CEO Of Digital Chamber: CLARITY Will Unleash A New Crypto Bull Market (Institutional Wave)

Transcript

Just like the streets of Manhattan, I'm going to keep this quick. Over 70% of our viewers are not [music] subscribers. Yes, you. Every week, we interview some of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the financial industry. The easiest way to support our channel is to hit the like and smash [music] the subscribe button. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy today's show. Welcome back to the rollup here live from Las Vegas. We're at the Arya Hotel at the Rare Evo Conference, and it's clarity, clarity, and more clarity. Cody Carbone, the man from the digital chamber who is in DC making it happen, literally with his bare hands pushing this bill across the finish line. Cody, man, good to see you again.

>> It's good to see you, Robert. Thanks for having me, man. >> Absolutely. Just tell us like what is what has been the energy like are you sleeping? Like what what has been the energy like in DC? >> Not sleeping. I don't know if that's just from having two little ones at home or it's the bill. It's probably a mixture of both, but no sleep. Uh we're in the thick of it right now. Like this this bill is on the one yard line. The time is to get it done now. Uh so it's a lot of negotiating. Uh a lot of back and forth between Republicans, Democrats, the White House, Treasury, and you know, my role is to offer the industry perspective. Hey, if you guys are going to, you know, try to push for this tweak, here's how it's going to impact us. Um so it's it's been surreal uh that

we're we're here. We have we're finally on the precipice of getting a market structure build done. It's without it, the US will never be the crypto capital of the world. So, it's our Super Bowl and uh it's it's all hands on deck. Trying with my bare hands to get it across the finish line with a lot of other help uh from industry leaders, but right now's the time. >> Yeah, the August recess is a real deadline. Um these guys go back home. Uh they start campaigning for midterms and these things next Friday. Um but there's multiple steps, right? And so, you know, we've got a time on the clock, right?

August 7th, I believe, is one of these deadlines, but there's multiple deadlines out there. Once the midterms take place, the next year, September, these things, um, multiple deadlines, also multiple goalposts, like procedural vote, ultimately signing this thing into law. Just give us a sense of what we should be targeting. What is a realistic goal for us to have before this August 7th deadline? And how much further along do we have to go in order to get that? >> You teed it up well, Robbie. I mean, for a bill to pass the Senate, there is multiple votes before final passage that have to happen. It needs to be brought to the floor. There needs to be a motion to proceed. Then there's amendments.

Then there needs to be a closure vote, which is historically what everyone says, 60 votes. You need to get 60 votes to end debate. That's the closure vote. And then go to a final passage vote. For me, where we need to see progress over the next week before they break for recess, is that we have to begin that process and have some of those procedural votes. You need to tee this up where when they get back in September, they're only here for three more weeks. All they need to do is vote on final passage and then they send it back to the House and the House votes on final passage. So August 7th should still be considered a real deadline. If we're sitting here in a week or, you know, next Friday and they did not put this bill on the floor, there was no

calendar time, there was no amendments offered, there was no procedural votes, then we failed. That means that this bill is likely not going anywhere this Congress. Who knows what happens in the midterm elections. If Democrats win either the House or the Senate or both, we're likely not getting this bill up again. And so then we're waiting until 2029 for a next administration uh two congresses from now to really take up market structure again. So we have to see progress in the next week. If you are sitting out there and watching and you don't want to understand all the procedural nonsense of the Senate, just make sure you look for whether there are any votes on this bill. There needs to be one of those motion to proceed. There needs to be amendments. They have to begin the process. So September is really really easy. Quick vote on final

passage and then it goes to the House. Quick vote there and then to the president's desk. >> And and it seems as if this all gets reduced into this procedural vote, this procurial vote because if it is put to a vote, then it's probably going to pass. they wouldn't put it to a vote if it would wouldn't pass. And if it passes this this initial vote, then it's most likely the case that they're going to end up signing it in September when they come back. So, it really all rests on getting the 60 votes. Uh because that would ultimately put us in a position to have the vote. Where are we on the path to 60? I remember you coming on the show, you gave us like literally senator by senator on who was on board and who was not. What's the update? I think

before it was 11:00 and we were closing in on 7:00. If we could get seven of the 11, we were in a good spot. Where are we today on the path to 60? >> So, when you look at the Senate makeup right now, there's 53 Republicans, 47 Democrats. >> Your hope is that a majority, at least 50 plus Republicans vote yes. I think we can get 51 votes, >> potentially 50. Mitch McConnell, we don't know what's going on with him. So, if he's not there and can't vote, then you need And then there's two other Republicans, Josh Holly from Missouri and Rand Paul from Kentucky who voted no on genius. historically just don't like voting on digital asset bills, don't like voting on bills in general.

>> So then you've got 50 Republicans who need all to vote yes. Then you need 10 Democratic votes. There's a group of 12 Democrats that have been working with the Republicans to get this bill over the finish line. There's 18 Democrats that voted for the Genius Act. So we're targeting those 18 to see how many of those we can pick off. We need at least 10. Right now the biggest issue is ethics. And I I know it's been talked about on your show today by Ellie and by Ron. Ethics is the ball game. Now, this bill has become unfortunately it's a 616page bill. Unfortunately, it's less about the substance of what is a true market structure framework, what is a digital asset security framework, a digital asset commodity framework, a tokenization framework, and about how do we from a democratic side, how do we

take the president to task? How do we make sure that the president specifically, and while it's broader than that, it applies to all government officials, how can we make sure that he can't profit off the digital asset industry? It has become a political gainer. That is a really ugly place to be in DC. And unfortunately, that's where we are in a lot of bills in DC. For Democrats to feel comfortable voting yes and to get those 10 votes, they need to extract enough on the ethics side where they can go back to their base in the upcoming midterm elections and say, "While this was a bill that President Trump liked, we were able to really punish him, punish the White House, and make sure that he can never profit off this, >> the president has to sign this bill."

>> And so getting him comfortable with something like that is going to be really tough. And it has been really tough. Ethics has become the whole ball game. And that's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't the case. Um I'm still confident they can get there. >> They are working diligently and it's the White House, Treasury, Republicans and Democrats saying we need to find a deal here. Let's not hold up progress and trillions of dollars coming into the US capital markets through digital assets >> by not being able to strike an ethics deal. That's the whole ball game. There's some other issues that need to be resolved. Uh and I know you talked about them at length today, but if you get ethics, I think you get those 10 Democratic votes.

>> Okay. And so the I mean it all comes down to ethics. What my understanding of the ethics language as it exists today is you've got this statute of limitations until 2029 and then you've got essentially putting uh restrictions on certain officials that would prevent them from fundraising via crypto, specifically memecoins and these sorts of fundraising mechanisms. It sounds like, you know, this came from the White House. They put this through. They're okay with this. The president would sign this. But Democrats are not okay with this. They're not satisfied with this ethics language.

The way, if I'm trying to cut through this to a breakthrough here, it sounds like the way in which Democrats could spin this to ultimately tell their constituents that they got to win and stick it to the president is that, hey, Trump made a lot of money via crypto. There isn't really I don't see Trump bending the knee and capitulating any of the money that he's already made. But if there's a compromise here, it may and I'm going to phrase this as a question. Just curious to get your thoughts on this. Does the compromise here look like Trump made a lot of money on crypto, we can't get that back, but we're going to make damn sure that he can't make any more money on crypto. Is that a

compromise that you think the president and the Democrats would feel satisfied with? I think I think that's what the president has offered thus far. It was like, I'm going to limit what I've already done. My money is in a blind trust. Uh I'm not going to issue any tokens. Everything Democrats in the beginning have asked for, President Trump says, "Hey, I agree to." >> Okay, >> it's pretty unprecedented because there's been no other president that has put controls and limits on himself from making money. Now, it's not going to be good enough for Democrats. They've already told us as much. I think they would like to extract and take away some of the money he's already made, whether that's devestment to his kids or put that money somewhere else. They also the biggest piece that they don't like is that the sole enforcement mechanism here

is the US attorney general who is appointed by the president. And so Democrats are saying, how can we trust that the person who was appointed by Trump is going to then prosecute him? They want state attorneys general to also have prosecuting power. There's constitutional questions of whether state attorneys general can even sue federal officials. >> Um so it's there's a lot to work out. They also don't like Democrats don't like that this provision only applies to this White House, >> right? >> They want to make sure that the next administration could potentially go after President Trump for anything that he's done during this White House term.

>> I think there is a deal that can be made. It's going to be really tough. There's going to hopefully over the next 24 hours uh we're going to see new ethics language that is being brokered between some Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. I think there's going to be a role for state AGS in there. Uh I think there's likely going to be an ask for devestment of money he's already made. And then it comes down to whether the White House has accepted that. The White House has gone to far lengths right now to offer ethics language that is unprecedented. Um but it's, you know, you have to get 60. So, there's going to have to be more negotiating and hopefully, you know, the White House sees that any deal here, the Getting Clarity Act is good for the country.

Hopefully, Democrats see that the White House is being a good negotiator because they have been for a long time. So, I I'm still confident we can get a deal. >> Yeah, man. Cody, I I just What are you watching? Like, are you you're you know, you're talking to the senators like what are you what >> you're watching baseball? >> Anything but but No, I'm just kidding. [laughter] I'm I'm watching for, okay, we're under this truncated timeline now. >> Yeah. >> Where can we strike deals? Right. >> We have to strike the ethics deal. Yeah. >> To me, that's that's number one. Where else can we start to strike some deals?

Patrick Witt at the White House, if you look at the law enforcement side, has done an incredible job in getting some of these law enforcement groups to move from I oppose this because of some BRCA language or some DeFi language into now supportive. If you look at the new text that was released a week ago, there was a whole new section on law enforcement. It's the pro most pro law enforcement bill we've ever seen. An incredible consumer protection regime. I'm hoping that that side is yes, there's still some concerns from Democrats on BRCA, but I'm hoping that side is mostly, you know, done. We have to see the ethics deal. So, I'm watching for over the next 24 hours. Can we get an ethics deal? And hopefully tomorrow, uh, by the end of this week, we start to get this bill on the Senate calendar. we start to have

some floor timeline and then we have the votes over the next week. If we don't again, if we're sitting here a week from now and we haven't had any votes and this bill is not on the time on the calendar and they're not going to take any action, I think it's we're in a really tough spot and we're probably looking to the future and what rulemakings can do for us. >> Yeah. Um prediction markets have this about 30% of getting signed into law by 2026. You were you taking the over or the under there? >> Over. I'm more bull bullish. Yeah, I with all the headwinds that we're facing, >> uh, all the, you know, trials and tribulations of this, it reminds me a lot of where we were genius. Okay.

>> People forget that Genius failed its first vote. >> People forget that it was after, you know, Genius passed the Senate, went back to the House, it was a group of Freedom Caucus Republicans that President Trump had to call in and advocate to accept this because they were going to oppose the bill. This reminds me of that. Nothing in Washington has done easy. It's a 616 bit page bill that is going to set the United States up for success for decades, centuries. Like I imagine this is what like the Securities Acts of the 1930s were like trying to get something of this magnitude done. It's never going to be easy. But no one has left the table.

>> It would have been very easy for Democrats to their credit uh the fact that they haven't left when this text came out last week and they didn't like it to say, "You know what? There's two weeks left. We're done with this. We're not going to get this done. Everyone wants to get this done and until people leave the table, I'm going to be optimistic because I really think there's a chance. We've been working on this for almost a decade. Uh now is the shot. We've never been so close and I think policy makers more than anyone feel that like this is our opportunity. I still think it gets done. >> Cody, you're the man. You're uh literally pushing this bill across the the line with your bare hands on behalf of the entire industry here. Uh we appreciate it and uh we appreciate all

the hard work that you're doing in DC, man. >> No, I I appreciate you guys. You guys are the ones getting the message out there. So, thank you. Bummed Andy's not here skipping [laughter] out on us, but no, appreciate you, Robbie, always and the home roll up crew. >> Um you're the man. Yeah, it's a team effort. Glad we're doing it together.