Weekly Roundup 05/24/24 (ETH ETF, FIT21 Act, Anti CBDC bill) (EP.530)

This episode delves into a whirlwind week in cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation, highlighting significant legislative movements and their implications.

1. Ethereum ETF Approval: Marking a significant milestone, the Ethereum ETF was approved, suggesting a major shift in regulatory approach and acceptance of crypto assets.
2. FIT21 Act Passed: This act, passing with significant bipartisan support, outlines clearer regulatory frameworks for crypto, distinguishing roles between the CFTC and SEC.
3. Anti CBDC Bill's Advancement: This bill aims to regulate the creation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), requiring congressional approval before the Federal Reserve can proceed, emphasizing privacy and decentralization.
4. Political Dynamics: The episode highlights a changing political landscape where crypto has become a bipartisan issue, with unexpected allies and opponents across the political spectrum.
5. Community Impact: The active involvement of the crypto community and its influence on political and regulatory outcomes are underscored as crucial to the week's successes.

1: Introduction

The hosts introduce the episode's focus on recent monumental changes in crypto regulation. Nick Carter: "This has been the most remarkable political crypto week of all time, bar none."

2: Major Developments

Detailed discussion on the Ethereum ETF approval and the passing of significant acts like the FIT21 and Anti CBDC bills. Matt Walsh: "This might have been the biggest stunner... Financial Innovation Technology for the 21st Century act passed by an enormous margin."

3: Political Reactions

Analysis of political reactions, highlighting the shifting support within Congress and the broader political implications. Nick Carter: "It's clear the Warren wing of the party has totally lost power."

4: Community and Future Steps

The role of the crypto community in influencing these outcomes and thoughts on future regulatory steps. Matt Walsh: "Keep the foot on the gas. What we're doing as an industry is working."

1. Stay Informed: Regularly update yourself on crypto regulations and their implications.
2. Community Engagement: Participate in crypto advocacy and community initiatives to influence policy.
3. Understand Political Landscapes: Recognize the impact of political dynamics on crypto regulations.
4. Support Transparent Regulations: Advocate for clear and fair regulatory frameworks.
5. Promote Privacy and Decentralization: Support efforts that enhance privacy and reduce centralization in digital currencies.

Matt and Nic return for another wild week in crypto. In this episode:

Whip Emmer returns to OTB Matt’s animal problems Congress passes the SAB121 overturn Gruenberg offers his resignation and what it means for crypto In a stunning overturn the SEC approves the ETH ETF The significance of the FIT21 act The anti-CBDC bill passes the House Sponsor notes:

Decoding the Digital Dollar In Coin Metrics' State of the Network issue 260, we assess the growth and usage patterns across Coin Metrics' suite of stablecoin coverage

People

Nick Carter, Matt Walsh

Companies

Coinmetrics

Content Warnings:

None

Nick Carter
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 two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis.

Matt Walsh
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. 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.

Nick Carter
All right, today's metrics minute, we're talking about stable coins. Total market value of stablecoin stands above 160 billion, with tether leading 112 billion. Total supply and USDC at 32 billion. Ethereum holds 54% of stablecoin network share, followed by TRON at 36, ETH rollups at 4.6, and Solana Avalanche, BSc holding 4.5. Between them.

The weekly adjusted transfer value for stablecoins exceeded 50 billion in April of this month. USDT on Ethereum and Tron accounting for half of this. As Coinmetrix has pointed out in the past, USDC activity peaks during us market hours, while USDT sees more activity on asian and european markets. That is your metrics minute. I mean, what a week?

Matt Walsh
I cannot say that enough. This has been the craziest week in my career in this industry. Yeah, I mean, ditto. This has been the most remarkable political crypto week of all time, bar none. I think it's probably the best week that the industry has ever had from a political perspective.

Nick Carter
Unden. Undeniably. It's not just, like, one or two things. It's five things. Yes.

Far as I can tell. I don't even know start. I mean, SAB 121, ETF, fed act, sterling burger signs anti CBDC trauma, braces crypto. Biden waves veto on fit. Biden comes out with the statements.

That's eight things. Now. Now we've eight things. It's eight things. I mean, what the hell?

Matt Walsh
Chuck Schumer coming out against the administration. Turn cloaks like something huge has changed. I don't even know what it is. The political. I mean, we'll.

The political calculus has completely changed. I mean, there's a lot of people to be thankful for, I can tell you that. I so you know, we're recording this at, what, 10:00 at night on Thursday, which is much later than we normally do, but the information is just happening so fast. Yeah, we couldn't, we couldn't record earlier. We put out a, we put out an episode with Whip Emmer, emergency episode with Emmer covering the week's developments, and that episode became obsolete 3 hours later because the ETHF is approved.

Nick Carter
Right. That is, Emmer is just a national treasure. I think he is. He's just a textbook example of someone who has actually spent the time to understand the technology and just didn't, you know, he didn't dismiss it. He just spent the time to get a lot smarter about it.

Matt Walsh
And I would say at this point, him and McHenry are some of the most knowledgeable people about blockchain technology out there, period. I'm not even just saying. Politicians shout out to Emmer, leaving the house floor after presiding over the vote of his bill, the anti CBDC act, and jumping on, on the brink. You know, I love it. Priority.

Nick Carter
That's a man calling priorities. Gary Gensler Worthless. He's calling Marty Gruenberg. What do you call him? A rat.

Yeah, bombs. I think I. What? He was so fired up. I mean, Marty Greenberg is a bum.

He's bum for, for sure. And, you know, he didn't even resign. I asked the question wrong in the episode. I said, what do you make of his resignation? He didn't actually resign.

He said, I'll resign if Biden picks his successor. Yeah, Marty Groomberg is a bum. He sucks in like, five different ways. Yeah. Terrible.

Matt Walsh
All right, let's try to go through the normal flow of this podcast, and then we'll spend a bulk of the time after the deals talking about just what has happened, because I do have a take on how we got here. I think that's important to kind of stitch this together in terms of the order of events. And it's not like Joe Bowden woke up one day and just decided he was going to be pro crypto. So there's been a confluence of events here. I do have to give a quick animal update.

This has been a thing. So I was cooking dinner, and I looked out onto my deck, and there was a rabid raccoon on my porch this evening. So I just had to get that across. How do you know it was rabid? I mean, it was walking around like it was drunk.

It was like stumbling around, and it was sniffing at my, I mean, it was a big raccoon. We just had a huge rainstorm too. So I don't know if that had something to do with it.

Nick Carter
The rain just somehow in call cakes, animals with rabies. I don't know, it was like a huge storm. So I don't know if that's. They come out made. And he was confused because usually you don't see raccoons that it was still light out.

Matt Walsh
It was like 630. And it. It walked up the stairs of my deck almost like I was trying to get into my house. It was sniffing around my grill. And the thing was enormous.

It was like a small dog and clearly washer. Maybe it's homeless because of the flood and it was looking for a new home. It's possible. It so really freaked out my kids, though. I thought it was trying to get into the house, and it kind of was, if we're being honest.

Nick Carter
So last week you had a rat in your wall somewhere that had died and it's decomposing in a smelly manner. Right? Yeah, I didn't. I didn't talk about that on the podcast. I don't want to talk about that.

That's okay. That's better. That's better. There is something. I've had a tough go that attracts animals and in a negative way, like, in a sense, I was doing a.

Matt Walsh
Lot better in the city. Yeah. This rural move, you've been just. The wildlife, the fauna has come for you repeatedly. I just need better.

I don't know. I don't know who to call to get rid of some of these things. It's. There's not. I just need a jack of all trades person that will protect my home from turkeys, apparently.

Now raccoons. Definitely. The mice thing. Yeah. I mean, I live in a house that was built in the 18 hundreds is part of the issue.

Nick Carter
You need weaponry. You need to train yourself and learn how to combat these creatures. Well, that's underway elsewhere in our content. This week, you sat down with Keone of Monad at the SCB Ten X redefine tomorrow conference. That was great.

Matt Walsh
That was a lot of fun. I do this SCB Ten X conference every year, and it's one of my favorite events. I get some great, great folks at this conference. I realized while I was interviewing Keoni that I call it Monad. I call it Monad.

I'm really interchangeable on it. I mean, it's one of our bigger investments ever. And I really can't say it. Which one is it? I should know.

I don't know. We should. Both of us should know. Frankly, I think it's Monad. Yeah, I agree.

Nick Carter
But I also say Monad. I think it might be a british thing you don't have. I don't know. I was just. I.

Matt Walsh
I think I just figured if we go 50 50 on it, then half the time I would be right. It's not a common word at all. It's not now. It's not. Well, but a lot of fun.

Nick Carter
Let's dig into the deals. First up, we have Farcaster, of course, there the blockchain based social media platform. There is 150 million from paradigm on Dresen and Han. Then we have plume, which is a layer two blockchain for real world assets. They raise $10 million from Han, galaxy, reciprocal SV, angel, and a number of others.

Then we have CISC, they're a zero knowledge hardware company. They raised 12 million from Hashke and OKX Ventures. Blockless, which is a DPin project, raised 8 million from NGC M 31 and no limit holdings. Then we have Elfie, a derivatives trading platform. They raise 5 million from IDG capital and Kucoin.

Matt Walsh
Then we have Weather FM. This is a decentralized platform for weather monitoring. So they raised 7.7 million from lightspeed faction, borderless placeholder consensys, and others. This is a cool one. So we've talked to these guys.

So they have these devices so you could, like, put them at your home. And it monitors the weather. And the idea is to kind of build a network of. I'm kind of one of these weather nerds. Like, I used to love that dark, dark sky.

I like the weather. I like knowing if it's going to rain and exactly when it's going to rain. I do like that app. I like that app. The dark side.

Well, it's gone now. It's like, integrated into Apple. Yeah, it's an apple, right? Yeah. But it's not as good as it used to be.

Nick Carter
The weather is very unpredictable here. So you actually do need to do the advanced weather analysis because the generic forecast doesn't work. No. So we need to go one layer deeper. So maybe there's room for weather FM.

Matt Walsh
I think so. I think that's a use case. Pretty cool idea. Next up, we have kelp Dao. They're a liquid restaking platform.

Nick Carter
They raised 9 million from SCB limited, laser, digital, bankless and others. Then we have stripchain, which is an interoperability protocol that raised 10.1 million for mechanism, hypersphere and Shima. Stripchain wouldn't be the name I would have picked for that. For an interoperability protocol. Yeah, it's an interesting one.

Lastly, we aversify digital asset lending and trading platform. They acquired ather digital for an undisclosed amount. All right, so let's, let's get into it. I don't even know where to set the table here. I think we need to rewind a little bit.

Matt Walsh
So Sab 121 has been out there. Everybody has known that this is complete garbage. The bank lobby has started to get behind the crypto industry in pretty meaningful force, I would say, over the past few months because it's ridiculous that the banks cannot compete in the custody business. So that's been kind of percolating. At the same time, I don't think people are broadly aware that the crypto industry is completely flexing its muscles in Washington, DC over the past few months.

So fair shake, which is this pack, which is fighting, I would say, some of the, the most hostile crypto politicians in the world. This is now the third largest pack in the United States of America and going after some, some really interesting races. So John Tester out of Montana is really in the crosshairs. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, obviously, Katie Porter was a huge win. So the industry is really reacting to the complete overreach of the Biden administration.

The SEC, Marty Grunberg, the whole cast of characters, Elizabeth Warren. So Sab 121 comes about, Biden comes out and says he will veto this on the same day that the House is about to vote to repeal Sab 121, to allow the banks to come in, and on that same day. So then, by the way, it passed the House. So a bunch of Democrats got in support of it. Jake Otchen, Klaus up here in Massachusetts, who's a Democrat, broke ranks.

So some really brave people broke ranks almost immediately after the White House said that. Then on that same day. And I think you can't discount this as a factor. Trump came out as pro crypto and had this event at Mar a Lago where Ryan Selkus played a role. And I think you can't undersell what the impact of Trump getting on board with this.

And I'd give Selkis a lot of credit for what he did down there. All of a sudden, the calculus started to shift. So it goes to the Senate, SAb 121, this is the end of last week, and it actually passes the Senate with a bunch of democratic support, including Chuck Schumer. And so maybe I'll pause there. But where we stand on SAB 121 is that the Senate just today, so we're recording this on the 23rd, sent the bill to or the resolution to the White House.

And the White House now has ten days from today, so it's not ten days from when it passed. So will Biden veto Sab 121 or will he do the politically smart thing, which is to just tell the SEC to make the rules go away so that he doesn't actually have to act on it and everyone kind of gets what they want? So, yeah, that I hadn't considered that second possibility. That was something that Whip Emmer brought up in the podcast, too, is Biden doesn't have to back down on the veto threat, nor does he have to follow through with what would be clearly an unpopular veto. He can just tell the SEC to get rid of the rule because they work for him.

In theory, that's what he should do here. I mean, so stepping back, I mean, why does this need to be a political issue? Like, why do the Democrats need to have anti crypto as a core thing when 40 plus million Americans own crypto? And there's a ton of influence in this industry. There's a lot of very politically active people as of about six months ago.

So the calculus here, I think, has totally shifted where they were just punching down on the industry for the longest time, trying to shut it down, fit in neatly with Elizabeth Warren running the country on the financial services side of the house, which she has been doing since Biden was elected. But now I think that calculus has completely shifted where, you know, John Tester is not going to have a job. Like, that's just the facts. Like, John Tester is going to lose in Montana. They have a very good chance of losing Ohio for the Democrats with Sherrod Brown.

And they should, and everyone should really be zoned in on those two races because, you know, John Tester is someone who said, and I quote, it's all bullshit when talking about crypto back in 2022. He said, I don't think it passes the smell test. I can't figure out who supports it. Well, guess what, John? You're about to figure out who supports it because you're going to be looking for a job here in November.

So I just don't get this. You know, it makes zero sense for Biden to have this as a weight on his shoulders heading into the election. I mean, he's got enough issues. SAP 121 in particular is a very stupid hill to die on because. Stupid hill.

Nick Carter
It only makes sense if you think crypto is bad and you want it done exist. But if you think crypto will exist and you want it to be done, safely, then you would want the big banks to be able to custody it, the banks that are the most highly regulated that the government has the most insight into. So from the generic democratic perspective, if you want surveillance and more control, etcetera, you would want crypto to be the purview of the banks. You wouldn't want to be pushed out at the fringes to niche boutique firms. So it never made sense to me that the Democrats were so opposed to it.

Jake Trevince get an interesting tweet, I think, saying a lot of folks, progressives, I think, thought crypto would just go away after FTX. Then they didn't plan for the world in which it came back, and so they thought it would go away. So ridiculous. They thought it was just dead. So, okay, they launched their final volleys against it.

Okay, crypto's dead, it's gone, whatever. And now it came back and they weren't ready. And I think that's it. They weren't prepared for the political might, the cloud that's being thrown around, and for the genuine grassroots support that's evidenced by the crypto industry. And now the bank lobby.

I mean, yep, you persuaded the bank lobby to join the side of crypto. Good job. Yeah. Odd bad fellows. So heading into the week, Sab 121 was kind of a good way to end last week.

Matt Walsh
Go into this week. Monday got absolutely crazy. Monday might have been the craziest day that I've had in this crypto industry. So Marty Grunberg, first of all, in the morning, comes out and Sherrod Brown came out and just said, kind of lost faith in this guy. He comes out and says that he will step back.

Caveat once a replacement is found. So rip, Marty. I mean, one of the worst public servants to ever do it. I mean, our orchestrated choke, .1.0 shutting down all sorts of industries that were ill favored, I would say, by the Obama administration, all this came to light. This guy's been running the FDIC for 13 years, 13 out of the last, what, like 18 years.

It's just absolutely remarkable. So he's been orchestrating a choke point, two point zero to shut down anyone who is banking the crypto industry. So really putting pressure on the bank, saying, you're going to have enhanced investigations into your bank if you're doing anything with these crypto companies. So you've seen a bunch of banks just wholesale leave this industry as a result. So he's going away.

So that was a good enough thing to happen. Yeah, that was the thing that gave me more joy than any of these other things that happened. And it's because I've been on a kind of a one man hate campaign against Grooveberg for over a year now. But, yeah, I mean, this guy's the first ballot hall of famer in terms of worst bureaucrat of all time. I mean, really?

Yeah. Joke boy 1.0, going after perfectly legal industries in an unconstitutional way, gets called out, okay, stops that choke, .2.0 tries to kill crypto, tells the banks, again with insinuations and threats of examinations, not with any rulemaking. Tells the banks they can't service crypto, moves on to fintechs. People don't know this, but if you're fintech, your bank, and you provided services to fintechs or embedded finance, you're at a much higher risk of FDIC examination. They're trying to quash all innovation in financial technology, not just crypto.

Nick Carter
And it's very far reaching effects. It's terrible for any us firm that's doing anything remotely interesting and needs banking, which is every firm, everyone needs banking. It's a catastrophe, honestly. And then meanwhile, he presides over this culture of sexual harassment and bullying and abuse. One 10th of the staff at the FDIC reported some kind of misconduct.

One 10th. That's, that's, that number is almost hard to wrap your mind around that he was. And those are just people that came. For harassment, you know? Yeah, it's just crazy.

Matt Walsh
It's crazy. And so he's guy responsible. I mean, it's, you know, it's ultimately his responsibility. He, the fact that he is still in that seat right now is actually a national scandal. Same with Gensler, who moving to Gensler, also on Monday, comes out and says that he is in disagreement with this Saab 121.

He thinks that it makes everything, whatever, less safe. His rationale makes absolutely no sense. So fast forward to the afternoon. We, I guess we need to, you owe someone a tungsten cube here, because we have long been saying, as far as we understand, the SEC has had almost no engagement with these Ethereum ETF sponsors. So the asset management firms that are trying to launch ETH, ETF's, we've said, look, I don't think this is going to happen.

That completely changed on Monday afternoon in a 180 degree way where I think it was Eric Balcuniss tweet that was the first thing out there publicly. But it came out that the SEC had been reaching out to the exchanges. Who applied for these 19 b four s to list these Ethereum ETF's and said, hey, it's happening. So Thursday was the deadline. They just got approved a couple hours ago.

I've never seen anything like this. Clearly, the Biden administration must have leaned on Gensler and said, look, buddy, you're done. You're not going to take us down with you here. Like you're on a one man crusade to get your name in the headlines. I don't know what your goal is.

You're not getting treasury secretary, but you're not going to destroy my chance of having a second administration. Give these guys the EtH ETF's and just shut the hell up about it. I mean, it's completely remarkable. And yeah, I did lose a tungsten Q bet to Justin Drake as of a few hours ago, but that's fine. I think my call was still right.

Nick Carter
In most ordinary universes, it's just we happen to live in the universe in which Trump embraced crypto at an NFT dinner at Mar a Lago and the Biden admin melted down and panicked. Yeah. And did a 180 like, okay, that's fine. I'm happy to lose that bet. And we're thrilled to have the Eth ETF's.

Matt Walsh
I very much looking forward to my bit wise and fidelity EtH ETF's. Eth completely deserves an ETF. Obviously, the only people that seem upset about it are the no coiners and weirdly, laser eyes bitcoin. People thought that bitcoin had some regulatory baptism the SEC, and that was why it was special. It's like, yeah, no, the case for bitcoin has nothing to do with the SEC.

Nick Carter
It has nothing to do with bitcoin getting a financial instrument, eth not getting that high profile. Bitcoin is believed in this. Just a little sidebar. But that's insane. So, yeah, I mean, the calculus internally to Biden admin completely changed.

I wanted, I don't know who is responsible. I want to book to be written about this. I mean, someone senior in the admin took note of the polling. Maybe the fact that there is clearly tons of grassroots, pro crypto, maybe even single issue voters. They looked at the reaction to Trump statement.

I mean, I don't know what it is that they saw, but this ETh thing was not trending in a positive direction, and it was a total reversal at the 11th hour. Well, it probably was not John Donnenberg, who's an economic advisor to Biden, who used to be Warren's chief of staff, because he's clearly not smart enough to see this. But I'm pulling up the election betting odds right now, which is the aggregation of all these betting markets. Trump is 52.4% against Biden, 39%. These guys were dead even about ten days ago.

Matt Walsh
So it's clear. I'm not saying crypto is all of this, but there's clearly a trend here. And so it is not inconceivable to me that someone at the White House picked up the phone and called Gensler and said, just stop. Yeah, I mean, I'm very curious as to who the White House operative was. I mean, I imagining it wasn't Biden himself, the made the call.

Nick Carter
Maybe it was, but it shows that the Warren wing of the party has totally lost power. And they had this iron grip on the financial regulatory apparatus within the Biden admin. They were making all those key appointments, they were all war nights, former aides, former staffers, et cetera. Something's changed. Warren no longer has that vice like grip on the Biden admin, and good.

Matt Walsh
For some of these democrats that have voted for SAB 121. And we'll get over to the fit 21 bill next because it's really just the will of the people is being expressed here through the Congress, which is what, what you need. Yeah, that's democracy. That's how it works. So, so anyways, uh, eth ETF, so real quick on this.

So the 19 B four s got approved, uh, that is from trading and markets division at the SEC. The s one s are not approved yet, probably because the SEC was ready to deny this. And I, I would love for someone to put out a FOIA request to actually see if the denial is something that can be produced. Because it's clear from where I sit that the SEC was getting ready to say that Ethereum is a security and that the only way it can trade is on this rinky dink Prometheum, which rip. Prometheum, by the way, couldn't happen to a nicer group of guys.

Nick Carter
But that business play didn't work out, Dunzo. Like that thing doesn't exist anymore. So anyways, I think they were going to deny this, but now that it is approved at the 19 b four level, it's not like it will start to trade right away. So division of corporate finance needs to approve the s one s of all of the, I believe it's eight issuers. My guess is that takes, I don't know, at least four, six, eight weeks.

Matt Walsh
So it's going to take a little bit of time here, mostly because the SEC was about to deny it, and then couldn't. So that's not even all the news. I mean, there's more. We haven't even talked about fit 21. Let's get into it.

This might have been the biggest stunner. So fit 21. Financial innovation technology for the 21st Century act market structure bill that was brought to a House vote and passed by an enormous margin, 279 to 136, 71. Democrats breaking ranks and voting for the measure. And this bill basically carves out CFTC versus SEC duties and market oversight stipulates, when something's a security, when it's not, when it's commodity.

Nick Carter
This is the regulatory clarity we've been waiting for. Is it perfect? No. Is it comprehensive? No.

But is it a great start? Certainly. I think this is. If you get a market structure bill, look, the contents of this bill are going to change. But if you get oversight, that can allow banks, broker dealers to play in this market somehow, and if you can allow for it to be very clear what is a security and what is a commodity, I think you get, you know, I don't know, 85% of the way there on full blown regulatory clarity, maybe, maybe even more so.

Matt Walsh
To me, this one has always been kind of the holy grail of a concept. I'm not saying I like every piece of the bill. It's not a perfect bill, and I think it will be reworked as it moves into the Senate. However, I just didn't see this coming. I mean, for the longest time, I think the view was we're going to try to do stable coins and then maybe market structure, but market structure probably gets kicked into the next administration because we're not going to be able to get enough Democrats on board with it.

I mean, there's 71 Democrats that voted for this thing. The average age of the yes votes on the Democrat side was 51. The average age of the no votes was 63. I mean, this thing totally broke along age, really. Not even really Democrat or Republican.

It's a bipartisan consensus here that Congress needs to act because the SEC has failed. So I'm just super impressed. And the fact that McHenry was able to push this up a hill for as long as he did is also impressive. I remember I actually met McHenry about two years ago, and, you know, he said that he was going to bring this forward. He had a market structure bill, and I was deeply skeptical, but kudos to him.

I mean, I. It's just an incredible feat of, I don't know, being a good politician, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, if you'd asked us a couple of months ago we would have said probably the only bill we could maybe expect this year be stablecoin bill. Right.

Nick Carter
And this one came through. Saab 121 overturn came through. Now keep in mind this needs to go through the Senate. There needs to be a sister bill in the Senate. My understanding is there hasn't been as much work done in the Senate on a bill.

So we're not at the finish line yet. But nevertheless, I mean, it's a strong statement of intent, strongly bipartisan, whether it's in this administration. And Biden also said he wouldn't veto it. Speaker two, that's a key thing. Yeah, we missed that.

Yeah. So whether it's in this administration or the next, things are trending in an exceptionally positive direction in Congress. And crypto is a priority. You know, they could be passing bills on anything, but they're doing crypto. All right.

Matt Walsh
And lastly, the anti CBDC bill passed the house. I don't have the final margin, but that happened a couple of hours ago here too. So this is whip Emmer's bill basically prohibits the Fed from doing a CBDC without explicit approval from the, from the Congress. So, you know, you don't want to turn into a dystopian place with full state surveillance like some other nations. So I thought that this one made a good deal of sense.

It's hard for me to tell if that one's going to go forward in the Senate too. But that passed the House. Yeah. So this is a more partisan bill. I believe the three Democrats voted for it in the House.

Nick Carter
Senate, obviously being Democrat controlled, would likely have a harder time getting through the Senate, but still totally agree with the spirit of the bill. Frankly, I don't see cbdcs coming to fruition in this country, but might as well pass some insurance legislatively as well, making sure that if they do exist, they behave like cash. They have privacy built in, which, you know, whenever you look at the CBDC plans from governments, they don't talk about privacy. They talk about surveillance and the need to have KYc and AML, etcetera built into the CBDC. So people always say this, if cash was invented today, it'd be illegal.

I think that's very true. Whenever central bankers talk about cbdcs, they never talk about making cash. And that's what this bill asked for. So, you know, I guess my message overall is just keep the foot on the gas. What we're doing as an industry is working.

Matt Walsh
The fact that so many people have donated to fair shake, the fact that so many people have donated to stand with crypto. The fact that so many people are going on to stand with crypto and sending letters to their elected officials, it's clearly working. So the tides have completely shifted here, and it's time to get, honestly, it's just time to get rid of some of these politicians that are hostile to innovation, that are in these tight races. So best thing we can do as an industry is to continue to fight for what we believe in. And this week was a great show of what happens when you do that.

Nick Carter
Yeah, I mean, the pressure's clearly been gathering, and I think, you know, it's a multi channel approach. It's not just calling your congressman or donating, but it's making noise and being active and making your voice heard in a number of ways. You know, we hear this from folks in DC, like things that you do make a difference, even if they're not explicitly political acts. And I think we have been persuasive. I think the resurgence of crypto has been persuasive.

The fact that there's meaningful utility now, the fact they're stable coins, the fact that a good percentage of Americans hold these things, and that there's smart, sophisticated advocacy groups that make the case for crypto in Washington every day. All those things together, it's not just one thing. It's not just Trump embracing crypto. Although that was a big deal, I think. Yeah, that was a very big deal.

Yeah, I mean, they thought it was dead and we rose from the ashes again, and now we're a meaningful political force. So, yeah, keep pressing. So what's next here? So we're going to get some clarity on sab 121. That's going to totally change the market if this goes through.

Matt Walsh
I mean, you're just going to see a big entry here of a few of the bigger banks that have actually built out custody. So that's one, I guess we'll see where market structure goes. As you say, you know, you have lummis, Jill Brand in the Senate. It's not clear that that fully comports with fit 21. There's a lot of differences there.

We'll see if something comes out of the Senate, and then you just need to keep an eye on who the people are that are in charge of these agencies. I'm starting to get to the point where I'm frankly just shocked that Gary Gensler still has a job like he is such a political liability. That could be, he could be the next domino to fall. I would hope to see a stablecoin bill, and then I think another big change is just the Senate races and obviously the presidential race, but the contour and the texture of Congress. Some of those key races we saw in the primaries, some of the primaries, most of the pro crypto folks won, where there was lobbying and super PAC efforts.

Nick Carter
I would expect to see something similar in the tight Senate races where there's a clear pro crypto, anti crypto side, especially Ohio. That's one I've got my eye on. But there's a few of these. Yeah, so there's a few races that weren't mentioning. So I think Montana is the most winnable.

Matt Walsh
John Tester is probably the most hostile, besides Elizabeth Warren. Then you have Ohio, Sherrod Brown. Nevada has a really tight race where there's a very pro crypto candidate on the republican side. Sam Brown, I believe his name is. You know, you have a Pennsylvania race that's very tight, very pro crypto candidate.

So there's a bunch of these races that are, I would say, increasingly important here. Well, keep going. Keep pushing. Keep. Keep the ground game moving.

All right, so it's getting late. I think we're gonna call it. Might even catch the end of this Celtics game here. Looks like we're up big. So, city of champions striking again here.

Nick Carter
We watched the Celtics game. They lost, though, to the heat. Yeah, that was a tough loss. Yeah, well, they always drop one, but I don't know. Pacers were a good draw, I think, for the Celtics here, so.

Matt Walsh
Looking forward to that. All right, everyone, this was a great week. Everyone, keep it up out there. Brink nation doing a great job. Have a safe and healthy weekend, and we will see you on Monday.