foreign policy, national security

with these kinds of questions. She's already done. She's already broken from the Biden administration very clearly and made it very clear. She's going to take a turn there on antitrust. She's made some moves which are really having a ripple effect. I can tell you where I sit in Silicon Valley that there's lots of conversations happening right now. Like, whoa, we did not think she'd come out with a different sort of posture indicating movement on antitrust issues to the Biden administration. That's massive. So she's already done these kind of sea change things. And again, we're like seven days into the campaign on these topics. So I don't think that the landing of its heart. I think the fair question is, will people buy it? I think people who are not going to buy it

are never going to buy it. She could come out there with a tattoo that said, you know, with the Bitcoin B on her forehead and people be like, oh, it's pandering. You know, you're not going to be able to win on with some folks. And I think that that is, that's just the nature of the beast. That's just reality. They're not going to vote for a Democrat because they perceive the party as being super hostile as opposed to actors than the party. I think people who have an enathema to Trump of which there are many and there are many in crypto, I do think would be more open-minded about it. But it depends on what happens, when it happens, how it happens, where it happens. And like I say, on stage the National Convention is one thing.

You know, that's a pretty, that's a thing versus in the party platform. That's a thing. Versus quietly in some rooms. That's a thing. Who's in those rooms? Like, it depends kind of how it manifests, how people are going to take it. And it also depends, I think, on. how convinced she can make a couple of key actors who are very loud voices in the crypto community, right? I don't think she's trying to convince the breadth of crypto holders. I think she's trying to see is there is their room. I mean, this is me speculating, but I think, I mean, I know she's met Mark Cuban. That was reported in the press. There's folks like that who I do think have some voice and who have been loud on these topics. And I do think have a credibility, whether that's

justified or not. It's a different question. But they do have credibility in parts of the community. And so it's going to depend on how to do it. But the doing of it is what I'm saying. I don't think the doing of it is actually that hard. It's the how does it land and with whom that I think is very complicated and is going to depend a lot on timing and vibes, frankly, in addition to content. But it's a good point, Laura, that you're making, which is that if she's just going to do this behind closed doors, it probably won't work.

What it needs to be is something that's unabashed. It's, you know, her saying something herself. has far more power than, oh, X, Y, Z reports in the Wall Street Journal that there's conversations going. That's right. You know, it's, I think that often people in D.C. don't understand is that, especially for something like crypto, which is radically decentralized, is transparent, it's not a game that just played in smoke-filled rooms in Foggy Bottom.

It's got to be done out in the open in, you know, crypto Twitter on, in the public. And I think that is the real crux of it. I would also note, right, in terms of whether it lands, And the polling we've done, in part because, you know, crypto skews young, it's skews not white. More Democrats own crypto than Republicans. These are traditional Democratic voters. And we looked at this. We asked this question in March, I asked voters, you know, did you vote for Biden or Trump in 2020? And overall, we found it mostly matched.

The election, it was like 45% said they voted for Biden and 38% voted for Trump or something that was like 4540. Now when we asked them in March, non-crypto owners were basically tied. they were backing Trump by like a point. The crypto owners were skewing dramatically to Trump, 48 to like 39. This shows you the bleed that I think a lot happened among crypto voters and why it's important that the Harris campaign take this brief window, this gateway, and walk through it because time is of the essence. Yes, that's exactly what we landed in our op-ed.

I will tell you, there was a great article written by a friend of mine, Paul Bradley Carr, in the SF Standard, an op-ed that was just like, oh, boy, how's Silicon Valley feeling now, you know, now that it's Harris, how's it going? That's not about crypto per se. It's really about tech and tech adjacency. And whether this is fair or not, I can tell you, again, I live in Silicon Valley. Like I can tell you, there is a perception that being anti-crypto means your anti-tech, means your anti-innovation, right? Like, that is an equation that has landed very strongly in Silicon Valley. And so you've got like the David Sachs and the Chimats, you know, supporting Trump, not because they care about crypto narrowly, but because they see this as emblematic of the positioning

that Biden's administration was taking on technology more broadly. Some of that, they care more about AI and they do about crypto, but they see them as kind of floating together, right? They're pegged, if you will. Yeah, but just to be clear, I'm pretty sure David Sachs came out of the womb, Republican. So anyway, agreed, agreed. I think there was more of like a, is it going to be, can I really get there with Trump as a Republican, right, as opposed to, you're right, the lift was not that heavy. Regardless, I think. there's now this moment happening, I think, where people are like, oh, well, had we known it would be Harris. And I can tell you, there's all these, like, buzzy conversations happening behind closed doors

here in the Valley with people being like, you know, good thing I didn't come out too strong, you know, good thing that I still have a bunch of money I can give away. Like, there's people really starting to question whether that equation is going to hold. Because, again, like Kamala Harris is... I'm not understanding your point. You're saying that they don't like Harris. that they're glad they didn't endorse Trump? They're glad they didn't endorse Trump yet.

That's right. They're glad they didn't pick it. They're glad they didn't pick a horse, right? The folks who picked Trump when it was Trump Biden are like, oh, well, we might have thought that, thought about it a little differently and maybe we still would have come out for Trump and maybe more quietly as an example. And there are folks who haven't landed yet who are now like, this really does change things because Kamala Harris, again, is seen as being tech adjacent.

She is somebody who has campaigned in California. She exclusively campaigned against California. let's not forget when she was a senator, SDA, as attorney general. She understands that. She is certainly not tech averse in any way or technophobic. And so the question becomes, like, what is she going to say? And I think people are really waiting to see not, again, this is not a crypto thing. It's really more about tech in general, but they're like, what is she going to come out with? She has a different view on section 230 than others, right? Like, she has more nuance in her understanding of technology and technology issues. So like I say, I think people out here anyway,

and this is also unique to your point about DC people, this is like Silicon Valley people, which is their own special bird, if you will, okay, but they are really looking to see what's going to happen here. And I think that's going to be meaningful, not just in terms of campaign funding, which is obviously very important, but also in terms of public stances that they're willing to take on some of this stuff. It's very different having Harris than having Biden out here in Southern Valley. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And also, even if I just think about how Biden is from Delaware, which is like analog finance. And so, yeah. Okay. Well, you guys, this has been a marathon session, but we covered, uh, if not everything, like at least all the important things. Um,

thank you both so much. Where can people learn more about each of you and your respective organizations? So is Sheila Warren, Crypto Council CEO? We are on, we are on Twitter or X. And you can follow us there. I'm Sheila underscore Warren, and we're Crypto Undershore Council. And we do a lot of threads and tweets and other things about what's happening in Washington. But we're also, I should just note, operating in the UK and in Europe and in certain places in APEC. And there is a lot happening there, too, that we didn't even get into today. But is very interesting as well.

Justin Slaughter, policy juror of paradigm. You can find us at policy. dot paradigm to XYZ. I am also on Twitter as JVSDC and Farcaster is also JVSDC. We love to do in particular polling. So we try to release polls every couple of months. And we do a full release of that to the community to help kind of guide discussions about where the data is. All right. Perfect. Well, it's been such a pleasure having you both on Unchained. Thanks, Laura. Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Sheila, Justin, and the Bitcoin Conference and all these other things involving crypto and politics. Check out the show notes for this episode.

episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Matt Pilchard, Wanner Manovich, Megan Gavis, Pamma Jimdardt, 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 Coin Desk Podcast Network for some of the best shows in crypto.