The Base token debacle, Zora content coins and crypto legislation

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where we serve alpha like a family potluck. Some hits, some misses, but you're definitely coming back for seconds. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Tuesday, April 22nd. Today, we are going to talk about what happened last week with Bass. Did Bass launch a token? We got to break this. This story's got everything. Drama. Uh, it's got was it a rug? There's so much in this story where it's obviously if Coinbase or Base does anything, everyone's going to pay attention. What happened last week with the bases for everyone token? What do you need to know? We're going to dive into that. We're also going to talk about the market structure bill in the US. As that bill moves forward, there is a lot of opinions being shared of what

that bill should look like. Should it be connected to the stable coin bill or should they be separate? and that as they go through Congress and through the House, we're going to break down exactly what's happening there because all of this is going to impact markets in a big way and impact specific tokens in a big way depending upon how these leg how this legislation is laid out. Also, tokenized treasuries just keep keep on growing and we can't not talk about that. To break this all down, we are joined today by Laura Shin, prominent journalist author fellow podcaster, really one of the most respected voices in crypto, host of the Unchained podcast. We're going to break it all down before we jump in and hear from Laura. Mark your calendar, folks, because this Wednesday, tomorrow, we are

going live with Adam Beck. Yes, that's the Adam Beck, one of the OG Bitcoin developers, currently co-founder and CEO of Blockstream. Come hang out on YouTube, 12:05 p.m. Eastern. Mark your calendar. Today's episode is brought to you by Moonay. Trade crypto fee, free, fast, and on your terms. It's also brought to you by Coin Shift, powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin, CSUSDL. Without further ado, Laura, welcome to the Mo Road Show. Hi, thanks for having me. Absolute pleasure to have you, Laura.

Absolute pleasure. Been big fan of everything you guys do over unchanged for a while now. So, it's great to get you on the show. Okay, let's start with uh with with bass. This was a fiasco that kind of happened last week. Let me give a little bit of backstory and then we can jump in and get your thoughts as well. So last week what happened was last Wednesday Bass posted this uh if you guys are watching you can see this this image base is for everyone posted this on X and then quickly after like I think within an hour after they coined it which means that basically they tokenized this post over on Zora and you could collect this post and you could speculate on this post because now it's a token and pretty quickly this token

went from zero market cap up to over 20 million and it has now settled back down around 6 million and there was all this speculation of is this base launching a token? Base famously does not have a token. So there's lots of speculation is this them launching a token or did they just rug us because this was not them launching a token. So Crypto World went crazy and you guys had Jesse on your show. Before we jump into Jesse's thoughts, uh Laura, you sitting back watching this, what were you thinking when everything unfolded here?

So, honestly, I was thinking that we're seeing kind of like a dichotomy in how these types of coins are being launched. And I was thinking that like the reason that there was this push back is because this looked like a memecoin, but they were claiming it was called something else, a content coin. But the other difference is that memecoins definitely felt more like, you know, fair launch, like grassroots, kind of like a community thing, you know, not not a VC type play. And that is very much in the ethos of crypto, which is supposed to be decentralization.

However, you know, this is coming more top down. So, it feels less organic. It feels more centralized. And everybody knows, of course, Bass is associated with Coinbase. And Coinbase is the largest crypto, well, actually, I I would have to think about this, but but you know, it's like at least one of the largest publicly listed crypto companies in the US. And so, when you see, you know, I mean, this is why Bass itself has a lot of criticism, right? like people say shoot was it was I think it was Kyle Zammani called it like you know the the company chain or I I forget or the corporate the corporate chain or or whatever and actually I think Lily Leo of the Salana Foundation also calls it

very similar things. Um that was actually on our show. She she stirred up a a firestorm with those comments. Um, but the point is like, you know, when you have somebody who works at this giant crypto company that's definitely a centralized company and they're kind of pushing this and then on top of that, when you have this activity where, you know, Coinbase because of who they are, they are held to a higher standard than most crypto companies and individuals just, you know, when you hear the fact that they're publicly listed, it makes you feel like, okay, so they they have certain standards, they're going to be more professional, and so to see the price of the coin go up and down like that, you know, and frankly the the priceation all happened within an hour,

you know, it hit the 20 million roughly or actually I Yeah. I'm not sure they I think it was within like eight hours or something. It was quick though. It was very quick. Well, no, but but actually so there were but there were two. The first one two spikes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. The first one was at like an hour in and I think it went to 17K. I I had to figure this out by by choosing like the one second or one minute or whatever it was. Um and I think it went to yeah 17 sorry not 17k what am I saying 17 million initially and then it then it went down to like less than 2 million and then it went up again. Um, but the point is like it created all these suspicions and I feel like it's what I was saying before. People aren't used to

this type of coin being created in this way where it feels like it's more coming from a centralized entity, maybe more like a marketing gimmick or something, you know, and and Jesse is known also for, you know, doing those videos where he's walking on the street and he just asks perfect strangers, would you like $50 to get on chain? And again it feels more like you know a marketing ploy or something. So what was interesting is in the interview with me he descri so I asked him about this you know theory about content coins or or kind of like what the thesis is for those or even just what the definition is. Yeah.

What's a content coin? I've never even heard that term before. And what was so fascinating is the way he described it. He first described meme coins and then he set up content coins and contrast. But what was fascinating is if you listen to the description he gave of memecoins, what he described was more like what we would have called NFTTS before memecoins came along because he said like there's like a community and a road map and you know whatever. And I was like wait that that sounds like you know more like board ape or pudgy penguins or something. Um and so it was like he kind of set up this like a straw man argument that that allowed him to create this distinction that to me didn't sound fully convincing. You know, I don't really still to this moment know exactly what a uh what the difference is

between a content coin and a memecoin, but you know, I guess like the reason why I was of two minds is because so all of that, you know, looks I can understand why people were suspicious. I can understand why they were criticizing it or making fun of it. However, I'm sure everybody knows that the way these things start is it looks silly. it it gets derided in the beginning you know like you know I I don't know the age of most people listening to this but I can remember you know when like Facebook launched or before Facebook it was like Fster and then um MySpace and then I forget I even forget what all the other ones were but the point is that you know now things like Facebook and and all the

you know equivalents like on obviously all of us on X on on crypto Twitter we're all on that platform and then there's you know like Reddit and there's Instagram and you know there's so many of these um Tik Tok these are like embedded in our everyday lives right people make a living from being on these platforms so when I'm looking at it I can also say at the same time that it doesn't look convincing I don't fully understand what it is a part of me also goes this is probably also the future you know and and I can say that even just if you look at the analog of for instance like Pokemon cards there are people they just look Pokemon cards, they say, "This is silly. Like, why are you trading this? Why does this have

value?" And to another person, that is a gigantic business. They make so much money from those. And so, you know, that's why I feel like I understand why the community had a negative reaction. And at the same time, I'm probably like, "Yeah, some form of this is probably the future." So, yeah. Yeah. Definitely the I mean as you said at the beginning Coinbase and indirectly base they have to be careful with what they do with tokens right and so this it's pretty easy to look at this and say like okay like were you were you intentional when you did this or did you just fly by the seat of your pants and you know as you said you've got to hold yourself to a

higher standard. can't fly by the seat of your pants launching tokens willy-nilly like somebody else might be able to do, right? Uh because obviously I mean I'm sure you you feel the same way. How many times has like some some collectible come out of Coinbase and everyone's like, "Oh, go collect this because if there's ever an airdrop, you know, we're all going to get access to the base token, right?" So everybody's waiting for that which is which look partly base needs to take some responsibility and be careful what they do but also partly like if you're an investor and you're investing on this stuff like you got to know you're gambling right and so like it feels a bit you can't blame everybody else right like don't sit

there and point the finger like this is a free market you made your own decisions right you maybe you thought this was a Coinbased token or whatever and look yeah it's it ran up and it ran down. That's what happens with the whole crypto casino that's ongoing every day, right? So, yeah. But there is one other aspect of this I forgot to mention, which is the other reason there was so much confusion is that after there was this outcry, then Coinbase released a statement saying that it wasn't intentional because just when you put something on Zora, it automatically creates one of these content coins. So, it seemed like they were sort of like distancing themselves and disavowing it, but then Jesse had to be like, "No, no,

no. I knew that by putting it on there, it was going to create a coin." Um, and he on the show he was saying that he'd actually or the the team, the base team has been creating a whole bunch of coins recently on Zora. So, yeah, it was kind of this like weird thing where it was like Coinbase seemed to be being like, "Oh, we didn't we didn't mean to do that." And then just being like, "No, no, no, we did mean to do that." So that's another reason why yeah there was there was confusion because in some ways I respect their like the way they're experimenting and moving really fast right like that's great in some ways you know when it comes to people losing money and speculating on it it's not so great but for for a big organization like Coinbase to sort of say hey yeah go

ahead experiment move quick let's try different things because look whether contentcoin becomes a term term or not, I don't know, right? Like just call them memecoins. They're all the same thing in the end, right? You're just speculating on attention on a different platform, whatever. I don't think there's a difference between a content and memecoin. But in the end, whatever happens, we need to experiment. And that is the one thing I've always respected from the base team and from Jesse, like they are pushing the boundaries of experimentation. And if in if in the in between as long as there wasn't any insider trading here, which there was not. I don't think that was all that was all just FUD. I think people saying that there was insider trading and the base team front ran this. I don't know if you have any takes on that. Um so he said

definitely not. And I pointed out that there had been issues with that in the past, but he said, "Oh, but you forgot that it was Coinbase who reported that those employees did that." Um I can't remember even what that was for. It was so it was a few years ago but the point is that somebody else said that probably like there are people who have kind of like sniper bots out and so maybe it was like sniper bots the I think you know what their view is is that eventually it will get to the place where um yeah there will be coins for everything and something fascinating he said in the interview was that Coinbase will get to a place where they will list all of these and I was like oh really like it just seems like such a departure from where they started but who knows Maybe

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regulated real world assets and secured with institutional grade risk management by our friends at Stakehouse Financial. Put your treasury cash to work earning native yield and protocol rewards. Built by the team behind Coin Shift, which is trusted to manage over 1 billion in business treasuries on chain, including a Gitcoin, and hundreds of leading institutions, CYCSUSDL is gaining traction at milkroad.com/coinshift. Yeah, I think the the the one area of one of the big use cases of crypto that I see massive product market fit for and I don't know we're kind of a little bit off topic here but is prediction markets like it's already

so clear with poly market and and some others myriad that are really showing that when you take predictions and you move them and you use onchain you can get better information flow basically like you can remove the need to have news outlet as information flow and you can use predictions markets as a form of information flow and what I think is going to happen in the future is we're going to see the same thing happen with attention markets basically right like we have predictions markets to predict the outcome of political events and sports and various events but we don't really have attention markets yet right we have social media that essentially is an attention market you just can't

speculate on it it's not there's no value exchange of But that's exactly what social media is, right? You go to Twitter, you're going to see what the algorithm says. This is the top attention of the day. Well, why wouldn't you be able to once you have the ability to transfer value on the internet as crypto gives us, why not be able to associate value to that and be able to speculate on it? That feels like and I know Farcaster is sort of in operating in that space and there's a lot of others that are building, but that feels like a use case that is coming for sure. And and from that perspective, I see I see Bas's side. I see what Jesse is saying. Yeah. Like you'll be able to collect everything and everything will be tokenized and why not, right? But I think the challenges we're just so early

and uh people get so caught up in the noise right now and the noise last week was oh my gosh, Base launched a token for like an hour and everyone was like, holy okay, I'm in. And then you get burned. But again, do your own research. That's sorry, but that's on you. Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing about this is that you know Coinbase is um trying to thread this needle like they're in this position right now where they are very much more like frankly a fintech entity right like their number one biggest kind of product market fit for a long time has just been the easiest way to obtain crypto assets and then they uh created you know Coinbase wallet they also have now base where

they're earning these sequencer fees and this is definitely their transition ition away from away from that. Like I can tell they're they're they know where things are headed. They don't want to get disrupted. Um but also part of that is, you know, trying to like foster some of this activity, but I think the other thing is uh just that sometimes the timing can seem off, right? And and I saw people talking about this because it does feel like if all this had happened back when we were more like at the height of the memecoin craze like before Trumpcoin and before uh Libra then it feels like we wouldn't have had maybe this level of reaction because it was just probably we we would have seen more

people pile in. But now that things have I was going to say it almost might have been worse though. It might have been. I get what you're saying. The negative we're we're in a very negative anti-mecoin phase right now. That part I get. But the but the it would have run up way higher and more people would have lost more money had it happened before. I think so. Right. I saw somebody tweet something about like um basically they or no it was a comment on our interview saying something like it's like if you throw show show up to a party in a suit like the timing is off or I you know and and I I get like what they're saying.

It's sort of like yeah the the party was like over here and you're you're sort of out of out of place and it's and it's a little awkward. However, the one thing we haven't talked about is that despite all the awkwardness and the strange timing and like the questionable activity itself, it actually did push activity on Zora higher than ever. So, the number of coins created reached um its peak on Saturday at 26,000 coins uh created that day. And then DEX trading and content coins um hit almost 300,000 uh in a single day, which again was like a peak. So, it's just fascinating that it basically worked. Um, it the other thing which I don't know if you want to

say this, but you know, Friday, I don't know what you're going to say. You got to say it. Well, so the the day that my interview came out, so I interviewed him the day before we released on Friday, but then that was the day when then they were embroiled in this other controversy saying bass is for can you fill in the two words? No, you you tell me. It was the uh basis for pimping and can you feel the other word? No, I don't know. I don't know. Oh my god. They um they tweeted those uh images and the two were bases for pimping. I can't believe I have to say this. And the other one was basis for squirting and like

everybody was like, "Oh my god, this is so bad. What what are you guys doing?" And then all these people were upset. Um, you know, especially like women in particular were like, "Wait, why are you saying this is for pimp?" Like they were just like, "What?" Um, so again, it just feels like off-brand for Coinbase. There's something very strange about it. But it also feels like they're trying to, you know, pump fun obviously there was like so much crazy stuff going on there. And it almost feels again like a topdown let's be edgy. Uh, which is why it kind of didn't really hit the mark and there was push back. It's just like you don't expect it from, you know, that kind of company. But again, it appears to have worked. And it's not even just

the Zora activity, but and I don't know about the timing of this. This is just crazy to me. But here we're recording Monday and Zora announced that they are doing an airdrop in a few days. And so initially everybody was like, "Oh my god, all the all the stuff last week was just a marketing gimmick for the launch of the Zorocoin." But then Jesse wrote a tweet thread saying that actually no, they did not coordinate it. That Zora didn't even know that Coinbase was going to do that whole thing like bases for everyone last week, the the basis for everyone coin. And um so like I don't know cuz pretty much where everybody's mind went initially was also where my mind went. Like oh all of that last week was a marketing gimmick for the Zora

airdrop. But no, you know Jesse says it wasn't that Zora didn't know. So, I'm just like, okay, I don't see the incentive for Jesse to lie or Coinbase to lie or sorry, I shouldn't say I don't see the incentive, but it's more like I don't see because of the kind of company they are, like I feel like they would be honest about it. And all of this goes to even just like what we were talking about like Jesse doing these videos on the street like trying to give people money. Like there's a sort of like shamelessness or whatever. So, if they had planned it like I feel like they would own it is maybe what I think. So anyway, the point is just that, you know, it it who knows, it's definitely generated more interest in Zora right before they do this airdrop. And so, you

know, now the question just becomes, can they sustain it? Given the history of how these things have worked out for like 90% of the of the chains that have done airdrops, I'm a little bit like mostly, and this is nothing against Zora. Like I actually I just downloaded the app before this interview. I was like, "Oh, I should try to use this before we chat." But I I didn't get to um to like and Zor, for those who don't know, Zora is basically what I was just describing, right? Zora is the onchain social network. Like it's a social network where every post is a is a coin and you can collect and you can speculate on any post. Like that is basically what Zora is. And they're really the leader and they're built on base. And so you can see the base.

There's the Zora base connection. Uh, so I mean basically what we're doing here is, okay, we're going to switch from do do your own research, not financial advice, but I would not be touching the basis for everyone coin. To me, that was a that was a pump and dump that had its moment because it got attention for a split second. Everybody's talking about it, so I wouldn't be touching that. But now we have Zora doing their airdrop this week. And now we're going to switch to talking about that. And everyone, if you've ever collected anything on Zora, I'm guessing you're going to get a portion of that airdrop. If you collected bases for everyone, you're probably getting a portion of that airdrop. So, and we'll see what happens with with Zoro. I'm not, you know, no financial advice, not telling you to go by Zoro when that

airdrops. It says their airdrop is going to be Wednesday. Uh, so it's coming very quickly. So, we we'll we'll see what happens there, but I think Go ahead. Oh, just the last thing I wanted to say about that is um I I'm very sympathetic to this notion of content coins in theory simply because I am a creator myself and I know how the internet has affected my industry and a lot of my friends who are creatives you know especially like musicians I think have been hurt maybe they got hurt the most yeah in some way I you know it's not like I have ever looked up numbers on this but in my head I sort of have this impression. Um, so the point is I'm just trying to say that like I think what I give props to Coinbase for and to Zora for uh and frankly anybody who's working

in the space is that there is a real problem to be solved there. Like I often see on crypto Twitter people criticize story protocol. They make fun of it, but I'm like wait I actually think that's like a real thing that creators could use. So I for one like to see experimentation here and if I said anything that was that came across as overly critical like it's not that I don't think that there's actually a need for this type of thing. Well, it's just remains to be seen what it actually looks like. Yeah. And there's obviously when you're when you're Jesse Pollock in your base, there's a way to do things and there's a way not to do things. And it makes sense that the way they did this was called into question cuz I think they I mean for whether whether they want to call it experimentation or

call it planned organization, they need to be thoughtful for sure. Okay, let's shift from you know well we're talking about Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto companies in the US. They are lo they've been a big part of lobbying in DC and a big part of really everything all the shift that has happened over the last six months when Trump won the election and even leading up to that as well. There was a shift really a shift happening behind the scenes in the SEC across all of DC and more of a a 180 towards crypto. So, we're in this position now where we've got really now all of a sudden it's almost like we're moving too fast and this question is

being brought up, which is are we moving too fast for the legislation that's coming around the stable coin bill and the market structure bill and is it going to put us in a bad place? Because what what I'm hearing right now is there's lots of people saying that these things Trump is basically putting the pedal to the metal and he's saying, "I want this by August. I want these bills passed by August. And we're talking about three bills, just so everybody's clear. There's two stable coin bills and there's one market structure bill. We're not going to dive into the details of the bills. We'll do that in another episode. I think we're actually gonna do an episode soon coming. So, watch out for that. But he's pushing really hard.

And when you push so hard, there's always this question of like, hey, hey, are we moving too fast? In your view, do we need to be slowing down on these bills? Are we are we going to get the best outcome right now or are we just rushing these because Trump wants us to rush them or some others some lobbyists want us to rush them? There's well there there's a a lot of different things here. So first of all um I think it is true that the industry has been waiting a very long time to get some clarity about what's okay, what's not okay. they don't want to suddenly be hit by an enforcement action that they didn't see coming for doing activity that was just not clearly spelled out as to whether or

not it was legal. Now, coming into uh this Congress, the thought was that stable coin legislation is a lot easier. So, probably that will go first and then probably market structure, which is just a little bit more complicated. There's kind of like more to um to figure out that that would be next year. Now, we're looking Yeah. at this uh potentiality that maybe both uh would go this year or or at least the the bills would be written up and interestingly we reported that there is a group of tra so actually no I'll tell two stories we reported two stories one is that Coinbase itself Coinbase makes an appearance again in this podcast um they wanted both bills to go this year and they in fact wanted

to do one giant bill I've heard and the reason is that Coinbase will be more effective ed by the market structure bill and it gives them more clarity and it frankly allows them to make more business moves earlier the the sooner it gets decided. You know, most most of the industry felt like this is not a good idea because it's just there's just a lot to decide there. And since the stable coin thing could probably more be easily taken care of, they just want to get the quick win. Just get take that off the table. Like just get that done. we can move forward on that and then take more time to to do kind of the the more uh yeah just more challenging bill because there's just more to it. Well then uh I don't remember how long later like a week or two later we reported

this other story. So I'm not reporting this as uh this is our regulatory reporter Veronica Irwin who is amazing. She heard that there is also now a group of traders that would like to kind of wait and see if they can actually instead of getting a bill that becomes law, get this new friendly SEC that is chaired by Paul Atkins who you know he was um I forget like a he had some a position at the token alliance. So he's a very crypto friendly, you know, commissioner. Get the SEC to put out guidance because going through Congress, they they might have to just like

compromise more because now, you know, now that they have such a a crypto friendly SEC, like potentially those might be friendlier even to to the industry than than something that goes through Congress. So um I think like most of the kind of like lobbyists like the more you know professional DC types think that this is a bad idea. Um they they you know uh one of the quotes that they gave us was something like this is the apex of crypto's power you know and frankly the reason for that is because crypto money helped create this red sweep of Congress. Yes. Um, you know, Trump for sure knows that there's a lot of money that he's been receiving. Like even just the day we're recording, I

think it was the New York Times reported um the donations he received for his inauguration and there were a bunch that we didn't know about that were from the crypto industry until today. So even more than the ones that had been previously reported. So, you know, I think like, you know, the the kind of lobbyists, the crypto lobbyists who are very familiar with CC, they're like, "No, no, no, no. You don't want to push it." Like, now is our time, basically. We have all their attention. We gave all of our money. Like, they're going to listen to us now. And also, we have a favorable administration, which we don't know if we'll have that again. Yeah. And who knows what could happen in the midterms. So, yeah. So, who knows what will happen, but that's that's what's going on. and and DC people are trying

to milk this for all it's worth, but others that know how DC works, they're like, "No, no, no, no. We may lose our window. So, let's not." So, we'll see what happens. Yeah, it feels it feels like the things that feel obvious to me is it it doesn't feel like we should put the bills together like let's keep let's keep stable coin and market restruct market structure bill separate because as you said, the stable coin bill can move quickly. Let's get that done. and let's get that through and then let's go on to the market structure bill or have them in tandem. But definitely the market structure bill is going to have a lot more back and forth. I don't think it's going to be as smooth to get through. So like why would you hold if if you try to

do them together? It feels like you'd hold you'd hold you'd hold them both up and they would both take longer. I think you run the risk that the stable coin thing would just get lost. On the stable coin side, I just going to plug our episode from Saturday quickly. We were talking about how there's talk that there might not be they might not allow yield bearing stable coin in the first version of the stable coin bill which not a massive surprise necessarily when you consider that uh two of the the biggest stable coins in the world that have the most power that are probably putting the most lobbying dollars towards us and tether you know they're not they're not yield bearing stable coins. You can kind of say that circle is a yield bearing stable coin because if you hold it in Coinbase there is ways

to get yield on it but it's not true yield. It's like marketing dollars. So anyways, you guys can go back and listen to that episode if you want to know our takes because we talk about some decentralized stable coins and if the market struct if the stable coin bill does not allow yield bearing stable coins, what does it mean for Athena and Maker Sky and the decentralized stable coins that do offer yield? So interesting. Go back and listen to that. Uh the otherwise I think the like this it feels like the thoughts around this bill are really like everybody's protecting their own interests, right?

So you've got a whole bunch of lobbyists. What's going on with um with uh Salana's uh lobby group uh SPI I think it's called um their their policy group which is is not directly connected to them or is directly I don't even think we technically know. Yeah. So, um, now now I'm going to have to quickly look at the article to remember what we made public and what we were just chatting about. No, just give it all to us, Laura. Just give it all.

So, the the main TLDDR there is basically that back when the um crypto villain was Gary Gensler and the SEC generally, crypto was united, right? They had like a common enemy. And so we had all of these different lobbying organizations that you know are more like umbrella organizations like you know the blockchain association or the digital chamber the you know DeFi educate like there's there's a bunch of these right and you know this kind of like Salana policy institute was sort of a new thing it's like you know has the word Salana in it um shortly before then Ripple had also announced that they were creating their own as well but it has a different name cryptocurrency

association which just sounds um it sounds like an umbrella group but you know it was um Ripple that that funded it basically like what's happening right now is just now that um there isn't a common enemy basically the chains are turning on each other no I know that sounds a little bit dramatic but the point is that you know the way uh legislation gets built it could advantage certain chains over the others so there is kind of this awareness that now the game is a little bit different and so I think that's why We're seeing we're seeing this happen. Any takes on where where all of this lands? Not with regards to the bill, but with regards to all these lobbying groups and maybe some of them being bigger or more powerful or

taking more being able to lobby with more money and as a result getting their way more because there's certainly it what it what this is reminding me of is this is reminding me of Trump's comment when he first started talking about the uh the well first it was the strategic Bitcoin reserve and then it was the crypto asset stockpile. And now it seems to be that there's going to be two. We're still waiting on exact clarity on the way this will shake out. Seems like there's going to be a Bitcoin reserve and then there might also be a crypto asset stockpile. Anyways, but what what I remember came up through that was this conversation of Trump saying, "Oh, we want to support Americanmade coins." And so him saying, "Oh, we might put Americanmade coins

into this stockpile." which obviously if they did that would raise the price of those assets because you'd have a new buyer who was buying these assets and there was like Salana and Ripple and I can't remember the others maybe Cardano actually was on their list which I was like what Cardano ghost chain like come on people so um it interesting to I don't know if you have any takes on that well so a couple things so um your question about who funded SPI you know that that is not public information so um you know who that's a big question mark who uh stood this up somebody who has a big interest in Salana doing well like it's called the Salana Policy Institute yes and they got some heavy hitters you know Miller White House

Lavine who's the head of that he's from the DeFi education fund you know he's he's a big name uh in crypto lobbing circles in DC Kristen Smith who was the CEO of the blockchain association she joined as president they also got one of DC's most powerful lobbyists who had been affiliated with a dark money group called the Cedar Innovation Foundation that had been tied to Coinbase and Ripple. He left to join the Sen Policy Institute. So certainly, you know, I don't I don't think all these people would have left their positions if there wasn't a, you know, an enticing incentive there. But then the other thing is just like in terms of what they're looking to do, and this goes back to what I was saying before about

how now the chains kind of understand that the way this legislation can play out could give some of them an advantage over the others. And so I think Salon is really looking to make sure that DeFi, you know, is not something that's disadvantaged because basically I I mean it's just very simple like for a DeFi protocol that's more decentralized. It's not it's not going to just have the same kind of presence as something like an exchange where you know they just hire people and then they you know uh and frankly they they make the most money right now. And so there's a certain presence that centralized institutions have that decentralized ones don't. And so like I think the Salana Policy Institute hopes to um just help protect chains that have DeFi ecosystems. So for

instance like Ethereum probably would benefit from their work as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. You need I mean let's be real. We're we're in a really big moment where there is some major decisions that are being made in Washington that are going to affect the future of our industry and we need voices from both DeFi and from CFI to be part of that conversation. So, uh it's it's it's good to see these lobbying groups. I just hope it's a wellbalanced view. Uh okay, I'm going to wrap there. Laura, we didn't get a chance to get to our last topic, which was US treasuries, but uh tokenized treasuries are doing great, everybody. they continue to grow even though you're we wrote a couple articles on our website and the really short version I'll just say here is that

during the period of like the Trump tariff war thing they grew by 21% at a time when US dollar stable coins dropped by by more than that so it was like a growth of $1 billion and then drop of $1.6 6 billion in stable coins. So, it looks like people are looking for these products that are built on chain but have yield and um it looks like institutions are using them uh when they trade like they want to put them up as collateral and and stuff like that. So, yeah, it looks like, you know, it's it's probably yet another crypto project that's found some product market fit.

Mhm. Mhm. RWAS, the term that everybody hates, but the use case that is coming real hot and is going to take us to the next level for sure. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was super fun. Thanks for listening in, folks. Really appreciate you sticking with us all the way to the end. I got to tell you quickly about a new documentary that just came out. I'm talking about Vitalic, an Athereum story. You can watch it on Apple TV, on Amazon Prime, or just check out whatever local platform you have. Or you can watch, you can actually buy it online as well. But you're going to want to check this out because I had a chat with the directors last week. And it is truly amazing to get into the mind of Vitalic to see how

he thinks, how he processes the world, how he spends his time, and the way he lives and the way he travels. it is. He's just such a fascinating human and if you're an Ethereum investor or if you're not an Ethereum investor, you really need to understand Vitalic even if you're just a crypto person because he's just such a big face in our space and a big name even though he doesn't like the spotlight. So, hit the link in the show notes if you want to check out the new documentary that just came out. Highly recommend. You won't be upset. Have a good one, folks. Thanks for listening in. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in the description to our free 5minute daily newsletter where we

simplify crypto for you while making you laugh. And if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game, we're going to also leave a link for Milk Road Pro. You get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying. This is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto. One final note, this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice. Investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Thanks so much for listening in my friends. Have a wicked awesome