You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 55: Dennis Porter - Bitcoin Policy & State Adoption

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 2025, we're going to have states actually pushing forward legislation where they can now actually add Bitcoin to their balance sheet. So Senator Lummis cares a lot about making sure the United States can hold Bitcoin in reserve, and so do I. I was a very big supporter of that legislation when they pushed it forward. So her legislation creates a pathway for states to utilize the infrastructure that the federal government provides so that states can also have their own reserves, but it would be in a segregated wallet with the federal government. Bitcoin is a very bottom up technology. It's a very grassroots technology. And so is our movement at Satoshi Action. We've been very successful in accomplishing our mission of passing pro-Bitcoin policies into law. We've had our legislation introduced in over 20 states. That's a huge part of the United States. There's 50 states total. So we're almost to halfway mark now. dennis porter very very nice to have you with me thanks for agreeing to do this of course

Starting point is 00:00:56 semi-spontaneously that's always the best that is the best so thanks it's really nice meeting you in real life because we've been tweeting each other for a while i've been following your work in satoshi act fund or satoshi fund satoshi action satoshi action yes um which i would love you to tell the audience a little bit about and also about your extensive work in passing bills into laws in the u.s and then if we can talk a bit about your news for this uh conference yeah let's get into it so at satoshi action what we do is we're very focused on on changing the narrative for Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining in the policy and the regulatory landscape. We, you know, I would say it was around roughly 2021, 2020,

Starting point is 00:01:43 there was a great fear amongst Bitcoiners that governments across the world would oppose this technology and that we would have to be fearful and we'd have to, like, move around and find governments, maybe one or two good governments that would be friendly to the Bitcoin movement. And so instead of, you know, waiting for those bad regulations and those bad laws to come, me and my team decided to get started developing pro-Bitcoin policy and pro-Bitcoin regulations in the United States, the best way that we can do that there in the U.S. is to start at the state level and work from a bottom up.

Starting point is 00:02:14 You know, Bitcoin is a very bottom up technology. It's a very grassroots technology. And so is our movement at Satoshi Action. We've been very successful in accomplishing our mission of passing pro-Bitcoin policies into law. We've had our legislation introduced in over 20 states. That's a huge part of the United States. There's 50 states total. So we're almost half to halfway mark now. And we've also been able to... Meaning that it's in some kind of process in some of those 20 states? So varying amounts of progress, everything from we got an introduction to a committee hearing to passage in the House, to passage in the House and Senate. And in four states, we've been able to have the governor sign those bills into law. And the states that have

Starting point is 00:02:51 done that are? Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Okay, great. And Louisiana, we also ban cbdc's effectively which i said on stage just now i had my talk about cbdc's and i mentioned that i put the article from forbes uh about louisiana and how this is a great sign for resisting cbdc's and promoting bitcoin at the same time so i think louisiana is a real good case study for a lot of countries states and actually individuals that want to see what is possible in other countries and not theirs but how they can go and advocate for something similar in their countries absolutely like most of my audience is not i mean i have a lot of audience from the united states but a lot of people from europe australia canada etc and

Starting point is 00:03:36 they all need to get inspired i think by some of the things that are happening in the u.s in that front um although i do think stable coins could be also another way to surveil money um and we need to be careful of that but at the same time banning cbdc and promoting bitcoin on a state level that is massive yeah can you tell me a bit about louisiana and then tell me about your news yeah absolutely so the process you had there yeah it's it's it's a you know a state where we have a lot of resources and our policy director lives in the state so a lot of good connections there and we were able to get the policy introduced and then work it through the process and and pass it into law, ultimately signed into law by the governor. And I totally agree with you. You know, one thing

Starting point is 00:04:22 at Satoshi Action that we think a lot about is that it's not just about that individual win within the state. We also want to create this positive momentum for other states within the country and the entire world, right? I was just talking to Joanna from Germany, and she said that, you know, they're taking that and saying, look what's happening in the United States. We can do this here in Germany as well. So that's really an interesting part for us is like, how can we generate the momentum and the success in America, but also generate that momentum in a way where other countries and other jurisdictions are wanting to follow suit with us. And so we've done that with Louisiana. We've done it in Oklahoma, Montana, and Arkansas. We will be

Starting point is 00:04:57 doing it in more states in 2025. There's a whole bunch of states that are going to be joining the forces here. So the forces of good for Bitcoin. And, you know, the thing that I'm going to be talking a little bit about on stage later today is the importance of making sure that this happens across the entire United States. So far at Satoshi Action, we've been able to pass our legislation into law in Republican trifecta states, which means the Senate, the House,

Starting point is 00:05:23 and the governor are all Republican. So that's great. We love that. And we've loved that Republicans have taken a lead on this issue. A lot of people that are on the Democrat side of the aisle wish that their party was leading on it, but we're just lucky to have a party that has been leading. But in my opinion, I think both parties

Starting point is 00:05:39 are going to eventually be very, very pro-Bitcoin. my theory is that we will move away from an era where we're battling over whether or not we should do bitcoin and we'll enter an era where we battle over how we do bitcoin so that can be everything from uh you know regulatory policy but i think more specifically it will be energy policy right because you have you have republicans who are for all above energy all the above energy they they don't have very big restrictions on what they think is good energy usage um but democrats are going to care a lot about clean energy renewable energy carbon free energy so that'll be a great debate that will take place. But at the end of the day, we're still promoting how do we use

Starting point is 00:06:13 Bitcoin mining. So very excited about that opportunity. Now, as far as the 2025 and moving forward, we just had this big Pennsylvania news where we said, hey, we passed this in the Keystone state, which is a key battleground state in the 2024 election. It's now a pivotal part of the talking and the discussions that's happening at the national level. We just had Fox cover the entire story. It was, you know, it was incredible timing. We've been working on it all year. We had no idea when it was going to start moving, but it just happened to start moving two weeks before the election. So we were able to get a favorable committee vote just a week ago, and then we passed it in the House. So now it's passed into a law in Pennsylvania? It's passed in the House. We need

Starting point is 00:06:52 to pass it in the Senate and get it signed by the governor. But we are very confident. How long is that part normally? Let's say normally, depending on the state you're in, it would be a two-week process to go to the next chamber, and then it would be anywhere from two weeks to a month for the governor to sign it into law. We're in an interesting dynamic right now because of the election. So the Senate is out of session. We need the Senate to come back into session after the election, pass it, and then, of course, get the governor to sign it. But we specifically designed this bill to be signed by the governor. When we look at our legislation, we always look at it in the lens of how Ronald Reagan used to look at policy, which is that you never go for the whole

Starting point is 00:07:30 loaf every single time. If you can, you go for parts of the bread loaf. You go for half of the loaf and then you come back for the other half later and so that's what we're doing with our policy we want to get half of the loaf in pennsylvania we want to get things like the right to self-custody the right to buy sell trade bitcoin um the ability to use the technology we left out the mining component and some other components because we didn't feel that it was as likely to get past this year but that doesn't mean we won't come back next year and get that other half of that loaf so very excited about pennsylvania and then anything to do with cbdc there as well nothing to do well there was actually a small amendment that was offered up by the

Starting point is 00:08:03 Freedom Caucus there. The Freedom Caucus, State Freedom Caucus in the United States is a network of state groups that are very focused on conservative, promoting conservative values. They really do not like CBDCs. We've worked well with them in the past and they offered up an amendment to change the definition of digital assets to exclude CBDCs. So nothing in this legislation, in my opinion, I don't think it would protect CBDCs anyways, but they wanted to take an extra step. I support it. I'm anti-CBDC. So they took an extra step and got an amendment passed 206 to 0 so everybody has supported and endorsed that amendment every democrat and every republican voted in favor of that amendment uh and now that bill has you know passed in the house with that

Starting point is 00:08:41 amendment so the bill does exclude specifically exclude things like cbdc's you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013 empowering individuals with an open source device enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins i find my treasure super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family enjoy my five percent discount on treasure product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code flat how does the work that you're doing on a state level intersect with the work that senator loomis is offering with her bill for the reserve of the united states can you talk a bit about that absolutely so big big fan of

Starting point is 00:09:30 senator lummis uh she has done incredible work championing bitcoin really before anybody else you know she said thank god for bitcoin on the senate floor in the usa uh and it's why we gave her the thank god for senator lummis award at our dinner the following uh you did yeah thank god for senator she loved it it was a great it was a really fun moment uh uh we did it at our awards dinner later that year. So Senator Lummis cares a lot about making sure the United States can hold Bitcoin in reserve. And so do I. I was a very big supporter of that legislation when they pushed it forward. And interestingly enough, in the language that she has chosen, she's trying to find a pathway for states to also work with the federal government to have their own reserves. Senator

Starting point is 00:10:09 Lummis has always cared a lot about states. State reserve. That's right. Okay. And today it doesn't exist? No, no state reserve exists today. So her legislation creates a pathway for states to utilize the infrastructure that the federal government provides so that states can also have their own reserves. But it would be in a segregated wallet with the federal government. Now, what we want to do is, I think, a step beyond that. But it's also something that Senator Lummis endorses. She's just trying to make sure that no matter what, that there's a pathway. Like if they pass this law, that they're not trying to take control of every state's Bitcoin, they want to have their own segregated wallet. We want to go a little bit a step further.

Starting point is 00:10:45 And I think Senator Lummis, I believe she supports this legislation, this type of legislation to get the state itself to have its own program to be able to purchase Bitcoin and to hold Bitcoin. We have been working on this type of policy for a little over a year now. First, we started with resolutions to be able to have the states study the purchase of Bitcoin and also for the pensions to study the purchase of Bitcoin. But in 2025, we're going to have states actually pushing forward legislation where they can now actually add Bitcoin to their balance sheet. And I have a, I'm curious about your perspective on the boots on the ground, the people that are hearing that those kind of legislations are actually passing in their states.

Starting point is 00:11:25 What is their sentiment? What do they feel about, are they aware of it? Are they becoming aware of it because of this legislation? Do they start becoming more interested in it? Or what do you see, what do you feel in the different states that you're operating in? Well, there's a few, you know, there's a few different ways. where there is a lot of great progress being made. Of course, boots on the ground, lawmakers and regulators in those states

Starting point is 00:11:50 are hearing a lot about Bitcoin because as the legislation progresses, their offices are being pinged and saying, what do you think about this? So the best part, absolutely, and this is part of our whole reason for doing this. Oh, that Bitcoin thing again. We want to make sure that they're thinking about Bitcoin and they're making up their minds about Bitcoin. So the great part about introducing this legislation and making it move through the legislature in the state level

Starting point is 00:12:12 is it forces those lawmakers to pay at least a little bit of attention, if not give it their full bandwidth for a little while, so that they can make a decision on how they want to vote. Because they have to vote on the bill, they have to put their name on the record for whether they support Bitcoin or not. And this is critical because we want lawmakers to signal, where are you on this technology?

Starting point is 00:12:33 Do you support it or do you oppose it? And that's really helpful for the broader advocacy space. Or do you not know anything about it and you need to learn? That's right. And then you guys become orange-pilling agencies? So we do what we call micro-dosing with orange-pilling. So we micro-dose, we tell them the benefits, we get them interested. So they start to see the value, the benefits of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:12:53 The full orange-pilling process, as you know, takes time. It does, yeah. We don't always have the time to do the full kit and caboodle when it comes to getting these lawmakers on board with being fully orange-pilled. So micro-dosing is where we start at. Occasionally we have time to go deeper. You know, in my state, my home state of Oregon, there will be some big news coming out of that state in the future, which will show that I think when one of us is spending more time in the state, that we can really truly get very deep with a lawmaker and help them to understand on a deep level why Bitcoin does matter. But going back to just the people.

Starting point is 00:13:27 So to date, we've been able to impact directly or indirectly over 2,000 lawmakers. That's everything from every single member of Congress to hundreds of state lawmakers across the country. additionally there are groups advocacy groups not bitcoin groups but they're just you know maybe they're center right center left think tanks that care a lot about bitcoin and we've been able to help them on how to a deeper understanding of bitcoin or if they've already got a deep understanding of bitcoin we've been able to provide them policy solutions so that they can actually protect bitcoin as well so that's been one thing that's worked really well for us it's not just us advocating for bitcoin anymore we have other groups on the ground uh i would say

Starting point is 00:14:04 The Idaho Freedom Foundation is one of them. We also have the Beacon Center in Tennessee. And there's a number of others as well, like the Frontier Institute in Montana. These groups, they're not Bitcoin groups. But because they do have people within the organization that appreciate Bitcoin, we've been able to work really closely with them to get legislation across the finish line in the states that we've worked in. Super cool. I like that. okay and my my last question you're known to be breaking a lot of news out there like a lot of

Starting point is 00:14:36 people follow you because they know that the next best thing is probably coming from you so they need to watch they need to pay attention did you have any experience with like something that happened that you were sure that it's going to be like the next big thing breaking news and then you kind of found yourself like maybe it wasn't so and then you're based on that like i'm asking also as a past marketeer and a pr person like based on that you kind of revised your strategy on how you're going to communicate on things in the future and stuff like that absolutely yeah 100 that's that you know we have some examples oh i have a perfect example so the very first time that I tried to actually get legislation moving, this is what happened. So in the state of

Starting point is 00:15:21 California, we were trying to get some legal tender language or at least some pro-Bitcoin language across the finish line. And I started to talk about it before we actually made the significant progress. And I wouldn't say that's why the bill didn't work out, but because I started to talk about it and then it didn't come to fruition, it was like, oops. So a lot of people were upset about that, but I learned a very big lesson on how to actually, when to start talking about things, when to wait, when to work on it. So that was a very good educational experience for me. And it's really influenced the way that I operate now in the space today, which is that, you know, I knew Pennsylvania had passed, the bill had passed in the House, and I'd waited 48 hours

Starting point is 00:15:59 to really talk about it because we wanted to line up the story with Fox and get everyone all the ducks in a row. And so that, I certainly learned a lesson from that way back when, I think it was about three years ago when I tried to do that. But today, I'm much more careful in the way that I I report on the things that I'm doing for the sake of making sure that they're successful. Do you have some earlier background in communication or PR or marketing? Well, I was a podcaster and a Twitter influencer, so to speak, for a little while. So I learned, I cut my teeth in the early days of Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Cool, cool, cool.

Starting point is 00:16:33 I learned pretty quickly how to market things on social media. I've been a Twitter junkie, you know, for years. So I had always been kind of aware how, you know, these things work and how you can put yourself in a good position to be able to market. Are you also on Nostr? No, I'm not. I'm not on Nostr. All right. So come on. People keep telling me I've got to come on the Nostr, but I have yet to be convinced. There's some fun on Nostr happening.

Starting point is 00:16:55 I have yet to be convinced, but I've come close. I've come very close a couple of times. Well, it's waiting for you whenever you're ready. Well, I've heard great things about it, and I do get fed the Nostr stuff onto Twitter. That's good. It's fun, and the zapping is so much fun as well. Like, just feeling the lightning under your fingers. The power. Whatever content you put there, you get direct indication whether that content resonated or not. Yes.

Starting point is 00:17:19 People are just zapping you. You know, you can get, like, all of a sudden 100,000 zaps for, like, 100,000 Satoshis for something that you wouldn't have thought that would work. So, it's pretty cool, especially for content creators. I think that this is going to be quite revolutionary going forward. Absolutely. Yeah, you should try it. thank you so much for your time where should people follow you uh well thank you so much for having me on i very much appreciate it it's an honor to be speaking with you today uh i'm big

Starting point is 00:17:47 on twitter if people haven't figured that out already from our conversations it's at dennis underscore porter underscore but you could probably just search dennis porter and i'm typically the one to show up at top luckily i have no competition there so i'm the number one ranking dennis porter on twitter if you scroll his feed and you see stuff about legislation yeah you found the right thank you so much enjoy the rest of your show thank you so much

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 55: Dennis Porter - Bitcoin Policy & State Adoption

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