We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC073: Bitcoin Policy Considerations w/ Jason Brett (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the podcast where we're talking about Bitcoin and current events in congressional policy. Today we have Jason Brett, who's a returning guest and expert in Bitcoin law and policy. Jason works with numerous congressional staffers and members of Congress helping to draft bills and policies that might become future laws. He's here today to help us understand what these future bills might look like and why they might be important to understand.

Starting point is 00:00:26 So without further delay, here's my interview with the thoughtful Jason Brett. You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. All right. So like I said in the introduction, I'm here with Jason Brett. Jason, we've had you on the show before. I ran into you down there in Miami and we just casually bumped into each other. And man, I was so pumped to see you. And what was the first thing I said to you? Let's record. I was just thinking I needed to talk about something with government. So here you are. No, I bumped into you.

Starting point is 00:01:20 And the first thing I said to you is we need to record something. And here we are, what, like three days later, four days later recording something. So you have your ear to the ground on everything that's happening in D.C., on the Hill, policy-related. And boy, oh, boy, there's a lot going on here. specifically, I think the really big news that recently came out was this executive order that came out of the White House. And talk to us about what that is. Oh, you know what? Before we get into that, before we get into that, I'm sorry, I jumped the gun.

Starting point is 00:01:57 What were some of your takeaways at the conference? Yeah. So it was great to hear, I think, people's takes in regards to, understanding the implications about the Federal Reserve and what it means with inflation and how more and more like for me the tipping point was like the Peter Thiel speech. Yes. When you know, you had this sort of notion of the pushback against Wall Street and the recognition that like, you know, it's actually okay to like Bitcoin and to push back about, you know,

Starting point is 00:02:35 what big money interests thinks of. it. And then the Senator Lama's speech, which I thought was really, really inspiring, you know, she's one of the co-sponsors of this legislation we're all hearing is coming any day soon. That would be the first major bipartisan legislation in the Senate. I caught up with some of her staffers at the conference. And, you know, they reminded me like, Wyoming was the first place that really started setting out regulations for this. And it's no surprise that we have a senator from Wyoming and how lucky are we to have that who's helping a shepherd through, you know, whatever regulation we might look at.

Starting point is 00:03:12 So I was really encouraged. It was really big. I mean, there were a lot of people there. I don't know about you, but it was like a lot of people. It was like, wow, we're really arrived. I mean, for me, having the bowl there from the mayor, you know, that's like. That was so cool. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:29 Yeah. No, I was with you. The amount of people there, it was crazy compared to the previous year. Do you know what the numbers were? Was it like 20, 30,000 people? It was somewhere in the ballpark, right? Yeah, according to the Wall Street Journal, they said there was 25,000 people that came through, which is twice the number from last year.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Yeah, there was a ton. And the side rooms, I mean, there were some pretty incredible conversations. I was amazed at Aaron Rogers, Serena Williams. I didn't even know they were coming. And I didn't see any type of announcements that they were coming. I just remember like kind of walking through and seeing it, seeing them on the stage. And there were some others that were just kind of like mind blowing. I was like, wow, this is, this is unbelievable that they're literally coming to these events to talk about how important Bitcoin is and the freedom that it provides to the individual and whatnot.

Starting point is 00:04:29 I mean, it was fascinating. So cool. Okay. So back to the back to where we were at. when we started. The executive order that came out of the White House. What was the impetus of this? Or like, what were you hearing was the impetus of this? Yeah. So there was a few things that were leading up to Biden deciding to release some information about the executive order. And I think a lot of it had to do with what really sparked it was back in October. The U.S. met with 30 other countries

Starting point is 00:05:05 and the main topic for the summit was all about ransomware. So if you think about it, ransomware happens for a lot of reasons. And we all know a lot of it is like not strong cybersecurity, and there's lots of elements to what takes place in a ransomware. But I think one thing to maybe acknowledge is it is a new kind of crime because usually they're extorting Bitcoin. And because Bitcoin is what is extorted from a ransomware situation, the White House felt it was a threat to national security.

Starting point is 00:05:36 And what's been a little hard to track is, first, the White House was saying it's all coming from China. And then all of a sudden, when Russia was ready to invade Ukraine, they're like, well, all this stuff's coming from Russia. So it's sort of like, where is it coming from, you know? And so, but if, if in fact the new sort of method of warfare, right, is this is through these ransomware, the attack on colonial pipeline, you know, at least the way our country is structured, that's like national security's job to try to address. Now, how they address it is a whole different thing. I mean, I know I don't have to tell you, like after 9-11, there can be overreactions and things like that. And I think generally the narrative of somehow that it was like Bitcoin's fault was problematic. So you sort of had the, then you had this

Starting point is 00:06:23 idea of sanctions as soon as the Ukraine-Russia conflict started. And at that point, you'll notice that's very soon after that started is when the White House order, was issued. And that because not only do you have the ransomware issues from Russia, but in their mind, I think you now saw the sanctions. And just a few days after the White House executive order, OFAC, Office of Foreign Assets Control, put out that, you know, virtual currency, digital currencies, the same as fiat currency regarding sanctions. There's all the debates about the exchanges and what kind of roles they needed to play. There was calls from the, you know, Ukraine about doing sanctions against Russian, you know, from cryptocurrencies. So at that point, I think

Starting point is 00:07:09 you're seeing it where the national security lens has caught the most focus. But there's been others that have been leading up to it, one of which is the most concerning thing I have and why I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you about it today, Preston, is the issues that they're focusing on regarding the potentials for climate change as a result of using proof of work systems and the attention that they're paying to that angle. Did that kind of come out after the whole Chris Larson thing? Do you think that this is something that was instigated by maybe Ripple and some of these billionaires that have been to the beneficiaries of these pre-mines?

Starting point is 00:07:53 Yeah, it could be. Because I think when you look at the executive order and then a little bit of the bit after the executive order, there was a request for information that's been issued by the White House Office of Science Technology Policy, OSTP, that's asking very specific questions that I feel like somebody who maybe didn't like Bitcoin would want to ask. Because one of the areas that it's focusing on is, you know, do we need to just move on to other consensus mechanisms? Like, you know, we need to sort of proof of work as old, so let's put it off to the side. And now we seem to look different ways of consensus mechanisms, which is like, like, we're already in like the fifth or sixth

Starting point is 00:08:35 inning in that thinking, when we're still, we got to go all the way back to the first of which one is really providing the security that we need. You know, but what concerns me, and again, there's this request for information that anybody in the public can respond to, to this White House office. It's part of the executive order, which is a question about, is it really going to have climate impacts? It wants evidence. It does give us an opening because it does say if you have any evidence to show that Bitcoin actually helps, you know, the environment.

Starting point is 00:09:06 They want information that's both going to refute and, you know, support that claim. But look, I'm not answering your question straight. I'm sure it was Chris Larson. I've seen Chris write articles in The Hill that have taken point blank aim at Bitcoin. I've talked about, and I'm talking about like op-ed articles. that really only congressman read that talk about how when China was the dominant miners, they could just change the Bitcoin, you know, ledger anytime they wanted to. So it wouldn't surprise me.

Starting point is 00:09:39 And this is public. This is not like me calling out Chris Larson. It's right there with consistent claims. I can't think of any other like blockchain protocol precedent. And it's really kind of sad that has taken such aim at Bitcoin the way Ripple has. And when you look at what they did at the SEC2 during this whole fight where they keep turning it back to, like comparing themselves to Bitcoin. It's really, it's unfortunate. I mean, Ethereum's rough. The other ones are rough, but like, ripple really strikes right at the heart

Starting point is 00:10:08 of like what Bitcoin's about. It's unfortunate. You just look at the lack of evidence behind this of their claims and it's just laughable. How can you create a money without there being like real work or a pegged money without there being real work to it? So quite concerning. But back to the policy, right? So this timing of that kind of came out. This was not part of the original executive order, correct? Like this was, this was like two days later or a couple days later after the executive order. And I think you said that it came through the Office of Financial Asset Control. Is that right? Yeah. So that was, and that had to do with the sanctions. So it was literally,

Starting point is 00:10:54 as we got to that weekend, we had both FinCEN that made it very clear about how banks and cryptocurrency firms need to be very aware if they hold of money, you know, services, money, service business license need to enforce sanctions against Russia. And the OFAC made it clear. It was already kind of listed that way, but they just reinforced. If people had questions, they said if you're using virtual currency, that's also a way of breaking sanctions. So you have to make sure. And this goes all the way back to Venezuela, by the way, in 2018 with Donald Trump when he was president. We had sanctions against, if you remember, the petro currency backed by oil, didn't really go anywhere.

Starting point is 00:11:43 But in principle, because I remember talking about that, that means like if you had a petro on your, you know, in your hand on your phone, you try to spend that or use that in any, way, you're breaking sanctions. So cryptocurrency really changed the paradigm. Bitcoin's totally changed this paradigm now about how sanctions are enforced. I mean, theoretically, if what they were saying about Venezuela is true, if El Salvador has a fiat currency that's technically Bitcoin, does that mean that if you and I are spending Bitcoin, are we somehow breaking sanctions if we had sanctions against El Salvador? So it really opens up a lot of questions, right? Like, how do you know if you're sending something to somebody in Russia or not with cryptocurrency? It also assumes that people are really actively using cryptocurrency to break sanctions.

Starting point is 00:12:29 I don't know that really the evidence is in yet. And that's been one of the things I think that needs to be further examined. But it was very clear that with these offices, quickly after the president's order, doing these things, it was clear there was some top-down type stuff that had it happen. As a result, I'll tell you, Preston, that executive orders usually are not like this. They're not usually studies. I was really worried what sometimes the executive order might come out and say, hey, we're just banning Bitcoin mining. You know, like usually it's an order.

Starting point is 00:12:59 So like the fact that they were getting this study is good. The question is, what's the next executive order going to look like in six months while all these studies go on? So that's why everyone needs to pay attention to how all these agencies are reacting and what the direction is. Because this could have really a foundation for the way the U.S. treats, you know, Bitcoin for the next 10, 15 years. All right, so back to the executive order. So in the executive order, there were three main parts to it. The first one was to develop a central bank digital currency or a CBDC. The next one was to protect against systematic risk within the global economy.

Starting point is 00:13:41 And then the third one was more on the illicit finance or transactions and maybe a national security risk for some of these things. So take us through each one of these. Let's start off with the central bank digital currency. What was it really kind of pointing out in the executive order? And then how about just like some of the thoughts on various members within the Hill and within Congress on how they're interpreting some of this stuff? Yeah, Preston. I think that CBDCs right now are considered the way that Janet Yellen and Powell, at the Federal Reserve want to combat Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Janet Yellen just gave a speech last week that said, you know, we really like parts of this technology and a lot of people in the Bitcoin space are really positive about what she said.

Starting point is 00:14:36 I think it's sort of like picking and choosing because they think they want to use like a distributed ledger for like a CBDC, but really it's going to be centralized. The push on this is really from the international perspective. they want to keep the dollar as a way to enforce sanctions and benefit from its status as a global reserve currency. And there is the threat, right, that it could go away, whether through stable coins. That's why stable coins have gotten so much attention, right, because it's the equivalent of a U.S. dollar. And, you know, the bigger question here is how, as we move to a digital economy that's really been accelerated by COVID-19? And that's why I think all of this is coming to fruition so fast is what do we have in the digital environment and the digital economy that's growing that can maintain the status of the U.S. dollar?

Starting point is 00:15:28 So, you know, it's really going back to the playbook of the fiat currency that we've used in this country to do regime change and so many things and trying to apply it electronically. You know, when you talk about the Hill, it's interesting, right, because there's a few different viewpoints on this. some folks in the Republican side, Congressman Tom Emmer specifically, and now Ted Cruz, have endorsed a bill that would have it. CBDCs only be used the way it's used now, meaning no direct contact from the Federal Reserve right with retailers. It would have to go through some either, you know, fintech companies or banks and then be dispersed, you know, after that.

Starting point is 00:16:05 There was another bill that was introduced mainly by progressives that talks about e-cash or electronic currency. It was called the e-cash. Act. This one actually is created to specifically not give the Federal Reserve any powers to create some anonymous aspects of cash, but in digital form. And it tasks the U.S. Treasury with doing that. So it's interesting, right? Because the Treasury really is the one that printed notes before we sort of had the Federal Reserve involved. And, you know, that has a lot to do with not wanting to, some of that has to do with, I think, the MMTiers, right? The, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:40 modern monetary theorists and printing a lot of money and being able to do that in digital form. So it's a little suspect, but it is interesting, right, that to me, both on the Republican side, the Democratic side, the one thing that's really being pulled out is people's fear of the CBDC. And I think the number one fear is like privacy. I mean, I don't know about you, but if I had a CBDC is on my phone, I mean, I already think the government listens to everything I say anyway, but like they're going to know everything I spend money on. I mean, I just don't think, I think people just don't have that, either they don't care or just people don't have the confidence that the government won't actually be watching

Starting point is 00:17:16 what we're doing. So that's the biggest hurdle for a CBDC, I think. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord. And every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world, many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive currency collapse, using AI to expose human rights abuses, and building technology under censorship and authoritarian pressures. These are abstract ideas. These are tools real people are using right now. You'll be in the room with about 2,000 extraordinary individuals, dissidents, founders, philanthropists, policymakers, the kind of

Starting point is 00:18:19 people you don't just listen to, but end up having dinner with. Over three days, you'll experience powerful mainstage talks, hands-on workshops on freedom tech, and financial sovereignty, immersive art installations, and conversations that continue long after the sessions end. And it's all happening in Oslo in June. If this sounds like your kind of room, well, you're in luck because you can attend in person. Standard and patron passes are available at Osloof Freedomform.com, with patron passes offering deep access, private events, and small group time with the speakers. The Oslo Freedom Forum isn't just a conference. It's a place where ideas meet reality and where the future is being built by people living it. If you run a business, you've probably had the

Starting point is 00:19:04 same thought lately. How do we make AI useful in the real world? Because the upside is huge, but guessing your way into it is a risky move. With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It pulls your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one unified system. And that connected data is what makes your AI smarter. It can automate routine work, surface, actionable insights and help you cut costs while making fast AI-powered decisions with confidence. And now with the NetSuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice to connect directly to your real business data. This isn't some add-on, it's AI built into the system that runs

Starting point is 00:19:50 your business. And whether your company does millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get their free business guide, demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash study. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash study. NetSuite.com slash study. When I started my own side business, it suddenly felt like I had to become 10 different people overnight wearing many different hats. Starting something from scratch can feel exciting, but also incredibly overwhelming and

Starting point is 00:20:25 lonely. That's why having the right tools matters. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from brands just getting started to household names. It gives you everything you need in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics. So you're not juggling a bunch of different platforms. You can build a beautiful online store with hundreds of ready-to-use templates, and Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions and even enhance your product photography.

Starting point is 00:21:00 Plus, if you ever get stuck, they've got award-winning 24-7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify. W-S-B. All right, back to the show. I agree with you. I think the privacy on it is extremely concerning.

Starting point is 00:21:34 I think the other piece, too, so people might look at the dollar right now, but it's already digital. How, what's like, what's the difference? And so the answer would be, well, it's a distributed ledger, right? But like, who's going to run the full nodes on these things? I know I'm not going to run a full node on, because it's not like you're actually going to be the ones validating the transactions. They're going to still have them on their own centralized server.

Starting point is 00:22:00 They're going to still be controlling the ledger. So what's actually different other than them consolidating the clearance to an immediate, you know, they're going to do immediate clearance like a lot of these different tokens. But the ledger and the processing of that isn't going to be distributed. It's going to be centralized, like completely centralized. And if I was going to go one step further, I'm sorry to talk so much here, but this is, I think, so misunderstood on the hill. And if I was going to go one step further, it doesn't solve the issue at hand. And the issue at hand is you need a peg. Like the whole reason the whole world's falling apart right now is because there's no peg and we're in a race between nation states to debase our currency to engineer what appears to be GDP growth.

Starting point is 00:22:53 But all that's happening is you have a race of. adding more Fiat units into the system. So a central bank digital currency with a controlled central ledger doesn't solve any of that. They're going to be still debasing it, right? So it doesn't solve anything other than you lose your property rights. And it's much more surveilled than the existing digital currency that's already out there, right? It's like the worst of what's already in existence. Yeah, you know.

Starting point is 00:23:25 How can we educate people on the hill about that? Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to a little bit, you know, like one of my favorite sayings from Albert Einstein is like, you know, if you have a more complex problem, you can't solve it the way you saw the first problem. Yeah. And that's kind of where we're at right now. And I think that's the right way to explain it is, you know, we have this via currency. And if you try to apply what work for Bitcoin with, you know, a CBDC, it's going to be very

Starting point is 00:23:54 open. You're not going to, you're going to be just where you were before with the problems that you know, we have with the Federal Reserve. And I think that at this point, you know, explaining the people on the hill, like even, you know, wherever you are to your congressman or congresswoman or senator, you know, having an opportunity to talk a little bit about Bitcoin and just explaining what Bitcoin is and how it works and how you see it as hard money, just like gold or any other, you know, precious metal. I think explaining that notion, explaining it could literally back the U.S. dollar.

Starting point is 00:24:28 I think it's something to start to have that conversation with because Bitcoin really has some positive momentum on its side right now. And I think the more people talk about it, you know, the one thing that's nice about this country is we have voters that can sway the politicians. And, you know, that's what I'd really encourage everybody. And I've done that before. People have asked me and I've brought them to meet with congressmen or congresswoman as I typically do with policy. And I help explain what the message they're trying to get across. And I also try to coach people on who the right person in the offices to talk about because you can kind of talk to anybody. But if you don't talk to the person that has the portfolio around cryptocurrencies, then it's probably not going to go anywhere.

Starting point is 00:25:09 But I think that having those just basically explaining what Bitcoin is, that it's this decentralized form of money. And that, you know, if the U.S. tries to create a CBDC on a central ledger, that's really copying what China's doing, right? Because China's already really done that. exactly what it is. So that's the danger of that, of thinking it that way. And that's what I mean when I say, we have to figure out a new solution. And I, you have a lot of smart people on your show. I think that's going to be a great, fascinating thing that's going to have to be figured out over the next several years is what is it pegged to? And I mean, is it pegged to Bitcoin? What do we peg our dollar or units of currency in this country too? So it's more substantial than, I mean,

Starting point is 00:25:54 look, fiat money decrees. We've proven, I think in our lifetime, it does not work. Yeah. And we're already seeing the tech. We're seeing some tech. I don't know if this is, if this is rooted in good fundamentals, to be quite honestly with you. But I'm going to talk about it. So like Luna is buying up Bitcoin and they're creating a synthetic stable coin dollar that the backing, instead of taking U.S. dollars and putting them into a bank account to back each one of the tokens, they're actually doing it synthetically. And I'm not an expert on how they're doing that synthetically, but the treasury is Bitcoin, which is fully auditable. And then they're adjusting the issuance of the tokens for the stable coin based on the change in the price of Bitcoin. But Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:26:41 is sitting there in the treasury to peg it. Now, there's a lot of people in the Bitcoin space that are very leery of this, to be quite honestly, I'm a little bit leery of it because I don't fully understand how they're able to perform that without slippage over the long term. I'm quite suspect of it. But I do find the idea very interesting and potentially threatening to anybody trying to stop stable coins if this idea and this is possible via mathematics to implement something like this. Do you think people on the hill are talking about any of that type of stuff? Are they aware of that type of technology for most members in the Senate and the House? No, no.

Starting point is 00:27:30 I mean, you have a hard time differentiating Bitcoin from blockchain still. I mean, this is a very small subset of 100 different issues that the congressman and senators face. Now, I will say with things like there was a recent bill on El Salvador and their use of Bitcoin that sort of forces them to kind of get more. knowledgeable about it. But going that deep, some of the staffers will understand that, but that's really a little too far of a reach. People in industry, though, like you said, can analyze it. The problem is the minute you start talking about a stable coin, and then you get to the type, and then you try to explain how Bitcoin could back it. It's just, it's advanced calculus at this point. They're still on the basic math. And I think that's one thing that people

Starting point is 00:28:17 really need to recognize. In fact, Preston, one of the things that's been happening is because Bitcoin is growing, I mean, this is a new ballgame from where we were five years ago. There are mainstream lobbyists, like from Brownstein and other top lobbyists chops in D.C. are going to the hill now, talking about the stuff. In fact, they can't get past what Bitcoin and blockchain are. So what they're doing is they're bringing the people who are like the programmers with them to the meetings and just letting them explain it. And then the programmer goes, so deep, it goes right over the people's heads. So we actually need to not just educate people on the hill, but these top paid lobbyists bring them into like a class with you and help them

Starting point is 00:28:58 understand. Look, this is just the basics, you know, get some understanding around the basis to the technology, because you know better than anyone that if you start to go too deep in this stuff, you lose people. And it's like you have five or ten minutes most of the times with people who are influential in their decision making. Then they're on to the next meeting. So yeah, yeah. On this on the systemic risk piece, what are your thoughts in the executive order on that particular part? I'm glad you asked me because I got a chance to maybe tell you my Bitcoin origin story at

Starting point is 00:29:31 this point. Oh, let's hear it. Let's hear it. Since it's all about systemic risk. So I was a regulator at the FDIC in 08 and 09 during the financial crisis. And that's really what opened my eyes up to the idea of something maybe like Bitcoin, but I didn't discover it until 2016. I started working in the industry. But I was in the Capital Markets and Finance Division starting in the summer of 2008.

Starting point is 00:30:01 And I saw all the banks failed. Any Mac bank failure. I was on a Bloomberg machine figuring out everything with Wachovia, Washington Mutual. It was really scary. I remember looking at it would look like the. matrix on my Bloomberg screen with some of the banks falling. And I had this one guy take me in this office, this older guy, he sat me down and was like, Jason, have you ever been through a financial crisis? I'm like, no. He's like, well, you're in one. So just relax, do your job, stay focused,

Starting point is 00:30:27 you know, and we'll get through it. But then what really opened my eyes to the idea of systemic risk had to do with AIG. Because when I started looking at AIG, we started looking at the different countries that it was exposed to the amount of exposures of what would happen if AIG failed, right after we said Lehman Brothers could fail. And that's when I was really realized how these products, you know, if you have a concentration of risk, it really creates a risk that can just shut down the whole system that forces the taxpayer then to bear the burden, you know, of that cost. But the reason I'm so, so then the other part of it for me was realizing that there really

Starting point is 00:31:08 is nothing behind the US dollar. We all come to accept that now in the Bitcoin community. but back then it wasn't really an original concept. And I'm watching like all these banks fail and I'm realizing that the plan that everyone was going to in the government was we have to, you know, shore up what public relations look like for the U.S. dollar. Like it wasn't like, hey, here's some gold or here's something reliable. It was like, Preston, let me convince you. Keep your money in the bank. Like, and that's what they sent folks out to do was these people from the, you know, great depression who had seen their grandparents lose it all, showing.

Starting point is 00:31:42 up with a suitcase wanting to just walk out of the bank with like their life savings and the job that government was you don't have to do that your money's safe don't put it under the mattress i mean and when i realized that was like the plan and then i started tracking what the federal reserve was doing with this balance sheet which was part of my job too i just thought something's wrong here you know something's not quite right and that was sort of my like the you know seed that was planted i didn't have the benefit of realizing the bitcoin paper and what came out at that point but in 2016 i i i'd love learned about Bitcoin and I haven't looked back since. I love this space so much because now I'm accumulating Bitcoin and for me it's just it's sort of like a second life for me of listen

Starting point is 00:32:23 to everybody in the space. I feel the same way. I'm the same way. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's like so the systemic risk piece really bothers me because there's this narrative now that somehow cryptocurrencies could be a systemic risk. This isn't this isn't real estate right with people coming up with synthetic CDOs that if something happens, the whole market ceases. Like, who's really going to notice if our Bitcoin goes down? Like, we'll care, but it's not going to cause a systemic risk. Like, that's a really, I mean, to me, a systemic risk should have a much higher bar than something that's like an innovative technology.

Starting point is 00:33:01 So, you know, I know they're exploring it. I know they're worried about how it might impact the markets. Listen, at some point, you're, you know, with the Luna stable coin and others, we might see all of this as the new financial markets. So then it's not a matter of what systemic risk they'll be. You know, systemic risk should really be like renamed like how we're going to kick out all the incumbent banks and will be the new show. It's not really, it's a risk to their business, but it's not a risk to the system. How about the illicit financial activity and the national security piece that was in the executive order?

Starting point is 00:33:37 What do you think was really kind of driving the impetus of this? Yeah, you know, to analysis did a report and it showed that the number's gone quite down as far as how much is a percentage of the overall crypto economy is used for this type of illicit activity. And I really struggle with a lot of this myself because I did some reporting where I looked at what the Secret Service was examining. because they're out of Department of Homeland Security. And I had numbers from 1% to up to 75% of the market. And the 75% number supposedly came from the FBI because someone gave it in testimony at a house hearing. But then when I went back to the FDA and I looked at it,

Starting point is 00:34:28 said no one could tell me where that number came from. Wow. So it was like we have this range of like 75% to 1%. You know, I don't know if chain analysis has it right with the less than 1%. But the real question is, yeah, maybe it's like a few percent is part of this whole thing with the illicit finance. But I'm sorry, it's a new kind of money. It's a new value of money. You know, we don't have the ability in our current system of stopping.

Starting point is 00:34:55 We try to stop bad actors from using money, but we can't. So I don't know what the expectation is. We're going to have a new form of money and, you know, maybe not the best advertisement for Bitcoin. But the idea that you can do tracing, you know, to figure out if something really bad has happened and follow where that went, should, I think, give people more comfort about it, not less. But the illicit finance thing, you have to remember back in 2013, the FinCEN, you know, financial crimes enforcement unit from Treasury was the very first agency to chime in on this whole subject.

Starting point is 00:35:33 And ever since then, there's always been this lens of looking at it from the, well, what if a terrorist took $100, you know, dollars worth of Bitcoin and ran into a U-Haul truck and ran it into a building or, you know, we have to stop every occurrence. And I think we've never really been able to pull away from that narrative, but with the executive order, it doesn't just capture that part. It's now capturing, you know, like we were saying before at the ransomware. That's really the concern, right? What if they try to do a shutdown of a colonial pipeline or anything. And obviously, you know, any other kinds of warfare, you know, would be obviously much more scarier. So this is what they're going to throw at us. We do have to figure out a solution

Starting point is 00:36:14 to what do we do when we have these ransomware attacks from actors, whether it be North Korea or Russia. You know, how do we help the companies get out of those situations? I don't think not letting them pay in Bitcoin is the right answer. If there's a way out, then they need to have a way out, but right now that's their biggest concern. Do you think it's fair to say that they're much more concerned about stable coins and central bank digital currencies than they are about Bitcoin specifically? Do you get that sense? Yeah, I said that a long time ago.

Starting point is 00:36:51 I thought stable coins are like, I called, stable coins are like the new orange, you know, orange is new black, like stable coins is the new Bitcoin because it's represent. sending a US dollar. And it's almost not fair when you think about the executive order when we're talking here about like that it's, you know, maybe these three issues. I mean, Preston, this is executive order encompasses 20 different reports that over the next six months have to go to the White House, 20 different reports from 23 different federal agencies. So this is a whole of government approach.

Starting point is 00:37:27 Like this isn't, this is about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. This is about everything. And so for the next, you know, now it's like five months in, you know, there's going to be just the most amount of reporting ever on the space, you know, from these different agencies. And you're starting to see the hill pick up a little bit like Senator Gillibrand and Senator Lummis that was at the Bitcoin conference. You know, Gillibrand said, look, I think it's great that the White House wants to do

Starting point is 00:37:57 an executive order about this stuff. But if there's going to be, you know, real change, it's going to be a new law. And you need lawmakers for that. You know, like there's a reason the White House does what it does. But then we have legislation. So she and I think Senator Lummis, they're planning to introduce what, you know, they've told us really just the name of the bill, which is the Responsible Financial Innovation Act. And then you had another Senator, Senator to me, that just introduced last week a bill about stable coins and how it might have to go through OCC licensure, or bank licensure. So these, you know, the senators are really starting to stand up and say, you know, it's great. You want to do all these studies, but we're going to dual track it because

Starting point is 00:38:36 we're the ones that are actually going to make the laws. So we're going to start introducing what we think it's going to be because what you're really seeing is when you see an executive order like this, the writing, the handwriting is on the wall that like the White House is probably going to get involved in the kind of legislation they want to do. I mean, one of the biggest lobbyists on Capitol Hill is, in fact, the White House. So by the end of this year, we could see Biden administration saying, this is what we want to see. And so that's why you have all these senators laying down bills because it's going to be a big, you know, conversation, big discussion to figure out what it might look like. The prediction, to your point about stable coins, the prediction on the Hill is the most likely first bill will be about stable coins because of the concerns that they have and regulating stable coins.

Starting point is 00:39:24 Yeah. Yeah, Caitlin Long does a great job of kind of describing why that's such a concern where it gets into the immediate clearance versus what the traditional system can do, which is a much slower clearing system. And when you're looking at how banks manage their balance sheet with the assets and the liability mix that they've got to have for certain types of securities that they're holding, real estate that they're holding, and now dealing with digital assets that are clearing immediately, it throws off the ability for them to kind of manage some of those ratios and manage them in a way that is in keeping with a lot of their requirements. So it seems like that's kind of more the driving factor of why this, and obviously just the pace at which this shadow banking and these tokens that represent US dollars is taking off, I think is scaring the heck out of a whole lot of people because we're

Starting point is 00:40:24 talking, are we talking hundreds of billions at this point in stable coins? I think, I think we are. But the one question I had for you when you were talking about that as far as like Senators Gilbran and Loomis with their announcement that they're getting ready to make with their, with their proposal, how long is this going to take? So they're going to make that proposal. How long before you'd have the House and the Senate start voting on on this stuff? I mean, votes can happen very fast, you know, under certain circumstances. But I mean, you're probably looking more at like a next six month type of time frame. So it could get voted on before the executive order even, the studies coming out of the executive order or even completed?

Starting point is 00:41:14 It could be, but it's that would be very, that would be unlikely. I think it might be in tandem with because the leading Democrats in the House and the Senate aren't. really going to want to push forward with legislation if they're getting signals from the White House to hold off. Because remember, right now we kind of have the try control. We still have the Democrat House, Senate, and presidents, all Democrats. So until they're sure, they're kind of going to get what they want. They're also not want to like do something against the Biden administration. So I think, you know, you'll like, what I think you'll see is you'll see these introductions. you'll see that they're going to really push to get the bill passed,

Starting point is 00:41:53 but it might be a two-year, three-year thing. Sometimes this is how long it takes. The important thing about the Gillibrand Lummus bill is that's like, you know, when you have a negotiation, that's like they're laying out all their cards. And I hear it's a massive bill. So, you know, it's sort of like, this is what we think we want.

Starting point is 00:42:14 It's bipartisan. And then it's like everyone moving toward that. you ultimately need like Mitch McConnell kind of say, okay, let's go through with this with Schumer and then you need Pelosi to kind of give the green light on it also for it really to reach that point where they're going to get a vote. I remember the last time we talked. There was another, I believe it was a senator who was laying out a bill that really went into the definition of digital asset securities, digital asset, I think it was just digital asset, which was basically Bitcoin and then everything else. What happened with that? Did that just kind of go away? Yeah, that's Representative Don Byer. That's right.

Starting point is 00:42:57 That's who it was. He introduced that, similarly introduced that right after the infrastructure bill, right? So that was sort of his way of introducing something that was very comprehensive. But it's a little hard because like what he's doing is he's introducing a bill that really has to get voted on in a committee that he doesn't even sit on. Right. So he's not in the House Financial Services Committee. It's very hard to kind of, you have to get it out of committee. So it's really like the, and so the bill hasn't gone anywhere. He hasn't added any co-sponsors to it.

Starting point is 00:43:30 Most bills don't get, you know, passed. The vast majority of bills don't ever become law. But what they can do is they, you know, when you actually get the bill that could be legislation that we're now starting to look like because of this executive order and because of all this attention on the digital asset space is people will pick and choose. So they'll look to the buyer bill. They'll look to this, well, Ms. Gillibrand, okay, how are they doing things with, you know, Bitcoin versus the shit coins?

Starting point is 00:43:57 What are they going to, how are they going to figure that market space out? And so those, these ideas are important because they can collectively end up being what the ultimate law, you know, will look like. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC

Starting point is 00:44:31 or running an enterprise GRC program, VANTA keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, VANTA gives you continuous automation across, more than 35 security and privacy frameworks. Companies like Ramp and Ryder spend 82% less time on audits with Vanta. That's not just faster compliance, it's more time for growth. If I were running a startup or scaling a team today, this is exactly the type of platform I'd want in place. Get started at Vanta.com slash billionaires. That's vanta.com slash billionaires. Ever wanted to explore the world of online trading, but haven't dared try? The futures market is more active now than ever before, and Plus 500 futures is the perfect place to start.

Starting point is 00:45:21 Plus 500 gives you access to a wide range of instruments, the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Bitcoin, gas, and much more. Explore equity indices, energy, metals, 4X, crypto, and beyond. With a simple and intuitive platform, you can trade from anywhere, right from. your phone. Deposit with a minimum of $100 and experience the fast, accessible futures trading you've been waiting for. See a trading opportunity, you'll be able to trade it in just two clicks once your account is open. Not sure if you're ready, not a problem. Plus 500 gives you an unlimited, risk-free demo account with charts and analytic tools for you to practice on. With over 20 years of experience, Plus 500 is your gateway to the markets. Visit Plus 500,

Starting point is 00:46:08 to learn more. Trading in futures involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus 500, it's trading with a plus. Billion dollar investors don't typically park their cash in high-yield savings accounts. Instead, they often use one of the premier passive income strategies for institutional investors, private credit. Now, the same passive income strategy is available to investors of all sizes, thanks to the fund-rides. income fund, which has more than $600 million invested and a 7.97% distribution rate. With traditional savings yields falling, it's no wonder private credit has grown to be a trillion dollar asset class in the last few years. Visit fundrise.com to invest in the fundrise income fund

Starting point is 00:47:00 in just minutes. The fund's total return in 2025 was 8%, and the average annual total return since inception is 7.8%. Past performance does not guarantee future results, current distribution rate as of 1231, 2025. Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income fund fund funders.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. So, Lynn Alden had a comment, and I'm going to paraphrase. I don't think this is exactly how she said but she implied that there's a sea of money that's waiting to get into this space, and it can't get into the space until it gets bigger.

Starting point is 00:47:45 And I think there's also a lot of money that can't get into this until there's better definition of the policies and having bills in place that really kind of clearly define what this is and what this isn't. I think the one thing that has been very clear is that Bitcoin is treated as a commodity, at least from a tax implication standpoint, and that seems to be really sticking and not changing anytime soon or with any of the bills that are being getting ready to be introduced. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that idea, though. Yeah, I think regulation, the clarity of regulation is what any business craves.

Starting point is 00:48:28 And remember, I mean, I'm an ex-regulator, but as a regulator, it's not really about what you want the rules to be. It's about where is the market and what is the financial market going to look like. And so if it's going to look like this, you have to move toward understanding this marketplace and coming up with regulations that can work. One of the things that has hurt, the U.S. is not having these clear regulations. A really interesting paper that I read was from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. And they did a study with Bank of International settlements in Europe and they looked at whenever there's a news article that talks about the regulation coming and that there's going to be clear regulations for Bitcoin, that the price of Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:49:13 went up. Whenever there was an article in the paper that talked about terrorist activities or listed activities, the price would go down. And it was basically correlating news articles. This isn't a trading strategy, by the way, but I've actually looked at it. And it is really true. Anytime you talk about regulation, you actually start to see the price of Bitcoin go up. But anytime you start to see big news about, oh, a terrorist threat or ransomware, it starts to come down. And I think that goes to Lynn Alden's point is that there's money on the sidelines, but they're not going to fully commit to it. And they feel like they have the regulatory clarity that they need. And I think that that's really, it is, Bitcoin is definitely a commodity.

Starting point is 00:49:51 It's been decided by the courts. The CFTC holds that. The SEC is not interested in Bitcoin anymore. That ship has sailed. I mean, if you look at what Gary Nelson. Really? Yeah. I think if you look at what the SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in the very beginning was, you know, he said, I'm trying to remember what it was exactly, but basically paraphrase that Satoshi's invention is real. I think we have to remember what that means. In other words, he's saying the fact that it created this distributed ledger system, the fact that it has this money that's used on it, right, you know, through cryptographic proof is is a real invention. And that's the end of it. You know, it's a real invention.

Starting point is 00:50:34 It's not something that's a security. It's decentralized. He made a joke during this asking if anyone with Satoshi Nakamoto to stand up. I don't know what that. But, but, you know, in a sense, it's given to me. And Brian Brooks, the former OCC controller, who's now the CEO of Bitfiry. Yeah. Followed up in a hearing, you know, soon after that.

Starting point is 00:50:56 And what he said was when someone asked him, like, what is all this cryptocurrency stuff about? He said, look, there's Bitcoin and then there's everything else. Bitcoin is an asset. A lot of people believe who believe in Bitcoin, think it's a really good hedge against inflation. But it's an asset class in and of itself. After Bitcoin, the way he described it was, which you and I all think of as shitcoins, but he said it politely to Congress, is a bunch of networks that people are betting on. You know, you think this network might do well or that network might do well.

Starting point is 00:51:25 And people are sort of taking bets at that point. And, you know, Michael Saylor says it all the time. He thinks most of the other stuff are, you know, securities and that's sort of the way the law is built. But I'm very secure that Bitcoin's going to remain as a commodity for pretty much the rest of my lifetime in the U.S. And do you think that most of them kind of understand that if they overregulate this, that they're just shooting themselves in the foot on a global scale? Do you think most elected officials view it that way at this point? I don't think they worry about that too much. What they worry about, the theme is always, like, not on my watch.

Starting point is 00:52:06 You know, the modus operandi is, what can I do in my job today to make sure I don't end up on the front page of the Washington Post, you know, for something blowing up? So regulators are very risk-averse, right? So they're not necessarily going to over-regulate, but, like, if you look at how slow things are moving in the banking system with taking cryptocurrency and, you know, you kind of need some. special permission to do stuff. And it's always, you know, and putting a lot of investor protection notes out from the SEC and enforcement, it's all just not wanting anything to blow up. That's like the first step. You know where one of my biggest frustrations are in the space from a regulatory standpoint and from a policy standpoint is when you look at a lot of the lending platforms, they're not treating over collateralization the same for retail customers as they are for institutional

Starting point is 00:53:02 customers. And so they'll have, you know, they'll have a person with one Bitcoin that can then go out and borrow against that that's over collateralized in a market that is marked to market instantaneously. And if the price goes down, they're immediately liquidated in that level. loan and there's no risk, right? There's no risk because it's traded 24-7 and it's over-collateralized. But you have these institutions who have massive balance sheets that have a whole lot of exposure to traditional markets that are also marked to market, and they're under-collateralized.

Starting point is 00:53:45 And to me, it's just like this total recipe for disaster for retail that this is allowed, that in this space in particular that's a 24-7 market that's trading over the weekend and you have these institutions that have all these other assets on their books on their balance sheets that are not 24-7 traded 24-7. I think it's just it's a disaster waiting to happen. I'm just shocked that nobody's talking about that and they're talking about all these other things. And it's almost like they don't understand that that's happening.

Starting point is 00:54:22 or they don't care that it's happening because it's such a small amount of the space. I'm kind of curious if any of this has ever come up in some of the conversations that you've seen and whether you even agree with my complaint. Yeah, you know, actually it's interesting. You should tune into a hearing. It's going to come up in mid-May in the Agriculture Committee because the chairman, Congressman Scott from Georgia, brought this up with, what FTX is applying for at the CFTC.

Starting point is 00:54:56 So FTC US, the bot Ledger X, they're trying to get a real-time clearing, you know, for their 24-7, 365 derivatives. And it'd be directly with customers. I think it'd be like every 30 seconds, they check your position and knock it down 10%. And it would be that way for everybody on their platform. And the people that are objecting to it are folks like ICE and C, CME and all the traditional players that have these things saying, no, we need to stick to having, you know, the FCM model, have the futures commissions merchant, aggregate everybody's assets into

Starting point is 00:55:32 one and then we'll figure out in three days what needs to be liquidated so you can have a nice Monday morning. So it's like, you know, and so, you know, what I think is great is that in this case, you actually have a regulator that's really very forward looking. It's the chairman and Rosten Benham of the CFTC that agreed to look at FTXUS's proposal. He's changed it from 30 days to 90 days because it's very rare that you, you know, you have these changes in the way you do margin requirements. So it actually be pretty historic. And if you think about it now, I think it's about 97% of all Bitcoin derivatives are overseas,

Starting point is 00:56:13 right? They're all finance and everything. Yeah, yeah. It's a huge market. So not to your point, not only is it these larger players, that have this different standard for collateralization. But to bring some of that to the US shore and have that marketplace,

Starting point is 00:56:29 it's gonna be so big and it's only gonna get bigger. It's gonna be really important, you know, and it's really important to have those hedges available in the marketplace too, because that's what's gonna help Bitcoin flourish in the US. The irony of what you said with the Ledger X piece is from what I understand, Ledger X has, their collateral requirements

Starting point is 00:56:50 for all their options contracts, least from what I've seen personally is that everything is posted, right? If you're going to write an options contract, the Bitcoin that you are putting up there actually has to be posted into an escrow. It's fully sitting there, right? So for them that like turn that off and try to do the CME model where, you know, it's not happening on the weekend. To me is introducing more risk, which is different than what, you know, a little bit different than what I was describing earlier with some of these institutions on the lending side being under collateralized. But it just seems like there's so many perverse incentive structures around derivatives in this space

Starting point is 00:57:34 altogether that if you're a big, giant institution, you just get treated a little bit differently than a small person who's actually probably way less riskier because of the way that they're posting things. And it just seems like somebody needs to take a much closer look at it. Because my concern, to be quite honest with you, on the risk here, my concern is actually on a meltup. If Bitcoin starts blowing up and going to the moon, it probably means that traditional markets are blowing up.

Starting point is 00:58:08 And if these institutions are under collateralized and they've got all these other counterparty risk type things on their on their balance sheet in traditional finance and it's blowing up while Bitcoin's going to the moon, it tells me that their under collateralization is going to be a major risk for anybody that's that's not long. And that's why that's where I think that, you know, if the market has a downturn and Bitcoin's going down with it, like what kind of like what we're seeing right now, I'm not nearly as concerned about the risk there. But I think if it starts separating and you get the correlation to separate between the traditional markets and these markets, it's going to be a really bad situation for a lot of people that have things lent out, retail

Starting point is 00:58:54 lent, specifically having things lent out. But anyway, sorry we went in a very different direction there. No, no. Well, hey, the positive side is Bitcoin would be very large and, you know, maybe a little bit of the Bitcoin could be used to bail out some of these really large institutions. kidding. That's not what this is about, right? It's about managing your risk, you know, being the sovereign individual, understanding that. And look, the whole problem, the whole premise of the 2008 crisis that's got us to where we are today are these large institutions, right, that took on much more risk than they should have and, you know, playing games with other people's money. And it's not okay.

Starting point is 00:59:34 So we got to change the system. Yeah. So people say to me, like, oh, the government's going to do this and that and everything else. And one of the responses that I'll often provide the people, as I say, there are states currently in the United States like Wyoming and Texas that have already gone out and aggressively set up policy and passed law in their states that have enormous protections to Bitcoin and digital assets. that if the federal government would start to overreach on some of the restrictions and set up things, and you're seeing exchanges like Cracken relocate into, or locate themselves in states like Wyoming

Starting point is 01:00:21 because of these policies that are, the state policies that are there. Do you see this becoming a states versus federal government battle? And maybe that kind of forcing the hand for the federal government to take a much more lenient, take on the regulation of a lot of this stuff because if they don't, they're going to find themselves in a battle that they can't win against certain states. And do you see other states pulling that the Wyoming and the Texas model as a template into their own states, try to attract

Starting point is 01:00:53 as much of this into their local domains? Absolutely. Whoever said, you know, states are laboratories for democracy, you know, is absolutely right. And I mean, thank goodness there's folks, like Caitlin Long and others leaving the charge and Jesse Powell at Cracken, because they're making more headway than you realize. It might be something that seems really, really insignificant. But like with Wyoming, right, they have Cracken Bank now and we have Caitlin's bank. I think it was Avanti and now it's custodial bank. You know, Cracken just got its first routing number with the Federal Reserve to work on ACH payments.

Starting point is 01:01:36 that's a huge tectonic shift because Krakken applied for and got a Federal Reserve membership, right? Like you automatically become a Fed member. But then the Federal Reserve then takes a step back and says, well, we'll let you be a member, but we're not going to let use our wire. We're not going to use our ACH until we decide the risk is clear. It's like, yeah, you can join this country club, but don't swim in the pool and don't, you know, like, don't eat in the dining room, just hang out in the front there and smile.

Starting point is 01:02:03 So like with that, though, that's really important. because that's affecting, you know, a federal regulator, right? The Federal Reserve and how it's going to impact a lot of these companies as we move on to using maybe the ACHNYR systems as part of cryptocurrency more broadly. And that's that's big. That's when you see a state has created its own type of bank. And now what's even more important is that that states is now being reflected in probably what we're going to see in this federal bill from Lomas because she's from Wyoming. So the states are absolutely critical. And look, I mean, Texas is like the best place on earth, I think, if you're going to be a Bitcoin miner and the way the governor's embraced it, they're setting up laws that, yeah, it really disincentivizes the federal government from coming down too hard.

Starting point is 01:02:53 It won't mean that they won't do it, but, you know, you're going to have enough states that are finding the benefits of this technology and why they're leaning in. And absolutely, there's, you know, states like Kentucky and others that are trying to do much. much more support where there's the big growth in Bitcoin mining. My home state in Pennsylvania, we have Senator Toomey, and there's lots of mining happening across this state. It's really, it's a great moment. And I think that's what is going to help us right now, because it does seem like we're a little too federally focused.

Starting point is 01:03:27 And the truth is, like, when we look at something like Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, you're talking about adding jobs, economies, you know, real impacts to families. And that's what the most important thing is that the federal government sometimes loses sight of. I mean, we are a state and federal government. So, yeah, absolutely the states are right now really leading the charge. The last question I got for you, you and I had chatted previously about this idea that when are we going to have the CFTC actually step in and defend Bitcoiners? against these scam tokens that we know are out there. Talk to us a little bit about this idea, because you brought this up to me, and I really liked how you were explaining this.

Starting point is 01:04:16 Yeah, so if we decide that the CFTC is correct, which it's already been verified by law, that Bitcoin is a commodity, that means that, you know, for once, instead of the uphill battle where maybe we have a little bit of the underdog syndrome, always as Bitcoiners, what we have to realize is that Bitcoin actually deserves some protections of its own. So instead of always just thinking, oh, Bitcoin's going to be banned or Bitcoin's going to be this, the truth is, if Bitcoin's a commodity, the CFTC regulates the options in future markets around commodities and also if there's fraud or anything that would relate to specifically affinity marketing. And they speak to that. The CFTC talks about the dangers of if you try to pass one product onto another. And they have a lot of great safety tips on

Starting point is 01:05:08 their websites for people, like whether it's emails that you don't know or, you know, things that are really basic, right? But what that should tell you is, in a sense, is that there's a Bitcoin options and futures marketplace right now, right? They don't actually regulate Bitcoin itself. But if there are people who are creating things that pretend to be like Bitcoin, or perhaps say it's it's Bitcoin and shit coin kind of together and they're benefiting from that and that confuses investors or if you've lost money as a result. It very well could be considered a fraudulent scheme. And, you know, I know the, the alt coin community, I'll be polite, thinks that that's not

Starting point is 01:05:49 okay to talk about stuff like this. But I'm not talking about it that you're secure or that with the SEC. Do whatever you want. Pretend to be a token. do but when you associate it with Bitcoin, that's where Bitcoiners realize the CFTC actually has a role to protect it, just the way they would with cows, right? If I was selling you 100 cows, they were all healthy. There's no problem with that. But if I'm trading futures and options contracts and there's cows, you know, that are sick or they're, you know, fake cows, whatever we

Starting point is 01:06:19 want to call them, that's a problem. That's fraud. And that shouldn't be taken lightly. So I think at some point, we actually have a really good chance with the CFTC chairman right now, Benham, with the way he defended the FTX proposal of realizing, yeah, we have a role to also protect Bitcoin, not just the investors, but the commodity itself. Hey, give people a handoff on, you had mentioned earlier that on the ESG part that they opened it up to the public, that people can go in there and make comments. Can you provide us a link and also kind of describe to people? who are listening where they would be able to do something like that.

Starting point is 01:07:00 Because I'm sure there's many people listening to this that would like to make comments or make referrals of important articles or content that's already there that goes into an enormous amount of depth. I know Nick Carter alone probably has how many articles on this particular topic. But where can people find out more to make those contributions? Sure. So it's in our federal register. So what that means is it's a public notice from the White House, and I can send a link later so everyone can check it out.

Starting point is 01:07:33 And it's a White House looking for information about digital assets, the energy implications of digital assets, and how climate change might happen as a result. And anyone can reply by May 9th. It gives you an email of who to reply to at the White House. you can write up to 10 pages with 11 plus size font or larger, with one or any of a variety of subjects, including the protocol, meaning the type of protocol is a proof of work versus something else and what your opinion would be on that. They're looking for evidence from a scientific standpoint of the impacts,

Starting point is 01:08:14 potentially of what we always hear, right, which is the FUD that we now see in this order. But it's your chance to respond. And what I tell people is you have till May 9th to do it. And you should respond yourself or get together with a group of friends, talk about it and write in a response. Because this is kind of like one of those, if it was Brexit or if you're deciding who the next president is and you want to vote, this is your chance to get on, you know, the public record with the White House, how you feel about whether Bitcoin uses too much energy or not and how it might influence their public policy. So if you don't take the time when we actually have this country that doesn't just ban cryptocurrency mining or ban Bitcoin, but actually says, hey, we're giving it a chance. We want science to rise to the top. You need to provide them that notice. So it's the White House opening its door for people everywhere to provide any kind of data that they want to provide. And I think people should take advantage of it. This is your chance to do that. Jason, I know you're active on Twitter and you do Twitter spaces.

Starting point is 01:09:17 things like that. So we'll have a link to that in the show notes. Is there anything else that you'd like to highlight or point people towards? No, I think that that's, I mean, just continuing to follow the space with what's happening in legislation. And I'll be putting out some information soon. I'm going to release on a website to really try to consolidate all the issues that are happening in Bitcoin. So people just have kind of one place to go. And, you know, maybe Australia that the next time I'm on, you know, your show as I have that more developed. Because there's just so much happening and to keep track of everything is hard. So I'm going to try to make at least one sort of location on the website, on the web for people to go to, to really keep up with regulations

Starting point is 01:10:02 in law. I love that. For people that are listening to this, we have a lot of listeners from the future that that will probably be up on, that'll be an active website by the time a lot of people are going to listen to this. And so what I would tell you is put the um on your twitter handle you have the ability to put a link in your bio so whenever you do get it up jason put that link in there and so when people look you up on twitter you know somebody listening to this six months from now or three months from now go to go to jason's bio and just click on that link and you'll be able to see i will be a visitor of that because i find the information that you consolidate and put out on this particular topic to be

Starting point is 01:10:43 very interesting so um thank you for your time to do do this. We've got to do this, you know, once a quarter, you know, twice a year or whatever. But I really find this valuable to just kind of level set and see where everything's moving with respect to policy. So thanks, Jason. Thanks a lot for us. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it's something that helps others find the

Starting point is 01:11:23 interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses, or forums, go to the investorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes. is only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC073: Bitcoin Policy Considerations w/ Jason Brett (Bitcoin Podcast)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.