Could an OpenAI Liability Case Also Put DeFi Devs on the Hook Legally? - DEX in the City

Transcript

Hi all, and welcome to Dax in the City, where the wallets are cold and the takes are hot. We have a great show for you, but before we continue, here's a word from our sponsors. You know what I'd do with a share of $1 million? Honestly, I'd probably buy a one-way ticket to an island, bring a good book, and invest the rest. And if I were sitting VIP at the World Football final this summer, I'd be dancing in my seat the whole time. And both are possible this Coinbase One Member Month. Hit a 14-day streak to split $1 million in Bitcoin. And the first to finish gets a VIP trip to the World Football final.

Make at least a $25 trade, stake, deposit, or spend on your Coinbase One card. Any of these count. And do it for 14 days this month. If you want that VIP trip, that means you have to start today and be the first to complete. Coinbase One is the ultimate membership to make the most of your money. Zero trading fees on thousands of crypto assets. 3.5% APY on USDC. Boosted and lending rewards. And up to 4% Bitcoin back with the Coinbase One card. If you trade crypto regularly, the basic annual membership can pay for itself. Hit a 14-day streak to get your share of $1 million. Plus, you still get 20% off the first year of Coinbase One annual plans.

And a $50 Bitcoin bonus when you spend $100 on a new Coinbase One card in the first 30 days. Don't miss your share of $1 million at coinbase.com/unchained. Again, that's coinbase.com/un And we're back. Before we get going, remember, as always, we're lawyers, but we're not your lawyers. So, nothing you hear on Dax in the City is legal or financial advice, and it doesn't create an attorney-client relationship. For the fine print, check unchainedcrypto.com. So, first we have Jesse web3 prosecutor turned web3 protector at Ribbit Capital.

And V from the SEC to web 3 and I'm your host Katherine KK fluent in trad fi and conversant in deep tech over at StarkWare. We have a jam-packed schedule today including a report on consensus vibes as V and I are down in very very sweaty Miami loving every second of it of course. But we want to start with our AI topic of the day because it's a very very important topic. We want to talk about Open AI, AI generally and liability and how that liability meaning who's going to get sued, who's responsible for a hot mess in AI, how is this all going to shake out and how is that going to

affect crypto? So Jesse, why don't you kick us off? Well, I really missed you guys and while y'all have been partying in the heat in Miami, I have been sort of glued to what's happening in AI and the Elon Musk Sam Altman trial which has been really crazy and just giving us like meme gold. But to me the actual legal AI story that everyone should be paying attention to is something related to the seven complaints that were filed just down the street in California from this like hot shot trial that's going on in the news.

And these seven other complaints which I'm going to walk y'all through a little bit, it's to me shining this bright like pay attention to me lights at crypto. So I'm going to help y'all pay attention to it. So what are the seven complaints about? So it's actually pretty sad. So in February of this year an 18-year-old in British Columbia in a place called Tumbler Ridge, you may have heard Tumbler Ridge cases, killed eight people, six children, and the complaints say that the shooter before the murders had been brainstorming the attack with chat GPT. And eight months before the shooting Open AI's own safety team actually flagged the shooter's conversations and urged Open AI's leadership to call law

enforcement. Did they call them? No. Um instead they deactivated the shooter's account okay? So the shooter allegedly made a second account after the deactivation and ChatGPT kept engaging with her. The complaints were are saying that they were talking about the shooting, the violence, they helped her plan how to commit and murder people. So I'm not going to sensationalize you can read about it or not because it's pretty disgusting but you understand where it goes. And so last week the families of the victims of the shooting sued Open AI and Sam Altman in federal court. The shooter has died associated with um everything that she had done and so they're like we need to hold someone liable. And they're saying

that you guys are liable uh Sam Altman, Open AI because ChatGPT was a defective product, right? So they're going after the product liability phase of it. Um and legally this is different than a lot of the Open AI and other AI cases that we've seen and that we've talked about here because it's not chatbot said something bad. It's the plaintiffs are telling a much more dangerous story for Open AI and software liability saying you built the product, you operated the product in some way, you monitored it monitor it monitored it [laughter] hard word to say today.

And your own team saw the danger or vulnerability and they didn't do enough. And this is where the legal nerd-dom in me is making me pay attention to this case even though at first glance it might be like let's just sort of watch from the sideline because for years tech companies have had a pretty powerful defense that courts leaned into which is essentially like it's just software it's not a product. And that might sound a little bit odd in the world that we live in now but software and products have been treated differently historically although that's been coming together and coalescing. But when you say it's software, not a product, you're saying it's just code, it's just a tool. Don't blame the infrastructure for what users do with it. And there's good reasons for

that, right? For all the crypto reasons you can come up with in your head, but also, if someone takes Google Maps to go shoot someone, you shouldn't blame Google Maps, right? Section 230, all the things we've talked about. But, courts are now beginning to like stress test that a little bit, and it's building up to this crescendo, and there's been a number of courts building up this precedent, which like, it could be an entire law school class, but essentially, speech protections are being separated from defective product cases. Then there's an AI chatbot case that case that's related to product liability theories, and then this one.

You know, there's an AirTag case going on right now, where the court is allowing foreseeable misuse of a tech product to be the basis of a claim, right? So, courts are starting to look past the label and ask the practical question of like, who designed the system? Who knew the risk when they designed it? Could they have designed it differently to prevent the harm? And that's the doctrinal crack that's touching our world, right? So, DeFi's living behind this similar seal for so long, it's just a protocol, but like, at what point is the developer responsible for the risks that could have been preventable? Yeah.

This is um I mean, we're we'll touch on this later in the episode when we talk about the latest developments with the Clarity Act, but like, this issue also comes up with the blockchain Regulatory Clarity Act, right? The part of Clarity, and like, how exactly that language is going to end up, like, if you're developing um like a protocol, like say like a privacy tool or something, right? Like, is it enough to know that that tool could be used by illicit actors at the time that you develop it and launch it, or does the law require, should the law require more than that? But like the precedent that you're seeing develop is I think very

dangerous potentially. You know, in that dangerous, and it's also on the flip side, it's an avenue for victims to recover cover under products liability claims, right? And maybe that's the path forward in order to make software a safer place for people to transact and or engage in any way, because I don't I think it's a really important question of taking it out of crypto for a second, like do we want to let AI be built in any sort of way with no accountability cuz people could just sort of use it to, you know, build weapons or build, you know, 3D gun printing, you know, things like that, which we've seen sort of come up

in the like software as code, where is national security playing in here, but maybe there's something to this products liability concept, and I don't know if it's a good one or a bad one because, you know, product liability cases are very state level, and I don't know if it maps perfectly to software, but we're seeing it happen in the AI space a lot faster in some ways, but it's inevitably going to come, and I think some of the activity of some of the most recent hacks is showing us that plaintiffs' lawyers are aware of this. It's really interesting because I'm very torn about this.

I know what you mean on the accountability point, you don't want people to build things that are dangerous, right? But then it's a really terrifying slippery slope to hold software accountable for any of this, and then you also wonder about the implications this has on all other areas of the law, like products liability is a massive massive area for lawyers. Lawyers have been kept busy for years and years, um, in certain classes of of products liability, and you know kind of a related category is what they call toxic tort where people sue manufacturers of products that ultimately harm people. And a lot of this hinges on the question of did they

know it was going to harm people like the baby powder cases that turned out to be you know cancerous or cigarettes or firearms or I guess cigarettes and firearms are actually a bad example because there's obvious issues there but there's also a whole category of things that people built or made these things not knowing that harm was going to be the direct or indirect result of the creation of those things. And I think we Yeah. And I think liability is a question mark there because you also have to determine whether the person knew that harm was going to result from the creation of that and the scary thing to me about when we're talking AI tech is a lot of these builders do not know and could not

arguably know that it was going to be used or misused or it could grow and evolve. I mean that's a generalization but there's definitely cases like that. Yeah. And there's this interesting incentive layer which you know we've talked about when it comes to clarity before on like if a D5 project or protocol decides to incorporate blockchain analytics or decides to like blacklist addresses does that make them less decentralized? It's similar here right like the open AI example isn't perfect when you compare it to D5 because they had a safety team and they had you know like notifications to help sort of ensure that things like this didn't like promulgate throughout the space. But if we're asking D5 protocols before they launch to do security audits

at the very least or make sure their smart contracts are safe. And let's say the audit comes back with like 90% of it's okay but 10% of it needs a fix or whatever something like that and they decide not to do the fix because of a risk-based analysis and then something happens. Then they There's evidence they knew something was wrong, but they made a business decision, right? So, like, does that disincentivize them from doing anything at the beginning? Yeah. Because then they have that knowledge. Right. Whatever the results are, yeah. Plausible deniability is a is a dangerous thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, this topic, we could spend an entire episode talking about this. In many ways, it's very very uh I mean, it's just dystopian uh on all of this. Like,

what can AI do? How can it be misused? This is also the problem with any nascent space or emerging technology. It's going to be misused, right? But, speaking of safety and security, this leads us beautifully into another topic that we need to cover. Like, we need to talk about it, guys. Like Good good segue, Kate. Perfect problem, okay? So April was now officially was and thank goodness we're in May, okay? Like, fresh Wait, guys, it's May? Oh my god. April was now the officially the most hacked month in crypto history.

Okay, DeFi Llama mentioned that I the damage is in excess of 600 million in April in April. And industry other industry estimates have said there was roughly 28 to 30 separate exploits. So, about one every single day. And you know that. I mean, if you're monitoring crypto or in crypto, you knew in April. It was like, "Hey guys, no hack today. Great." And so, that means this is this is a huge jump. A huge jump from from January, let alone a year ago. I mean, effectively, we're we're looking at a siege. And the more disturbing part of all of this is that it is a siege from a known nation-state sanctioned actor.

Obviously, the vast majority of these attacks are linked to DPRK, North Korea. And now North Korea has a huge pot of funds to power their efforts. The other thing I want to say about this >> It's I don't mean to interrupt, KK. I want to be explicit. Powering efforts means developing nuclear weapons. Correct. >> And that is like something that we should all pause and think about what that would mean. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but just to give some more gravity to your great comments. I'm I'm glad you interrupted to make that point because I think people sometimes forget that the money that that North Korea is gaining doesn't go to just doing more

hacks. Like, yeah, some of that, but there are serious threats to human life as a result of these endeavors. And that is obviously terrifying. We need to take this seriously, okay? But here's the other troubling part. We could spend the entire episode talking about all of the tenants that, you know, Jesse and I have in our paper that we talk about all the time, um the things that that DFIR could do to increase security. But a lot of these hacks are social engineering. And they're they're crazy sophisticated social engineering. We obviously do not have time to go through the 30 separate exploits, but just a few nuggets that I'm sure many people have read about. In one of these exploits, the hackers actually ended up investing

in the protocol. And I think we all know that once you hit investor status, you hit a certain level of trust. There's relationship cultivation over a months-long period in a lot of these scenarios. And V and I are at consensus right now. And my my good friend Kathy Yoon made a really good point in a tweet where she was like, "Hey guys, you need to be conscious about not walking around and flashing your badge in your company everywhere." Obviously, there's a tendency to do that. That's necessary for business development. But at the same time, this is also how social engineering starts. You know, the a wrongdoer knows your name, knows your company, knows your location, can use that as the basis for a hey, great to see you. Wait, don't you remember?

Didn't we meet? Let's exchange telegrams. Oh, now you're a known contact. You know, there's 72 different scenarios that we could explore on the basis of social engineering and unlike underlying technical infrastructure that are known vulne- vulnerabilities like single key admin setups, social engineering is a lot harder to navigate. So, you know, I want to touch on DeFi United, which is the response to this, but before I do, V, Jesse, like any thoughts about this? Like what the hell is going on? Okay so I think a lot of the incidents that we've been seeing happen, a lot of it could have been avoided with like by just implementing kind of common sense

like operational security measures. It actually, to be honest, it blows my mind that DeFi has been around for, I don't know, like five to seven years now, and we still don't have like industry standards over something as simple as if you're a signer on a multi-sig, use a dedicated device just for that. Don't use it to do a ton of other work where you're like downloading malicious files that's on the same device as your key. Like something as basic as that.

How are we not all doing that as an industry by now? Right? And we find out about this stuff every time there's an attack. So, I think a lot of this stuff is just like basic common sense that was not followed, basic basic security measures that were not followed that could have prevented a lot of the stuff that you thought. A question I have, especially for you guys, you know, you work at projects um the DeFi space right now like I agree with you, V. You could I couldn't have said it better myself. But we are here now, right? And so many things have been built Many of them have been built correctly, but many have not.

And we have seen over and over again the contagion that occurs when there's a problem or a vulnerability with one project or one bridge or whatever. And what do we do now? Like, is it blow everything up and start over? But not blow everything up. That's probably like too close to home. Or is it we need to go and then fix things? Like, let's assume we can get everybody on the same page to do this, which is like the dream that I had last night while you guys were partying in Miami. But for me, it's like, what is next? Let's say everyone's like, okay, you're right, it's freaking time. Is it rebuild? Is it go in and fix old infrastructure like we wanted to avoid doing at banks or

traditional finance? Like, where do we go from here? So, that's actually I'm so glad you asked that question, Jesse, because it brings me to DFI United. I feel incredibly mixed by this. So, just for those who aren't familiar, DFI United, obviously we saw major hacks with Drift and KelpDAO. And the thing that people keep forgetting is these hackers are stealing money from human beings, from people. They're not necessarily stealing money from crypto CEOs. They're stealing money from retail investors, okay? Including and protocols and and crypto whales.

So, DFI Aave got hit really hard by in particular the the KelpDAO incident. So, Aave basically coordinated a relief effort by a multitude of ecosystem participants. And in some ways it it was pretty cool. I mean, this has now raised more than 300 million dollars. And you have major places, uh players like Avalanche, Ave, Consensus, others, Ether Phi, Tron, Lido. And you know, these are Yeah. Even Solana. Solana Foundation even donated.

>> It's amazing. Like these protocols are competitors, but everyone came together to, you know, coordinate this shared financial response, you know, to effectively restore, um you know, wrapped backing uh to to prop back to prop up the the stolen funds and and help the ecosystem. So, I part of me is like this is a beautiful thing. Like, you know, it's beautiful to see everyone coming together to mitigate the damage, mitigate contagion, mitigate after effects.

But, I'm also like, is this is this a good idea? Meaning, it's like someone on your street gets robbed and then all the neighbors get together and give the the person money. Okay, good, but shouldn't we also talk about improving the security on the street and catching the robbers? So, I I'm not sure if it it's the right message. And And the last thing I'll say is So, when I heard about this, the the first thing I thought about, and this shows me what a shows you what a history nerd I am, was the the Panic of 1907. Like, I'm a little bit of a Wall Street historian nerd. And I don't know if everyone remembers this, meaning remembers this from history class.

So, good old J.P. Morgan organized a massive syndicate of leading banks to give liquidity to struggling institutions. Like, J.P. Morgan effectively acted as a central bank during this crisis cuz there was no central bank. So, J.P. Morgan locked a bunch of senior executives from banks in a room in 1907 and said you have to sign this pledge, like committing a certain sum for this bailout. And you know, it was it was voluntary, but again, like the the the story is that he locked the doors of his famous Morgan Library. You can tour that today in New York and refused to let the bankers leave until they had all agreed.

So, this has happened historically, but why why? Like, does this fix anything? Does this really fix anything? Let's start with some positives that there's something being done, right? You know, instead of ranting into the abyss. So, I'm torn about it as well, because like, okay, let's help people. Um and I don't I guess I wouldn't go so far back as the >> [laughter] >> and like J.P. Morgan. >> 119 years ago. It was like there's mutual insurance right now. There's Lloyd's syndicate model. Like, TradFi does similar things here. I guess the thing that concerns me is the whole point of all this system and DeFi was to

take centralized powerful intermediaries out of the mix, right? And with this coalition and perhaps the government one day could call it a cartel, it's an organized effort to choose who wins, right? And which protocols get to survive and which hack is worth compensating? Because as your numbers show, I don't think there's any way they could like compensate everybody. I mean, you we all talk about it all the time, but like I help a lot of victims whose money is stolen by crypto and try and just help them get their money back. And they're not in a big hack news of the day, right? They it wasn't associated with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rather, they lost a few hundred thousand dollars, and that to them is devastating and perhaps life-altering, right? And so, why are those people not being helped? And so, I think the analogy you gave KK of like the neighborhood is a good one, but it's also like three people get robbed and the neighborhood coalition decides who gets the money, right? And maybe there's a way to do it so that everything gets spread out and like the government right now has like a victims of terrorism fund that you can apply for. And so maybe there's a way to do it so that there are certain rules about how you apply for the money and and how you can demonstrate evidence and then

maybe there's something there. Um but I think like another way to tackle it is like if you talk to a Binance and I'm not even picking on Binance like any centralized exchange just like many banks do. There are like millions frozen in assets right now based on suspicious activity and they just sit there for years until someone helps to claim it or Binance realizes that the risk of releasing it is important or whatever. And so maybe there's some angle there to like get it all these frozen funds anyway. Um I'm just brainstorming out loud right now because to me having an idea is always good, but this is just like centralized decision makers of who survives in the

market. I I do think that like the reason like this effort happened was one because it was Ave, right? And Ave is so just like symbolically like it represents like DeFi. It's you know, one of the oldest projects, the biggest like DeFi protocol out there. And I think the other thing too was like I think a lot of people were really sympathetic to Ave because it wasn't actually Ave that was hacked. Like but they you know, they're obviously suffering like the biggest impact of this. But I I think you know, that was unique to the situation and like this probably wouldn't have happened if it was just some other like random protocol or >> Which is disturbing because like again, that's a good and bad thing. Like we

want Ave to succeed. Like one of the things I've always loved about crypto is I mean, the the GC crypto bar, the general counsels in crypto have always been incredibly collaborative and open and transparent. And and because for the longest time, and we've all been in crypto for years, this was like this from day one. It was like this through the Gensler administration. It's still like this. There is a sense of like we're all in this together. Like, you know, there are existential threats to this asset class. I don't ever want to see another L2 fail. Like, I don't care if they're competitor, you know, that Yeah. You want others to succeed cuz it's a little bit of kind of lifting each other up and you want the growth in

and out of crypto. So, the togetherness again is a beautiful thing. The collaboration is a beautiful thing. But, I think this really raises the question of like how far does that go? And this can't just happen every time there's a Yeah. I mean, it's it's basically like a a DeFi version of like a trad-fi bailout, like the kind that we criticized all the time. And yes, there is a difference between like using taxpayer money to bail out, you know, like financial institutions that effed up. And and something like this, but I mean, it is a bailout. Like, I was I was having breakfast Yes, exactly like that.

>> [laughter] >> I was having breakfast with um the DeFi lead at like a non-crypto fintech this morning, and he was like, his bosses have been following like this effort and the Celcius DAO thing and everything, and they came to him and they were like, "What's going on here? Like, I thought this was DeFi. I thought like code is law." Really? But, I was like, it's a good question. I think honestly all of us are wondering that, too. Oh my god. Okay, so speaking of breakfasts, I have to say so, V and I are at consensus right now. Don't give me too much FOMO in this update. We miss you. We miss you, Jesse. It's not the same. Uh I

think one of the reasons a lot of lawyers go to Consensus is there is a big legal and regulatory presence. But here, I'll just say there's a big presence. This is a really, really, really well-attended, buzzy conference. I didn't get here until late yesterday on on Tuesday. Um but I literally heard from multiple people that the line to get to at check-in yesterday was something like 2 hours. Like that's just how well-attended it is. There are more events than ever before, and there were already a lot of events at Consensus. There's also a sense that, you know, as as many people might be aware of, the the big conference token that was supposed to take place in Dubai was was canceled. So, my, you know, I'm

speculating that a number of individuals and entities decided to take their budget from Token and put it into Consensus. There's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of optimism, despite the fact that we seem to be in a bit of a crypto winter. Like there's a high degree of energy. Like it feels a little bit like a bull market lately. And I think that's really interesting. And one of the reasons I'm curious about this vibe is I'm wondering if everybody's kind of excited that Clarity might get passed all of a sudden. So, I want to turn it over to V to give us the full Clarity report. As a reminder, Clarity is the comprehensive crypto market structure bill and has been percolating for quite a while now.

And I think all of us had been extraordinarily pessimistic about the passage of Clarity. I have consistently given it about a 20% chance of passage, but there were some pretty significant developments lately. V, fill us in. Yeah. Wait, so do you do you think that's responsible for like the vibes? Well, I don't think solely, but I think it's >> No, maybe there's something to that. >> I think it's contributing to it. And I mean, I am sure you saw like a number of the crypto public companies, like Circle stock jumped 14% and it was attributed to the clarity buzz. I think everyone is really terrified about the scenario in 3 years if the Democrats take control and we don't have market structure. So, the people who are really in the know understand how important clarity is.

Yes. Yes, I think that's right. That like a lot of people are coming to their senses on this. So, So yes, one of the uh biggest developments in the industry the past few days is that it looks like lawmakers may have like finally reached a compromise on the stablecoin yield issue. That's been like one of the main things that's been holding up the clarity act for the last few months. So, um the reported compromise between Senators Tillis and also Brooks, who are the two senators who are sort of leading the effort to like reach a compromise, would still It would still prohibit stablecoin issuers from from paying interest that looks like a traditional

bank deposit product. But, it looks like the language does allow uh certain kinds of rewards that are tied to actual platform or network activity. And what's really um interesting is that Coinbase has come out and basically signaled that they're okay to move forward with it. Um they I think they just now want to get to a markup, right? So, that's really important because they had been one of the loudest opponents um of a broad yield ban. Um but of course, the banks are still unhappy, right? So, over the last few days um the banking lobby has come out like the ABA, the Consumer Banking Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, and others. They've all come

out and argued that the bill still leaves leaves major loopholes that would let crypto firms um basically offer deposit-like products, but in an indirect way. Their concern is basically that you know, maybe the issuer itself can't pay interest directly to customers, but what if Coinbase or another exchange creates like a membership program or a reward structure or a loyalty program or some sort of like arrangement with an affiliate that has basically the same economic like function, right? So, I think this is where the entire yield debate is headed now, right? So, it's no longer like can stablecoins pay yield?

It's now like what counts as evasion, right? So, because once you start writing anti-evasion language, which we'll have to do, I think things can get sort of blurry really fast, right? Like the question then would be well, what actually counts as yield, right? Like what what would be like evasion? So, with things like fee rebates or rewards points or trading incentives or staking rewards would like would all of those things like count? Right? And even like, you know, the kinds of products that we do, which are these earn products where um consumers deposit their funds into a vault that then deploys those funds into DeFi protocols, could something like that be swept up, right? In in this ban?

So, the the banks are pushing the regulators to define all of this really broadly, right? So, you guys may have seen like a slew of comment letters being filed to Treasury and the OCC the last week um where like a lot of uh crypto companies are saying like the anti-evasion language shouldn't be written so broadly that it sweeps in all of this like real activity that generates yield, but is not like a deposit-like product. Um so, yeah, I think that the question now is how aggressive is the anti-evasion framework going to become? It's something we're monitoring really closely. Um and I think it's going to be interesting to see like how that debate plays out and and what like Treasury and OCC end up doing also in addition to

where the Clarity Act lands on this. It's funny because there's a lack of clarity with all of this. Like, the funny thing is even if you settle on this compromise, I mean, there's already a lot of discussion about loopholes. Like, okay, can you go around? What can you do? These parameters are not going to be clear. Like, even if we get clarity passed, there's going to be years of interpretive guidance. There's likely going to be years of litigation surrounding this issue. Like, this is a big deal. I think this is a big deal for growth of stablecoins generally. Um growth of alternatives to banking. So, this is definitely like I think this aspect has, in many ways, more bearing and more influence on kind of the the

macro blockchain as a disruptor to market structure than anything else right now. Uh >> I also the stakes are very high. I also just want to remind everybody, not you guys cuz I know you know this, but this is just one issue in clarity. And in my mind, everyone has sort of like put blinders on for this issue because it was the thing that sort of, you know, took it off the rails last time. So, I understand why, but like there are many other things that still need to be resolved. Decentralization, like we've talked about. Illicit finance, which, you know, I've yelled into the abyss about. And ethics. No one has figured out the ethics question yet.

And that could put the kibosh on this whole thing, right? Yeah. Such a like high politicized, like really difficult, emotional issue for me even, too. Um that I I don't know if people are paying enough attention to that yet because they're sort of like, "Well, we don't want to deal with those things until we make sure that this is okay." And maybe that's, you know, how the sausage of banking is made. But I just want to remind everybody that like I love being hopeful and optimistic, but I'm also like, "Okay, we're talking I'm clarity again." Like, there's some progress, but how much is this progress?

Do you think ethics is going to end up being the like blocker here? Like, I feel like we can get there on DeFi and on Broca. I do think ethics is going to be like I'm going to hope that everyone's morals and ethics come together and define good rules here. I don't think it's that hard to come up with what that should look like. Um, but whether there'll be enough political will, I think it's going to be the harder thing. Like, the exact language has been the really difficult thing here in making the coalitions happy.

Um, but this is much more of a political issue, which is it depends on what's happening with the midterms. It depends on what's happening with the Iranian war. Depends on what happens with gas prices, you know? So, like, it's who's going to stick their neck out on a political issue that might go against the current administration in this time. And what is what all the other winds say that have nothing to do with crypto. I'm still not super optimistic. Like, I was going to ask you. No, I think these developments I feel like with these latest developments, I went from maybe 20% a week ago to like now I feel like I'm at like 60% that it'll happen this year. What like where where are you guys at? 20% to 40%. Yeah.

So, increased maybe, but I still think there's a lot of issues yet to be worked out. There's a lot of questions is does this have momentum? Does Congress care enough about this? Will Congress be distracted, appropriately so, by geopolitical issues and considerations? So, there's a there's a lot of things that need to fall into place for this to happen. I mean, I hope I'm proved wrong. Like, get me to be clear, I want clarity very badly. Yeah. What about you, Jesse? What are you at?

I have been disappointed far too many times by politics and clarity this year. So, I am always the optimist and I have had that optimism plummeted. I just haven't seen like real engagement on everything but stablecoin interest and I I see that when I do have conversations about illicit finance with people on the hill. Yeah. Yep. Okay, so we only have a few minutes left. We have a shorter episode than usual today because hey, we are all running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Um if only we had unlimited time to criminal of the content and the craziness in crypto. But I have to say we are ending on such a high note because this week's crypto good news makes me so happy. Okay. >> [laughter] >> I I I'm not going to lie to everybody. Sometimes we struggle to find crypto good news. >> And I make us do an AI one or something about puppies that's unrelated to pets. >> Like robots are helping people in war. Okay, great Jesse. That's good [laughter] news. Okay. But this week honestly, props a round of applause to Dogecoin and MoonPay. So, House of Doge, which is apparently the name of the of Dogecoin's Doge the Dogecoin Foundation their corporate arm,

which is kind of amazing. Um House of Doge, MoonPay and the Dogecoin Foundation have collectively contributed 1 million Doge uh to the American Kennel Club to help dogs frankly. And the AKC specifically the AKC Humane Fund, which is a charitable affiliate of the American Kennel Club in a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of dogs across the country. And my favorite part of this was probably Keith Grossman's statement.

He's president of MoonPay. He starts by saying, "Dogs have always brought out the best in us." "Now the little help from the the community, they are bringing out the best in crypto, too. Okay, you know what, Keith? You're right. Good for you. I love this. I love that we're seeing this interesting partnership to advance a charitable effort. Uh we've said this before, we'll say it again, like crypto, we're borderless, we're global, but we need to be important members of our community. Uh to the degree that we are creating good with the technology, we are also causing complications here and then. So, we need to be responsible and, you know, positive contributors to the world. So, let's not lose sight of that. So,

amazing amazing job. >> Amazing. Yes. >> And for all of those who need a break from crypto Twitter anytime, and that we're they are not sponsoring us, just go to We Rate Dogs and watch the videos of dogs being rated, and maybe buy a sweatshirt that says tell your dog I said hi, and donate to some of these dogs with crypto, perhaps. Yes. Jesse and I both have dogs. We are a huge dog lovers. Bea is not a dog hater or anything. She's just not a a dog mother, which is fine. But, so this is obviously, as soon as we found a piece of crypto good news that also involved dogs, I think we were both a little overly excited. So, cheers to that.

Let's end on a high note. Uh next week, hopefully we will have no hacks to talk about, but we'll see you next week on Dex in the City. [music] >> Mhm.