Weekly Roundup 05/10/24 (Biden threatens SAB121 veto, Trump embraces crypto, FDIC scandal deepens) (EP.527)

This episode discusses key political and financial developments, focusing on Biden's stance on SAB121, Trump's embrace of cryptocurrency, and an ongoing FDIC scandal.

1. President Biden threatens to veto a bill aiming to nullify SAB121, aligning with his administration's stringent stance on cryptocurrency regulations.
2. Former President Trump signals a supportive stance towards cryptocurrencies, contrasting sharply with the current administration.
3. The FDIC faces a scandal involving allegations of harassment and mismanagement, underscoring issues within federal regulatory bodies.
4. The episode discusses the implications of political stances on cryptocurrency for the upcoming elections, suggesting that crypto policy could be a significant electoral issue.
5. The hosts highlight various financial deals and movements within the cryptocurrency and tech sectors, indicating vibrant activity despite regulatory challenges.

1. Introduction to Topics

Overview of the episode's focus on Biden's veto threat, Trump's crypto rally, and the FDIC scandal. Quotes: Matt Walsh: "It's been a controversial week with significant political overtones affecting the financial sector."

2. Cryptocurrency and Politics

Discussion on the intersection of cryptocurrency with current political developments. Quotes: Nic Carter: "Trump's engagement with crypto could redefine his political legacy and influence voter behavior."

3. FDIC Scandal Analysis

In-depth analysis of the FDIC scandal, its implications for governance, and public trust. Quotes: Matt Walsh: "The scandal could significantly impact public perception of regulatory bodies."

1. Stay informed about financial regulatory changes to adjust personal and business strategies accordingly.
2. Consider the political landscape when making investment decisions, especially in volatile sectors like cryptocurrency.
3. Evaluate the security and compliance of financial institutions with which you interact, in light of ongoing regulatory controversies.
4. Participate in industry discussions and forums to stay ahead of potential legislative changes affecting your investments.
5. Use diverse news sources to get a comprehensive view of the financial and political climate.

Matt and Nic return for another week of news and deals. In this episode:

The SAB121 repeal bill passes the House with 21 Democrat votes Biden threatens to veto SAB121 repeal Trump endorses crypto Is Gensler a liability for Biden? A scandal deepens at the FDIC Senator Warren defends the embattled FDIC chair Robinhood gets a Wells Notice from the SEC Is FTX really offering over 100% recovery to creditors? We review the Ohio State commencement speech Greyscale withdraws their Ethereum ETF application Content mentioned in this episode:

Nic on Medium, Five Perspectives on Stablecoins Wyatt on Medium, Monad & Stablecoins Sponsor notes:

The Usage & Evolution of Decentralized Exchanges (DEX’s) In Coin Metrics' State of the Network issue 258, we explore activity across Ethereum decentralized exchanges (DEXs)

People

Joe Biden, Donald Trump

Companies

FDIC

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Matt Walsh
Brought down by bad mortgage investments. Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated. The federal government loans american international group AIG $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping in to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the.

Nic Carter
Two mortgage giants that have been threatened. By the housing crisis. The bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars, and all of a sudden people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called a bitcoin.

Matt Walsh
Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Welcome to on the brink. I'm Matt Walsh. And I'm Nick Carter.

And this episode is brought to you by coinmetrics. And here is the metrics minute. Today we're looking at activity across Ethereum. Dexs. So dexs have seen an uptick in trading volume, with Uniswap's quarterly volume reaching 84 billion in q one, which is a 55% increase quarter over quarter with Uniswap's concentrated liquidity model.

Nic Carter
Pools like USDC, USDT or USDC wealth tend to attract the highest liquidity and trade volume. In contrast, more volatile pools consisting of assets like meme coins are more popular on your Uniswap V two. Curve, which is a deck specializing in stablecoins, has seen its liquidity drop from its 15 billion peak in 2022. However, volumes and utilization are rising. ETH and staked ETH make up 26% of deposited liquidity on curve, while stablecoins represent 32%.

And lastly, the SEC scrutiny of Uniswap does highlight the regulatory hurdles facing dExs. That is your metrics minute. Busy, busy week, huh? I can't remember a week with more regulatory drama than this one. Yesterday was a remarkable day.

Remarkable. Well, I'm just getting back to normal. I had the norovirus, and I have to tell you, that is the one that we should shut the country down over. That is a terrible one. You get it every five years, it seems.

Matt Walsh
Remember when I got that first time? We had it in San Francisco? We were on a trip together. I missed a dinner with wences that night, actually. Yeah.

Nic Carter
That was great dinner. Yeah. Total bummer. Yeah, that was a really bad one. This was a really bad one.

Matt Walsh
I missed the Medici conference, which is my favorite conference every year. Heard Adam Winick and team put on a great show, so it was bummed to miss that one, but I was down for the count. Yeah, you look recovered now. I'm back. Yeah, I'm back.

I actually got an iv. Really? Yeah. That'll do the trick. Was it a placebo or do you think it actually made a difference?

Definitely made a difference, yeah. That brought me from 2% functionality to about 40% functionality in about an hour. Well, we did have a big week on the content front, that's for sure. So you sat down with Will peck, head of digital at Wisdom Tree. That was his second appearance on the show.

Yeah. Always great to catch up with Will. Talked about tokenization, bitcoin, ETF's. That was a lot of fun. And you are back in the writing game.

So you wrote a very long piece here evaluating the academic and policy discourse on stable coins. We'll put it in the newsletter. So five perspectives on stable coins. Really good piece there. Yeah.

Nic Carter
Thank you. I know you're complaining that I don't write anymore, and this one's 7000 words, so you are going to have to block out approximately 30 minutes to read it. Yeah. You can also put the audio button, though. It's on medium, so you could listen to it.

Matt Walsh
Theoretically, yes. Yeah. So the point of this piece is, I've actually noticed an evolution in how, let's say, the establishment is talking about stable coins now from initially a tone of basically pure hostility in prior years, now to more acceptance. And so I wanted to draw people's attention to specifically two thinkers. So Mossad, we talked about this in prior weeks, but Mossad, who was Obama's CFTC chair, had a very sophisticated piece on stablecoins and brookings, basically arguing that they're the new eurodollars, if that sounds familiar.

Nic Carter
He is concerned about stables for sanctions evasion. But aside from that, shows a really strong understanding of it, which I thought was great. Then Chris Waller fed Governor we've also talked about his comments on stablecoins I thought were really perceptive. And it's very, very interesting to hear a member of the Federal Reserve talk about how stablecoins can extend the reach of the dollar. That's the point of the piece.

There is a change, there is an evolution in thinking at the highest levels, from what I can see. Yeah. Then of course you just have the camp that don't want it because they don't like digital assets, don't like crypto, but I liked it. Just didn't address that topic. Yeah, I mean, there's always a camp, I would say mostly found in the progressives where they feel that transactions should be politicized or they want to use financial infrastructure for political purposes.

So you're not going to be able to persuade those people on stable coins. And there's another camp that believes that basically any fintech, not just stable coins, but even fintechs like PayPal or whatever, should be operating from the bank charter model with more oversight. And they're also more hostile to stablecoins. So I think it's just a matter of understanding people's perspectives to understand why they have the position that they do on stable coins. So definitely a piece to check out.

Matt Walsh
Over the weekend, Wyatt also wrote a piece on stablecoins. So Monad and stablecoins, highlighting why we think the Monad ecosystem is going to be a real big player here in the stablecoin market going forward. So also we'll link to that piece. Yeah, we'll add that one to the show notes as well. So tons of news.

Nic Carter
Obviously crypto is now a factor in the presidential race. But before that, should we get into the deals? Let's cut to the deals. First one is Arbalos. This is a digital asset proprietary trading firm founded by Josh Lim.

Matt Walsh
They are focused on options. They have raised $28 million from Dragonfly, room, breed, VC and others. Congrats to Josh and the team. Awesome to see. Next up we have kiosk.

Nic Carter
They're a farcaster social media client. There is 10 million from electric capital, a 16 z, USv and variant. Then we have Volta. This is a non custodial, multisig custody platform that raised 4.1 million from Fica Ventures, Haven Ventures, Soma Ventures and a number of others. Then you have galaxys galaxies, an NFT platform.

There is 10 million from Chainlink, ENS and Rarestone Capital. Then you have Botanics, a bitcoin layer two development company. They raised 8.5 million from polychain placeholder and valor equity. Yeah, congrats to Willem and the team over at Botanix. Next up you have lava network, their modular blockchain project.

There is 11 million from Animoca Gate and Coingecko Ventures. Then you have ZKM, it's another bitcoin layer two network that raised 5 million from Okex, Amber and Crypto.com dot. Then Mosa, which is a shop to earn platform. There is 2 million from symbolic capital Dao, five coinlist and polygon shop to earn. Alright, I don't think I've heard that one before.

Matt Walsh
That's a good one. Then we have ambient network. This is a Solana DPin project that raised 2 million from borderless and Solana Ventures. Next up is Lagrange, a hyperparallel co processing protocol couldn't tell you what on earth that is, but they raised 13.5 million from founders Fund, Fombushi one, KX CMT Archetype and Maven Eleven. And lastly you have Agridex.

This is an agricultural commodity blockchain marketplace that raised 5 million from endeavor Ventures agricultural commodity blockchain marketplace. There we go, a lot of deals this week. So we're going to knock out the middle square for OTB bingo here with Saab 121. Who would have thought that probably the first experience a lot of people have with SAP 21 was this podcast, right? I got to tell you, man, it's a huge deal.

It's been something that I have been zeroed in on ever since this staff accounting bulletin 121 was released. And we started to see the early signals of this with all of these banks that were hiring people that wanted to be in the initially just bitcoin custody business, that they hired all these people, they built this great infrastructure, and then they started letting go of these people because of the Saab 121. So hired them and fired them, basically. And as a reminder, Saab 121 is this rule that the SEC put out. It is a rule, although they did not put it out as a normal rule.

So they didn't have like a comment period. And it says that banks need to treat customer assets as if they were the bank's own asset from a balance sheet perspective, which means you cannot be in the digital asset custody business because you'd have an asset that you can charge, say 25 basis points to custody, needed to hold about 500 basis points of regulatory capital against it. And more importantly, that is just not how custody works at any of these banks. You don't have the customer's assets on your own balance sheet. It's a segregated thing.

It's bankruptcy remote. So anyways, previously the government accountability office had found that this was unlawful. So under the Congressional Review act, they said this was, this was a rule, it was not adopted as a formal rule. No comment period, nothing of the like. So anyways, a bipartisan bill was introduced.

Mike Flood was the champion of it. It was passed through the House of Representatives yesterday. Now, an hour before it went to a House floor vote, the Biden administration came out with a statement of administration policy. And they explicitly said that if this bill were to pass the House and the Senate, the president would veto it. Why does the president want to make this just a less safe market structure, not allow some of the most trusted banks in the United States to be the custodians of bitcoin ETF's and things like that.

I don't know why. But anyways, this still passed. The House will now see it go over to the Senate. I'm sure we'll be talking about that in the coming weeks. But that's the first chapter of where we stand here on Saab 121.

Nic Carter
Yeah, I mean, it's truly remarkable to see the President Biden dying on this hill. I mean, this is a rule that should uncontroversially be overturned because it is a bad rule. It explicitly fragilizes crypto markets by keeping custody outside of the domain of the largest, most credible financial institutions. There is no reason this rule should remain in effect. It doesn't comport with the way that other asset classes are treated.

It's a bad rule. And it is very notable that 21 Democrats joined the Republicans in passing this resolution to nullify it. Jake Otchenklass, Wiley Nicholas Seth Bolton, Darren Soto, Eric Swalwell, Richie Torres. Some of the usual names we know are more crypto friendly. But this was after Biden threatened to veto it.

So really interesting to see a couple dozen democrats break ranks here. I just, I cannot believe that the Biden administration felt strongly enough to come out with a statement of administration policy on this. It's not even passed through the Senate yet. They clearly wanted to just discourage Democrats from getting on board with this. It's crazy to me that this has become, this is now a campaign issue in a way that I'm sure the Biden administration does not want it to be.

Matt Walsh
This was a rule that Gary Gensler, a lot of people like, he just kind of went rogue on this. Clearly, it was a. We now know, I think, that this was a top down edict from the Biden administration to just choke off crypto. So they're doing it through the FDIC, trying to get Gruenberg to debank the crypto industry, try to extra legally go after some of these banks that were doing business with the crypto industry participants, and then they did this Sab 121 thing, and now we know. Yeah.

Nic Carter
And again, the badness of the rule shouldn't be a partisan question at all. If you're a Democrat and you dislike crypto, you should still prefer that crypto custody be done by the most sophisticated and largest firms. Encouraging to see Democrats breaking ranks. But, yeah, just remarkable that Biden has chosen this specific issue. I mean, it's such a niche and esoteric thing.

Literally only people like us care about it. And now it's something that he's chosen to make an issue. It's a huge deal. I mean, Ian Cain, who's running for Senate up here in Boston against Elizabeth Warren, has been super loud on this issue in that race against Warren. So this is going to become an issue all over the place.

Matt Walsh
And, I mean, there's some big Trump news this week, too. I guess we should talk about that. So Trump historically, when he was in office, didn't seem to have strong views on crypto. Didn't really do much. His secretary of Treasury Mnookin was hostile, but we didn't really have a lot of data points.

So I think there are a lot of folks in the industry over the past few months that have been saying, well, obviously Biden's really bad for crypto, but maybe that's just the people that he put in charge. Maybe it's not Biden. Well, forget about that. We know that Biden is hostile towards crypto now. That much is in stone as of yesterday.

You know, Trump hopped on it immediately. I don't know if he knew that the Sab 121 thing was happening, but he hosted an event at Mar a Lago yesterday that had a number of crypto people that had those Trump NFTs and some really high profile people were down there. Right. Like Ryan Selkus from Masari being one of them, who, by the way, got up and did a great, like 1 minute kind of overview on the spot. They are against it.

The Biden was just kind of called up. Biden doesn't even know what it is.

Dollar talked about, why get me off the stage? Talked about how this would give him a lot of the president stage. And I say this, a lot of people very probably.

But anyways, Trump came out and I guess, should we roll the audio first? Yeah, let's play the clip.

Nic Carter
So Trump had historically tweeted, I'm not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He seems to reverse themselves. He says, quote, I'm fine with it. I want to make sure it's good and solid. And if you like crypto, you should vote for Trump.

So, pretty unambiguous. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, we'll see. But I think you can thank Vivek Ramoswani here in large degree. Right. Like, he was the one that kind of got into the Trump orbit after he dropped out and was running a very pro crypto race, you know, when he was still in it.

Matt Walsh
And it seems like he's had some influence, I think, on Trump's thinking on this issue, if I had to guess. So now it just, it becomes actually a really core issue. I think there are. It's not that crypto participants are necessarily going to sway this election, but there's over 50 million people in the United States that own a cryptocurrency. And this is a very, very tight race.

If you look at the polls, Trump is up, like, one point on the prediction markets right now. I think if you aggregate them. So this becomes something that I think is impossible to ignore as an actual issue at this point. Yeah, it is an electoral issue. The sides were crystallized yesterday.

Nic Carter
We're not saying it's the only issue that should inform your vote, but it's very clear if crypto is your main issue, which you know which way to go on that. So, yeah, I mean, look, in the past, people said it's not a partisan issue, it shouldn't be a partisan issue. It just factually is at this point. That doesn't apply to every single member of Congress. Like, clearly, we see those heterogeneity and views there.

But at the presidential level, there's very clear divide that's materialized. DCG actually partnered with Harris research this week, and they put out a study, crypto attitudes in swing states. And the poll shows that over a quarter of voters in swing states are actually weighing candidates positions on digital asset policy. I think the data would support the hypothesis that people actually care about this in a number of swing states. Yeah, I think Biden is making a mistake here, frankly.

Like, I don't think his agenda necessarily required trying to destroy crypto, as they factually have done. And he's chosen to position himself as very hostile to it. And there are a lot of people that crypto really, really matters to in this country. That's just a fact and a growing number. I think you could say at this point that Gary Gunsler is a huge legal liability or not legal liability.

Matt Walsh
He's a huge political liability. Maybe he's a legal liability, too, but he's a huge, huge liability from a political perspective to Biden right now. Not only is he going after the crypto industry in a completely extralegal manner, but he's also going after a number of factions of just the financial services industry. You know, Milken conference was this week, and Ken Griffin was on CNBC just talking, really not in glowing terms about how the Biden administration's administrative state and the steps they've taken, talking about the FTC as well. So I don't know if you're Biden, you have to be kind of evaluating whether or not you want to go into this election with your current leadership at the SEC.

Nic Carter
I would think there's another issue that has been intensifying, which is the FDIC. And it's another one of those things that we've been complaining about forever, basically. And now it's breaking into a full blown political scandal or political issue, which is. So our issue with the FGIC is we know this. They systematically pressure banks to debank crypto firms.

That's a fact. If you are a crypto entrepreneur in this country, the fact that you have a hard time getting banked, especially at tier one institutions, is at least partially due to the FDIC and now fintechs and embedded finance. If you rely on banking as a service, you are being pressured by the FTIC. So they just have a general anti technology posture. So we called that choke.

.2.0. Choke .1.0 was under Obama, Gruenberg as well, the chair of the FDIC. Now a scandal has intensified whereby there was a report that came out, an internal investigation into the culture at the FDIC. And the report was pretty damning. I mean, the Wall Street Journal reported, quote, more than 500 individuals, mostly current employees, reported experiences of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other interpersonal conduct.

To the FDIC hotline, 500 employees is 10% of all FDIC employees. So it's a really meaningful number. So it's clear that. And Groomberg himself had faced accusations, I don't believe, of sexual misconduct, but of basically bullying. And so it's clear that there was kind of like a good old boys culture at the FDIC.

Now, Biden, when he came into office, said that he would fire any employee of his that, you know, was fomenting such culture, and he hasn't done so. It appears that Democrats are closing ranks around Grunberg because if he left, the FDIC's agenda would be frozen. Elizabeth Warren came out in defense of Grunberg, basically in a statement exonerating him. So that's another issue. This is actually pretty awkward for the Democrats.

Now, there's a clear, documented example of this agency going haywire, having a really negative culture, and basically nothing is changing. Yeah, it's truly mind boggling that nothing has changed in terms of just who is running that agency right now. And then you have Elizabeth Warren, who claims to be a champion for women, and 500 women were sexually harassed, bullied, intimidated at the FDIC. And she just doesn't care because she needs Marty Grunberg to be there so that she can have her perspective on power in the financial services world. So it's just a despicable display by Elizabeth Warren and all of these elected officials that actually have the power to stand in here and actually do something for these people, but they don't care.

Yeah, it's extremely cynical and really, really disappointing because we now have a report that's hundreds of pages that's documenting this persistent culture of harassment and misconduct to this agency, which is the most important, arguably, bank regulator. Yeah. And this is not a Wall Street Journal report. This is a clery Gottlieb independent investigation. Like, this is a top law firm going in here in saying, no, you've got 500 women sexually harassed at this FDIC, and they just don't care.

Yeah, it's really shocking and I think, really, really awkward for Democrats. So there is a hearing, I believe, next week where Marty Groomberg will be testifying. And that could be a moment where we discover what the next steps are going to be here. I think it really depends on whether democrats continue to close ranks and pretend that this isn't a problem or if some defect and acknowledge that this is actually an issue, that the conduct of these really important, of this really important body, that it matters what the culture is there. All right, so let's stay on regulatory for one more here.

Matt Walsh
So Robinhood came out on Monday morning and said they've received a wells notice from the SEC in relation to its cryptocurrency business. Apparently, the SEC is claiming that Robinhood facilitates the trading of unregistered securities. But the SEC has also not told Robinhood which assets are securities, which ones are commodities. Robinhood has a pretty conservative mix of assets, I would say, on the platform. I look at them and I couldn't tell you which ones are securities.

It's not like they have any of the overt ones. So what has happened now is Robinhood, co founder of Vlad Tenf, has come out and said, look, we're not settling here. This is not going to end with us settling. We're going to fight this. We're going to go to court, and we're going to fight on behalf of our customers here who have a right to be in these products.

And the SEC just has given no guidance on the issue. And so really just feels like a shakedown, feels like a third world type of government shakedown. But I really hope that what happens here is that Robinhood chooses to get a lot more engaged in the efforts of the industry, get involved in fair shake, get involved in, stand with crypto, get involved in some of these groups that are actually focused on putting elected officials and seats so that we can actually change some of these agencies from the inside. Yeah, I thought it was very interesting that Robinhood, which is not considered a crypto native firm, chose to fight this. I think it's very clarifying because it shows that a sophisticated capital markets firm with obviously great legal advice, even they were not able to navigate the SEC's maze in terms of what constitutes a security or not.

Nic Carter
I think it makes it very clear that the SEC's guidance is incoherent, and something has to change there. All right, so moving on, some FTX News this week, John J. Ray, they came out with a new plan, an updated plan, I guess I would call it, saying that many of the customers on the FTX platform in this convenience class will get a 118% recovery, which that might sound great to some people, but when you actually look at it, obviously these claims were dollarized at the petition date. So, in other words, if you're a customer that had one bitcoin on FTX, 100% recovery means you get $16,600, which is the price of bitcoin as of the filing date. You are not getting, what, $62,000 or whatever the price of bitcoin is today.

Matt Walsh
So you're getting completely shafted here. Lawyers have made, I think, over a billion dollars so far on this case. You know, if I'm John Ray. Yeah, whatever. Take your victory lap.

100% recovery. But this is just really, really misleading. Yeah, the press coverage around this is totally misleading and misunderstands the accounting here. I mean, we're talking about bitcoin being marked at $16,000, not at $60,000. And let's not forget the FTX estate.

Nic Carter
While they did an admirable job of liquidating most of this stuff, made some huge mistakes. Okay. The sweet position, they sold that back to miss and labs for $96 million. They'd waited two months and exercise the options, the warrants. I think that would have been worth 750 to a billion dollars.

Wow. Yeah, I ran those numbers yesterday. So they left almost a billion dollars on the table there on that one position alone. So there has been a lack of sophistication in the liquidation of these assets. The anthropic position, I think they could have gotten more for.

So, yeah, we're not talking about 108. Like, something needs to change with bankruptcy law, frankly. Yeah. Seriously. First it's Gox, and now it's this.

Like, let's not arbitrarily dollarize these positions. Like, that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's completely ridiculous. I don't know. They would be better off just not taking these type of victory laps, I think, because it's just very misleading.

Yeah. Couple other drips and drabs here. So three former executives of cred who. I remember that one lost to history. It was a cryptocurrency lender that went out of business well before the whole crypto lending category blew up.

Matt Walsh
So three of these executives have been indicted on wire fraud charges. Seems like the way they were generating the yield was some investment scheme in China or something. It seems like that. Seems like a mess. Yeah, not great.

Nic Carter
Did you watch the Ohio state commencement speech, man? Yes. So this guy, Chris Pan, he tried some things out there, let's just say. So he got booed. Not off the stage, but this made the rounds this week because he mentioned bitcoin, and he got roundly booed.

Matt Walsh
But you have to view it in the context of. He got up there and started talking about, you know, ways to treat your depression. He started talking about ayahuasca, and then he had a section on bitcoin. And I think by then, everyone was just totally out on the speech. But, I mean, his bitcoin points were, I thought were pretty good.

Right? Like, it was.

Nic Carter
The bitcoin stuff wasn't even the worst part of the speech. I watched the whole thing. Yeah. And it was the funniest commencement speech, I think, of all time, because it was insane. Like, I.

So he made the audience do breathing exercise. He complained about a breakup that he'd had he shield bitcoin. He did a magic trick with the university president. He made him do a magic trick with him. Yes, I saw that.

He praised the singing revolution of the baltic states. Never even heard of that. He gave everyone in the stadium a bracelet, and he sang two songs. I mean, it was unbelievable. So I know that bitcoin doesn't have a spokesman, but if I could be so bold and just speak for the entire bitcoin community here.

Matt Walsh
This wasn't our best guy. We're sorry. We didn't send our best guy. It wasn't our guy. He's not our guy.

Next time. If we knew it was Ohio State, I think we kind of thought this was, like, a rinky dank community college in Ohio. Turns out we sent the wrong guy. We meant to send Jon Pfeffer, wences casares. Um, we.

You know, there were a bunch of guys we could have sent. We sent the wrong guy. Yeah. Like, we disavow him. Also, in an interview, he admitted that he had gotten into bitcoin two months ago.

Nic Carter
So he's just a New Zealand. Like, he's a new convert. He did have that elephant slide, which I thought, that's a good slide, you know? Oh, you've used that slide? Yeah.

Matt Walsh
It's like the blind man touching the elephant. They're like, well, what is this thing? Yeah, you know, that's a good one. It just seemed like a huge non sequitur. Like, in a commencement speech, you're meant to just fire people up and make them excited about starting their career and stuff.

Nic Carter
And he just jumps right into a bitcoin diatribe. Yeah. And apparently he was spending time at, like, the protests outside, too, like, handing out lollipops. Not our best guy. Not our best guy.

Not our guy. Who would be your best commencement speaker to talk about digital asset industry? Ross Stevens. Without a doubt, Ross Stevens would be a great one. Yeah.

Yeah. But I'm. I don't know if, like, there's scope for a bitcoin discussion in a commencement speech. I feel like you just want to talk, give very vague career advice or something. Other news this week.

Matt Walsh
So Grayscale has withdrawn their Ethereum spot ETF application. Not great. Yeah, I mean, that's maybe the nail in the coffin for the. Yeah, I mean, you know why it's not great, though? I think we kind of all think this is getting denied at this point.

But Grayscale was the one that successfully sued the SEC over the bitcoin ETF, and they have the same case to be made on the ETH ETF, and so them pulling out kind of takes the lawsuit off the table. So someone else is going to have to sue the SEC. And I guess if you're grayscale, they're catching a lot of heat for this because it's clearly just. They want to preserve the fee. They don't want to have the massive outflows that they saw on GBTC.

So that's why they did it, is my guess. Right. Like, I don't know why else you'd do it, but it's a business decision, ultimately. Yeah. I mean, it does seem like getting the ETF approved was an own goal for Grayscale after everything.

Nic Carter
And we did ask the same question, like, who is going to sue the SEC over the ETH spot ETF, not grayscale. Now, it's unclear, but it's not going to be grayscale, it seems. All right. So checking in on our on the brink community, on Farcaster, Dylan asks, how are my muscle ups coming along? I had to put that on pause for the boxing training, unfortunately.

So I don't know, maybe. Oh yeah, the muscle ups. Yeah, yeah, the muscle up. We had to totally pause that. So I'll come back to it in a month or two.

Matt Walsh
Well, you look like you're probably in. You could maybe do one. I don't know. I mean, I'm definitely in boxing in better shape because I did a full on camp, but yeah, I have no idea. I feel like a lot of the muscle up stuff is skill based.

Nic Carter
So look, we'll find out. Give me three weeks. And then we have Jeff asking for a take on the DTCC collateral rule that basically says that bitcoin ETF's cannot be used for collateral in posting to the DTCC. This store is a nothing burger, which is why we didn't talk about it. It doesn't actually apply to really anything.

Matt Walsh
So DTCC participants have to put up collateral in order to settle trades. But it's a. This isn't like you can't get margin on your. On your fidelity, bitcoin, ETF on interactive brokers or something like that, that you can still do. So I don't think that this really matters whatsoever, this DTCC collateral issue.

I think people got all in a frenzy for about 6 hours on this. Teddy Fusaro has a really good tweet storm about this and just how little this matters. Cat Sullivan says, exciting moment for this OTB fan. Ran into Matt Walsh in Boston on a Friday. Oh, yeah.

At the airport. Thanks for. Thanks for listening. Oh, yeah. So Adam Parrish says exodus.

Nic Carter
He talks about the exodus listing, exodus wallet. And I think there is some drama around this because wasn't that listing blocked by the SEC or something? I'm not up to speed on this one. No. Yeah, I had a bunch of people dm me about this.

So Exodus is a wallet provider. They're listing on the niceie, which was they were meant to uplist on Thursday, but it was delayed. So a lot of people dm me and felt that this was sinister, but we don't know. So that's the thing that happened. All right, we'll look into it.

Matt Walsh
You know what I think we should put as a question to our warpcast. We need to bring this warpcast community up a little bit. So I think we will have a prize for. Here's the challenge. Put your top three commencement speakers.

So top three people. And the criteria is someone to represent the digital asset industry writ large. Not just one asset. Someone to get up there and say, why public blockchains matter to the world and tell that story to an Ohio state sized crowd without getting booed off the stage, talking about ayahuasca and all that stuff. What's the prize?

Well, the prize is that we will send you some merch, actually, some free on the brink merch, TBD on what it is. But there's a bunch of stuff being workshopped. That is a signif that's real. That's a real prize. Yes.

So we will. And we'll read your handle on air if you want us to. Okay. Actually, get on. Speaking of merch, someone sent me something here.

There's a Satoshi pickleball club t shirt. They want you to wear it. I think. I think that's a reasonable request. Well, just wear it.

Nic Carter
What? On our audio podcast. You know, so, I mean. Okay, so I'll put it on, and then I'll tell people I'm wearing it, but they won't really be able to see it. We'll take a picture.

Matt Walsh
We'll put it on warp cast. Okay. All right. We'll do that. Okay.

Nic Carter
I accept the shirt. All right, everybody, that's it for the week. Everybody have a safe and healthy weekend, and we will see you on Monday.

Matt Walsh
Everybody have a safe and healthy weekend, and we will see you on Monday.