Welcome back everyone. I am Cass PNC.
I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett
Tomlin. How are you today?
I'm doing well. How are you, Cass?
I'm good. We're joined by a special guest
today, Joey Politano, who does the Apricotos Economics
Substack. He is a economic analyst and
data journalist. Joey, it's wonderful to have you
on. How are you?
It's amazing to be here. Long time listener, first time
appearance. Yeah, happy.
Happy to be here. Awesome.
Well, so we wanted to talk to you about the incoming
administration and how that is going to possibly affect
cryptocurrencies, maybe including some of our favorites
like Tether. We know Lutnick is going to be a
part of this administration. We touched on that in one of our
previous episodes a bit. But I think you probably know a
little bit more about all of these people and can tell us,
inform us a little bit more about what to expect over the
next four years. So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know how you want to start it.
If you want, you can start with Donald Trump, the man himself,
and kind of what you expect his cryptocurrency policies to be.
I think everyone's going to start should wind back like a
couple years. I remember right about 3 years
ago, I was, I still am living near DCI, remember going into
Union Station in DC like the day after FTX fail.
And Union Station is so crazy because they have these giant,
you know, LED billboard. And so it was like wall to wall
Sam Bankman Freed's face on an LED billboard the day after he
had been the day after the exit failed.
And then we had known that like this, you know, the Justice
Department was going to be going after him and all this stuff was
going to happen. Before that.
There was like a big push in DC to kind of like normalize
crypto. You know, they were outsider
industry. They were then like regulated.
Then they have like, OK, we're doing these big conferences,
we're inviting such and such representative.
They're trying to like put on a normal face.
And the FTX thing just like totally blew all that up.
Nobody wanted, it was like radioactive and no one wanted to
be associated with crypto because association with crypto
was indirectly association with FDX, which was, you know, and
then Fast forward to this was the moment that I they had this
realization this year. I was on the metro.
And if you're on the DC metro, you get very weird ads.
It's like half defense contractors and like, like you
should get an STD check. But I remember going into
Capital South, which is right near Capitol Hill and seeing
like massive wall to wall ads from crypto company.
It was all like it was a collaborative push about like
this is the future of money. But and this is 2024.
I'm like, what is this? Who did I travel back in time to
2021? And that was the moment for me
where I was like, OK, they're going to be pushing really hard
this election, and they really did.
And so this is something I was excited to talk to you about.
I was talking with Cass about this before we get on.
I was reading your article from November 10th, 2022 where you
were talking about like the failure of FDX are right around
this same era. And there's a line in there.
Bankers, regulators, and lawmakers will likely remember
FT XS fall when thinking about crypto for the foreseeable
future. And at that time that was very
strongly cast in my stance as well.
You can find a whole bunch of me doing long monologues about how
I'm like. This might meaningfully change
crypto regulation forever because it can't be ignored.
We also had one of our good friends, Elizabeth Lopato, who
is a journalist at The Verge. We had her on and she was
covering the Sam Bankman free trial.
And I think part of what I remember during one of our
episodes with her, she specifically said that she
thought the F the collapse of FTX was going to be a moment
where it takes years and years and years and years for
cryptocurrency to come back at all, if it even ever does in
America. And I was like, I'm not sure
about that, but I guess we'll see.
And lo and behold, here we are and.
Now we have seen, and so like you're talking about, Bitcoin is
at a new all time high, ads are everywhere, and the crypto
industry spent heavily on the last election.
Was that like really the driving force that prevented lawmakers,
regulators and stuff like that from dealing with crypto?
Was it the crypto industry making it such an election
issue? Or is there something else you
kind of attribute that shift to? I would say in a broad sense,
it's clear like there's a public opinion shift back.
This is like why, if you remember Harris when she was
campaigning, said some like very weird things that were like
vaguely pro crypto. You may remember that famous ad
where she was like, I'm going to protect.
I think it was Latino like the households wealth by by like
securing crypto. And that was such a weird
moment. But to me it was like, OK, this
is clear in all the polling that they're they're picking up on
this like increased affinity for the stuff.
Again. The second thing is the spending
is was like a really big issue and it was both spending
directly on like competitive partisan elections and also
spending on on primaries. I don't want to say you can't
ever say like the money killed this person's you know, but but
like Katie Porter, who is the. Money killed.
Katie Porter, who is like very, very vocal crypto critic, had a
lot of money spent against around the California primary.
Jamal Bowman was like very left wing crypto guy, had a lot of
money spent on him in the primary.
And then as you've got towards the general election, you had a
ton of like I would say there's one camp of like there's
actually a lot of bipartisan spending on crypto.
Most of it from was focused on like moderate people in swing
states who can't afford to lose voters.
And the examples that I would give are the two Democratic
senators who won. So Slotkin and Gallego, who are
very close races, you know, managed to win states that
Harris lost. They did so in part because they
had a lot of crypto money backing them in PACs.
And what was actually very funny is the day after the election,
you saw a lot of people on like crypto Twitter who were like,
man, we shouldn't have done this bipartisan nonsense.
We should have backed the Republican candidates in every
every race. You know, getting the like
crypto moderates on the Dem side was a mistake because we may
have they may have saved Slotkin and there you go seats.
Those races were extremely close.
But the other thing that was like a really big example to me
was there was a pack that was basically partisan Republican
pack. But even that I feel like is
almost giving it too much credit.
It was the anti Sherrod Brown pack.
Sherrod Brown was this Democratic senator from Ohio.
Was this defend American jobs? Defend American jobs.
Yes, the most brilliant marketing by those people who
came up with that one. With its left, with its
Democratic correspondent was protect progress, I think or?
Something I haven't written down here, I have like a whole yes,
protect progress. So the bipartisan 1 was called
fair shake. The, the Democratic or mostly
Democratic one was called Protect Progress and then the
the Republican one was called Defend American Jobs.
And also to be clear, how has no one picked up Defend American
jobs yet? Like how is that still on the
table that no one could defend American jobs back?
It's been 10 years since the United guys, you guys.
Don't hurt babies pack or something, right?
Right. But this is almost all spending
against Sherrod Brown. Brown, who is the chair of the
Senate Banking Committee and who is AI, would say prominent
crypto skeptic and obviously the man in charge of writing
regulation. Like, he's the most prominent
congressional lawmaker for regulation.
And Ohio is a very Republican state.
Brown is a guy who, despite being a Democrat, always ran
ahead of Democratic presidents and was able to, you know, hold
on in Ohio for so long. And then Moreno, the guy who
beat Sherrod Brown, it's like he's a car dealership owner and
he founded a crypto company. And he like, he's the exact kind
of guy that you would expect a Crypto PAC to really love.
And that was like a really big victory for them as they spent I
think $40 million in one race. It dwarfs any other race they
competed in. It was specifically the.
Target. The next closest was, I think
the 10 million or so spent against Katie Porter in the
primary. I think one of the Senate races,
one of the excuse me, one of the other Senate races might have
come close, but there was like, right.
It was, you know, serious and and that was like a message that
I think some people in Washington heard very clearly,
which is that if you're like marginal, you know, a crypto PAC
can't like unseat Elizabeth Warren.
But if you are a swing state senator who's up for Election
2026, they can and will spend a lot of money if you're like, not
playing ball. Would it make you feel better to
know that there's reporting today that fair shake between
the money they didn't spend in the donations they've already
got has 106 million already for the midterms?
Make me feel better that actually Bennett that might.
That's a lot for one back in the midterm elections.
Right, like the other thing to to to be clear here is like
campaign spending can kind of feel like like money doesn't
matter. Like there's just 10s of
billions of dollars being spent. Like, So what is it all matter?
That's true at like a presidential level, you know,
Trump raises a zillion dollars, Harris raises a zillion dollars.
They spend it against each other and it kind of cancels out.
And but at like a Senate level, even like that amount of
spending can can move the needle significantly.
And so you can imagine, like, imagine you're Senator Rosen or
imagine you're Ossoff. Senator Ossoff in Georgia who's
up for re election in two years. Georgia's a very swing state.
You're like, you know, you're the the first Democrat in a long
time to have hold held the seat and now you got to fight back.
Are you a little scared now of like, what if, you know, they
run some psycho crypto? What if they run Purdue and
Loffler? We'll get to Senator Loffler was
a very big crypto advocate who maybe has a personal reasons for
being an advocate that we'll get into.
But like she could possibly run for Senate again.
Do you want to be fighting down her?
And then like a 30 million spending from whatever fair
shake pack or whatever? Or do you just say, well, I
don't actually, I don't need to take a stance on crypto
regulation issues to me like move on to to other things.
I mean that that sounds pretty pessimistic, but it's also
sounds totally reasonable to me. Like, I guess that kind of
sounds like this is going to now be one of these issues that is
at best for critics and skeptics, not touched anymore,
not discussed, as opposed to like, like, you're not going to
see it Like you're saying if you're in, if you're somewhere
like Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania, why bother talking
about cryptocurrency at all? Like, you know, it seems like
you're asking for problems. If you're going to be like,
well, I think that Tether is bad, then why?
Like don't just shut your mouth, you know?
I think that's the message that a lot of people are getting
because it's, it's one of those issues where it's very low
salience for most people. You know, people the say 60% of
people who like, dislike crypto, it's just not a thing that they
think about on a day-to-day basis.
And it's not something that they're like forming their
voting opinions on, you know, but there's a like entrenched
few percent of people who own a decent amount of crypto assets
and have an affinity for the stuff.
And then there's this giant pool of money on it.
So like, why go against the giant pool of money, right?
And it's like at some level, like you're if you're senator
from Nevada, you're going to have like very weird opinions on
gambling that have, you know, little to do with your internal
logic on what if gambling's good or not.
And a lot to do with whether the fact that you're the senator
from Nevada. And I think there's going to be
like increasing amounts of that too.
This was another thing where we'll get into, but like there's
a lot of crypto stuff in North Dakota right now.
And that's like a very big. Wyoming.
Wyoming is another one, right? So these are very small states
that obviously punch way above their weight in the Senate.
You know, if you are the senator from North Dakota, do you really
want to like bother one of the four industries that like your
states economy runs off of or are you just going to.
I don't know if you've heard like this is one of the things
that I remember someone mentioning either on blue.
I think it was on Blue Sky where they said like you don't have to
like the robber barons or the train barons, you know, from
back in, in history, back in the old days of the, you know, the,
the late 1800s. Or mid 1800s.
Yeah, you don't have to hand it to them exactly.
But one of the things they did was they did create
infrastructure and jobs like you, they might not have been
the best jobs in the world. They might have been paying
people in company script. They might have been doing all
kinds of shady stuff to make a bunch of money, right.
However, however, again, and you do not have to hand it to them,
but they were, they were building infrastructure and
creating jobs versus you reflect on like these cryptocurrency CEO
billionaires. And there's many of them now who
are influencing politics, buying politicians and all of this
stuff. And it's like, So what are you
bringing to Texas? Like 11 jobs to Texas or
something Like what are you bringing to North Dakota?
Your, your, your billions of dollars to give to a bunch of
politicians and nothing else. Like I, it's, it's just to me,
it's, it's, it's really depressing in that it's like,
OK, so here's this new class of hyper wealthy people who offer
absolutely nothing else besides their wealth.
And I think I mean, part of the tough part is like if you were
the Vanderbilt, you know, a lot of your money was tied up in
physical infrastructure. So you had, you know, you built
a railway line from Albany to Cincinnati.
You now are stuck dealing with the people in Albany IN
Cincinnati because you own that railway line.
If you're, you know, crypto billionaire, like you're
explicitly picking places because they're flexible and you
can move to them and and blah, blah, blah, like your wealth is
wholly transferable. There's very little physical
cost and even the like data center stuff, which is really
big in Texas and North Dakota, like that's very movable, you
know, the primary. And the threat of like, like,
it's like the Elon Musk thing too, where he classically,
right, this whole idea of like, I hate California, I'm moving to
Texas and it's like, OK, dude, but I, I can, I can perceive a
future where like what you're talking about, essentially these
states are being held hostage almost, right?
It's like, Oh, you don't like the cryptocurrency stuff?
Well, do you want the money for your political campaign or not?
Like, I don't know what to say to you because I'm not going to
give you the money. If you're opposed to us, I'll
give it to your opponent. And now, but but then again, and
different things where you can think about taxing them or other
stuff where they go like, Oh, you're going to raise taxes on
the hyper wealthy in North Dakota or something.
Well, then I guess I'm just going to fucking leave.
And then they do, right, because all of this money can just be
moved around and they can go live in the Bahamas or in the
Cayman Islands and they can transfer it out to wherever the
hell they want. And it's not the, it's exactly
what you're talking about, where it's not the same.
And I do, I do. I know I don't want to be
hyperbolic, but it feels like a crisis in governance and a
crisis for America. Truly it does for for me not
there's a hundred other bigger, more important crises that
America is facing as well. I don't want to like disregard
that, but I am saying that financial problems and the way
that Trump and the administration coming in seem to
be looking at not just cryptocurrency, but like fraud
and other aspects of finance that that you that you know
about and government where like, I see you, you talk about
government infrastructure, you talk about subways, you talk
about, you know, basic things where it's like, yeah, if we
build this out correctly, you can see how I I always talk
about Wuhan, Like Wuhan in China didn't have a subway until like
2000 or something. And now it's the ninth most used
subway in the world. Why can't we do things like that
in America? And it's like, well, because we
don't fund the government, we hate the government.
And now that's just going to get worse, right?
I think the, the, the big story that you could tell of like a
lot of industries, and I've thought about this a lot, if you
think about like, why is Silicon Valley moving rightward?
Or to be very precise here, it's not Silicon Valley because like
tech workers are still very left wing, but like, why is Silicon
Valley owners and managers moving rightward?
And I think it's to do with like this transition from being
upstart, small, very chaotic industry to now like we're fully
entrenched business interest. You know, the tech companies
obviously are different than oil companies, but they're now both
in that category of like, we are the largest companies in the
world. We're much more focused on like
defending what we have than trying to like create the, you
know, brand new product that no one's ever seen before.
I think you could tell a story of crypto that's like also kind
of in that lane where you were like, hey, this was a very anti
government, anti regulation thing.
It got so big that now it became enmeshed with all of these like
corporate interests and specifically like quasi legal
corporate stuff. We're talking about like FTX,
We're talking about like how there are things where you're
like this may technically follow the laws of the Bahamas and how
we deal with international trade.
But I, I really feel like this is, you know, missing the point
here. And previously, you could say,
well, now, you know, I, I wrote a piece, I remember in 2021
talking about this very interesting way where you're
like, you could regulate a lot of crypto because the main
access points to crypto are large companies that, you know,
fundamentally are more close to like the, the Merrill Lynch than
they are to like a decentralized platform.
And those, you know, centralized actors have won clearly.
But now we're in like the opposite, where the centralized
actors have won so clearly that now they're in control of like
all of the, the regulations. And we're going to get to like,
you know, Trump is a very big crypto guy.
You know, personally, he's made a complete 180.
He, during the campaign launched this weird coin that's not quite
a coin, but it's like aesthetically crypto, the world
liberty financial thing. And then Justin's son just
announced that he's putting like 30 million into that.
We we love Justin son on hypocritics huge.
Fans, he shows up all the guy. Where does he keep?
He literally pictures a. Newsletter today about Justin's
son investing in World Liberty Financial, where I might have
heavily implied it's a bribe. I, I say this stuff facetiously,
like all the time, but like, we made Jimmy Carter like put his
peanut farm in trust and now it's like, first of all, Trump
has this weird adjacent crypto scheme that like regular
billionaires are just investing in obviously like.
Billionaires specifically are being sued by the SEC by as much
of the token as they plan to sell, in total unlocking
millions of dollars in revenue from the thing that Trump
otherwise would not have gotten. Right, and on the flip side of
this is so there was Trump has this main vehicle that's like
the majority of his wealth now is true social, which is like
the DJT indicator. And I feel like calling it true
social is like almost a bit of a misomer.
Like ostensibly it owns true social and that's the business
model, but functionally it's just a way to like gamble on
stock market on Donald Trump that the entity and they the
Financial Times said reporting on that they were in talks to
buy bocked. What I'm saying is right, which
is a crypto company. I'm not.
Sure. You know what, I don't respect
it enough. I do not regret the error.
But Bucked, which is a crypto
company that's majority owned by Intercontinental Exchange.
Kelly Loeffler, who was the former Republican senator to
Georgia, lost the election in 2020.
She was the CEO. Her husband is the CEO of
Intercontinental Exchange. The company that owns spot,
right And so that that and you could pull up the the stock
chart. I think it's up like 150% over
the last. Week or two, which is also a
little bit wild because whatever the acquisition is going to be,
it's going to be some like strange equity for equity deal
where the backed equity holders at best are getting like Trump
media stock that's going to be hard for them to liquidate so.
It it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm not trying to say it makes
sense, trying to say. I just wanted to yell about that
briefly. Right.
But it was purely like, OK, this person who donated to Donald
Trump and is affiliated with the Republican Party has this
vehicle that can earn them a decent amount of money.
Donald Trump has this vehicle that earns him a decent amount
of money. Like let's mix those together.
And ostensibly there's like crypto connection in there in
that like bot, this does crypto stuff.
And then they're going to do, if you remember how Elon Musk was
talking about, like turning x.com into a payments platform,
like they're going to turn True Social into a crypto payments
platform. Sure.
But this is the man who is like appointing now the replacement
head of the SEC, who is the attorney general, the heads of
commerce and Treasury, which we're going to get into in a
second here, all of whom are much more pro crypto than than
any of the Biden administration folks were.
I just want to say like, it's to me, it's crazy.
I think I, I think it was a tweet from Brian Armstrong from
a couple weeks ago before I'd completely exited Twitter X,
whatever you want to call it, where Brian Armstrong said
something along the lines of like how how much money was
flowing into fair, what is it fair shake, whatever, whatever,
whichever crypto pack it was. And he was like, this is so
powerful. And then I started reflecting.
On politics at work, Mr. Armstrong.
Well, it's just, it's so crazy to me that like originally, if
you go back, I think you and you you've kind of touched on this,
Joey, is like originally they the whole concept of
cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, like this was the concept of
decentral decentralizing finance, of making it so no
nation state was controlling this currency that you could
move across borders with this money fluidly and not have to,
you know, not get called out for it and all the all this stuff
and not, not have to deal with banks and this and that.
And it's like that was the powerful part of cryptocurrency.
But now the powerful part apparently is when you donate
hundreds of millions of dollars to super PACs, like I sorry,
what the fuck are we even doing? Like what?
How is that? I it's just wild to me, But it's
now moved past. Oh, it's not just super PACs
being important and like trying to win over senators and stuff.
Now it's like, oh, we're going to have a whole fucking
administration and cabinet that loves or at worst doesn't care
about cryptocurrency. So yeah, let's get, I would
love, let's get into some of these names like you just
started mentioning. I don't know whoever you wanna
start with, feel free please. I think the best place to start
is Commerce Secretary Linux Lutnick is the first of all, to
be clear here, this is as as far as we're the most billionaire
filled like cabinet in history. I think if you totaled up the
net worth, it's it's like probably now in the closing 100
billion. Obviously if you added Elon,
who's like shadow president or whatever goes even higher.
But the Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
He has been a very pro crypto person like from day one from
from go and he's been on this like train of trying to
integrate like the cryptocurrency ecosystem into
the existing Wall Street ecosystem.
And he personally has a ton of dealings like with tether.
And this was like the the very interesting thing Tether
obviously is in that like quasi legal Gray area.
They have been, they've been prosecuted by like the I'm
trying to use that word there's. A backlog.
We've got a playlist, got a. Backlog.
There's a lot of Tether lore, but they're not the most sane
actor. And they've been, you know,
prosecuted by arms of the United States government in the past
over things that they've been investigated continually.
And then Lutnick is at commerce is one of the main arms of the
US government concerned with like, regulating international
trade. Lutnick, by the way, like Turbo
Tariff guy, he loves them. So get ready for that one.
But then immediately after this now, now there's rumors swirling
that, like Candor, Fitzgerald is trying to set up some sort of
very large Bitcoin lending fund with Tether.
Yeah, they've been working on it for the last couple months.
Right. And so this is something that's
like should be obvious conflict of interest in some sense of
like, here's the cabinet secretary working with this
legally dubious organization offshore to to for their
cumulative monetary gain. And to be clear, just to so
everyone is aware, Howard Lutnick won't stay the CEO and
head of Cantor Fitzgerald when he takes this role.
But his son is apparently in line to take over at Cantor
Fitzgerald. So the idea that like, he won't
have any influence is fucking insane.
He's going to have total power still.
Do not get me started on multi billion dollar family
businesses. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And.
I mean, similar thing of like ostensibly there is a separation
between Donald Trump the man and Donald Trump, like the business
enterprise and Donald Trump the president.
But in in practice, it's like there's much less like like.
Like there's not, there's barely even any pretext of pretending
there's distinctions between those anymore.
There was a little bit more of a distinction 8 years ago like.
People wouldn't there be a distinction He doesn't want you
to there to be any distinction like they are To him, they're
the same to us, they're the same.
I like, I don't think he the only time he doesn't want you to
conflate the two is during legal proceedings.
So. Right.
But so the example I would give is like, OK, going back to to
Loeffler, the the Georgia Senator, she was CEO of Back,
which was like owned by Intercontinental Exchange, where
her husband is the CEO. And then when she got appointed
to the US Senate, she just like resigned the position.
And then if you remember, like immediately did insider trading.
Yeah. It it, you know, it was had to
be investigated for the actions that she took in like within
seconds of getting to the Senate.
And that's part of the reason she lost the election was
because people wrote like that. That election was Loeffler and
Purdue were both like in this in Mesh in this investigation.
It was insane. I like, I, I just, I, I would
love, I, I wish we had covered it more.
I don't think we've covered it very much when it was going on.
But like, yeah, just the idea that this woman gets appointed
essentially to the Senate seat and then immediately does
corruption, like immediately, instantly sits down and does.
Corruption. It was a little bit like that
Domino meme, just in terms of how it changed the politics of
that state. Like nominate this random CEO
for this few months in the Senate and Oh no.
Right. One thing leads to another.
I think of. That like do you do you remember
the David Perdue no wrongdoing totally exonerated.
I think about that all the time. I.
Don't. This was so funny.
It was one of the IT was one of the packs in in this election
because he was also a part of this, this investigation.
And like I said, the investigation did not turn up
criminal insider trading to be clear, but like you know.
So for the lines were crossed. I think I'm right.
I think the sanctity of the United States Senate was
violated a little bit, whatever remains that and.
I too, agree that the sanctity of the United States Senate has
been violated before. But Purdue ran this ad that was
like totally exonerated, no wrongdoing.
It's a picture of him like at a farm, like smiling with his
kids. It's the most.
And so I have people use that all the time as like a my not
involved in human trafficking shirt.
That's a lot of people asking questions already answered by my
shirt. Yeah, there, there, there does
feel like there's a risk of reaching a low information voter
there who's like exonerated of what?
Lutnick is Lutnick is there at at commerce.
So we're coming back. The Treasury nom who was just
announced was is besant. And I think the key part to to
realize here is there was like kind of a chain.
Lutnick wanted to be treasury because Treasury is like
normally the more powerful position.
I think Trump personally doesn't like Lutnick which is really
funny. Like just annoyed with the guy
interpersonally. Right, yeah, they're apparently
having fights. And also Besson and and Lutnick
are apparently having a lot of fights.
But Trump and Lutnick's egos are too similar for them to get
along. Macho.
Billionaires problem for the next 4 years as people.
So Besson, who is, as far as Trump world goes, more normal,
like the bar is 1. Of the more sane individuals.
Like the bar is in the floor, but he is like, I was happy when
he got nominated because he staved off like much worse other
outcomes. He's not.
I'm not endorsing Scott much. Worse being Lutnick, basically.
The other option was Lutnick. So for SO for what it's worth.
Yeah, well, there were. There was other attempts they
were going to do something funky with trying to have like a
shadow Fed chair at Treasury. That's an insane plan they come
up with because they don't like Jerome Powell anymore, even
though you'll remember that Donald Trump is the man who
appointed Trump. I just there's.
Like famous. Leftists.
I know, I know how popular it is to hate on the Federal Reserve,
and I get it like it is. It's a it's a weird shadowy
organization. I understand that that's that
makes. People what you don't
understand? Totally.
It's easy to, it's easy to have issues with it.
I totally get that. But also, like, the way that
they've navigated 2020 on, it's hard for me to point to a bunch
of misfires. It's like, well, we're doing
pretty all right. So, like, why do we hate Jerome
Powell right now? Is it just because it's easy and
fun? It's kind of funny because
during the Trump administration, you'll remember like Trump was
constantly at odds with Powell because Powell was raising
interest rates at the top. And Trump is like wanted
interest rates to be lowers. Who just tweeted that?
Like, it's bad that they're raising interest rates.
What you're not supposed to do, that's not the president is not
supposed to directly like try to interest the federal.
Reserve, yeah. Joey, are you suggesting Donald
Trump does not believe in a true and independent federal?
Reserve. I'm I'm I'm thinking about it.
He doesn't want 1 is what is what he Yeah, it's not whether
he believes it. He doesn't want.
It but what was very funny to me was like when Powell was
appointed, that was actually like a a break with tradition.
You're supposed to, in a theoretically both sides of the
aisle are just supposed to reappoint the Fed chair unless
they've done something real bad, you know, unless there's a, a
like massive, like the economy is in a recession or like
they've done, you know, crime. Like that's the.
And so Trump not renominating Yellen was actually like a big
break with tradition. And then Biden renominated
Powell to try to keep this this chain going.
And I think like, you know, there's actually not that much
light between Powell and Yellen on the very specific narrow
issues of like where interest rates should be.
And now Trump's back in office and the guy that he appointed
last time to break traditions with, he's like, now I don't
like them anymore. But Besant, we're going back to
Besant. Besant staved off.
There was a talk of like nominating this, this guy who is
going to probably be Trump's bed pick to Treasury and having him
be like shadow Fed Trayer when he was Treasury and Besant is
not going to do that. And so that that was what I was
thankful for. But Besson is also a very pro
crypto guy. He's not like overly so, but
he's also he's another hedge fund billionaire.
He's another guy who's been very early on in the, the crypto
ecosystem. And he again, same by Trump
world standards, but like very pro crypto guy.
And being at treasury, you have a lot more control over U.S.
policy, especially on like sanctions and stuff.
So the Office of Foreign Asset Control is like a big way in
which the US government tries to rein in, let's call it non
American actors, people in the in the Bahamas or the Cayman
Islands or Singapore or whatever, who are doing things
that we think aren't quite legal.
And so sanctions enforcement and like money laundering
enforcement that falls under treasury.
And you have a guy who's like very pro crypto in that
position. And you should say pro offshore
money in general, so. Right, and Trump is also going
to get to nominate someone for. SEC Yeah, And we don't know who
that'll be, do we? We don't know that who that'll
be, Yeah. None of the rumors are good.
None of the yeah, I was going to say it's all bad options so so
don't get your hopes up. To be fair, I think Gary Gensler
has been very ineffectual. I think that's kind of on from.
I think both sides feel that he's hasn't.
Hasn't, and we've talked about it on here before, but the SEC
structurally has some difficulties in terms of
becoming an effective regulator. That's true, yes.
But I think that the, the like competing influences are now at
SEC. The competing influences are
Donald Trump owns a massive publicly traded company that has
like kind of funky business value that he doesn't want
regulated. Elon Musk owns a massive
publicly traded company which has.
At least and private companies. And private companies and a
defense contractor, Yeah. Defense contractor and is
personally beefing with the SEC on like a weekly basis and.
Is actively violating his settlement terms on a daily
basis. I think about all the time how
he's supposed to have a lawyer read all of his tweets.
And he does presumably right. There's someone who's paid to be
a lawyer and read all of his tweets.
And sit in the room. Sure, but I don't believe.
That it happens after the fact. So when when when he was pushed
on this in the follow up to the original lawsuit, they admitted
like they review it eventually most of the time, sometimes and
the lawyer will sometimes say things to Elon and he ignores
them most of the time all the. Time and then third of all,
there are this large crypto lobby that is very mad at Genser
because he took like very moderate steps towards
regulating crypto or preventing all crypto currencies from like
being on the New York Stock Exchange.
And so they're going to like you said, all the names are are bad.
They're going to replace them with somebody who is much more
crypto friendly and much less like enforcement of rules
against large publicly traded companies.
Friendly. Yeah.
And this, this actually extends further than just the Cabinet,
for what it's worth, because we just had the resignation of
Damian Williams, who is at the Southern District of New York,
because Trump has already said he's going to, he's going to
appoint Jay Clayton, I believe, to the Southern District of New
York, if you're unfamiliar with Jay.
Clayton I mean, with a record like Jay Clayton's, how can you
not put him in charge of America's white collar crime?
Prosecutions. If you're unfamiliar with Jay
Clayton, the reason that Bennett is saying this is because not
and not you, Joey, I'm talking to the audience.
Jay Clayton is was running the SEC and under his tutelage.
If you think Gary Gensler didn't do anything.
They brought one case, the most obvious case in all of crypto,
against Ripple and lost. And lost yeah, yeah.
So if you if you think you're. Lost Asterisk, but fuck it, it's
a loss. Jay Clayton was the most
ineffectual. So I think we're going to start
seeing like some pretty egregious stuff just get
ignored. And it's not just, again, not
just on a cabinet level where you're like deciding policy.
Now we're talking about like laws being enforced, which is
crazy. And I will say, OK, I have a
whole like that, like It's Always Sunny board drawn up in
the notebook. Try to remember how everyone is.
But like Ripple was I think the number 2 or #3 done or to all of
these hacks. Yes, and, and they're the one,
them and A16Z are the two who've started to contribute to the
midterms already, right? God hate ASICS like even hearing
a 16 ZI just get like I just they are just the worst.
They are the worst. They have no, there's no all of
these guys. Fuck man, I this is this was
another discussion that I wanted us to have at some point.
Joey is just this idea that I'm I'm also very pro generally like
YIMBY. I'm like, I, I want things to
get built. I want, I want government to
make new things. I want infrastructure projects.
I want us to use nuclear power. I got let's let's do all the
things. And then when it's like, oh,
well, us billionaires, we're going to build a whole new city
in the middle of California. How about that?
And you're just like, wait, no, not yes to this.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on hold.
On yes, but not you. Yeah, exactly.
It's frustrating to me that they've like occupied this space
because like, they're not going to.
I feel like people have kind of bought this.
It's like, OK, well, Trump sometimes says things that are
just blatantly not true. And people like adopted this
style. And the example that I give all
the time is on the All In podcast, Jason brought up like,
oh, we need more high skilled immigration in the US.
And Trump said like, yeah, anyone who gets a a college
degree in the US should have an automatic green card.
Like those were the exact words. And I was like, first of all,
that would be like the most liberal immigration system of
almost any country on the planet.
Second of all, like you were president before and like, you
cut legal immigration. You made it harder.
And people on this podcast you like you said this knowing that
what you did, you know, four years ago is the complete
opposite. And people on the podcast are
like, I don't I don't think they believe him, but they're trying
to project this idea that other people should believe him when
he says, oh, actually, I care about abundance.
Therefore I think we should have like the best immigration system
and fix California high speed rail.
You know they don't they. Right.
It's bad that it takes so long, but like they they also don't
have any interest in like fixing the New York City subway.
And so I don't know, frustrating that they try to occupy that
issue space and Andreessen in particular.
And now we're we're getting we're going off again, Sorry,
but I apologize. Andreessen's like, he wrote that
big YIMBY and then he wrote time to build or whatever.
Yeah, he wrote it's time to build, and then he wrote a
letter. It's like the Atherton City
Council being like, you shouldn't allow this, Like no,
no buildings. Over 25 feet, it's going to cast
a shadow near the street I sometimes walk on.
You can't do that. For what it's worth, it's not
just Marc Andreessen, it's the whole every partner there pretty
much is just like the worst kind of individual building, the
worst kind of idiot. Yep.
Sorry for that tangent. I'm sorry I took us there.
I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, Joe.
So. Nominees and appointees we.
Got we got the best and and Lutnick, those are the two ways.
But keep in mind, so Bert, we just we talked a bit way earlier
about like North Dakota crypto stuff, but Doug Bergum, who's
like very tech adjacent N former North Dakota governor is going
to be at interior and he is like the purpose of him being at
interior is very has little to do with crypto.
But this is like building this story.
Chavez de Remer, who is the perennial election loser who
continues to like get appointed to hire in hire positions.
She lost the election for a congressional seat in Oregon.
She's now the the secretary of Labor.
She was backed by these. Definition of failing up right?
There you go. It's very funny if you if you go
it's look into her Laura, she's lost the same woman like three
times. She lost for like an org like an
Oregon State Senate race and then an Oregon like state
assembly race and then now this Oregon congressional race is the
same person. And she keeps getting appointed
and then the appointment ends and she's like, well, time to
run again. I gotta run for the next level
up. I can't run for the House again.
Gotta run for Senate. Now I.
Thankfully she I don't think she you win an Oregon Senate race.
I think this is the secretary of Labor to something else.
But Christy Noem who is the governor of South Dakota.
You will learn both the Dakotas very into animal lover and she
was one of the people who like as governor.
She vetoed like crypto regulations that a Republican
South Dakota, you know, state Assembly and Senate passed.
Like, this is the level that we're at.
Yeah. And then, of course, who could
forget RFK junior HHS, who thankfully, I don't think HHS
does anything related to crypto. Maybe two disasters are going to
be touched. Soon enough, let's get those
medical. Let's get all our medical
records on the blockchain, folks.
It's time. It's finally time.
First of all, we stop CMS from paying for any drugs RFK Junior
doesn't personally believe in. And then we take that money and
we send it directly to the strategic.
No more. Adderall for anyone?
It means Adderall when you can send people to forced labor
camps and that is literally an RFK junior position.
Yeah, I know. Well, the ADHD will go away if
we take the fluoride out of the water.
Guys, don't you understand how this works?
It's so funny to me that like the fluoride stuff was like the
butt of jokes in like the 70s already.
I know, you know, and we're, we're back to that.
It's crazy, but RFK is like also a big crypto guy.
He's he's gone to a ton of their conferences.
He claims that his entire net worth is in crypto and I kind of
believe him. I don't.
The brain worms are talking again.
I don't think. RFK junior has access to most of
his net worth. Like I think being a Kennedy at
this point, he, he sees an account and he's probably taking
money out of that account and put it in his allowance.
But I don't think, like, from a legal sense, that's his net
worth, you know? You, Bennett brought up the the
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which I hate that I have to verbalize.
Yeah, that's right, Cynthia. Cynthia Loomis has been talking
about this. She is a senator from Wyoming.
She's been really loud. About anyone's a good faith
actor, it's Cynthia. Loomis, yeah, definitely.
And she, for what it's worth, I think part of her pitch here for
this strategic Bitcoin reserve, part of her pitch is that we
sell off our gold reserves and move it into Bitcoin, which I
like. Those massive American gold,
Yeah. Those crazy I do.
Funny enough, we do have the I believe the largest gold
reserves in the world are American are American are.
They really? I thought we've been passed
though. I believe so.
I mean, it's just, it's just like vaults at Fort Knox, NY Fed
that we and and Fort Knox and we're like, don't we don't do
really anything with I mean. This is so funny because it's
like you should sell things like like I remember when Biden sold
part of our our strategic oil reserve and it was like, yeah,
that lowered gas prices. Like this is it was very
effective. It's like, yeah, I don't hate
the idea of selling some of our strategic gold reserve.
What good is it otherwise, right?
Like what do we even need the gold for?
Selling some of that is great. Selling it and then immediately
taking that money and putting it into Bitcoin is like what the
fuck are we doing and what? Well, Bitcoin's like gold, but
it's digital cash. Thank you.
Sorry. No, I didn't.
Know that. Thank you.
No, I OK, now it makes sense. Yeah, it's funny because like,
why do why do normal countries that aren't the United States
like have foreign currency reserves?
It's like, because usually their currency, if, if you're, I'm
thinking on like, right, you don't have the dollar, I'm
picking on like you could pick on Malawi or something.
And it's like it's tough because there's very little external
demand for their currency. So they have to have some
reserves. If it's both a like way to
manage the currency and also a way to like hedge against risk.
If you're the United States, you don't really need that because
when if there's a disaster, like it's if there's a disaster
globally, like people in Malawi want U.S. dollars.
If there's a disaster in the United States, people in the
United States want U.S. dollar. So you are the safe asset.
Like you don't need to then hold another like gold is riskier
than the US dollar. You're going.
To need the gold bar in in an emergency, don't you understand?
It's so shiny. I kind of regret taking this
like like seriously. I don't think that this is going
to to happen. It obviously it's not going to
happen by an act of Congress. I can tell you that much, but
it's possible, you know, like we just had Lutnick and Besson have
are very crypto. It's possible that they could
flex some of the exchange stabilization fund is an example
of like we have these funds that the US that are supposed to be
at the discretion of the president and the cabinet in the
event of like a break glassing place of emergency thing like
oh, Congress can't act fast enough.
You have this money. Just in case it's possible they
could like try to flex some of that new crypto.
I again regret bringing this up. No one's tried that before.
So we don't know what those ideas, what this are.
We'll have to wait and see what the Supreme Court says.
Oh, man. But I think the bigger story is
like, I fully expect them to be really like to annoyingly talk
about this intermittently. I would fully expect Donald
Trump to at some point post on true social like we are going to
make a strategic Bitcoin reserve and then not like follow it up
with anything, but that would like launch the price, you know?
My gut instinct is they're going to look for some kind of Bitcoin
that's been seized that realistically like is never
going to be returned to anyone else.
Isn't like reasonably tied into restitution and they're going to
pull whatever tiny bitcoins they can find that the government has
that fit that description and call that the reserve if you
want my guess. I don't think they're actually
going to spend much money. I also going to I.
Also think 1. Of the quarters in the couch I.
Also think one of the dangers of this is that you, many of us
have been like, yeah, well, fucking Donald Trump won't do
the thing that he says he's going to do.
And then he and then he does exactly what he said he was
going to do. So I'd like the idea that he's
like strategic Bitcoin reserve and all of us are like, he's
just being stupid and and loud. But like, no, I could definitely
see him making this somehow happen, you know?
I think it's the the gap, the frustration I have is like,
he'll say something that is directionally correct, like he's
going to do that in that direction.
And then people like treat you as crazy if he doesn't do
exactly what he said. So I'm giving example just cuz
this was literally yesterday and this is like my alley.
Trump posted that he was going to put a 25% tariff on all goods
coming from Mexico and Canada if they didn't like fix the border
and stop fentanyl. And again, poor Justin Trudeau.
Like, you know, I feel bad for him.
He's not doing anything in this, but like, I don't think he's
going to do that because, you know, just automakers would be
furious, absolutely devastated if they attempted this.
But I think I do directionally think that he will get in office
on his first day as president of the United States.
He will sign some sort of trade restriction or tariff on Mexico
over immigration. And so it's like, on the one
hand, I don't believe that there's doing the 25%.
On the other hand, it's ridiculous that like he's the
he's going to be the president of the United States.
We have to take what he says seriously because he's going to
do some portion of it and it's always like directionally
correct. So when they say like, oh, we're
going to do a strategic Bitcoin reserve, I think though, they're
going to try something flashy. I think my point there is like
both like you're it's debasing to have the man behind the
resolute desk be like shilling, you know, shit coins.
I'm sorry, I'm not used to cursing up.
It's amazing that have been like shilling shit coins.
Secondarily, like to say it's it's so antithetical to all of
what crypto is ostensibly for that like we're getting, you're
getting bailed out by the taxpayer.
You're getting like juiced by, you know, public funds if it
happens or you're advocating for it to happen, Like why?
Why as a senator, sitting senator from Wyoming, why are
you advocating for the US government to be like gambling
money on this? And then from a Third Point,
it's like it's going to be bad because like Elon Musk is going
to tweet about the strategic Bitcoin reserve and it's going
to make the price of Bitcoin go up.
And like possibly there will be people who know about that who
will make money from it. And like we have an entire the
department of government efficiency thing.
It's like it's not a department. First of all, that's not how
that works. But second of all, it's like the
name is, is entirely there because Elon Musk thinks like
doge is funny. And it's like increase the price
of Dogecoin a lot. And now there's a Senate doge
caucus. There's going to be a house doge
caucus led by Marjorie Taylor Green.
And I'm like, we're, we're forced to like take some of this
stuff seriously. I'm forced to say Senate Doge
Caucus because that exists now. And Elon Musk has never been
able to explain why his fixer was listed on the board for the
Dogecoin Foundation on their website.
It's this stuff where you're like, even if there is a you
didn't like legally the doge thing that's not like invested
in Bitcoin. It's not told people, excuse me,
it's not told people to invest in.
It's like we all know what you're doing here.
And it's, it's just very, it's very, it's like people are, are
like, there's a lot of it's, it's one thing to be like,
there's a lot of pressure. But I think the other tough part
is like, there's a lot of people who are just going to like
gamble and lose money off this who are mostly innocent because
they think Elon Musk is cool and they think that this is like an
easy way to make money. You know, I don't have sympathy
for people who are like sophisticated fund managers who
lose money on crypto, but I have sympathy for people who are
like, haha, Dogecoin, I'm going to put $2000 in it.
And I do worry about the sports gambling industry seeing how
effective the cryptocurrency industry's big pile of money
was, it making regulating the industry basically impossible in
Congress. I don't think it's a great thing
that the sports gambling industry just saw that example
in the last election. Or like any of the like like Zen
Yeah, is another another one where like that's you know,
highly. Any highly profitable vice
industry. Really tobacco and tobacco is
much more regulated advertising space.
But they're they're you know, they're frustrated by that.
I also say for now. Yeah.
And and they're frustrated by that.
And like the Trump has like weird regulatory beliefs.
Sometimes. You remember it was his
administration that like put some of the first restriction on
Jewel, but like he flips all the time.
You know, he was like pro TikTok ban.
Now he's like anti TikTok ban because he because he's popular.
The TikTok executives was unclear.
And I don't know. I do think it is like.
From. The pure perspective of if you
are a rational imagine, like you were totally a moral being and
you've just cared about getting reelected to the Senate, that
was your only goal in life. Like, yeah, you're going to talk
down cryptocurrency regulation a ton over the next few years
because you saw how effective a lot of this is.
And I will say like it's becoming the fact that it is a
more bipartisan issue. It's like in the one hand, it's
partisan, like the this is the new president.
He's going to be much more pro crypto than the previous
president. But on the other hand, it's like
one of those issues where the seemingly the only people that
are like going to be pro crypto regulation are like Elizabeth
Warren category. Well, I'm just saying that
category of person like Warren obviously has a lot of personal
beliefs about financial regulation.
Like that's where like they, but I just meant that category of
person who is in like AD plus 20 seat, who doesn't actually have
to care about like winning re election because they're going
to win re election because they're popular at home in a
very liberal state, are going to be the people who who care about
cryptocurrency regulation. If you're someone who's like, Oh
my God, I have to win a state that's actually competitive like
you, it immediately gets dropped.
And again, like we saw this with Paris where like that was part
of the strategy was like a peace offering towards the crypto
industry to try to prevent like them from spending so much money
on electing Donald Trump. That's the other thing they
stayed out of the the presidential election.
You know, obviously not entirely people who are like Andreessen,
Marc Andreessen is like very pro Donald Trump, but.
Yeah, we're making their big illegal donations, which
immediately got refunded to them after they got their headlines.
But like the the big crypto packs stayed out of the
presidential election. Like, that's not a guarantee in
2028. You know, that's the strategy
they took this time. That might not be the strategy
they take four years from now. And I think if you're JD Vance,
for example, who's going to be presumably the Republican
nominee for president in 2028, it might be Trump Junior.
If you're JD Vance, like. It might be Donald Trump that's
real. Hey, I can run on you say like,
hey, you know, if I make enough overtures to the the crypto
industry as vice president, like they'll back me with a very
ridiculous amount of money. Peter Thiel is deep in crypto,
so it's not even hard for him to like, find the connections and
make that oh. Absolutely.
They're right there. And so I like I think that this
is this election was a lot about like the crypto entering space
as like entrenched business interest more so than than ever
before. Well, and I think what you said
there about how this election, it was bipartisan, but that may
not be true in the future, is something we may see very
strongly in like 2026 in the midterms, especially if they're
worried that like the the anti incumbency narrative becomes
like corruption things, fraud, the things that are easy to tie
on Donald Trump in that way, I can imagine the crypto industry
wanting to prevent things from swinging the other way.
And so I think it's quite plausible we'll see them deploy
way more to Republicans and stuff like that to keep that.
Because you were even alluding to earlier in this conversation,
there were people who, when they saw a fair shake, helped get 2
Democrats elected. They were like, oh, maybe that
was a bad idea. Maybe it's better actually to
have all from one party, which is categorically against
regulations. Maybe that'll be cleaner.
Right. I, I was like Gallego and
Slotkin as much as any other person, like owe their victory
to crypto donations. Those, those elections were just
so tight that you could point to anything that they did that
would have lost them votes, would have, could have doomed
them. And if you're like in
Pennsylvania that the Democratic senator lost, if you're that,
are you like looking at this like, you know, if only I was
like Slotkin, if only they'd given me more money, maybe I
could have won. Maybe I could have pulled this
one over. And conversely, but like you
said, conversely, if you were the, the donors, you said you,
you feel like I was the deciding factor.
I got 2 sitting US senators elected.
Maybe next time I should decide the other way.
And like that's, that can be dangerous.
I think, I think that they're likely to try to keep this as
bipartisan as possible for the next like 2 years.
But it's possible. Like the other thing is the
Senate math. And now we're getting like, way
too much in. The.
In 2026 I believe the Democrats could, and if you asked me to
bet right now, I would say they're likely to regain control
of the House. That's just how like anti
incumbency bias Democrats tend to do better and off your
elections nowadays. But the Senate?
Republicans are bad at governing.
People, people are going to be reminded, wait a minute, I've
been like Donald Trump. That's what I voted for.
I remember him now. He was on TV years ago.
But the Senate math is like very brutal, like the Democrats have
to defend very close seats in in Georgia and Michigan.
And they all, they only have a couple states where you could
plausibly like win like North Carolina.
And so it's possible if you know, if I was a crypto PAC, I
would be very interested in this idea that you could like
maintain the Republican Senate Majority pretty easily.
And if you lost probe house, like, well, you'd still have two
out of three ain't bad. And so I would not be surprised.
And like you said, they aren't. They're already raising money.
I, I, I want to stress again that this is like, there are
lots of super PACs that spend a ton of money on the scale of
super PACs that spend a ton of money.
This is up there. This is not like, this is like
the money that the American Petroleum Institute throws we're
into, into. Races and the other thing I want
to add, we should wrap this conversation up soon probably.
But like the other thing that always strikes me is that in
many sense, in many senses the best regulation for the
cryptocurrency industry at least they believe is effectively no
regulation. And so like these cryptocurrency
packs and things like that are to be incentivized to like split
the House and the Senate, split the House and the presidency,
like create situations where legislation, regulations, things
like that are divisive, can't be advanced coalitions can't be
built because their goal is for nothing to happen.
The longer nothing happens, the longer they get to grow
unfettered and take advantage of more people.
And so like, that makes like the the meta game of their political
donations like darker in a certain sense than like other
industries which are trying to capture and get favorable
regulations. Yeah.
Right, right. Yeah.
And I mean, like we have a in the in the United States, this
is like a a core problem where this is like you as president,
it's rare to get a trifecta. Joe Biden had a very, very, very
thin governing majority when he was first elected and managed to
do a ton with it relative to the size of the governing majority,
you know, the amount of spending and like especially.
Considering mansioning some. Especially considering mansion,
but if you're like, oh, well, you know, all that needs to get
there there like mention spawn, you know, there's we're talking
about when we're talking about these nominees who maybe should
I maybe should have mentioned this earlier, but like most of
these nominees for the economic positions are going to go
through beatsly. It's kind of amazing that like,
Besson is going to go through easily, but like, people don't
believe that RFK junior can be torpedoed because you need to
peel off 45 Republicans and you're like, OK, you, you, you
start calling counting senators and you can't find like any.
Pence is trying. It's it's it's a little bit
hilarious to me that like, right now, one of the people trying
hardest to torpedo RFK Junior is Mike Pence, the former
president's Vice P Yeah, because RFK Junior has historically been
too liberal on abortion. And so Pence is running hardline
like to all the pro-life senators to try to get them to
defect from RFK Junior. That's really funny.
I let the fight on that one. But like RFK has very like, you
know, crazy dangerous ideas on on what should be normally
bipartisan issues. You can't do that.
And like, or even Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director National
Intelligence, like she in in most she's a former Democrat.
She has poses this giant security risk.
She has been friends with like Putin and Assad and whatever you
think that you could like find 5 Republicans that would be like,
I don't know about this one, you know, but it's really tough.
And so in a world in which, you know, Republicans control the
Senate, Cabinet appointees are like check box unless they've
committed like horrible sexual assault.
And even then. And.
We just said we can't torpedo RFK.
We can't repeat RFK is possibly going to get the nomination for
Department of Defense, but the like I was just saying Gates was
the one person so far as Ben Duke.
But like a world in which Republicans control the Senate.
You can appoint whoever you want to executive positions in the
judiciary, but Democrats control the House and therefore you
can't actually pass any like legislation that meaningfully
does anything is like one in which like to your point,
there'd be a lot of you could appoint friendly regulators and
nobody's going to write a law in in Congress.
They'll hold some hearings in the House.
That would be annoying. And like that's a, that's a good
outcome for a lot of like the, the, if I was to say, like
closing remark is like crypto people feel really happy about
how this election went and like the executives especially and
that's very tough. Yeah, I, Yep, I fully agree with
all of that. We, we have a crypto executive
right here and all she's been saying is how happy she is that
cast coin is going to be possibly a new central bank
digital currency for the upcoming administration.
So, yeah, I think that's that's a pretty accurate and fair
description of how the entire cryptocurrency community has
been feeling since the Trump election.
I think you can just look at the price of Bitcoin and probably
figure that out.