Unchained - Why Many Democrats, Including the White House, Have Come Around on Crypto - Ep. 652

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, joins Unchained to explore the dramatic shift by Democrats in the last few weeks on crypto. She explains why she believes the overturning of SAB 121 and the House vote for the FIT21 bill were both instrumental to the White House's changing view on crypto and may have played a role in the SEC’s surprising approval of spot ETH ETFs.  Having worked for years on passing crypto legislation and as a lifelong Democrat, Sheila describes what kinds of arguments were persuasive to Democratic members of Congress, addresses some criticisms of the FIT21 bill, and gives her perspective on the debate about single-issue voters. Show highlights: The overall attitude toward crypto in Washington going into the House vote on SAB 121 on May 8 The bipartisan votes in the House and Senate to overturn SAB 121 Why, by the time of the Senate vote on FIT21, the White House had had a change of heart about crypto Why, after the Senate vote to repeal SAB 121, the SEC approved the spot ETH ETFs Why Sheila is so proud of the passage in the House of the FIT21 bill How Sheila and CCI approached their discussions with Democrats and what arguments they found effective Whether the industry has survived the negative image of SBF and FTX The sea change in the White House between the SAB 121 vote and the FIT21 vote A high-level description of the FIT21 bill  What kind of authority the bill would give the CFTC over crypto  What the implications of the bill are for launching tokens FIT21’s approach to regulating DeFi and how the FIT21 bill is "kicking the can" on this topic The overall political and legislation landscape and the next likely steps for crypto Whether the ETF approval changes anything about the SEC’s investigation into Ethereum What Sheila thinks about the 'crypto single-issue voter’ debate  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 VaultCraft Guest: Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation Previous appearance on Unchained: Did FTX Ruin Crypto’s Image on Capitol Hill? Two DC Insiders Discuss Links Previous coverage on Unchained of the recent shift in the US political landscape: Senator Cynthia Lummis on Why Crypto Now Has Bipartisan Support in Congress Bits + Bips: Is US Politics Driving the ETH ETF Approval? Why Spot Ether ETFs Are Now Likely to Be Approved on Thursday SAB 121 Bloomberg: As Bitcoin Rallies, Banks Are Pushing US Regulators to Change Crypto Guidance  FIT21 CCI: FIT21 Coalition Support Letter Unchained: FIT21 Bill Heads to The Senate: Should We Really Be Excited? Sheila’s op-ed on Fortune: The clock is ticking for Democrats on crypto Spot Ether ETFs Unchained: Analysts Up Odds of Spot Ether ETF to 75% as Prometheum Launches Product That Treats ETH as a Security Ethereum Foundation investigation Fortune Crypto: SEC probing crypto companies in Ethereum investigation as hopes for ETF dim Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And I think the fact that this spanned the spectrum of moderate Democrats to very progressive Democrats was incredibly rewarding and exciting to me because I've been trying to make the case in the face of, well, I mean, I had to close my Twitter DMs at one point. I've been trying to make the case that this must be bipartisan. Like it is extremely important that we not, you know, give up on Democrats. And even after the whole, you know, 2022, you know, Sam stuff, when Democrats were very understandably skittish, we at CCI did not give up on them. We were like, listen, that is a thing that happened. We need to like own that that happened as an industry. We need to kind of contextualize it appropriately,

right, and talk about what that meant and didn't mean about the industry and how the technology operates and all that kind of thing. But we're not giving up on Democrats. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're a no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto nine years ago. And as a senior Editor at Forbes was the first Mainchain Reader Porter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the May 28th, 2024 episode of Unchained. Deploy custom crypto strategies and boost your yield with perpetual options on VaultCraft, the universal defy adapter for supercharging your crypto.

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Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come down to precious metals. I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment. Technology companies. Solar energy. Robotic pollinators might be a thing. A wrestler to face a robot?

That will have to happen. So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at WealthSimple. Start now at WealthSimple.com. Today's guest is Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovative. Welcome, Sheila. Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me. You were a driving force in Wednesday's House vote for the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, being called Fit 21.

And it was the first time that a chamber of Congress had voted for comprehensive crypto legislation. So congratulations. And I definitely want to go into a lot of detail on that. But I was realizing, I feel like this achievement is best appreciated. if we go back to May 8th, at that time, things looked very different. There was this SEC staff accounting bulletin 121 that basically made it impossible from financial institutions to get in on the crypto game to do things like custody crypto assets for the Bitcoin

ETFs. And both the crypto and banking industries had been lobbying to overturn it. And so on that day, the House was set to vote on overturning it and the White House released a statement saying that if Congress did vote to overturn it, that the president would veto that vote. So tell us at that point, what was your sense from your work of what the overall attitude was toward crypto in Washington and the overall stance on crypto policy? Yeah. Well, you know, I'll start off by saying that Washington is not monolithic, right? And so the view on that would depend very much on who you asked. I think it was definitely disappointing to say the least that the White House felt the need to say anything, frankly, about Sab 121 and about the CRA that was up.

Oh, and when you say that do you mean that it's not typical for the White House to come out and say in advance they will vote veto something if it's voted in? It's not atypical, but this is a really, to put this in perspective, this is a staff accounting bulletin. This was not, and the issues here that, to your point, both the banking and crypto industries had around this, some of them were process related, the way that this was promulgated, did not go through an ordinary public notice period with comments and whatnot. Some of them were about, as you noted, like just the outcome of this, which would make it functionally impossible for thanks to basically, you know, a whole digital assets, because of all the digital assets. So the bottom line with this is there were a number of things wrong with it, but it's still all things considered a pretty small thing. right, compared to like Fit 21, which is this massive effort. It was going to, you know, it had, it went through committees, it had a lot of different process around it, all of that. This was kind of a more subtle thing. And so the White House always has choices. They can come out and give a

neutral statement. They can come out and give a statement in support. They can give a statement in light opposition or they can say they're going to veto. And so it was disappointing that the veto option was the one that was chosen on something that, to our knowledge, the White House hadn't really been paying a ton of attention to, to be frank, right? It wasn't like this was something they had been talking about for a long time and, oh, this is, you know, we got to keep this or whatnot. They hadn't really taken a view. So to come out and say that they would veto was, again, I'll use the word disappointing. It was, was it surprising? I don't know, right? Because this White House has said, had quite a few things to say about crypto-related topics. So I don't,

I don't think anyone expected silence. But I think there was some hope that perhaps they would take the sort of lightly opposed kind of view as opposed to saying, nope, can't let this happen, not going to happen, not on our watch, which is what they did. So then what's so fascinating is, of course, in a way, looking back, we can say this is like maybe where the avalanche started or something, because eventually the House did vote to overturn SAB 121. And in fact, 21 Democrats crossed party lines to support that repeal. So were you involved in that effort at all? But even if not, like, you know, how do you think that defeat affected the White House's stance? Yeah. So in the Senate, you know, we were asked,

our opinion about this. The opinion was very clear. It was very consistent across a variety of actors. I think anybody in industry who was asked about this had the same view. And again, I think the banks did take the lead on a lot of this because in their interest, they want to have the ability to run business the way that they see fit, right? And this had, again, the process footfalls, the substantive ramifications and issues. So it was kind of driven and led by that and by some actors in the Senate who had put this forth, who had said, this is not the way you make law, we can't do this, including Senator Lummis and her team. Oh, wait, I'm confused. I thought that on May 8th, that was the House vote to overturn SB 21? Was I mistaken? Was that the Senate vote? Um,

that was the Senate vote. I'm checking dates because dates mean nothing to me right now. In my one day is today, I have no idea. Yeah. And then I thought, because that was the same day as the Trump dinner. And then I thought the week after on May 16th is when the Senate. You're right. You're absolutely right. I was thinking, you're right. I was thinking, you're right. May. Eighth was multiple weeks ago, not last week. Like I said, every day is like a year. Yes, correct. But this was a Senate-driven thing, right?

So the Senate had basically come out and said, we think that a couple of things. This is not the way that you make laws. Another example of regulation by enforcement. Everyone listens to your show is very familiar. What that phrase means. We don't go into detail about that. This concept, you know, that, well, I guess I will about detail.

The concept that there are ways, there is a process by which rules become law when it comes to administrative agencies. And in this case, this was put out through, again, this thing called a staff accounting bulletin. It's kind of more of a notice than going through an actual formal process. So the Senate took issue with that. The House also obviously took issue with that. So on the same day, in advance of the House vote, the White House came out and said, this is something that we do not support. And if it passes Congress, we will actually veto it. So that, I think, and on that same day, again, to your point, later in the day, former President Trump down at Marilago made some statements and said some words about crypto that certainly trended positive or indicated

his openness to digital assets and to the importance and his recognition, it seemed, or acknowledgement of the importance of their staying in the United States. People can interpret those comments however they like. They are well available online, but there's no question that there was a distinction between the Biden White House and they're saying they were going to veto the 721 situation and Trump at the very same day later in the day saying crypto seems great, you know, let's do it, let's go. So yeah. Well, I mean, he literally just invited people.

He said if you support crypto, then vote for me. And I wondered because of what happened later where eventually, obviously we know the end of the story, which is that the White House ended up at least taking some actions that were more supportive of crypto than outright hostile to it. How much, I wonder how much of a calculus or how much of the calculus changed for the White House because of what happened with Trump or because of what happened with these votes. I was curious for your thoughts on that. Look, people have, you know, who can say, you know, what influences what? It's all part of a big ecosystem. Okay. So I don't, I think the linearity some folks are drawing between

Trump saying, hey, you know, crypto, yeah, vote for me, et cetera. I'm going to be this guy. You know, I think that line is a lot less direct than people think. I actually think that what we saw here was the White House realizing that Democrats, you know, contrary to what I believe that some people, some people, again, the White House also not a monolith, okay? So some people in the White House who I think have been pretty quite anti-crypto and some of them quite overtly, but most people in the White House are pretty neutral on this issue. They have a million things to deal with, right? So they're just pretty open. They don't know much about it. But I think there was a sense or a perception that Democrats by and large were against this technology. And I think I'll say it that

baldly. And I think that proved to be not true at all. And the votes demonstrated that. And to be fair, you know, people say all kinds of things. You don't really know where anyone stands until they're put to the test through a vote. And so when you get numbers like we saw on these various different bills that have come through, it's impossible to deny that this is bipartisan and has bipartisan support. And it's literally impossible looking at the numbers. And so I do think that that was what affected the White House's recognition. Oh, this isn't something that the party believes. And right? This is something that some people believe, but other people really do not believe this. Therefore, maybe we should be taking a step and then looking at this. And I actually think that was

more influential than whatever said on the campaign trail, because people say all kinds of things on the campaign trail, you know? And there are all kinds of issues where Trump is saying words and Biden saying words that are very different words. And I personally am not convinced that this particular thing was what would cause such a rapid change. in positioning. But it is no question that it's all part of one big ecosystem. And I'm sure there are some people for whom that was a very significant moment and the most significant moment. But I think for most people, it was counting the votes and seeing that there is not just, you know, certain support by a couple of people. There's pretty widespread support across the

entire party for the concept that digital assets are important and should stay on short United States. Yeah. I think so when we go to the next week, to my mind, mind. That is when we see the two events. It's, you know, the May 16th vote in the Senate followed by the reversal on the ETH ETF approvals. Those two, to my mind, are the kind of key moments to look at. So just, you know, on that May 16th vote, which we kind of touched on a little bit, but, you know, one key point that I want to pull out is first, well, actually, you educate me. My perception is that maybe it is easier to get something like that passed in the house just because there's more people. There's like more options of like how things could go. And then the

Senate is just harder because you only have a set number. And so, you know, there's just like a little less room to wiggle. It's kind of like the people that you're targeting are like a fixed, you know, it's like a sort of fixed number. But the thing, you know, that I wanted to highlight was that one of the people that cross party lines to overturn SB 21 in the Senate was House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And I wondered if he could talk a little. bit about what you thought the significance of that was and just generally that vote in the Senate in terms of, you know, the about face we eventually saw. Yeah, yeah, sure. So I do think Senate Majority Leader Schumer, again, I wouldn't say he was crossing over. I think he voted the way he felt was right,

right? And so his views on this, I think, had been evolving in a pretty rapid clip. Like everyone's views had been evolving. You know, a lot of education was happening up the course that looked for the last two years, but certainly when there's a specific thing that's coming up before them, they're educated about it. If you're going to take a vote on something, that's when you really start to focus on what the thing is, right, and which way you're going to vote. So this idea that there is all this changing and all this. I think what people miss, and I'll just, I think this is really important to state, is that there are some people in Congress, both in the House and the Senate and in the White House who have very strong views about crypto. Most people to date have a pretty

neutral view about it. They just don't really know that much, right? They're not a financial services committee. They're not on the Ag Committee. They're on some other committees, judiciary, you know, ways it means, like they have a whole slate of things they are focusing on, right? So their knowledge and awareness of this is pretty light. Like they really, it's not their core topic. And I know that for all of us in the industry, we're like, this is the most important thing on anyone's point at any time. I mean, that's the job, right? But these people have like broad, broad books of things they have to focus on. So the idea that they have these really strongly held positions and, you know, Democrats are against crypto or Republicans. It's just not true. Right. Now, to the extent people tend

vote with their party, which is definitely the case. I mean, we're all voters. Okay, who among us has not gone to a ballot and been like, well, I don't know, so and so endorsed that thing, I guess, all the time with that, you know, as opposed to doing our own research. That, of course, happens. That's human nature, right? There is an element of that that's true. But it doesn't mean that someone who's never paid attention to these issues has a strong view that cannot be, that cannot be molded, I guess, to some extent, right, by getting actual accurate information in, right? And so that's what a lot of our effort over the last two weeks was about here at CCI and with allies that we were working with was trying to get some of those folks that hadn't

necessarily been paying much attention to this, but knew it was getting a lot of attention to educate them. But what is this? What is this? What's the industry? Why is it so dramatic? Why is everyone so seemingly nuts? Okay. So that's an important point to land. And wait, can you say that? Are you saying that those were people in the Senate or people in the White House? All over, all over, all over Washington, right? Like there are a lot of folks. that have a lot of things going on. And when it comes down to a floor vote, everyone gets a vote, right? Committee is one thing.

In committee, it's your jurisdiction. You need to understand this. It's your responsibility to be educated about it. It's a different thing. You're on a committee, right? It's like if I'm on a school board, I got to know about the school policies in that area, right? That doesn't mean I'm on the water board of the same area. I don't know anything about that.

You know, so that's how it works. But when it comes time to a floor vote, everybody gets a vote. So suddenly you've got people that are like, oh, well, that's coming up. And let's remember, I also want to contextualize. as you said something about the House in the Senate, let's look at what this how, what's going on in this house, okay? This is a house. This is not an ordinary House of Representatives we've got going on here. We have, I go back to the Kevin McCarthy vote, which again, like, dates me nothing to me. I literally have not slept in my days, but like, dates me nothing to me. Regardless, that was not that long ago.

You'll know what the dates were around that. Then you had Speaker Johnson. You had Marjorie Taylor Green tying to trying to get Speaker Johnson out of there. It's just, it's a very dramatic place. But it's not a place that has moved a ton forward. Okay. So to be very clear. So we're not looking at kind of an ordinary time in political history where things are very measured and sedate and gentlemanly and gentlewomanly debates are being had. You've got like memes. You've got people shouting at each other.

I mean, it's insulting each other's personal appearances, which happened last week or maybe this week. I can't remember. Whatever. Recently that happened. This is the situation. Okay. So I'll tell you all that context. simply to say, the fact that this vote was so bipartisan, was so successful, was so overwhelmingly

and resoundingly in favor of paying it at a minimum, paying attention to the digital asset industry and taking it seriously. No matter who you are, where you fall, what you think about the bill, not the bill, there is no question. That is what this vote, both votes, all the votes, the Senate vote, the House vote, all of these votes demonstrated. That's what this is. Okay. And that is why I think we are so proud. I'm so proud of my team. And again, like, I think you've got on my team what date it was or what day of the week it was. We would have no idea regardless. You know, I think I'm so proud of the effort because it's borne fruit. And it has landed this industry as an industry that is relevant to American consumers and investors that has benefits to the American economy and the

global economy that is laying the way for American leadership. All those things, I think, are now not really in question. Now, also, views are going to continue to evolve. Now that folks are paying attention to this, they had to vote on it, right? Now that they're paying attention, they've taken a position. Now we kind of know, okay, so who might be the next generation of folks who really start to get very interested in this stuff that maybe we're kind of like, I don't really know what that is before, but now we're like, you know, I've learned more about that and I really find that fascinating. And going into the next Congress, some of those people are going to wind up being the new folks who are the ones who make passionate statements on the floor, right? Or the one.

ones who actually helped refine the language in a bill. All of that is kind of also part of what we're all looking at and thinking about as we move into the next Congress and get to this election process. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you know, just looking at it from the outside, I remember thinking, oh, that's interesting that the majority leader voted against, you know, what the president said. And, you know, I don't follow politics actually very well. Like when you were saying stuff about Kevin McCarthy. I was like, oh, right, I saw a headline about that. But I actually don't really follow it very closely. Probably better for your mental health. I'm going to just put that out there. Yeah, well, that's kind of why I don't follow it. But on Monday, you know, I actually was scheduled

to record an interview podcast with Eric Balchunis. And literally in the seconds before he, you know, gets on, he found out that he had confirmation from more than one sort. so the ETFs look like they were being reversed, yeah. And so, you know, what do you, you know, what do you think kind of caused that shit? I mean, it's a dramatic shift. So what do you think happened there? Yeah. Look, I'll say something else, which is, it's really fun to come up with conspiracy theories. And it's really fun to imagine that there's this like, you know, hotline, you know, that people have to each other. And they're like, hey, this thing's happening over here. And, you know, Trump is getting traction. So, hey, Gary, you got to like do this thing for me. I mean,

this is not really, this is not how this works. Okay. So, so the reality, I think, is that, well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I know and I'll tell you what I believe, okay, which are different things. And there are folks who know more because they track the SEC very, very closely. That's, I have people on my team that do that. So, but what I think we all know is that there was a lot of back and forth happening at the SEC, okay, among the commissioners about this topic. Just like after those votes, or do you mean like this whole time? Because whole time, this entire time. It completely separately this entire time, right? So, and after Bitcoin ETFs, of course, right? So you saw the note that came from Gary. Some people called that the capitulation of Gary. I would just say, like, Gary saw the writing on the wall and the reality of what had been said previously about Bitcoin made commodity, you know, et cetera, right? And so kind of was like, look, the ship has sailed here. We just got to like close the loop essentially, right, and did that. You were talking about the statement he released after the approvals for the Bitcoin ATPs? That's right. That's right. Right. And then we all read it. Right. So this kind of like, well, I don't

have a choice, boo, whatever. But here we are. Okay. So, so, so there was a similar conversation happening around this because there is ambiguity around Ethan. There has been, right? That people go back and forth. And again, like, Eric, I'm sure talked about this on your show. You know, is it a commodity? Is it not? Is it? What is it? What is it? And, um, and I do think that it was a slam dunk, super settled thing. Okay. So the timing of this, I do think is related. The outcome here, I don't know if it's related. The idea that you're suddenly going to switch policy on something as major as this because of politics. That's, I mean, look, people love that story and they love kind of telling the narrative that way.

That's not usually how this works. Okay, people have jobs. They are accountable to each other. They do take their jobs seriously. Whether we agree with the way they do them is a different question. But I don't think, you know, people are here for all kinds. People are in jobs for all kinds of reasons. Can we put it that way? But on this one, we know that there was a lot of back and forth. And there were people in the SEC who had a very strong view, right, about the ETFs that these were similar and that they should be allowed to proceed and that we should actually have more tradifying. engaging the assets. So that was a conversation happening. Now, like I said, the timing of it is they can choose when they release news. And I tend to always believe and be a conspiracy theorist around the timing of releases to be beneficial for other reasons. Okay. So I don't know when this decision was

made. I actually don't have any visibility of line of sight into that. But I think the timing of when it was announced is not a coincidence. I think in the middle of all of this, seeing some, you know, positive movement and some acknowledgement of the crypto industry's value, which again is how I would take this, the EFTF decision. I actually think that that is, is relevant. And I do think, so that's what I believe. Now, again, what anyone knows, these are pretty closed agencies. That's part of the problem here. People are saying it's supposed to be more transparent in public, the way you make, you know, rules and all that kind of stuff. And part of the challenge the industry has been having is that a lot of this has been happening behind closed doors and people

don't have an insight into the process around how these rules are, some of the rules are made, not EFTFS, but other things, right? Like SAV-121 is a great example of that, right? But yeah, yeah, so that's what I would say. Okay. I don't know if I even fully follow it. So you were saying that they probably were having a back and forth over it, like for some extended period of time and maybe the vote, like if the dial had been like slightly to the no position, then the SAB votes suddenly pushed it slightly to the S position or something. No, I'm not saying that. I'm not even, I'm not even drawing a connection between those things, right? I'm saying that I don't know if the outcome would have changed here, because I think it's the right outcome, right? So it'd be very clear. I think the logical outcome is what

happened here, right? I think we all think that. So I like to believe that that outcome would have been the outcome because- Wait, so you think the SEC intended this whole time to approve the Bitcoin? No, no. I think there was a big fight happening about what to do. I think there was a lot of discussion happening about what to do, right? Oh, okay. That's what I'm saying. And I think that that's just normal. That's a normal part of the process. Some of that becomes made public. You have various commissioners talking sometimes after the fact about decisions that were made and how they felt or didn't feel. or whatnot, right? So all of that is a normal part of the process of going about, I mean, in this case, it wasn't a commission level, but all of this is part of a process. And there's

people that are like working the thing and deciding and looking at precedent and what's going to mean for the markets. All that analysis is happening, right? I mean, I think the idea that this is just a knee-jerk thing and the SEC decides one way or the other. There is some process. It's just not a public process. Okay. So that was happening all along. I do think that the tides turning had an impact on the eventual decision. I do believe that. But I think what it had more of an impact on was the timing of announcing the decision, right? Like when to go public with this is what we've decided, right? Oh, I mean, well, they didn't, they didn't like go public on Monday. They, they like reached out to that. That's my point. Issues. That's my point, though, right? There's,

there's a choice about when to time that. The myth they did that. It was pretty public. I mean, let's be real, right? The myth that they did that, everyone knew it was going to get, I don't know, week is the right word, but it's going to get shared, everyone's going to have a sense, right? Why Monday, as opposed to next Monday or two Mondays ago or three Mondays from now or whatever, right? Like, I think the timing of things is often related. And so I think that there was a desire, and again, I'm speculating here, but it would not surprise me, let's say, if there was a desire to signal, oh, hey, this thing is coming. It's not all bad news. You know, here it is, right?

Like, look, we're open-minded or whatever the signal was trying, the symbol that they were trying to signal. I have no idea. I'm not in these people's minds. But bottom line is, I always tend to look at things and the timing of things and say, huh, that's an interesting time for that move to have been made, as opposed to any other time that it could have happened in sort of the last month or the next month or whatever, right? Like, that's what I think is interesting. So I mean, I just like it couldn't have happened next month because the deadline was Thursday.

So it had to, they were running out of time, basically. On Monday, basically saying, you know, hey, hi. Right. Like, hey, everyone adjust, adjust, adjust, right now. I don't know. Like that's the part that I think is interesting. But does it affect the outcome? Did all of this stuff with, you know, Sab and Trump and everybody else? I mean, yeah, of course, right? Like everything happens in one ecosystem. It's no one's like immune or blind that's happening other parts of the ecosystem, right? It's just more like, how big did they go? Who did they ask? What was the signal? All of that stuff,

right? It's interesting because it became a really active part of the conversation, as you know, because Eric got that news right before he went on your show, right? So that suddenly became a very very very, very, very big talking point in the middle of a lot of folks focusing on crypto who wouldn't normally focus on crypto. But the industry, it always would have been a big reveal. But a lot of other people in the financial ecosystem were focusing on crypto at that moment in time, right? And it just added more to the sort of general awareness that like, okay, this industry is making waves, making moves. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, I am so interested to know what was happening in your life during that time because obviously, so the vote for your bill happened on May 22nd.

So this was, so if the, you know, the hint that the ETH ETFs was going to go through happened on Monday the 20th and Wednesday the 22nd was the vote for your bill. And then May 23rd on Thursday was the ETHs getting their initial approval. So during this whole time, like, what were you doing? You know, when, you know, when did you even compose the bill? And how did it, you know, what does your life look like in order to get it actually passed? Yeah. So I just want to clarify a couple of things. Okay. So at the end of the day, the people who hold the pen on the bill are on the hill. It's hill staffers who hold the pen, right? So the idea that

anyone in industry ever writes a bill, I think there's like this perception out there that like people just kind of like write a bill and take it in. They're like, here's a bill. You know, that's not how this works. So it's really, it's a number of people on the hill. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's bipartisan people, you know, Henry staffers, you know, Paul Valzano, you know, people in Well, Nichols' office. There were a lot of people that were holding pen on this bill. And again, this particular bill, Fit1, Fit 21 had been around for a while, okay? So it was, there was a version of it all the way back to 22 that had kind of been around and about and whatnot, okay? And so for us, we were, we were informed, we, the industry,

were informed that there was a new version of it that had been, you know, we all knew had been, it had been being negotiated, et cetera, right? But there's a new version of it coming out that dropped on a Friday. Don't ask me dates is obvious. I have no idea what data was. We were told that evening we were given a readout of what it contained, like an oral readout of what it contained, us and our members. So we had the weekend to kind of process that and think about what's our position on this,

how we feel about it. I realized we were supportive of it for a variety of reasons. And from there, it's just like all systems go, right? So what we realized we wanted to do pretty quickly was we felt we needed to have broad industry support for this and to say like this is something the industry's been asking again for regulatory clarity for a very long time. This bill, well, not perfect, covers a lot of ground that we have been asking about. A lot of it is pretty intact to what the previous version was. Some of it's changed. Of course, we all had to analyze all the changes.

Right. And every individual firm had to make a decision. Does this bill work for me or not? For us, we're an industry association. We represent the broad industry, not any individual firm. And so for us, we were like, this is definitely a giant significant move on behalf of industry. It's going to move things tremendously forward in ways that are really important. So what do you do?

Well, you spin up a gigantic effort. So every single day, there were scrum type calls for those who were developers. There were scrum type calls. You know, was everyone hearing? What are we doing? How are we feeling? All this kind of stuff. We pulled together.

We wrote actually and drafted a coalition letter that got. released where we basically pulled the draft of that together. Here's what we want to say about the bill. Here's how our position is on it. That was all discussed across a variety, a bunch of different actors. Do we strongly support it? Do we support it? Do we put all of this? We came to agreement. We then went around drumming up signatures. So I was on the phone with all day long, every day, all day. I was talking to people in the house, right, trying to get them to support the bill. We were focusing our effort a lot on the Democrats because we wanted to have a really strong showing of bipartisan support. That was extremely important to me

personally, but also to the industry. So I personally was on the phone with, and, you know, a ton of Democrats, including some that actually I hadn't spoken to before, to the points we talked about earlier, right, who were suddenly like, oh, there's a vote. I better figure out what's going on there. So we were able to get into some offices. And it kind of been like, sure, I don't really care about that, though, so thank you very much. You know, I was able to get to members of Congress. I was talking to a lot of these folks. And then also talking to industry and saying, we need to show up. So we were really proud of the coalition we got together. And when I say me, I mean, it's Team CCI, right? So this.

This is a very small team, to be very clear, compared to a lot of, like, organizations. Like, if you look at banking or you look at, I don't know, you look at oil and gas or whatever it is, like they have, like, massive, gigantic organizations, right? We're a tiny organization, you know, all in. So everyone on my team. How many people do you have? In Washington, we have five, right? We're focusing on five people.

And of that, it's really like three of us that were the ones who are going out and doing a lot of the sort of calling and wrangling and all of that, right? Well, four, I should say, three and a half four. And that was in coordination, right? We were like, our members and everybody else were like, okay, who's talking to whom? How are we doing all this? So you go out and you try to educate people about the bill, why it matters, you know, why we support it, why it supports it. But I think the most significant thing we did, because that's all normal around the bill. Like, that's whatever industry does. I think the most significant thing that I was incredibly, I did not know if we could get it done, to be perfectly honest, but to get that industry

coalition letter signed to get six alliances across the top of it, to get a total of 59, almost 60 signatories to it, some of the biggest names in the business, folks who are competitors with each other, all saying, yes, we support this, we really encourage people, members of the House to vote in favor of it. And that to me was a huge accomplishment. I mean, as you well know, Laura, this is not an industry that is, you know, kumbayaing on a regular basis. Like we're not all holding hands and the soak in the piece pipe, right? So the fact that we were able to get that alignment and to get people to agree to a piece of paper that they all signed off on, right? I mean, I'm still, I'm not going to lie. I'm still a little bit flabbergasted. I don't ever

really know how you pulled it off. I'm not going to lie. But I'm incredibly proud of it. And I think it was just us saying, this is the moment. Like, this is the moment we have been asking for. It is crucially important that this be, again, my partisan effort, that we support people like Patrick McHenry, right, who is deeply educated about this technology. You spent a lot of time learning about it and listening to people. And I'll tell you, honestly, Laura, my take on this was, you know, at some point you have to trust that somebody who has been listening, who's been paying attention for such a long time, you know, who's met with so many people in the industry, right, who was known to the industry, he's had an open door policy around things. At some point,

you have to trust that he was negotiating the best language he could get, right? Like, he was really out there taught his staff and his team, they were all out there talking to everyone they could talk to. And of course, G.T. Thompson's staff on the ag side and of course the other folks on the Democratic side who were helpful with this, that they were all working as really, really, really hard. It's not just us who are working hard, right? It's all those staffers on the Hill and all those members of Congress who were working so hard to come up with language that they really thought could get through. Right. So, and that's one thing I think people also miss on the outside. And, you know, it's funny because I think I still think of myself as on the outside because, you know, but I'm obviously not on the outside. But I think it's, It's a compromise, right? Like sausage making is sausage making. It's not pretty.

All kinds of random things get them. If you look at any bill, leave us our industry completely aside. Look at any bill that comes through. It's got all kinds of weird things in it, right? So this is like it's called pork or whatever, or like just gimmies or like, hey, I'm only going to vote for this thing if this totally unrelated thing gets put into it. That's how law is made. And it's not pretty and it's kind of weird, but that's the reality.

And so on some level, you know, it's not that. you get anything, it's never, no bill is ever going to reflect a perfect understanding, a reflection of reality of what's actually happening in any industry or in any moment in time, because it's always going to be a compromise. And sometimes we don't, as outsiders to the hill, we don't have a line of sight into exactly what people are asking for or what those negotiations look like in a real-time way, right? So like I say, I'm extremely proud of the effort. I'm extremely proud of the team, some of the most hardworking people I've ever worked with, and that's a very high bar. But I am particularly proud of the fact that we were able to

bring the industry together in coalition and to sign one letter and to say, this is a statement from all these different members of organizations, but also all these different firms that are aligned in support of this. Because I think that made a huge difference. I know it did. It made a huge difference. Yeah. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about what the discussions with the lawmakers were like, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. Deploy custom crypto strategies and boost your yield with perpetual options on VaultCraft, the universal defy adapter for supercharging your crypto.

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Back to my conversation with Chile. So, you know, you said that you were focusing a lot of your conversations on the Democrats. And I wondered, you know, what were their concerns? What were their hesitations? You know, what were the conversations like? And then which arguments did you find tended to be persuasive with them? Yeah. So over the course of the period of time, we were talking to them, things shifted, right?

Because, again, this bill dropped. It's very dense. Got a lot of text. So as offices started to wrestle with it and wrangle with it, different questions came up. So it's a very fluid process, and it's not that there's one argument you use the entire time. Like, things evolve. It's a very dynamic situation, right? So I would say the first thing you do in a situation like this is you call the folks that you know we're on side.

Right? So you call the drafts of the bill. You call the folks that, you know, really understand the space really well. And you say to them, who else should I talk to? Who else might I speak with that might be interested or might want to hear from someone like me specifically? And here's where I think it's important to note that's always a team effort. So the people that are going to really appreciate hearing for someone like me, are different from the folks who are going to appreciate hearing from someone who is,

you know, very differently politically oriented or has a different frame on things, right? And so determining, like, who am I best situated to speak with? And I decided, and my team decided in my particular case, we have people that can speak on, who are securities experts, right, which I'm not a security expert. They can talk to some folks, right? There's some folks who have worked in Congress and can kind of, like, get in with staff in certain ways. They can talk to certain folks, right?

I can talk to certain folks. I'm a California Democrat. I can talk to certain folks who will open. open a door to me and really listen, you know, when I say something because the credibility I bring with that particular friend. So you're always thinking about who's the right person deliver the message. And so that's why I say it's a coalition effort, right? Because we're lucky in this industry. We have a lot of different folks from different backgrounds and different predilections. So, but for me, what I was focusing on was a number of different things.

Number one, American competitiveness. Okay. So the idea that the United States is really behind in terms of regulation of this space, whether it was things like citing electric capital developer report and kind of like literal numbers of kind of like developers moving offshore, code commits coming in offshore. That's for some people, right? To other people, it was consumer protection. This bill actually helps consumer protection move forward and investor protection move forward. Here are examples. Boom, boom, boom, boom, whatever, right? So that's, sometimes you go in with that angle. Sometimes you go in with an angle where you're talking about the SEC and the CFTC, right? That is an age-old battleground situation, depending on who the chairs are,

right? This helps resolve some of that ambiguity. Some people, people care about that, right? So you go in with that. So it's really, to be effective in this role, you have to, it's just like being effective in anything. Who am I speaking with? What are their priorities? What do they care about? What do I believe that they already know or don't know? And what is going to be the most important thing on their minds? And in many cases for people, again, who are off committee, they're not on financial services, they're not on ag. They really bluntly, many of them just don't really care about this that much because it's not really their core issue. But what do they care about? Are they may be on, you know, do they care about foreign policy? Do they care about national security? Do

they care about judiciary? What are the committees they're on? What are the things they focus on daily? And how do you craft something that connects this bill into their priorities? So that to me is being an effective advocate. It's educating effectively. But, you know, to answer your question really simply, you don't go in with the same message to any office because the message changes over time as new things emerge and new concerns or questions or whatnot emerge, but you also would never go into, if you're a good at this job, which I believe my team and I are excellent at this job, you go in with a message that is relevant to the person that you're talking to. And this is just common sense, but you'd be surprised how many people just have like a sheet and they read the

sheet to every single member of Congress, right? And it's, you hit it sometimes, like a clock is right twice a day, but many times people are left being like, I don't know what you're talking about. Why do I care about this, right? So we, so when I get my, get prep docs from my team, team and very particular. I'm a very particular person sometimes. I'm like, this is what I want to know. What are the last votes they took? What bill did they draft? What committees are they on? What do their constituents care about? What are the main issues happening? This is what I get in prep. I don't get like, if you're prep on the bill. I get prep on like the person, right? And then I'm able to say like, who am I speaking? I have five, 10, 15, 20 minutes with this person, sometimes on the phone. They're in a

car going from place to place. What am I going to say that's going to be interesting to them, right? And it's not the same. It's not the same every time. Yeah. Honestly, when you were describing this, I was like, oh, it's like pitching an article to a publication. Like if it's like about some trend in restaurants, you could pitch it to a business publication or, you know, you could rewrite it and write it to like a food publication. And anyway, so, okay, I can understand. Yeah, the content. Core content's the same, but the delivery mechanism, you push it up, right? Yeah. Right. And so, you know, obviously you got 71 Democrats to vote. for it, which is incredible. It's well above what most estimates were. Whose votes were you most surprised or most pleased to get? And, you know, what arguments do you think persuaded them? Yeah. Well, there were a number. I personally, I was super pleased to see folks like Jasmine

Crockett come on. She's a young progressive. You know, she's the one that got into it with Marcia Taylor Green, you know, it's like a meme person. Yeah, and they were arguing over each other's looks, which was alarming. But anyway. Right. But that's the next generation. So for me, whenever I see the next generation of folks in Congress paying attention, that to me is really exciting because I do think. Are you specifically saying that's her age? Like is she, do you know what her age is? I don't actually have any idea what her age is. But when you say next generation, you're talking about like younger. Younger to Congress too, right? Because the people who are newer to Congress, I, people are always like, oh, you want the old people. And I'm like, well, you want the young people. Because they're starting their careers.

I mean, young, literally, or young meaning new to this phase of their career. I believe she's both. But, you know, the people like that, that you're like, they're the future, right? And so if they're understanding this and they're seeing relevance in it, especially when it's off jurisdiction for them, that's really exciting to me. But I give her as one example, Nancy Pelosi. I mean, getting former Speaker Pelosi on was huge, was, I mean, obviously was massive, right? Catherine Clark, getting the Democratic whip on, the minority whip was massive, right? She had said she wasn't going to whip against this whipping meaning. So, let me back up a little bit. So when a vote is coming, there's a person in Congress who's in the House and in a Senate whose job is called whip.

And what they're meant to do is go out there and basically tell their party how to vote and get people to show up. So one thing is like, you got to show up to vote. So be on site. This matters. It's an important vote, whatever. But also here's the position, you know, what it is. And she'd already said she would not, you can whip for a vote or against a vote, right? So you can say, come in and vote, yay, or come in and vote, nay.

She had said that she wasn't going to whip against. I mean, she would not be applying any influence or pressure to tell people to vote, no. Okay. But she had not herself said she was going to vote yes and had not committed to that. And so seeing her come across and actually be supportive was really amazing, really amazing. I thought that was great. There's a number of folks, Ted Liu. There are a bunch of folks, I think, that came on side that were not obvious. And I think the fact that this spanned the spectrum of moderate Democrats to very progressive Democrats was incredibly rewarding and exciting to me because I've been trying to make the case in the face of, well, I mean, I had to close my Twitter DMs at one point. I've been trying to make the case that this must be bipartisan.

Like, it is extremely important that we not, you know, give up on Democrats. And even after the whole, you know, 2022, you know, Sam stuff, when Democrats were very understandably skittish, you know, we at CCI did not give up on them. We were like, listen, that is a thing that happened. We need to, like, own that that happened as an industry. We need to, we need to kind of content. textualize it appropriately, right, and talk about what that meant and didn't mean about the industry and how the technology operates and all that kind of thing. But we're not giving up on Democrat. We're going to continue to make the case, continue to show up, continue to do the work. And I will tell you, I mean, we didn't get necessarily a ton of support from industry around that position. And we didn't necessarily get a ton of support from Democrats from that position. But we were like, it's too important. And so it has, it has felt at times very exhausting. And you question yourself, like, you know, is this, what am I doing here? or is this really waste of time? You know, whatever. So to see this happen,

it's not just a result of this two weeks of work, Laura. It's like two years, right? Of staying on side, going in to educate, being told the industry is all scammers and horrible people, not taking it personally, going back again, going back again with different arguments, with different evidence, with different people over and over and over

to make the case that this is too important to ignore. And message landed, right? Message delivered. 71. I mean, I had my kids, we had a pizza and my kids helped me put 71 on the pizza, you know, because I was like, what on Bitcoin Pizza Day? This all went down. What a huge, what a huge moment, right? What a huge deal. So, yeah, to say I feel proud is a huge thing. It brings tears to my eyes to just think about all that effort over years and to have it happen on Bitcoin Pizza Day. Like, that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, it was, I'm not.

going to lie. We were emotional about it, you know, because again, I mean, people were like, it's all the Republicans. It doesn't matter. You know, we just have to go with this one party. Not everybody, but a lot of folks were saying that and saying it loudly and getting a lot of traction around that. And I, to me, I just, I was never convinced that was the right answer. I was absolutely convicted that we had to stay the course. But man, you know, it has, yeah, long time coming. So I don't want to belabor this too much because I still have so many questions, but I just was so curious, like, for the FTX SBF bit, like, you know, what kind of impact do you think has been lasting and, or, you know, how much do you think the industry has been able to

counteract that, you know, like, I guess I'm trying to assess, like, what is the damage you think that's been done that's with us or still with the industry? And then also, you know, what arguments have you found most effective to counter their perceptions on that? Yeah, I think we're definitely in the long tail. You know, I think there are some folks that still talk about that, but most people really don't. You know, I think, look, I'll say it in cheeky way. It's a good thing this vote happened this year, not last year, very different last year, right? But I think that, first of all, his conviction really helped the fact that he was convicted under existing laws, right? He's in jail. People are, you know, industry is pretty happy about that. You know, we're not like, you know. So I do think that that process running its course was the most helpful thing, to be really honest, right? Because we're we'd been saying this was not about laws, not laws, this, that the other thing. This was somebody who committed old-timey fraud, as I said in the press of the time. So I think that's helped a lot. And like I say, I don't think it's completely gone, but in my mind, that's not really a factor anymore. It's not a meaningful factor. We're in that long tail where there are some folks, I think,

who are a little skittish because that's the thing. And again, it's mostly people that don't have been paying attention and tracking it all along because that was such a big media moment and for so long, right? As I tell my team, I'm like, we're not done yet. There'll be the inevitable HBO Mac special or whatever, and then we'll get another, you know, cycle about it, right? You get like the initial thing. You get the trial, get the conviction. You get like the Netflix or whatever. That we have one more to go, you know. But I think that most people paying attention realize what can contextualize that pretty effectively. So I did get a couple of questions, you know, here and there from folks to whom this was all pretty brand new. Now, like, isn't that the space that that guy with

the hair did the thing? And I'm like, well, let me tell you what that was and wasn't, right? So a couple of times, but it was really, no one's really talking about it anymore, Laura, to be honest. really not. I don't consider it something I feel like I have to go in, you know, on defense about, whereas, again, last year, different situation, but a lot has changed. Okay. So, you know, one other thing that I just have to call out, which was, again, so remarkable is the morning before the vote, the White House also came out and it released a very different statement from the one that had released ahead of the SAB 121 vote, you know, which had ended, we were going to veto this if you vote this in. And for Fit 21, they said, quote, that the White House looks forward to continued

collaboration with Congress and developing legislation for digital assets. So I wondered, you know, what your perception was for the reversal in the stance on the world. Or it's not a reversal, but definitely a sea change that we saw from the White House. Yeah. I mean, huge. I can't under a huge, really, really, really huge. We had been clued in that it was going to not be calling for a veto. So we knew that part. But again, like I said to you earlier, there's a spectrum of this stuff, right? It can be like not saying it's going to veto, but pretty negative. And this one was about as mild mannered as we could possibly have hoped for and more than we expected. So it's just, it's huge. It's an absolutely massive change. And I do think that's related more to the SAG-121 vote, the Senate vote,

than to anything else. I actually think seeing Majority Leader Schumer, you know, break with the White House on that, I think was massive. Like, I think it was a really strong signal sent by Senate Democrats, more than I would say almost anybody else. But I also know that there were folks in the House who were having conversations for sure. There were leading Democrats in the House that were also, you know, asked about their positions on this, on Fit 21 and all that kind of thing. And the White House, I think, made a very practical and strategic decision to come out, you know, in this mild way. Again, you know, they will put a position out, but, you know, it could have been anything. And I will tell you at this point, almost nothing will surprise me. So if they come out and been like,

worst thing ever, terrible or like, we love this thing. I would have been like, all right. I mean, here we are, you know. But I was, yeah, we were very, we were very, very happy to see that. And I agree with you. I think it is a sea change is the right way. It's a sea change in positioning that the White House has demonstrated, for sure. So it's kind of amazing because we're about 45 minutes into this episode. And we have not discussed the main tenets of the bill. The whole political thing was such a big story that I really wanted to unpack that step by step. But please, tell us about Fit 21. What are the main tenets? Yeah. And look, I mean, I would encourage anyone that's affected by this bill or things they will be to go. There's plenty of information about

this out there. Okay. And there's a ton of information on specifics, both on the CCI website, but also like all over Twitter. So I won't go necessarily. into a boring rundown of like every single single thing it talks about. And maybe I'll keep it a bit high level. And then maybe you can, we can kind of follow up there. So the major thing that this bill does, and I talked about this briefly, is that there's these two agencies, the CFTC and the SEC, okay? And so they have oversight by different bodies. Ag committee oversees the CFTC and financial services and the Senate Banking Committee oversee the SEC. And what's happened, I'll contextual over the course of the last, you know, number of years is the SEC has slowly been just

taking jurisdiction over things, right? This is called by the industry of various things. The most common was regulation by enforcement, the idea that it's not clear that it is within the SEC's jurisdiction to oversee digital assets based on existing law. And I think that is, I personally believe that absolutely. But nevertheless, the SEC was kind of just engaging in enforcement and creating this kind of bigger, bigger and bigger playing field around this industry. Okay. And so one of the things I think that's really important about this is this gives a role formally to the CFTC. Now, people have mixed views about this, okay? But it is something I personally believe what is was going to happen. The minute that we all agreed and I mean, we all agree,

everybody, Gary Gensler included, the Bitcoin's a commodity, the SCFTC oversees, you know, essentially spot to spot. And one of the things is commodity, there is, there is a room for the CFTC to come in and and claim jurisdiction. So this should have been kind of sailed. It was a matter of what is this going to look like. And this talks about like working together, the CFTC and the SEC, jointly issuing rules, you know, things like this, right? It also has interesting provisions that were new that I think don't get a lot of play. I'm going to talk about things we don't get as much play as they do on Twitter around whistleblowing, right, during intent-to-register periods. That was something that was asked for by a couple of members. Insider trading was something

people asked about, you know, talking about who's holding what and when and all that kind of thing. So those are things that were interesting because it actually on Consumer Protection kind of noted that there is this, there's other stuff that's happening in this space that's also important. And that's an example of the kinds of things you wouldn't think would necessarily get shoved into a bill like this, but get put in there because somebody asked for it. And they kind of are like, okay, let's see if we can get more votes by adding some of this stuff in. I would say the most towards the very end of the process, the controversy, a lot of controversy came up around what's called Title II. And Title II is where there's clarification around what is this security. And so without getting into the details around this, and you know, you've had people on to talk about this before as well, what is a security is defined by a set of legal tests, okay? And those legal tests, industry has argued for a long time, don't really cover the realities around digital assets and how they actually operate, how they actually work.

Okay, so it's not clear industry has argued, and again, I completely agree with this, of course, that those terms and that kind of test, it didn't contemplate because how could it have the reality of digital assets and how they operate, right? So what do you do? And so right now, this bill entitled to what it tries to do or what it does is clarify that there's securities and there's investment contract assets. And it talks about what investment contract assets are. And again, that's something that's of primary interest to, you know, people who are, lawyers in this space. But bottom line is it basically defines things in a way that makes it very hard for the SEC to claim that they already have all the laws and rules and everything that they need

to regulate the industry effectively. Because again, they don't. So what new ones are needed and kind of what do you do? Okay. So I think there's some of that. There's also part of what industry has talked about and the SEC has put back against is this idea that like things take too long. It's kind of like we don't know where we stand. You know, there's not a process that's a here. And so the idea here is that there are limits on certain kinds of things around how fast the SEC has to get back to people, you know, and things like that that are helpful for clarification for industry. So you, you know, right now you send something into, you know, electronic file and like you're like, when am I going to hear back around this? There's a little more clarity around

that, which is helpful. And again, we could go into all kinds of things. How do you come in and how do you register? What does that mean? You know, there's stuff about qualified custodians. in here. There is, I'm just flipping through this briefing dot. We have a summary of it. There's, oh, here's another really key thing. So right now, one of the main differences in the SEC and the CFTC is that the SEC has, it doesn't have to, it doesn't get all its money from Congress, okay? Whereas the CFTC does. And so a big change here that's been talked about for all over the place for a while, but it was also included in this bill is that the CFTC will get fees. Okay, so there'll be fees. When an entity comes in and says, I'm going to register with the CFTC,

as a variety of whatever it is, I'm going to pay a fee. And so that funding mechanism for the CFTC is something that many folks in Congress have been looking to get for the CFTC for a while, and it is included in this bill. And again, there's pros and cons to that. There people have different views about it, but it's a significant thing that's actually in here as well. Yeah. So I guess that's because, as far as I understand, I guess the CFTC is much smaller than the SEC. And so, you know, one piece of this, which is actually a point that some critics in the crypto industry called out is they were saying, and especially, you know, I should just name Gabriel Shapiro of Delphi Digital Labs as probably being one of the more outspoken people. And as he said that the bill

would give the CFTC authority that it's never had before, which is authority over a spot commodities market, in this case, the crypto markets. So why was that something, you know, because obviously they don't have that right now, right? They, do, I guess, when there's a regulated market for futures, but they don't regulate like Coinbase and stuff like that. So, you know, why was that chosen? Yeah. Well, so this was a bill that was put together by the Ag Committee and by the House and Services Committee. Okay. And an ad committee has control over the CFTC. And for quite some time, the Ag Committee has been looking for, are you talking about the fees? Sorry, or about the general CFTC inclusion? Because there's different

things. The general CFTC inclusion, but I did see that, yeah, Maxine Watt, one of her objections was the fact that she didn't think that the CFTC would have the resources to do it, which is why I assumed you there was this fee element to give them more resources to do it. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about the more threshold question. Okay. And so, so, you know, I find this is such an interesting conversation. Okay. So when I first joined a CEO of CCI, that was February 22, okay. And so the big bill that was up in November of that year, whenever it was, October, whatever it was, was the DCCPA, which was put forth by Senate Ag. The Senate Ag Committee, I actually testified about this bill. And there was a lot of discussion.

And I think that was Sam Finkfurtz bill, right, that he was pushing. I mean, he definitely supported that bill. And I think a lot of people did not support that bill. Our view on the bill, well, anyway, it doesn't matter. The bottom line is that was the first time that I, in this rule, had come up with that, come across that argument, right? Like the CFTC has a role to play here. And so at the time, when I was getting up to speed on this over the summer of 22, I was asking a bunch of questions. And what I wanted to make sure this wasn't an emotional decision on the part of industry, right? Because I'm like, look, everyone's mad at Gary Gensler. They, you know, Russ Benham's been pretty quiet. But like, what makes you assume that the next

chair of the CFTC is not going to be more like a Gary Genser than like your West Benton. Like, you don't know who you're going to get. And so you should be thinking more long term about these agencies and about, you know, what, what it is that they have authority over. Okay. So that was my starting place was not to say yes, no, whatever. It was just to ask the question. Like, is industry generally supportive of this? Because a lot of folks beyond Sam were supportive of that bill, at least parts of the bill, I should be very clear. None of us ever came around, most of us didn't come around on the defy provisions of the bill, but on the other things, a bunch of industry was actually supportive of that bill and it's broad strokes. Okay. So,

and there was a long process that was going to be had if that thing ever had really moved forward. It never, you know, there was a long process. So there was a lot of, the question was, do you engage on it or do you not? And our take on it was you engage on it because when there was language, you want to engage on language because language is real. And if you aren't at the table, you're on the menu. So you should better engage in the process, right? So that was our take on that. Now, that being said, I think, I do think there are good reasons that you want to have a

multi-agency approach to this. Okay. And I think there are good reasons why you wouldn't. And a lot of those depend on the specifics for corners of how a firm operates and the approach the firm takes. Why I say, you know, I personally have no judgment around people who are opposed to this bill because I think it's a very individual analysis. And anybody who's working at one particular company is going to have a take on that because it may or may not be beneficial for their

particular company. And that is a very valid and legitimate point. My job is to look out for a much broader set of stakeholders. And when I see a bill that's going to move things forward for most of the industry and may not be great on some things, but isn't bad necessarily on those things. I think that my role is to help move those things forward. And that's what my job is. That's why I'm in this role, but not some other rules. But in general, I think the reality is we have a multi, we have like a, look, I could talk all day about the absolute absurdity of how many agencies we have and the sort of alphabet soup of agencies that we have in United States. Okay. Contra, but what I'll just say is contrast Singapore. People are like, oh, Singapore got regulations that fast. They have one agency.

The monetary authority is Singapore. One. Okay. It's not that hard to coordinate one agency. We've got a billion agencies that involve financial services, okay? We're not. even talking about the prudential legality to OCC, the FDIC, we're not even getting into all of that. We have a tremendously complicated agency structure. And in my view, the reality is you have to talk about defining what all those agencies do and don't do. And if expansion of something into the CFTC, that's been on the table for a long time. In my view, this is a milder expansion than many other options on the table. And also, the reality is there's another process that's going through. So people who have objections are going to be absolutely able to talk about

those objections as this thing goes forward into the Senate, right? There's a chance for people to log criticisms that they haven't maybe yet logged. But I will also say, as I noted, this bill has been around in some form for a long time. So people haven't gone in there and said their views and put that in there. There's also responsibility in the party industry, right? This bill was not drafted in like two weeks in a cloak room and suddenly released. Like, it's been around an incarnation for years. So a lot of folks have gone in and logged their views and asked for amendments and contested language and all of that, you know, and that's part of the process, whether we like it or not. So, you know, on some level, the CFTC ship has sailed.

The question that we are all going to have to wrestle with is what is the role of the CFTC, not does the CFTC have a role, right? The CFTC does and is going to have a role. Again, opinions on that differ. Those views are legitimate. I'm not here to like contest any of that, right? I think, again, people are going to have different views based on what they see, what's relevant to them, what narrow things are crucially important to them versus generally important to them. But the idea that we're going to have any bill that gets through either body that doesn't acknowledge the CFTC is a fallacy. It's just not going to happen ever. Yeah, I don't think people are objecting to them having any role. It's more like, why are they now in this new role? But the role is going to be new though, right? Any role they take is going to be. new. So you know, saying, if you have a role, then what's the role? It's got to be a role. And it's kind of like, is there a different rule? But you know what I'm saying? Like, otherwise there's no role. But if,

if you acknowledge they need a role, then the question becomes, well, what is the role, right? Which is going to be new. It's going to necessarily be new because it is new. So that's what I'm kind of saying. Yeah. Okay. And so I definitely have to ask about two other things that I'm sure people are very curious about. So let's say this were to become law, which I, you know, I'm just going to tell the listeners right off the bat that the chances that at this moment in time look, you know, pretty slim. But if it were, then let's say that there was a team that wanted to launch a new token, they have some idea for some project, you know, it involves a token. What would be the process for them under this bill? So some of those rules are still going to have

be promulgated, the specifics around that, okay? But the first assessment, you'd have a different assessment than you have now. So right now, you know, I mean, I'm not going to, I don't want to say this in a way that sounds, you know, flippant. There's an element of kind of like yoloing to this, okay? Like when you launch a token, because you're like, I don't really know if the agency is going to, is it this one? What are the rules? How decentralized do I need to be?

What does that mean? Like, there's ambiguity here, which is exactly why people are not doing that. They're doing it in other jurisdictions where there's clarity. So the clarity everyone's calling for is like, what does it mean? There is more now. And I think there is an ability to do a more clear analysis of what to do depending on the outcome that you're seeking. Okay. And that is kind of, I think, what everyone has wanted is like, okay, now we have a little bit more clarity around what to do. If something is, you know,

an investment contract, if it's security, if it's this, if it's that, you could choose to launch a token as a security. Okay. You could make that and it's clearer what that path is. You could choose to launch it as very clearly not a security. There is now a path to what that looks like. Again, the details are going to come, are going to be determined in part by some of the consultations that are required by this, she has to see the NACTC, et cetera. But the whole point here is to land some, I'm going to say security, ha, ha, ha, but some security, some clarity is a better word, around how to do it and what to do. So the point is where before there was not really any sort of process and everyone was kind of like, I don't know, someone else did that and that seemed to work.

Maybe I'll do what they did. I don't really know if that worked. You know, now there will actually be some parameters around a process that will allow people to at least skirt away from like known landmines, as opposed to just kind of like crossing their fingers and hoping for the best, which I would say has been the approach of very brave folks who have done this. So that's like a huge improvement. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously some of them have stepped in the landmine or, you know, the SECs thrown the landmine at them however you want to, yeah. There it is. It's been lobbed at them. That's exactly. So on a related topic, obviously people have been concerned time and again about how DFI would be treated in any legislation.

You know, we've seen multiple times that regulation tends to try to enforce the traditional structure of having the regulation be targeted at an intermediary, which, you know, the people that are involved in DFI would say, you know, that's not possible. It's not workable. So how does this particular bill treat DFI? Yeah, it's funny you said not workable because that's actually the language I used when I testified on DCPA. I said it's not workable, right? Because I understood what the intent was, but I'm like, there's just no way to, like, it's literally not workable.

There is no way to comply with this because it doesn't even make sense in the context of defy. I think this is better, but not all the way good, okay? Better than kind of that approach, but not all the way good. And I think what is what the attempt is here is to kick the can on defy. I think most people kind of get that. And so that's exactly what we saw in Mika, the bill that came down in Europe. also not perfect, you know, but people have been able to work around it effectively, and I think that's important to note, very not perfect, but, you know, people are working with it.

And the idea there was defy's too new, you know, and I was part of the behind the scenes on Mika in my previous job, talking a bunch of people, educating them about everything from, you know, clob to defy to whatever it was. But the bottom line there is, we don't know, it's too soon, let's do a study, let's kick the can and figure this out. Meanwhile, this other stuff's been around for a while. It's suffering from a lack of clarity. Let's land it. land that plane. The plane we can land, let's land. The thing that's in flight, let's acknowledge it's in flight. Okay. That is the approach I think that's taken here. Is it perfect? It's not perfect. Okay. Do I wish the carve-outs were really, really delineated? I do. Right. But I do

think it sufficiently distinguishes centralized things, let's say, from decentralized things in a way that makes it clear that decentralized things, including, by the way, developers and other folks who work on decentralized projects are not meant to be captured in the bulk of this thing. And to me, that is a big deal. I think it is being underrepresented, I think, by some. But it's not everything, to be clear, right? It's not everything. And so like I say, that's why any individual actor or person or firm is going to have to form their own opinion about this, because depending on where you fall and how crucial clarity in that area is to you, or how crucial certain kinds of carve-outs are to you, you may or may not be thinking this is sufficient.

But from an industry play, the acknowledgement of the difference, in my opinion, is significant. I think it matters. It indicates attention was paid. There's an understanding on the part of the members of Congress and the folks who voted on this varying degrees that it's not monolithic. Industry is not monolithic. And they're trying to land the plane they can land. And I personally am very appreciated those efforts, which have been a long time coming. All right. So I know this question is going to be a little bit broad, but since we just said that it's, you know, probably more likely than not that this particular bill will not become law, you know, we have this whole landscape of things now that have shifted. And there's also things that existed before that now maybe are going to be seen in a new light. So we have this bill, which did, you know, get this bipartisan vote. We have the statement from the White House saying that they're open to, you know, trying to formulate some new digital assets. that legislation. We have the Lemis-Gillibrand bill in the Senate, which, you know, I don't know what the current status of that is, but that's been floating around people who have been talking about

stable coin legislation. I mean, there's like a whole sea of things. And then we've also had the sea change, you know, as we discussed from both the Democrats and the White House. So, you know, just looking at all those things, plus anything else that I have forgotten to mention, what would you guess would be kind of like the next things to happen? Oh, and by the way, also we have an election coming up. So when you look at just that whole mix of things, what do you think are kind of the more likely things to happen for the crypto industry when it comes to your policy, regulation, etc? Yeah. Anyone who tries to predict in this case, it's an exercise in futility and foolishness, but I will indulge you. Who knows, right? It's again, it's like it's a, it's a show that is

constantly writing itself. The script is writing itself in a sort of improv time. That being said, Let's look at the calendar. Okay. So the realities we have to the end of this session, which ends around the summer, and then we have the lame duck period, as everyone calls it, which is the period of time after the election, but before the office's turnover. Okay. And the question that's really hot on the hill right now is what could go through now

and what could maybe go through in lame duck. Okay. And of course, lame duck is affected 100%. The biggest factor affecting lame duck is the election. Who's still in office, who's not? Who got a seat? Who didn't? Will leadership change in the next cycle?

or not. So we'll Sherrod Brown still be a leader of the Senate Banking Committee or the chair, or will there be a Republican, will be somebody else, like, who knows, right? If Sherrod Brown's not there, who's an expert? So all of those factors come into play for LIMS. So let's leave Lame Duck aside, but recognize that is a very important moment. And things do go through in Lame Duck all the time. It's very common. So even if things don't go through in this session, in the active session right now, before everyone just turns to the campaign trail, you know, they may happen next. And we are keeping us a close eye on that. Personally, I think of stable. If a stable coin package of some kind doesn't get attached to something, whether it's this,

whether it's something else, I think that there is a good shot in lame duck of getting some portions at least of that through. Because for stable coins, there's pretty widespread agreement on both the Senate House sides really about what that should look like. It's not agreed upon. It's really more of the politics around it and other things that I think are making it complicated. So that bill also, the various options or iterations that had been around for quite a while, you know, people have, like, all kinds of people have weighed in on it and whatnot. So let's see.

In this short term, well, you've got fit, right? So there's all going to be a lot of activity in the Senate over the next, you know, weeks, basically trying to figure out, like, who's where, what do people think. There isn't currently what's called a companion bill. So a lot of times, for something to go really efficiently, the House is working on something, the Senate's working on something, and they're on the same topic and they're coordinating, you know, and whatnot. And the language is similar. And so what happens is the House approves their version, Senate approves their version. There's kind of like a comparison around it, right?

Sometimes it has to go back or forth or whatever, and they come to an agreement and the thing goes to the president's desk. In this case, there isn't actually a companion bill. Okay. Now, that being said, the DCCPA, which we talked about, is going to come back into for, it's going to be relevant because that's the last time Senate Ag looked at the CFTC issues was there. And there was some agreement. on that. So my expectation is that some version of that is going to come back into play, not that

bill itself. And it only talks about ag, to be clear, it doesn't talk about the SEC because that's not the jurisdiction of that committee. Something like that, I'm sure as we speak, is being talked about with Senate banking staff. They're going back and forth on it. You know, what do we think about this version? They're analyzing Fit 21, which they've been doing. They're looking at the language. Do we support it? Do we not? Et cetera. But there's going to be some, I don't know if lags the right word, because things can go fast and people are motivated, but there's definitely that hiccup, that there isn't an obvious companion bill to vote on quickly

and then kind of do the compromising, right? And we're on a calendar. Like, we have a limited amount of time left in this session before they're done for the summer and they're off doing other things, right? Can it get through? Can it get floor time? Can it get community?

All of those things, it depends on how motivated people are, right? Like, that is a big factor here. There are a lot of things the Senate needs to consider, a lot of things they need to consider, and is this going to rise? I believe it will. I believe there is sufficient attention, energy, attention from the White House on the campaign trail, you know, from the House. There is sufficient pressure that the Senate, I do think, is taking this very seriously. What that will look like, my team, we're literally in the process of thinking about that, right? So I don't even want to speculate. But it is going to be, you know, it's not going to be super straightforward. It is going to be like anything else in this Congress complicated and probably messy, you know, and a lot of things will go on. Now, what's the flip side of that. What's the good news there? The good news there is there is a chance to get in there and talk about things in this bill in the House version that maybe we'd love to see a little more refined,

right? Maybe we'd like to see pulled out in reserve for another time, whatever it is. Like there's a chance to go in there and have those conversations because it's not baked. It's not a fully baked situation. And that is good news, right? That means there is an opportunity for the things that maybe, you know, are complicated to talk about for people that have those feelings about stuff, right? It is unlikely that the Senate, because this never happened, is just because of the nature of politics, they're not going to come in and be like, what a great bill. Ray, we love it. Let's do it. Let's go, guys. That's just not a thing that ever happened. Okay. So, hey, you know, that doesn't happen. So what the sausage making looks like,

it's going to vary. Now, a thing I will note is you pointed out, majority leader Schumer on Sab 121, okay, indicated, look, we shouldn't overly read into anyone's vote on things. People vote, just like any individual voter. They vote or don't vote for a variety of reasons, okay? But what I do think that vote indicated, and the votes by other senior Democrats on that in the Senate on Sab 121 is we take the stuff seriously. We don't approve of the idea that it's not important. We think it's important. We think that something about the way the SEC did this was, eh, at best, Okay, whether that's APA issues, there's all kinds of reasons, right? And they say, they've said different things at a points of time, et cetera. Yeah, administrative proceedings for people who don't know what that is. So was it a process footfall, substance footfall, various folks in the Senate have various views on that. Okay. But for whatever reason, enough of them put their hands up and said, uh-uh, not today. That doesn't work. Okay. And that demonstrates, I do think, a renewed openness to having conversations about this topic. And Fit 21 is the thing, is the vehicle to have. those conversations. So like I say, I feel, look, I'm always hopeful because I'm a hopeful person.

I couldn't have done two years of slogging like we talked about, like without being a hopeful person, maybe like a delusional person. I don't know. You can interpret how you will. Regardless, you know, it seemed to work. So here we are. I am hopeful. But again, the major limit here is limited calendar time. There just are only so many days for things to be discussed. And this is complicated. It's not an easy topic. And so is it going to get the attention that it needs to get through the entire process? Again, I believe yes, but, you know, this is a world we live in. God forbid, some other horrible thing happens out in the world that requires Senate attention. Who knows, right? Like, there are all kinds of things that could derail attention, I would say rightfully so,

in some cases of true horrors, you know, around some of this stuff, right? And we just have to kind of hope for many reasons that doesn't happen. But like I say, if it does, there's always lame duck. There's always lame duck, right? So hope is not lost. So you mentioned the SEC and I did just have to ask, and I understand this may not be in your willy house, but obviously now because the ether ATFs have gotten the initial approval, you know, I wondered what you thought that meant for the reports that the SEC was investigating ETH and the Ethereum Foundation. do you think that means that that's off or I don't know if you have thoughts on that? Yeah, you know, I don't really have thoughts on that. I've heard about it kind of the same way I think you've heard about it.

I will say that there are people who have much more, including on my team, who have much more line of sight into the SEC and I intend to have, and there are some folks not on my team, unfortunately, who seem to have an almost uncanny sense of like predicting enforcement actions by the SEC, for example, right? I am not such a person, sad to say, or maybe happy to say. say, I don't know, because it goes both ways. But yeah, I look, I'm just going to say this in a way. I hope it does not mean, and not intending to be ominous, nothing would surprise me. Okay. And what I will say, and I will say this as a caution to people who are, I think, dancing maybe a bit too much. And I think understandably so, this is not an SEC that will give an inch without taking a mile. And we know that. So we got, you know, ETH ETFs. We're step one. I mean, should be clear, like, we're step one, and we have the next steps, right?

So we have these steps towards that process. But, you know, that doesn't preclude the SEC from coming around and doing something else, right? Those are distinct things. And like I say, I think we should always have our eyes wide open when it comes to, you know, well, any regulator, I suppose, but certainly this particular agency and the way that they have tended to do things. I will say that we have heard, I don't know if these are how substantial, of these are, but it's made its way to me, so I'd assume pretty substantiated. There are rumors of pending enforcement action of one that is coming. I have no idea against you. I do not know

anything other than that. And again, these are rumors. I tend to take them with a grain of salt. That being said, you know, it would not surprise me if you, you know, while you're holding the trophy, you get the right hook. That is not an unusual way of doing business for this SEC. So, like I say, I am a person that does not count votes till they're counted. While we have a chair here who has been overtly hostile to the industry, I am not, you know, I'm not turning my back on the agency. But in that's the case you talked about, I have no knowledge. I don't know anything more than what you suggested. I have no, you know, no insight into that, you know, whatsoever. And I think that every time in the force action has come down, it's been

pretty, people have been pretty blindsided by it. And you know that as well as I. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll have to see. So. last question for you. I know we've gone so long, but there's been so much to discuss. You know, the crypto industry obviously has suddenly pivoted to discussing a lot of political stuff over the last few weeks. And, you know, one moment that really set a lot of things off was an op-ed run-in blockworks by Molly Jane Zuckerman saying that basically people shouldn't be single-issue voters. I think she literally used the word fool to describe people who were. And, you know, after when we saw Kavita Gupta, who tweeted something like, you know, as a woman in crypto, am I going to be forced to choose between my body and my career or my industry?

You know, you are a Democrat. There's been other people on the show, for instance, Robert Leshner on shopping block said, I'm a lifelong Democrat. What do I do? So, you know, obviously now, so much has happened even just since those discussions just a few weeks ago. And because you, you know, are a Democrat, as you mentioned, I wondered sort of what your take was on where the Democratic Party stands at this moment and, you know, where you think that might go between now and election day. Yeah. So Justin Slaughter and I read an op-ed last week, this week, again, I have no idea, recently. That when it was, it's a series. So we had our first op-ed that came out a while ago that was about progressivism and how we actually think progressivism and decentralization are compatible or highly compatible. And it's surprising to us that there's been this distinction.

I think that was quite influential in getting some progressives to pay attention. I'm really proud of that. And then we did one recently that basically was like, hey, Democrats, all is not lost. There is this trend, but it can be turned around. And I think we wrote in there something I thought, I think Justin Rith, this is really funny. You don't have to like tattoo eye, heart crypto on your forehead, right? It's just an openness and awareness of the importance of this industry and that it's not going away. It does have merits and challenges, you know, benefits and challenges. And it's something that we should be really trying to keep onshore in the U.S. through a variety of paths. Like that would suffice for a lot of people. Like some, I don't know, folks you cited in their personal views. I haven't talked to, I know the books. I haven't talked to them about that specifically. But, you know, I think for a lot of people, they want to vote with their party. Like they do want to stay in the party that they've been in for their, you know, entire voting lives or whatever, right? They need a reason. And that.

that reason doesn't have to be, you know, full embrace bear hug, you know, the situation. It has to be an openness to being educated to listening. And I can, if I can be reassuring, I will tell you, over this last push that we've had, there is a lot of openness on the part of Democrats across the entire spectrum from centrist all the way to hyper-progressive, you know, various individuals, to have those conversations and to make up their own minds, right? And so the idea that the parties are a monolith is not true. We've clearly seen the idea that President Biden, in or his administration or the folks in it are setting the tone for the entire Democratic Party, that's not true. And we know that because, again, you don't know what someone really, really is

going to do until they vote. And now we have the votes to print. So we've been saying this for a while. We've been saying this out loud to a lot of people for a long time. Don't give up on Democrats. The idea that they're not going to show up is crazy. It's not true. You're not helping by shouting at them. We need to be like as open as we ever were. And some of the hits we deserve, right? Some of the things that are being loved at us are true. Some of these things do. did happen. We need to own it and talk about how we're doing better as an industry, which we are, talk about how we're self-policing, which we are, and talk about how this is an opportunity that applies to everybody in the world, not just Republicans or libertarians or whatever, right?

That's not helpful if your goal is to get policy. It's just not helpful. So I think that has been validated, you know, and then some, and I feel, again, I feel personal pride in that. I think I'm displaying very clearly. I feel personal and pride in that. But I also think that this, until the votes are in, the votes are not in. And this stuff is going to change and it can change. And you've seen, we've seen it now. It can change fast. It can change fast. So my view on this is, you know, if you're a Democrat, you know, all is not lost to say the least. I would also say my personal view, okay, I'll just say this in a, again, a somewhat cheeky way, you know, read into this what you will and I won't go further on it. But, you know, maybe laws don't matter so much if there is no rule of law. I'll put that out. there. Okay? You know what I'm saying? Like, perhaps something more fundamental is at stake and at least

part of this election, which is democracy, rule of law, you know, these kinds of like being able to rely on like a process with things. Like I think some of these things are really important. And, you know, I just don't want industry to think, sometimes I look at some of the rhetoric and I think it's deck chairs on the Titanic. Okay. Like if the whole, if the whole system of American democracy is going to crash, I don't even meldramatic on this, but if the whole system is going to crash. Maybe some of this fine-tuning is a luxury, you know, and we should be looking at the bigger picture. But I also think at the end of the day, Congress makes laws. There are a lot of people in Congress. There are 535 of them, okay, 100 senators for 135 representatives,

and every one of them in my view, with a couple of exceptions, is in play. They are all, in my opinion. Part of this is my job, to be fair, but with a couple of very clear exceptions, and we all know who those exceptions are, okay, a couple of everybody else in mind. opinion really is in play. And there are people that could be educated about the importance of the technology if we took an approach where we saw that as our responsibility to do that. And we didn't like flail about, you know, sometimes like demanding attention when we're not actually going in and doing the work to educate. So I will just say that. That is the approach that I believe is successful. That's the approach I take with the team at the team at CCI supports, you know.

And I'm happy to see more and more folks in industry, I think coming around to that point. position, you know, that particularly after some of the things that happened in 22, we had to hold a dig out of, and it was our responsibility to do that, right? It's our responsibility to go in and educate. It's not always their responsibility as much as we wish it were to come out and, like, seek that information, right? Like, they have to have a reason to want the information. And this vote was an example. They had a reason to want the information. When they got it, they took it in, they heard it, and they acted in a way that I think is very beneficial, frankly, to industry. So what more could I ask for?

Yeah, yeah, that part where you said that basically, like when it came time to the vote, they realized they needed to educate themselves. I realized like, oh, okay, yeah, probably a lot of these people just didn't really have an opinion. And then when they learned about it, they did. That's right. Like anything else, right? Yeah, like, it's sort of like deadline oriented. Like, you know, you're the student cramming for the test. Who among us is not? It's like, again, I'll go back to like, you and I are voters, right? I vote in every election since I turn of age. And like, I look at that ballot sometimes. I'm like, I don't know what the hell that thing is, right? And you have an, I need an opinion.

I got to vote. You know, I got to figure it out. Sometimes that's what people do. Until it's in front of them, it's not on their radar. And like on some level, why should it be? Right? Why should it be? So when it is, like it is, when I say, when it is, if you go in with appropriate messaging, I think everyone is, because the technology is, this is all my personal conviction, right? I mean, I know you show this as well. It's so important. Like what we are building as an industry and what we were building as users of these systems is so incredibly important. And it's important for a variety of different reasons. But when you go in and you talk with that kind of passion about it, people do listen when they have a reason to pay attention. So there it is. All right, Chila,

well, this was truly fascinating. Thank you so much for also going over time. I really appreciate it. Where can people learn more about you and CCI? Yeah. Well, you know, we're on Twitter. I will say I'm not very good or X or whatever. I'm not very good at it, but I'm trying. I do a bunch of threads where I try to explain things. They're a bit nerdy, but they seem to get some traction. I will say I posted my first meme. I was pretty proud of it. I thought it was kind of funny. It took me 10 seconds. And I was like, why is this the thing that gets all the, I know, whatever? Fine. So we're there. Of course, we have our website atcouncil.org. And the folks on the team, of course, I just want to shout out, you know, G. Kim, Ryan Egan, Brett Quick, Amanda Russo, Pat Kirby,

our kind of team, D.C., that's really focusing Peter Herzog, who's our state guy. We've got folks in Brussels and London. So yeah, information through our Twitter handle, which is Crypto Understore Council, mine, any of the folks I mentioned. And then, of course, our website gives information as well. We have explainers. We have briefs. We have like one-pagers on how Congress works, you know, how the European Parliament works. So if those processes are interesting to people, we found those to be really helpful to folks in industry to just get a sense of like, what is happening? What is this moment about? What does this mean? But we also have explainers and briefs for members of Congress or their staff on things, everything from, you know, what's MED, what's

decentralization, you know, that they also pull down a lot in use as well. So yeah, thanks for asking. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on Unchained. Thank you. Did you know Unchained is much more than a podcast? Last year, we unveiled a completely redesigned website, enriching your experience for the latest news, insightful analysis, compelling op-eds, and comprehensive learning articles and guides for beginners. Explore all this and more at Unchained Crypto.com. Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Sheila, F-It-21, and CCI. Check up the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with a friend Matt Pilcherid, Waneranavich, Megan Gavis, Pamma Jimdardt, and Market Korea. Thanks for listening. Unchained is now a part

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