🚨 LANDMARK WEEK FOR DIGITAL ASSETS: LIVE From DC Blockchain Summit Day 2

Transcript

Heat. Heat. Thank you, son. Lord, we'll see you around the timeline.

Feels good to be back. I think the rollup is one of the most premier media brands in crypto and Andy and Robbie are great experts at everything they talk about and it's my favorite podcast. >> Adding to my library every day potentially multi-chain deployments. Here we are at day one here. I'm testing from base. Heat. Heat.

JP Morgan, Black Rockck, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions. It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. >> I'm bullish. >> He said it. He finally said it. So bullish. >> It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Corola is headed to the top. If we're

not already at the top, we're going to the top. >> Roll up is my favorite. >> People from all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry come together for the roll up. Zoom out. The institutions aren't

coming. They're simply here. It's the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. Welcome to the next. See you on the show. Welcome back. Thank you, Washington DC. Let's get some love, brother. Yes, sir. Guys, welcome back to Washington DC. Absolutely. >> Incredible week this week. Um, I mean, landmark deal. We've got a lot to discuss and >> we ended the stream too short yesterday. Just after the show ended, we had some of the most important landmark news from the SEC ever in digital assets history.

Guys, we are live from day two. We've got our first guest, Cody Carbone, here. Before we bring him up, let me tell you about Chain Link, the connective tissue between DeFi and finance, connecting all sorts of institutions to the digital assets space. Chain Link is prominent here in DC. We are happy to have him as a partner. Guys, we've got Cody Chainlink just got mentioned on stage. You can't he just got on stage. Zack Wickoff mentioned Chainlink of this historic uh landmark regulation that we're seeing between the SEC, the CFTC. We've got the man himself, Cody Carbone. Welcome to the show.

>> Yeah, thanks fellas. Thanks for coming out to DC. Thanks for coming to the summit. Appreciate you guys being here. >> Oh, it's awesome. I mean, this whole event is about giving a voice to policy makers who want to champion this issue, digital assets, blockchain technology, and also giving a voice to the industry leaders. And when I think of the best voices in the digital asset industry, I think of you guys. So, I'm grateful that you guys are here. Really, it's it means the world to us. >> Well, thank you so much for having us. It's been an incredible journey uh experience this week. Um, we had uh a a a slew of amazing regulation that came out of this. Um, I think if you're looking at this space from the outside, every all of the action is right here.

Andy was pushing me on this, but I've said on this show over the last couple days, there's been more innovation in the policy space than there is on the technology. For so long, we we had, you know, all of this action on blockchain architecture, all this. So much of this is happening in the regulatory space now. You guys are at the cornerstone of mo a lot of these agencies. Everyone is here talking about things. What are some of the most exciting updates that you've heard that you've had on the stage? Because we've been locked in here in the last 24 hours. What are you hearing in the air? What is what is the conversation on the floor today?

>> I I mean, you said it. What a 180 from where we've been. I mean, for so long, we had to be reactive to what the government was throwing at us. It was always bad. It was enforcement actions. It was bad guidance. It was being told that we don't belong, that this was a trend. And now the government has not only embraced us, but they're coming here to work side by side with us. The regulators want to know what does digital what does the digital asset industry need to be successful in the United States? How can we make the US the crypto capital world? It's been incredible. So, you guys alluded to it. Amazing news yesterday. It sounds like we're going to get a market structure bill hopefully done in the next few weeks. And we've got some still regulators to come today from the White

House, from Senate Bank Committee to tell us more. incredible news from the SEC to watch the SEC chair, the CFTC chair sit side by side and say, "Hey, we want to work together to make sure that this industry can be properly regulated that if you're going to issue a token, you know who your regulator is. You know, if it's a security or not, you know, if it's a commodity or not." >> It's been incredible. So, I'm glad the news is breaking here. Obviously, I'm biased, but it's been amazing to watch just the innovation to your point, how it's succeeded here in DC, that DC is at the forefront. we're leading cuz that's not usually what people think of when they think of DC. They don't think of new digital asset policies, digital asset innovation, but it's starting here.

>> Yeah, man. I I think the entire industry is very excited about this digital commodity classification. I think it was kind of something that we expected and something that we thought was likely to be the case considering these crypto assets are far different than traditional equities or other commodity structures. But to have that firm classification and this kind of five five kind of classes as part of this new rule, it almost feels like we just jumped over Clarity Act. It's like Clarity Act is kind of being bogged down and slowed down, but this was huge. Talk to us about what this means for the industry from the policy perspective.

Why are these five classes of asset types in the digital assets industry so important to have now as part of our regulatory body? >> You're right, Andy. This is clarity. this guidance that we received yesterday, that's the clarity that we've been asking for for a decade. That's the clarity that if you're going to issue a token in the United States, you now know what you're issuing. You know what you need to do to comply from a regulatory perspective. You're not in a no man's land. You don't have to worry about an enforcement action because here is the guidelines. Here are the rules that you need to follow to do it right. If you're going to list a token in the United States, you now know what you're listing. You know if you're listing a security, you know if you're listing a commodity. There's no guessing anymore.

That is what has kept the United States falling behind for so long and where other jurisdictions have beaten us and saying, "Okay, we're going to be very, very clear. If you're issuing this, this is what you need to do. If you're listing this, this is what you need to do. This is what we've been looking for." So yesterday, it can't be like understated. It was monumental. We still want the legislation because we want to administration prove this. So we always say the legislation is critical because what it allows that if we get a bad SEC chair in the future, if we get Gary Gensler 2.0, you know, the first thing they can he or she can do on day one is say, you know what, that guidance that Paul Atkins released at the DC blockchain summit, we're going to resend that tomorrow. Legislation is harder to

do that. So, we want legislation, but we want legislation to enshrine what we got yesterday. That's the clarity we need for at least the next three years, and hopefully we'll get the bill to match it. And and what does it mean for Paul Atkins, Mike Celig? What does it mean for them to be announcing this legisl this regulation here? This guidance at the DC blockchain someone at your event. >> It it just shows how far this industry has come. This industry now is at the forefront. It is being prioritized at all levels of government. We got over 50 policy makers here, a tenth of the United States Senate. For the first time, we've been hosting this, you know, for almost a decade now. For the first time, we had decline members of Congress. be like, "We just don't have room. We had to decline regulars. We

don't have room." Everyone wants to show that they're leading because this is the next era of finance. This is where the economy is going. So for the SEC and the CFTC, our two capital markets regulators in the United States to say not only do we want to lead on digital assets, but we want to announce it at the premier digital asset conference in DC. We want to show the industry that we're not only working alongside them, but we have their back and we're listening to them. We want to provide that clarity so you can continue to grow here and build here whether it's DC or New York and San Francisco, but it's the United States. It's it's massive. >> Um, we know your time is limited. What can we expect for day two?

>> What like there's been chatter that there's resolution on a yield issue in the Clarity Act >> coming from the White House potentially. >> Coming from the White House this afternoon, Patrick Wit, the director of the White House crypto council will be here and it's teased that we might see that resolution. We also have Senator Oscar Brooks from the Democratic side of the aisle who's been working on the legislative fix of stable coin yield. So, I'm hoping we get some more clarity. Uh, we'll kill that word this week, but we'll get some more clarity on that stable coin yield pros. I'm hoping that we hear from Patrick. Here's the resolution. We've got a deal. Here's the timeline to get a market structure bill done. We've got a lot of senators coming up, not only on the market structure side and Senate Banking and Senate A,

but also on the tax side. Tax is what's next after we get market structure. So you'll hear some of the tax writing leaders from the Senate and the House. You've got more regulators from the credential regulatory side coming in saying, "Okay, how do we get banks involved in this? How do we get crypto companies working with banks? Let's get rid of Operation Chokepoint." And then you've got the industry leaders, massive industry leaders, CEOs at some of the biggest exchanges, CEOs of the biggest Bitcoin mining companies, token issuers, all explaining why they're now building here instead of other countries. So massive day, too. I'm thrilled you guys are here for it. >> Absolutely. Cody, man, wishing you the best. Congratulations on this amazing event. Robbie and I came to this event in 2018.

>> It was a way different world. >> You guys are here before me. You guys are the >> There you go. >> So, we're going to have Perry on this afternoon and we'll be talking about the good old days, but these are the good old days. I mean, this feels like it's the opening of the next generation of crypto. It's the next generation of digital assets and it's ingrained in the economy as we know it. It's becoming it's becoming part of the new normal. But again like this event is all about giving a voice. Giving a voice to the policy leaders who are leading and giving a voice to the industry folks who have been building this and you guys are the most illustrative emblematic example of that. So I'm thrilled you guys are here for it. Thank you so much man.

Appreciate you having us man. >> We'll see you next time. Thanks guys. >> Guys, what a way to kick off the event. We're going to take a quick break and then get the show started. We've got markets news, weather, commentary, a lot of headlines and more breaking down what actually happened with the SEC. Rob, let's go. Let's do it. See you guys in a sec. We get deep. We get deep, you know. We

get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know we get deep we get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep we get we get deep we get deep we get we get deep you know we get We get deep. We get deep, you know. We

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We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep. Know we get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep. We get deep. We get deep. >> Day two. >> We're back live, guys.

>> Day two. >> Absolutely crushing the energy. I mean, he's fantastic. He was able to organize this entire thing. And so, uh, shout outs to Cody Carbone. It's pretty incredible that they have the CFTC, the SEC, these regulators, these White House, Treasury, OC, all of these agencies coming here and making their announcements at this conference. >> I know. And it's no surprise that the actual conference was the place and the time when we got this major breakthrough in regulation. I mean, guys, if you've been paying attention to what's been happening on the hill, you've noticed that things have been kind of coming to this tipping point. There's been this buildup here where people have been

expecting some regulatory action. They've been looking for something from the White House, from Washington DC. Of course, today and yesterday were the big big big moments for this. So today, as you guys just heard, we're expecting a bit of a teaser from the White House about the stable one part of the bill. >> We already got the teaser. The teaser, >> I'll say it right here, right now, is that there's going to be a resolution on the yield issue that's been holding up the clarity. Today, >> when Patrick Wit takes the stage this afternoon, we're going to get a resolution on the yield issue. That's what we're hearing here today. So, those are the rumors.

>> Those are the whispers. We're going to see if that actually comes to fruition this afternoon on stage at the DC Summit. >> All right, guys. Let's roll into today's topics. We've got another busy day here at DC Buckching Summit. Day two, we got markets and weather. >> It's cold out here, but it's sunny again. Markets, it's I don't know what happened. I think >> there is some PCE that came in or something. We'll talk about it. >> Yeah, >> we got SEC and CFTC crypto classifications. We definitely want to talk about that. We definitely want to roll into kind of what that means for the space, for the digital asset landscape. Those five classifications.

We've got White House expected to make significant moves today. Again, we were just kind of hinting at that with the upcoming yield portion of the Clarity Act. So, looking forward to hearing more about that. And then, of course, we've got lawyers, policy makers, CEOs, and founders joining the show here live in Washington DC. Today's topic is powered by Treasure, the best hardware wallet on the market. Guys, use code rollup10 to get a Treasure at treasure.io, guys. Secure your crypto. Let's keep it moving here into the markets, into the weather. It's a beautiful day out here. Like I said, it's cold. We did some BTS shots that you guys will see on the recap memorial, the capital building, and more. We we got out there this morning

and we were uh we were making some moves around the city in DC. Went to the Lincoln Memorial. We went to the Washington Monument. We went to the capital steps, looked at Congress, looked at the Senate where uh a lot of action is being made. I stand by what I said. I think there's more innovation being made inside of the capital building and the SEC and the CFTC building than a lot of your favorite L1's these days. >> Um, >> that's a spicy take, guys. >> All right, let's keep it rolling here. We're going to move into our our weather segment, our markets segment. So, looking forward to just kind of talking about what's h what's happened over the last 24 hours.

>> Yeah, there's been a lot that has happened. It's all been coming out of DC. So, let's keep it moving. Let me tell you about FRA guys. Open stable borderless the future of digital money. Fra is building F FRXUSD a genius compatible stable coin powered by the FRA protocol. One of the OGs in DeFi and a lovely partner of the show. Fra is powering the future of digital money. Guys, tell us what the difference between compliant and compatible is. So I believe compliant suggests that it is a part of the rules like it is directly compliant with all of the rules.

However, the laws have not been enacted yet such that that you can actually be compliant. So the right term is genius compatible. >> Okay. Well, that's the weather for today. It's a very compatible day out there. It's very >> 30° sunny here in DC blockchain summit. We've been using the term brick. >> It is brick out there. >> Brick out there today. It's a bit windy, but it's sunny and it's brick. >> And this weather's brought to you by Relay, one of the best crosschain intense protocols. And they are powering us as we go from DC to New York. As we go from sunny to cloudy, as the wind moves through the intent protocol, relay protocol. Go there. Use them for your crosschain swaps. They're powering today's weather segment. All right,

guys. Let's get into the markets. Markets red today. People are a little bit confused. We had such strong such strong >> action. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it it it's what's the old saying the uh market can remain irrational be uh longer than you can remain solvent. Maybe some other words that you know people like to throw in there but today's markets are red. Um we did get some negative uh PCE inflation news tation. >> Um people are attributing that to the market downturn. >> This could also be like a buy the rumor, sell the news. I'd imagine that there was probably some exciting rumors coming out of DC. Obviously, we've been hearing things over the last few days. Market has ticked up. Now that those things have been announced, we're seeing the

market slide back. Um, >> what do you think? What are you confused? You're confused >> why, you know, we have such the strongest regulatory action since the inception of this industry, >> yet we're still in this kind of bearish phase where the market's not reacting. Hyperlid had some insane news today. That asset is obviously holding up. Rest of the market's down for sure. And well, today's market segment is powered by Zama. And whether the market is up or it's down, Zama's technology continues to work because it's privacy. And what we're hearing from DC Blockchain Summit and I want to give a big shout out to Hester Pur. She's the privacy champion within the SEC. Commissioner Pur was on

the show. She also had a lot of great talks at several crypto conferences. I I heard her speak at uh the science of blockchain conference in UC Berkeley. Uh she was very steadfast in the privacy uh language that she instills upon this regulatory guidance. And so I think without her we wouldn't have this sense of privacy that is instilled in the guidance that we've heard over the last couple of days. So, big shout out to Chester Pur big privacy champion along with our friends at Zama building FHE technology.

>> Yeah, guys, it's been a wild 24 hours. Let's get into some of the timeline reactions, market news, news reactions. We have some really, really, really good news from the Trade XYZ and Hyperlqu side. I mean, amongst others from Eleanor Tourett, our local DC correspondent. Absolutely crushing. She will be on later this afternoon. Elanor, >> our friends at Crypto in America had a lovely Subway ad running in NYC. Uh before we have her on, uh we're going to go to some of the news because there's been plenty.

Let's go ahead and get teed up. First, we're going to tell you about Near. Near is the blockchain for AI and AI agents. They are building the agentic future. They have the L1. People forget they were an AI company first. They saw a lot of this. They said we need a blockchain in order to coordinate amongst AI agents. Now AI agents are running the world. Near blockchain is your go-to home to launch your AI agent and have it interact with the rest of the open financial world. Guys, trade.xyz absolutely insane news today. I didn't even know this was possible. The SNC Dow Jones indexes and trade XYZ have joined forces. Yeah. to launch the first official S&P 500 perpetual contract

>> available exclusively on Hyperlid. Guys, what this really means is the S&P 500 knows that they're cooked. That if they don't get on board with Hyperlid, Hypquid is going to eat their entire lunch. I'm telling you right now, they're scared. >> All right, I've got a bit of a different perspective. >> Terrified, boys and girls. I I think what's happening here is something we're going to see a lot more of, which is the gatekeeping and the verticalization of the products and and the assets themselves. Obviously, the S&P 500 is an indicy product. It makes up 500 of the most well- capitalized companies in the United States. I think they are partnering with trade XYZ and Hyperlid

>> by cutting off all other trading venues from the right to list the S&P 500 on their venue. They partnered with the license says do you think the license actually says that >> the license? >> I mean >> if there was an open license then anyone could list this and this announcement would be meaningless. the fact that they went ahead and issued this license and they did it with Hyperlid in my opinion. Look, we don't know all of the details surrounding this, but I would imagine that the license gives Hyperlid the exclusive right in order to list the S&P index. And we're not going to see every trading venue under the sun, get that same license, and therefore not be able to list the S&P. And so, they've chosen

Hyperlid as the fastest horse and their champion in the crypto industry. >> Sure. I mean, I think that's a fair take, but at the end of the day, Hyperlid just listed S&P 500 permissionlessly anyways. Trade XYZ had a oracle that just uh, you know, followed the price of the S&P. I can just go and list S&P on a different exchange, call it something else, and track it. >> I think I think if you do that, you could get sued now that SP at this world >> probably where this licensing thing comes from. So yes, but like at the end of the day, I still think that that that's going to happen. Like the point is people are just going to list this.

>> Tokenization and digital assets are the three largest pillars in this industry. We heard this from Teddy from Bitwise yesterday. We're seeing this play out in real time. And now we're seeing it become adopted by the largest traditional financial products in the entire world. They're choosing winners in this space rather than building it out themselves. and they're continuing to leverage the technology that's been built over the past seven or eight years. >> You got to love it, guys. You got to love it, man.

>> It's incredible. >> Rob's bullishness is palpable. Let's go, man. Let's go. >> I've been bullish for 3 or 4 months. It's It's way easier to be bullish now that a lot of these things are coming to fruition on the regulatory side. The traditional financial landscape is adopting this technology and they're putting more and more of these assets. The tokenization wave continues to progress. I think all of this is dwelling swelling underneath the surface. We've seen it happen ever since last November. We've we've been seeing this happen and we've been able to really feel the emergence of this as a category. We were there when everyone was leaving and so as a result, we're seeing this continue to swell beneath the surface. Ultimately, I think we're we're getting very ready and very close

to Still not that bullish yet, guys. Um, if you guys have been following my takes, I've been out of out of a lot of stuff other than hype for a while. I'll continue to hold that kind of a view until later this year. How's that uranium doing? And uranium chilling in. Copper is down a little bit, but happy to not be thinking about all the crypto volatility and being had a great week this week. Look, we're down a little bit today. We went from 75 back to 71, but we are up from 62, 63, whatever the lows were. You know, it's pretty incredible. Ethereum 2300 >> highest open since 1010 >> Hyperliquid absolutely crushing it partnering with this there's we were sitting at dinner yesterday we were talking about some of the uh the chains that have institutional strategies

you've got Ethereum you've got Hyperlink you've got Canton and then you've got things like ZKync and Aptos that are also in this institutional world >> to a certain extent we're going to be hearing from all speaking Alex the inventor of ZKYNC live on the show as our next guest Guys, don't go anywhere. Quick break. We're going to get him all situated and we're going to be ripping it with guests for the next 3 4 hours. Let's go, guys. Welcome back to DC day 2, baby. Let's go. We get deep. We get you know we get

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know we get >> All right guys we're live from DC DC Blockchain Summit day who today we have the ZKSync inventor unpacking the launch of the Kerry network powered by some of the most influential folks in the banking industry in the United States of America specifically the controller of the currency Alex great to have you back on the rollup man >> thank you excited to be here >> yes welcome to DC uh I assume it's not your first time considering all the work that's been going into this launch let's not bury the lead here we were once fighting the banks the banks are now being onboarded. They want privacy. They want block space and they want to operate distributed ledger technology.

Why? What is the demand side of this and what's going on here? >> Above all else, they want to be modern. They want to go from this era of 1970s in which they got stuck for many decades and finally want to move with the markets which are um real time that are progressing in seconds. And you know we have this infamous T+1 T plus2 T plus 5 settlement delays which are absolutely ridiculous. They cannot um continue the the way uh they go now. Uh but the reason this has perpetuated for so long is that the banks have been caught between two conflicting requirements.

The regulations on the one hand demanded that they preserve control control over privacy over the the private data of uh the banks with the bank secrecy act and and business logic uh uh protection of basic common sense u uh privacy uh uh data of of the customers. On the other hand, they have felt the pressure that they need to connect to others much faster than what was possible before.

And this pressure is now materializing in stable coins taking so much value away from the banking system from from deposits into these completely new rails. And the banks of course feel this pressure. It was not possible to reconcile until the arrival of uh basically previdium and and zero knowledge cryptography. So to understand why we really want to zoom out the and look at the history of banking as a whole for millennia or centuries now it's been a history of trust. It's it's been a question of how do you build um trust structures that enable people to transact on a civilizational level with other folks who they don't know who are

living in different places in different countries governed by by different laws and and it's been this this this history of creating trust structures of organizations institutions that connect to other people other institutions they can trust. And the problem is this does not translate into the internet era because in the era of internet we transact in seconds. There is simply no buffer nor circuit breakers where the humans can intervene and can perform human based trust building functions.

You really need something that protects the integrity of these transactions by design with mathematical guarantees with computational guarantees. And this is of course what Bitcoin, Ethereum, the blockchain world brings to the table. This incorruptible guarantees of uh uh of uh transaction integrity. But this was not compatible with privacy and zero knowledge proof. Zero's changed that. And Pvidium is the answer for this. >> Beautiful. And so in this carry network, this network actually is able to keep the bank's deposits on their own on their own balance sheet with FTIC coverage, but having it on chain. How does that work? And what kind of uh how

is that different from stable coins? Because Omar from your team came on the show and was talking about tokenized deposits. He was alluding to this, but I think there's still a lot of misconceptions. What is the difference between tokenized deposits like this and stable coins? How are those two different? >> This is a fantastic question and on the technical level there is indeed very little difference. Both are governed by the same ERC20 standard. And you can think of tokenized deposits essentially as bank issued stable coins, >> okay?

>> That are issued on their rails and under the perimeter of the banking infrastructure that they control to essentially the same degree as they control the the deposits with the difference that this is now a a payment instrument that is compatible with blockchain rails. So you can apply all of the same logic. It's not just a record in a database that sits there and can only be moved by the bank. It's now something you as a user can control with your normal Ethereum wallet, custodial wallet, non-custodial wallet, whatever.

This is something you can use on smart contracts. You can do repo, you can do borrowing, lending. Um, you can do like more complex structures and and and integrate this eventually with derivatives and and and financial trading. You can also combine it with stable coins. Some of the banks will be moving faster than the others will be embracing I I mean like we've seen this with the Arabore bank for example, they are stable coin native from day one. Some of the other banks will not be as aggressive, but they will be all living on the same network. So now with this table uh sorry with this tokenized deposits being issued on on previdium as a part of ZK sync network they will be compatible and we have other um uh ecosystem players building clearing

houses that will enable banks to connect to each other but will also enable them to connect to the world of native crypto stable coins and also capital markets on Ethereum itself because what what Carri is building with preium is settling on Ethereum. This is I think this this is a really interesting thing to to to talk about the uh the banks understand that when they are figuring out the rails how they can connect to each other the only standard that can win is an open standard.

You know, we've seen a number of competing private consortium networks, some driven by the banks, some created by alternative commercial companies trying to fill this niche and say, "Oh, we will be the the payment rails. We will be the new Swift. We will be kind of like the place where everyone connects and all of them are saying the same thing." The reality is none of them can perform this. The only true alternative is real opensource open uh fully permissionless networks and I think Ethereum has by now won this category like Ethereum is the global settlement rails settlement layer for for the world finance and it's the only natural place where everyone can

agree to build on because everyone understands that it's the only place that will not be permanently captured by their competitors and by um you know like or or heavily controlled by their competitors. >> Yeah. I want to get your read on a couple of things. Um you know on on this I think we here accept that Ethereum is the open standard and this has the most potential to be the the standard when it comes to uh open finance and settlement. Um I've also said on the show recently that you know we have the New York Stock Exchange launching uh its own network for tokenized equities. uh the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ, we have uh kind of this new L1 uh trade or uh invention

that that is coming out. Um we also have uh things like Tempo that launched today. How much credence do you give to these new networks that are so seeming to be launching with the same principles in mind? Tokenization, equities, highquality assets. Do you think eventually they will pivot to Ethereum and become interoperable either as a rollup or move their business onto Ethereum? If so, why? >> Look, this is a natural process. Blockchain as a technology is a superior way to manage value.

>> Yeah. So, even if you are deploying something for a single organization, blockchain is a better database. >> Yep. >> Cuz it's incorruptible by design. You can you can protect it. you like you cannot modify it uh uh by a single system administrator. You can split control. You can do a lot of interesting thing. You can you can add programmability of smart contracts even within a single organization. So it's very natural that each organization will have their own blockchain system. They they they must have it like they must have something that is completely under their control but inherits all of the benefits from blockchain. Now the question becomes later how do you connect them all together. So the fact

that all of them want to build their own uh blockchains is really the underlying thesis of previdium. Whole idea of previdium is we come with this open source technology we offer it to you and say hey like you want to build it you you need privacy you need integrity from uh uh from blockchain you can take this framework and build your own system. Now as a bonus on top of that you can be connected to Ethereum and through Ethereum to everyone else every other previdium and with um ZK proofs you also get private interop not and this is very very important this is very important for banks they cannot allow the uh visibility of inflows outflows specifically for tokenized deposits to

happen on public networks regulators have already flagged this as a risk for triggering bank rounds and and stuff like that right so Now other organizations like uh the ones you mentioned are going to be building their own uh networks. Tempo is a venture by Stripe. So obviously Stripe as a large payment processor wants to have their own network and they don't care if it's still one or or two. They're going to build one. And of course all of them will try to get everyone else on on on their network. But guess what? Like that that's going to be that that's precisely the reason why it's never going to happen in the end. Like yes, Stripe wants everything to happen on Tempo, but JP Morgan wants everything to happen on JP Morgan chain and um Circle wants

everything to happen on ARC and and so on and so forth. They will never agree. The large players will never agree to build on infrastructure of another large player. And this is why Ethereum is the only option, the only way forward >> as a neutral infrastructure that everyone can agree that that that's the place where where we all all want to connect and previum is built for with this in mind. >> Alex, coming back to the launch of Kerry and kind of this 2026 roll out, you have some big banks involved here in DC, in New York, in the States. um Mnt, Keycorp, Huntington, some of the names here. What is going to be the first use

case that they're doing on the network? What are some of like the experiments or tests that they've been running and kind of what is that spectrum of use cases look like as they get more and more comfortable using blockchain for their, you know, for their company? >> Yeah, these five banks you mentioned is just the beginning. We already I I just spoke to to uh Jean Ludwick, the the founder CEO of uh Kar yesterday. uh he said he just immediately after the announcement got got more inbound from other banks want to join it it just like from now it's going to expand very fast now the very first use case for these banks is very trivial it's just replacing the AC with the real time means to to connect the banks so

according to some estimates uh that that I've seen like I cannot attest of like like exact 100% um validity of them but but like it roughly goes in this direction. Around $27 trillion sit in Vstro Nostra accounts on corresponding banking completely idle just because the banks need the way to connect to each other and you cannot build a relationship matrix of like every other bank to every other bank in the world. That would be like what 10 tens of thousands of banks square millions of of connections like that does not work.

Because they can connect only to some banks they know and trust and they put money there and from there they connect to others and and they have to rebalance and reconcile and this is all not happening in real time and this is causing this massive friction of idle capital costs are quantifiable enormous like a single organization that has the finances split between different financial endpoints with let's say like middlesiz corporation with $3 billion in assets has roughly 30 million 50 million every year lost on this friction.

>> Wow. >> In in missed interest payments on uh on treasuries in in in missed opportunities uh on on using this capital in more productive ways. All of that is going to be going back. So this is the very first use case. But that's of course just the entry point for everything else you will build on top once you have the the deposits tokenized cuz now now you like it's easily expand expandable to all the other um use cases of crypto with repo with uh tokenizing of equities tokenizing of everything else >> like once you have the the foundation the tokenization engine the you know nice dashboards user control which is very important like a large part of

previum so It's important to say the previdium does not come as an empty computer. It's not just a empty infrastructure that you have to build applications on. It comes with um tools for the treasury managers for for the cos for for the compliance officers to monitor the network to configure exactly who has access who may see transactions who may transact modify um specific contracts. Some of the contracts are public but with specific guard rails and and like you can easily fine-tune all of that. Once you have these basics in place all the other applications become like 5% of the effort that you needed to to get uh in those. So now that we have

providiums uh and we can tweak all these dials also we got tremendous regulation the SEC the CFTC partnering on on you know digital commodities digital uh tools we've said at least I I've said Andy's pushed back on this a little bit that the policy is really where a lot of the innovation is happening. You were here in 2020, 2021 like even before then inventing these things, building out the technology, building the architecture of these chains. Do you see most of the technical work is complete and production ready for institutions? Now it's about pilling the institutions, educating them, selling them on these things, helping them understand the benefits. That's where really the the

innovation or the hard work is, the focus is on that. or do we still have more technical work to go? >> I we will always have more technical work to do. At what point was I don't know Amazon complete and and and ready like you cannot put a point like it's an evolving organism of or an ecosystem with various parts of technology being constantly developed but I would say that we have the the the absolute basics in place for the institutions to actually start transitioning to blockchain rails in a compliant way. I mean, you could do it before. You could you could do do some of the compliant finance on public chains. And we've seen that being done with some of the big

banks tokenizing and and and going on Ethereum. Uh but it was not there with privacy, >> right? >> And I believe the K is the first ever project that has more than one bank on the network. Yeah, this is critical like having a single bank doing some experiments and and you know like a lot of banks have the innovation departments they just do pilots they they they just do things and it sounds impressive but it's not going anywhere. Ki is actually solving a real big problem with a lot of money on the on the price for them. So um the reason they can do it between the

different banks is a because it's settled on a neutral infrastructure that none of them controls and the the uh you know kai itself does not control it's really settled on Ethereum and and protected by zero knowledge proofs and the integrity is guaranteed mathematically and two they preserve the privacy they can configure the privacy correctly and and the transacting parties only see what is relevant for them and not everything that's happening on the network. This for the first time opens a completely unpre like opens a much larger scope for what's possible on blockchain rails for compliant institutions and this is frankly a much much larger market like orders of

magnitude larger than what what was possible before in in traditional crypto. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean just kind of coming to a close here when you're thinking about what the addressable market is for these types of blockchains right like how big are we talking or like how much asset volume transfers how much uh assets on the network in terms of tokenized deposit like how big are you thinking here? Just starting with these five banks, they have 600 billion north of 600 billion dollars in deposits that they're looking to tokenize and the tokenized deposits um in the US banks alone is something like around 8 trillion but alone that

plus as I mentioned 27 trillion is is like the worldwide estimate on the uh money that is locked in corresponding banking. But if you go beyond that, you will uh uh you know like this is just the beginning. The you really need a single killer use case to start a um complex network to work because it's it's very it's a very hard problem to solve chicken and egg like a network is only as valuable as the the participants of the network. So we needed something that provides value from day one that is immediately valuable even to a single institution or or a small group of institutions. But once you have that

this is where the network this is the crystallization point from which the the the network growth and and expands into this trillion dollar markets. And look the uh it's always been the promise of blockchains to tokenize everything like blockchains ethereum specifically has always had this internet of value vision >> right of you know just how what internet has done to information every type of information is now on the internet like we're doing kind of a radio video uh podcast right previously you would have it split between the radio uh network and the TV network and then maybe like some pictures printed in

the newspapers. Now the everything is digitized on on the same rails. The same thing is going to happen with finance. >> All of these isolated um lanes and and and things will be merged together in one big network and that's going to happen with blockchain. >> Alex, last thing for you for me. How do you kind of grapple with this institutional adoption wave, banks coming on chain, tokenized deposits, uh regulatory action, um different rules, different asset classes. As a very, you know, aligned person with the core ethos of blockchain, of decentralization, of immutability, censorship resistance, ZK, these types of core properties. How do

you currently grapple with the state of the industry? This is 100% compatible with what we do. Our our mission from day one was to advance freedom for the world. Freedom drives progress and prosperity. I was I was very impressed yesterday when we met with uh uh Gene Budik, the founder of KI uh at his uh place which is called the Ludvik Institute for Shared Prosperity. And we we spoke about this how how we really have the aligned vision. Everything that makes economy more um efficient advances economic freedom.

Everything that makes the traditional financial system more um integrity preserving advance the mission of freedom >> because now you don't rely on you know like the more uh you can automate uh the the the less trust is expected from people and so there there can be less extraction from individuals happening. But then on like if you zoom out on the bigger vision when we integrate banks into the financial rails and we connect them to Ethereum, this strengthens Ethereum ecosystem. This strengthens all of crypto because now if tokenized deposits are just one transaction away from stable coins and and one transaction away from native ETH

and and all of the tokens, you essentially merge the both markets together. You have the traditional financial markets, the new crypton native markets, all being traded, all being connected in the same network. That's the bullcase for crypto as a whole, and that's the blue case for our mission of advancing freedom. >> This is the new financial system, and it's playing out right before our eyes. Alex, thanks so much for joining. You've been here the whole journey. So, we look forward to the next generation of uh Ethereum and and digital assets as well. >> Thank you, Alex. >> We'll see you soon. >> Thanks to you, >> guys. That is the future of tokenized deposits on chain on ZK sync on Kerry network powered by the comproller of the currency several large banks guys. It's not a bankless world. It we will have

banks on chain. We will have tokenized deposits. Guys, we're going to take a super quick commercial break and get our next guest up guys. See you in just a second. Hey. Hey. Hey.

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get deep. We get Here we go. All righty, guys. We're back. Day two at DC Blockchain Summit Live. We've got Perry and Boring sitting next to us. She is a new mom, just in case anyone needed to know that. Um, >> she is the founder of the digital chamber and also a UF grad. >> Yeah. And uh Pin was instrumental in bringing uh our club where where Andy and I met in case for anyone who's unfamiliar, Andy and I met in the UF Bitcoin Club in 2017 at University of Florida. Um shortly thereafter, we were at our first crypto conference which was

the DC Blockchain Summit, >> the depths of the bare market, >> the depths of the 20 I I think it was 2018. Um and the room was very different than this. >> Extremely different. >> It's probably different on the UF campus, too. I mean, I remember going meeting the club and it wasn't very big and it was like pro, no offense, but like the nerdiest group of students I think I had seen. >> And uh I just hope Bitcoin's cooler now at UF than it was back then. >> Shout out Yoel.

>> Shout out Antonio and Nathan. Those guys are legends. >> Yeah, true OG's. >> Yeah, true OG's. Um and so yeah, you had us out. It was 2018 and we got our first taste of what the conference circuit looks like. Could you give us sort of like the the story? Like you founded the digital chamber. What it was what was it like when you were first starting out and then just fast forward to what's happening here today. >> So we started in 2014. So we'll be hitting our 12th year this year. And I mean looking back actually a lot of the challenges we were facing all those years ago are still a lot of the challenges that we're facing today.

Right now we face a major narrative issue. There continues to be what just feels like a coordinated hit job on our industry. You look at traditional media, the mainstream media, there's story after story after story of unverified sources that in my personal opinion looks like an intentional disinformation campaign to paint our industry in a bad light, paint the the power players in our industry in a bad light and scare people away. And it's discouraging because ultimately crypto, Bitcoin, this technology, it's a tool for freedom.

It's a tool that gives people the right to truly take sovereignty over their individual um assets, but it seems like there's still forces that don't want that to happen. And that was happening a decade ago and it's still happening today despite all the progress that we've made. >> Who do you think's behind that? >> Who do I I think it's um a lot of different things. I think some of it is just market competition. uh you know we've made it so there's very very uh intense competition amongst all the big companies they all are competing for market share and I definitely think there are some companies that are playing very dirty in how they how they capture market share and they talk they talk bad about people I'm the kind of

person where I just I don't talk bad about people if I don't like you I'll just tell you to your face I don't like you but I'm not going to go behind your back and spread a bunch of lies about you to try to get ahead I just ethically I don't think that's right and I don't think we should have that kind of activity. So there's that. I do think the um traditional financial services industry certainly sees this as um competition to legacy infrastructure. Blockchain technology is going to flip financial services on on its head. You don't need all these middlemen to facilitate all these transactions, which is a good thing, but it obiates a lot of business models. So it's very natural that those companies are going to protect their business models. some of these companies and these people behind

them are extremely powerful. So they've been uh very successful in doing that. And then it's uh it's also I think unfortunately over the recent more recent past crypto and bitcoin has become more of a political topic. We've worked very hard to keep this non-partisan. I uh you know at the digital chamber we are a single issue organization. We care about the future of digital assets and freedom. We're not engaged in all these other political issues. We don't care where you sit in the political aisle, but we've seen obviously with President Trump, Republican, they've really been the party to embrace this. And then

Democrats have been on the other side of that. So Democrats are attacking crypto as a tool to attack Trump. So, you know, you're up against competition, you're up against big banks, financial services companies, and then you're up against in some people in the Democratic party. So, we're up against very powerful forces. >> And and one one point on this is right yesterday we heard the innovation exemption. Uh Mike Celig uh and you know, chairman Atkins are up there working together to advance the regulation. Um, but we're also hearing on some of the people who came on the show that we can expect litigation from Citadel and some of these market makers to attack the innovation exemption in in

you know the the regulation that's been put forward the guidance and so we're still fighting against some of the same crowd you know at some point and we have seen how some of these institutions are starting to embrace crypto. We just had Alex on here talking about tokenized deposits. Banks are starting to come forward. be more accepting of stable coins. Is this inevitable? Like these people will come around. They're just sort of hanging on to buy themselves more time. What do what do you think ultimately gets them over the hump? >> I mean, technology doesn't care about all this stuff. Tech technological progress moves forward. So, a lot of the things we're seeing are just really going to be speed bumps when we look back 10, 20, 50 years from now.

Ultimately, if you have a more efficient way to move money, the market's going to move forward. But of course there's people in the middle who are trying to slow it down. So you can slow it down, you can try to divert it some, but it it isn't it's it's inevitable. Uh P, another thing that we heard was actually that there's a part of the Clarity Act that is uh kind of around ethics, specifically around President Trump's involvement in certain crypto projects, his memecoin, world refinance, these being blockers from the Democratic side with regards to whether or not they want to push forward this clarity bill because of this kind of conflict of interest. How problematic do you think

or kind of how ironic is it that our crypto president could be also a deterrent to the Clarity Act going through? What's your thoughts on this? >> It's very disingenuous. Congress obviously has an insider trading problem. I think I I mean there there's there's ethical issues all throughout our government. We can't just poke at one person or at one person. But I think if we're gonna attack one side, we also need to attack everybody. You know, we we should not have the government should not be profiting off of actions they're taking.

That's how we should operate regardless of what industry. So there needs to be things in place to protect that from happening. >> But it's happening everywhere. It's not just happening in in crypto, if it even is happening in crypto. And then it's also a a another issue we keep saying seeing over and over again in the political environment is crypto gets singled out in the regulatory environment. So we saw this during the Biden administration where there was these huge efforts of enforcement on the crypto space when crypto only represents a very very very very small amount of the overall market share of what's happening in financial markets. yet like 80% of all compliance resources and enforcement resources are going to to

focus on this one space and just kind of turning a blind eye to what's happening in in other industries or other markets. So it's if you're going to attack the president for or try to ban him from being or his family involved in crypto, why wouldn't you ban him from being involved in real estate or the stock market or the equity market? like why why are we just singling out this one industry? So that's also very disingenuous as well. So I'm for regulatory par. >> Yep.

>> You know, we shouldn't be singling out this industry and holding it to a different standard. We see that happening over and over again. And I am all for tightening up all the ethical protections around the government and that includes Congress as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean after the Clarity Act, we could get the right the the Parody Act where where you know we We stream it. >> I would be happy to pause >> market structure to address insider trading and also term limits. By the way, you shouldn't be allowed to be so old in office that you die of old age in office. Like if you're that old, are you fit to serve? But you is Congress going to take this up? I don't think so.

>> Power dynamic. I >> I think these are some of the issues that Americans actually care about. >> It would be great if we spent time on the things people actually do care about. And and so, you know, you were founder of the digital chamber. You've certainly made your mark. I mean, we had Cody on and, you know, he's now he's now kind of running the the day-to-day, but you were instrumental in setting up this entire thing. And now we have the most prominent voices in DC announcing this uh these landmark regulatory guidances and legislation here on at this conference. I'm curious, is it parody?

What's next for are you going to be running for office? What like what are you most excited about? What are you focused on? What's next for you? >> Uh, I'm definitely not announcing anything right now. >> I took some time off last year to have a baby and so I'm a new mom and it's really been the most meaningful and amazing journey of my life. I truly recommend having children to everybody. You guys are both young. It's really a beautiful >> I struggle with that. I think we'll both struggle with that, but we'll try. >> It gives you something every morning to wake up to look forward to. And I don't think I've ever been more happy in my entire life. You just have this cute little adorable thing that you just want to make happy and smile all day. And I uh I'm really grateful for the

opportunity to become a mom. Um I became a mom a lot later in my life. So I decided I wanted to have a career and I prioritized that. And uh you know I was grateful I was actually able to be able to do both. So that's what I'm focused on now. But I've really dedicated my life to fighting for freedom where I see injustices happening where our fundamental rights are being taken from us. I'll continue to advocate for that. And any make no mistake that Bitcoin cryptocurrencies is open-source software which is protected under the first amendment as free speech as language.

Any attempt to restrict our access to this technology as Americans is an attack on our most sacred rights. It's worth fighting for. So that is what I've dedicated my life to. That's why I started and serve as the chair of the digital chamber today and will always hold my ground on that and encourage other people to participate in that as well. your right to self- sovereignty, the right to run a node, the right to use the software. We all should be exercising those rights every day and ensure they're not infringed upon.

>> Yeah. And and I think yesterday was huge, right, with chairman Paul Atkins coming out saying that most crypto assets aren't securities. This was part of that, right? This kind of freedom, this this outlook of digital assets being accepted as part of the kind of economic system. While many of us operate kind of outside the system in in terms of the way that we think about it, it's now a part of the system in a way that I think that a lot of us wanted. We knew that these assets weren't securities. We didn't really really get clarity from any regulatory body. Gendler was not going to give that to us. President wasn't going to give it to us. But finally, chairman Paul Atkins comes out yesterday with his kind of five classes of digital assets, namely the big assets, ETH, Salana, Cardano,

XRP. a lot of these names not being securities. What does this mean from your perspective having been in the hill fighting this battle for so long? Is this a major win? What's the morale boost like? Just what's your perspective here? >> Well, one of the women on my team who I've been working with hand in hand on these issues for so long said this was such a gift and s like one of the best days of her life uh because so many of the things we worked for on the policy side are now being implemented. So, we are winning. We still have battles ahead of us, but but we absolutely are winning and it's, you know, chairman Atkins was a member of our board of adviserss before he became chair Atkins and we work very closely with him on what that

taxonomy looks like, what it should look like, trying to establish that clarity. So, it feels like we're we're finally c finally making progress, finally starting to cross the finish line. But ultimately, this is what's good for uh the US economy is what's good for American people. Uh we It it is a national security issue that this country leads in financial innovation and financial technology. Today wars are not necessarily fought in a traditional battlefield. A lot of it's fought with technology and if you're not at the forefront >> somebody else will and uh finance is a big part of the battlefield. Yeah. So being able to have that regulatory clarity, that regulatory certainty so businesses, investors, developers can

build and invest and develop here in the United States is critical to our future. >> Yeah. >> So I do believe this is one of the most important issues we as part of the uh younger crowds in this town can be focused on >> and it it it's it's a fight it's a fight for freedom and it's a fight for our country. >> Yeah. What would you expect to be some of the tangible changes here as a result of this win? I'm stoked to hear that your team kind of feels a a breath of relief of fresh air. What What do they expect? What do you expect? Tangible improvements to the kind of digital assets structure here. What is going to change for the you know average user, investor, entrepreneur in the space as a

result of yesterday's news? Well, what we saw previously in previous administrations because of the hostility towards our industry, because of the weaponization of the law against crypto businesses, so many people, companies left the country altogether. If I mean I I we we had members who were so demonized that they moved their entire families overseas. And I know one story of a family that they decided to renounce their citizenship because of how they were treated just because they're working in this space. So, uh, we, you know, we've been villainized. We have been discriminated against because of the technology we we're building in the

ecosystem that we're in. That's illegal in this country, by the way. So now with having a government that is working to reverse that, yesterday was a very big step. I believe we will start seeing those businesses come back and we already are. And that's good because market competition is what creates the best products and services for users. the more competitors who are out in the market, the more intense they're going to be working to sharpen their products, to bring fees down for people, and to create more robust infrastructure. So, that builds the economy, that builds the markets, and that creates a better environment for people who will be using the technology.

>> I I've got a bit of a different question here. Um, because you guys work on both sides of the aisle and and really try to push this forward as a whole. you know, there's projections, the polls are poly market and college are better than the polls these days, but you know, the the idea is that, you know, maybe there's a change in maybe the midterms or the presidency. Uh, and that is part of the big push to get clarity into legislation, turn a lot of this regulatory guidance into administration proof legislation. If there is a change, what advice do you have for the crypto founders so that we don't fall prey? we don't have to renounce our citizenship.

We don't have to leave the country again. Is there anything that we can do or advice that we should give to navigate some of the complexity if the tides turn? >> I I am concerned about the midterm. Just historically speaking, when one party takes, you know, both the White House and the upper and the lower chamber, something's going to give in the midterms. That's highly likely to happen, which means Democrats would either be in charge of the House or the Senate. and looks like very likely it could be the House. If that happens, that means that Democrats will then have subpoena power and they'll be driving the agenda in the House. We have seen over the last two years that Democrats have been attacking crypto as a way to attack Trump who who's their ultimate

target. And unfortunately, we're we're just the we're just the way, you know, we're in the middle of the target. So I think what's really important is for businesses specifically and people in this space to not be partisan. Once you align yourself with one side of the other 50% of the establishment is going to be against you. We need to be doing everything we can to be working with Democrats to be educating them helping them understand that this is good for the Democratic party as well. This is good for America. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a political issue. So if we do have a change of power and we'll be there's an election every two years in this

country. So things are always changing. We don't want our industry subjected to these political winds. This is about technology. Most technology issues really are not partisan issues. So we need to get out of that. It's very destructive and it's not helpful. >> Right. And so are you on the side of really wanting to be a clarity in before the midterms then? Is that like the goal post? Well, everyone is saying and they've said it over and over again at the conference that like this this is our our moment. We've been working on market structure legislation for I want to say at least seven or eight years in this town >> that and I I worked in Congress. Only 2% of legislation that's ever introduced

actually becomes law. It's very difficult to get things passed in the House and Senate and signed by the president. By the way, we are the only organization that did get crypto legislation through both the upper and lower chamber before we had a pro crypto president. >> We did that. It's not easy. And there was only one bill in a 10-year history that ever even made it that far. So having a legislative pathway is honestly the hardest thing about getting legislation done. Uh so the more time that goes by, the more my confidence monitor is dropping that it's ever going to to to happen. So timing is really critical.

>> Um I'm I'm curious about uh any relationship or you know, obviously President Trump gets a lot of credit for being the pro crypto guy. David Saxs is also a really instrumental character here in DC. Have you had any run-ins, any relationship with David or how instrumental has he been in helping push this legislation forward? Well, we called for the the crypto office years ago. When Trump was elected during his first term, we issued the national action plan for blockchain, which was the original blueprint, our original proposal of how the federal government should be approaching blockchain technology and digital assets. One of the issues we've always faced is that you have all these different jur all

these different bodies regulators whether it's SEC, CFTC, you have Treasury, Finson, OFAC, IRS, all these different agencies that are involved in some way, shape or form. So having one office in the White House who can be in charge of policy and make sure everyone's operating in the direction and the jurisdiction they should be in is really critical. And we're seeing the results of that. We got the Genius Act done largely thanks to the incredibly hard work of David Sachs and his team and the will of the president. So, we need to keep that momentum moving to get market structure done and that's not where it ends. There's other things that we need to turn to as well. Tax clarity is really important for the growth growth of this industry. Modernizing the Bank Secrecy Act so it actually works

with open-source blockchains is critical for the continued growth and the hardening of this infrastructure. So, this isn't the only policy issue that needs to be addressed. There's many others that we need to work on, too. >> Are we receiving as much push back on the bank secrecy act modernization, the tax uh clarity as well? Are those as controversial as market structure? >> Probably. >> What isn't around here? >> Yeah, right. It's always going to be something. >> There's always somebody, you know. >> Yeah. Pan, uh, as we come to a close here, just reflections, thoughts on this year of the event, kind of what's been the big changes from the crowd, from the vibe, from the, uh, effectiveness of of

actual legislation getting moved forward. What's your, you know, general takes here? >> We've made it. We have arrived. Everyone's going. >> It's only, it's only uphill from here. >> Awesome. Pan, thank you for your time. We'll see you on DC blockchain 2027. >> See you there. >> All righty, guys. That's Perry and Boring, the founder of the digital chamber. I think it's lunch time. We'll be right back. Quick commercial break, guys, with our next guest. Thank you guys so much. We get deep. We get you know we get

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Ready? Let's go a little high. Leo, >> here we are. Tempo mainet back to DC blocking. >> Tempo mainet is live. Tempo mainet rumor mill called it as usual. The rumor mill has been correct on the tempo mainet. Shout out to all the lovely lovely anonymous sources here. Let's watch the video. Get the insight on on the branding. I think this is pretty cool video. Aentic payments are here for temple mainet.

to 1.7 billion people worldwide. >> What would happen if money became digital and electronic? >> One thing that's missing is a reliable ecash >> result in new ways of exchanging value, expanded economic opportunity. This vantage point we see the promise of stable coins. >> You want your agent to go buy something for you? Oh my goodness.

This has not been talked about. Is that billions of times a second? >> Billion transactions a second. >> Trillions. >> It's a pretty good launch video. That's kind of the go-to. This is the standard.

Now, we're going to see more and more of this Apple style launch videos. >> Yeah, didn't really hear much about it at all on the timeline. Um, people kind of just left it there. Uh, Ethereum people didn't really like it. They were like, it's a L1 with one block proposer. Didn't hear much about it. They kind of just like stealth launched this thing. And yeah, even like the rumor mill about it didn't really pick up that much steam. It was just like people People just kind of seem jaded towards new chain launches to be honest with you.

It's just kind of like the slow moving process. Oh, another chain, another chain, another chain. >> There's no differentiation, right? Every chain now is solve the problem. >> I don't think that's right. I think Tempo has tons of differentiation from distribution, from the tech side, the token standards, a lot of these things. >> So, why people aren't a excited about it? >> I mean, why are people not excited about any new chains or any tokens outside of Hyperlid? I don't know. Because I think a lot of the chains have very little differentiation. >> Yeah. Sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. But I just think like like there was like this agentic payments narrative marketing flow that was happening here and then it kind of just it kind of just launched and that's what happened.

>> Look, we're here where a lot more action is. I again think that there is not much innovation happening. Yes, they have distribution, but a lot of that is on the more payments focused. That's that's on the business side. A lot of that is attributable to Stripe. It's not really attributable to Tempo. They've cranked some things up. They've gotten more centralized. They've been able to really tighten things in, become a lot more fast, have high throughput, but that's sort of where we're at these days. And so, you know, the the reality is that these things just aren't very innovative now. And that's why I think we see so much more excitement around where the action is. The action is here in DC with this regulation.

>> Yeah, speaking of that, let's get over to that to the SEC and CFTC issuing a joint interpretation officially classifying in this case the Chainlink token amongst many other tokens as not securities, >> right, >> which is huge for the asset. Shout out to Chain Link being a partner for the DC blockchain summit here. Chain Link, all other tokens, Salana, Ethereum, top 10, tons of others. Landmark, landmark regulation here. Yeah, I mean this is regulatory guidance at its finest. Gendler was uh too scared to issue guidance uh based on the rules that you know he was supposed to be issuing on. And so obviously you know we

have the Howie test, we have securities laws, we have things that have been enacted by Congress into law. the role of the regulators is to interpret the law and issue guidance based on a fast-paced moving industry. And so Gendzler was too afraid to do that. He decided to regulate by enforcement. Instead, what Atkins and Celig were proactive and proficient in doing was issuing this interpretation. They've identified five classifications for crypto assets. We have digital commodities, right? These are things like link, Bitcoin, ETH, not securities.

And yes, they actually name these tokens. These are functional decentralized systems where the token plays a role. Then we have digital collectibles. This is sort of all the fluff that's getting left behind a little bit. This is the collectibles, the NFTts, the meme coins, the things that aren't really a utility. There's not really much you can do with them, but you have fun trading them. Maybe they're speculative instruments. >> You got digital tools. I think we're going to hear a lot more come out around digital tools. These are things like ENS names that are tokenized, you know, tokenized really. There's a lot, you know, of functional things that can be uh incorporated into digital tools.

Domain names, credentials, soulbound tokens, I think would also fall into this category. >> Stable coins, we all know stable coins, they were actually able to make this carve out. We have genius that goes into deep deep depth around stable coins, but stable coins is one of the classifications here. Y >> the last not least, digital securities. They said, "Look, if your thing is a security, just because it's tokenized, it's still a security." But they also identified the four other classifications that digital assets can fall into. It's not just bucketing everything up into securities. So, we were able to parse out, untangle a lot of the digital assets and finally reach a point where we have some rules of the road. The only thing missing now, which

we heard from Cody Carbone, is to turn the regulatory guidance from the SEC and the CFTC. Turn that into administration proof legislation. >> Yeah. Actually put it into >> actually put it into law because, you know, we're going to get a new SEC chair. We're going to get a new CFTC chair. The next president is going to appoint whoever he or she thinks should be in those positions. If that person is unfriendly to the industry, then they're going to reissue new guidance that takes all this away. But if it's legislation, it's much more difficult to repeal.

>> That is the only thing missing. It's the it's just solidifying and codifying the interpret the guidance that we had yesterday into law. >> Yeah. So, why don't we actually hear from the SEC chairman Paul Atkins? He actually made these remarks yesterday. We're going to pull this video up and basically we're going to hear exactly what he said about his interpretation on crypto assets grounded in an existing law and informed by extensive public input from some of your favorite DeFi and digital assets founders. So we're going to go and play this from Paul >> as he speaks yesterday here at this event in DC.

>> Failure to provide clarity on this question is over. As we speak, the commission is implementing a token taxonomy and investment contract interpretation, and you should find that in your inbox or if you look on the website when you get home. Our interpretation, which is grounded in existing law and informed by extensive public input, establishes four asset categories that are not deemed to be securities. So digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools and payment stable coins under the Genius Act. With these categories in place, the interpretation then clarifies

only one crypto asset class remains subject to securities laws, namely digital securities, which are traditional securities that are tokenized. This distinction returns the SEC to its core mission and statutory authority of protecting investors involved in securities transactions. We're not the Securities and Everything Commission >> anymore. >> So, we're not the Securities Everything >> audience exchange and everything commission anymore. You heard it direct from the SEC chairman

Paul Atkins. The >> at the DC blockchain summit in the room right in front of us, guys. He was here yesterday. Today we have from the White House some potential stable coin yield announcements about the clarity bill. Guys, we're going to take a super quick commercial break. We've got the money 2020 team in here today after they just announced their partnership with the digital chamber. We're going to keep rolling. We've got them. We've got Alan, Tourett, Adam, and Ben from Chain Link, and a couple others to wrap us up. Guys, stay with us here. Couple hours left. Great speakers coming up. See you guys in just a moment.

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>> All right, we are back. We've got Scarlet. We've got Virginia here. the money 2020 team after the announcement that you guys are partnering up with the digital chamber. It feels like this is where all the action is in DC. Guys, thank you so much for joining the show. >> Well, thank you for having us, Robbie. We're we love the concept of rollup. It fits in exactly what Virginia and I and the Money2020 team are building. So, it feels like a perfect time to have this chat. >> Absolutely. Virginia, you're leading uh US and Lat for money 2020. Uh give us a sense of what you're seeing particularly in the US. Yeah, thank you for having me here. Uh we are very excited. This is a fantastic show. I I I have to say what we have seen here is pretty much an opening of what we will see at the show

in October. Uh we are covering big big trends not only related to the DeFi but also you know bigger in the payments industry also innovation technology and policy and regulation. So those are the big trends that we will cover this year at the show. >> Amazing. Well, we've been big proponents of this convergence between legacy finance and DeFi. Uh, we'll get into more details around that as well as what we can expect from Money 2020 in Las Vegas, also all around the world. Um, before we do, I'd love to hear why it makes sense to partner up with the digital chamber. You know, we've been friends with these guys for a long, long time. Uh, it's really great to know that you guys are friends with them, too. Why

did this partnership make sense now? Yeah, it's a really good question and to I love that you've been friends with them for a long time because I've known Perryanne for over 10 years and so I am actually a an ex-banker. uh I've spent a lot of time in the space as a CIO and leading innovation from some of the largest financial institutions in the world and so back in those banking days when digital chamber was just getting started they were talking to us uh about joining and you know those are the days of when R3 was a big thing and so these consortium models started and so I have uh I I personally and the money 2020 team have been watching the digital chamber for years and they've been coming to the shows and and we see the role that money 2020 plays kind of at

this this intersection of of these two worlds. world and we are an ecosystem play where the entire industry comes to to get business done but also we are the platform where we help shape the future of the industry. So when we think about someone like digital of chamber who has spent so much time educating and spending time with policy makers and regulators, it just felt like such a perfect match because we have the banks, we have the payment companies, we have all of the fintexs, we have the regulators, but they are the ones who are spending time in Capitol Hill really building those relationships out. Obviously they just made that acquisition over in the UK with Crypto UK. They've now expanded that over into Asia as well. Those are markets that are important to us. We're always looking at the global perspective and so we feel

like the the combination of our skill sets and our relationships really make a great match and so it's obviously starting here in DC today but we're expanding that you know between now and October and then we also have this closed door program called policy 20 where we're bringing together the regulators and and the CEOs of the biggest companies and some of the most you know prolific fintexs that we know coming together and uh Cody and the digital champ going to be working with us on that as well. This is really where worlds collide. DC and and the digital asset industry have been so competitive for so long. They they were they were really at odds, but but I think now we're starting to see that we're actually making progress on the regulation. We're getting guidance and

eventually we hope to be getting legislation as well. Um we're seeing DC and digital assets collide here at the digital chamber, DC blockchain. And then we've also got legacy finance or tradi colliding with DeFi and digital assets in money 2020. Uh Virginia, you mentioned earlier pillars of money 2020. I'd love to get into what those are and we can talk about how these two worlds are converging. >> Absolutely. Well, I mentioned kind I I kind of mentioned them already but yeah to go into the details. The first one will be about the modernization of crossber payments which is basically what we are discussing here right new rails 247 access people wants to move their values every time at every second

so that's basically one of the pillars the other one will be about um technology as the great equalizer I mean no if you go to any of the sessions yesterday today AI is part of those conversations like hyperpersonalization identic AI but also AI as a layer to move money faster you know and trust and you know people can be sure that their their values are like secure by using AI. The third one which is very important and we have seen a lot of announcements later lat lately even yesterday is about fast or fintech as a services you know um before like trackfi and defi and fintex and traditional

companies were competing now they are partnering to make to be to be bigger you know like it's a it's a way to scale right so a lot of announcements so we're going to have a pillar about that too and the last one is you know what you just said about regulations and policy makers. I think it's important that we cover that topic but more deeper uh of you know we're planning to have roundts at the show and those roundts are basically to discuss further how can money 2020 help the industry to align and those important points and keeping that conversation alongside the year and then you know like being able to help because we are um neutral fint tech big

global fintech platform and we kind of open the door for everyone in the industry to come together. >> Exactly. A place where everyone can come together and I think because you have a brand that spans so far and wide both geographically and then conceptually across these different verticals you're able to pull in people from all of these different industries. And that is a that is an edge that not everyone has, right? to to be so big and so flexible that you can welcome everyone in that provides a lot of cross migration cross-pollination of ideas a lot of times you know you have here you have policy makers you have regulators with technology and blockchain there's not a lot of neo banks or fintexs here right >> if we can have one complete place where

everyone can come in I think that is extremely powerful because we can you know try to imagine what could possibly come but actually putting the people in the room there are things that are going to come out of that that are going to stay making momentum, pushing things forward in terms of the partnerships and the companies that end up doing deals at these conferences. Like Scarlet, I think you said, this is where business gets done. >> Talk to us about how this has evolved like fintech, neo banks, this, you know, fintech industry has uh extraordinarily progressed over recent years. Now, blockchain, DeFi is sort of a more recent advancement. How have you started to see some of the conversations and the

nature of money 2020? How has it shaped and evolved over you know the the recent months of DeFi digital assets and and taking that into account? Yeah, it's a really good question and trying to combine some of the points that Virginia made and what you just articulated very well is one of the things so if if I sit back and think about 10 years ago and there was this conversation of banks versus fintex and we'd be sitting in an event like this and fintex would be like we're going to come eat the bank's lunch we're going to take you over you're not serving our customers well banks would be like you don't got scale bye-bye like over time we've seen over the years there has been a bit of not to the same level but we're seeing now with Trafy DeFi but there has been a convergence

and by the way some of those fintexs now have that scale think about a revolute one of the largest private companies in the world started out as a neo bank a little baby neo bankank I remember Nikolai back in the day chime just went public you know another example of that and then the clariners etc so the I guess my point is there are real scale happening there and then we are seeing a lot of those patterns emerge here as well so one of the things that I haven't heard as much in the last two days but it's something that we spent a lot of time thinking about is is the psychology behind it. So there is a bit of a fear.

You read the headlines and there the way that these things are positioned can be quite intimidating and overwhelming. But what we're seeing in the data that we have and the conversations that we have and we have a unique position as Virginia said as this independent platform where we get to sit in the room with these boards with these sea suitees of some of these leading institutions all over the world and they're curious. A lot of them were building in private and they were just waiting for the regulation to start doing something more publicly. And then there are others who, you know, there's a lot of data that's showing that in those boardrooms, blockchain, DeFi, stable coins, obviously because of genius, but more broadly that is on the the docket. Not that they're going to be playing with it tomorrow, but they're they're interested in it. They want to understand it. They

want to learn. And so we think that at at Money2020, we have the opportunity to have the platform where they can learn. We don't want to just do theory. We want to do practice specific examples of what this looks like when customers bank has leveraged decentralized finance. How has that actually impacted their business? How has that impacted their bottom line as an example? But as we think about this at scale, then we also think about okay, how do we bring these groups together at the most senior level so we can actually implement change and start somewhere. So, but there is a bit of a psychological piece that we spend a lot of time with when we can with some of those leaders talking about here's what it is, here's what it means, and let's see how we can work together uh together better basically to make that future and

because we don't have a a stake in the game as as Virginia said, that gives us a real opportunity. >> Yeah, absolutely. You're you're a neutral player that is able to bring all of these entities together. Um I'm curious what the fintex and the neo banks are looking for in terms of blockchain and digital assets. You mentioned Revolute started out as Neoank now they everyone has a stable coin and a digital asset strategy. Um what are the fintexs and the neo banks looking for in US and LAM? Like are they looking for the tokenization companies? Are they looking for some of the lending and borrowing some of the custody providers?

Virginia what what can you point to as far as some of the connections that you'd help facilitate between the neo banks of fintex and the blockchain industry? Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it's is basically what I say before like scale is one of the things they are looking for. How can do better not only for their company for the people in general because the more scale the more connections the more access they will have you know they will grow like in a natural way. Another thing that I want to clarify the track five you know we call them traditional finance >> these guys have already evolved a lot >> they have already acquired companies that you know promote and help them to have this technology stable coins

tokeniz assets tokenized assets sorry and you know that's something that there's they're not traditional anymore they are working very hard to be part to make those world that world coming together. >> We we talk about this a lot. We call it neo finance on this show. Does that term resonate with you? It's this evolution as Trafi does modernize. They accept AI. They accept stable coins. They modernize their business. They are the new generation of finance. Does Neo Finance resonate with you guys? Well, it's some I mean I I guess the industry recognize the terms as stratfi and defy and it's something that we need to start evolving and in terms of the conversation of

course we as a neutral platform has seen you know the trafi and defy very strong talk a very strong names if you will but yeah I agree like and I want to put that that that top that thing at the table that there is a lot of modernization on the traditional finance and without these two worlds coming together >> the evolution will happen >> right >> it's true but I mean I think so if we traditional finance is such a large bucket but if you think about some of the largest players in the space so like let's just go with JPM as an example the onyx kinesis JPM they've been doing this for the whole time and regardless of what was maybe being said publicly we know those teams and they've been working on this for years so they were

just waiting for the moment to go and and take that over to the point that now the the co-head of payments for JP Morgan globally is the the gentleman Umar Farooq who led this initiative. So I think there are really you know Ryan Rug head of digital assets at city like they're thinking about this at the highest levels but the interesting thing that we start seeing is it's not just the big banks. So we have we'll announce in short order a CIO of a small credit union who has thinking a lot about decentralized finance and already implementing some of that stuff. So it's not just the big boys and girls it is the layers below as well. So it is happening from high and low and I think the other piece from our perspective looking at this from a global lens is and we just recently had fintech

America's join our family which is really focused on Latam and we've spent a lot of time in the region as well and yesterday here at the event we saw Daniel from Bitzo we know him very well um so in any case there are real applications in emerging markets like LAM where there is such a strong need that there is an acceleration there at like an unprecedented pace case and we're seeing similar things in Asia. So we have our show in April next month and the conversations and and the ability to bring in the different play players together is just accelerated because that crossber payment thing that Virginia is talking about for Vegas is so relevant and so active there because there's so much movement across borders.

So that is where you know we think we have an opportunity to say hey here's what's working really well between Indonesia and Thailand. How can we take some of those lessons to bring it between the US and Mexico? obviously different regulatory rules and everything else, but there is a lot of opportunity and we get to see the trends. We get to see what's actually working. So, we want to try to help bring those lessons to other parts of the world as well. >> Yeah. I I'd love to continue on this geographical connectivity that money 2020 helps play that role because you are global. You see what is happening in the US, LAM, Asia, and you're able to connect all of these trends and narratives together. And so, what are some of the most innovative regions? Is it Asia? Is it LAM? Who do you see

pushing the needle the most? And what do you see as maybe something that's missing in a particular region? Right. If the US gets something right, can you then take that and educate Asia or educate LAM on what some of these regions are doing? Well, >> yeah, maybe I'll start with that and you want to add to to to LAM if that works. So I'd say Asia is definitely a leader in this pack and it's funny because we'll get to this but I I brought the global team from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, LAM and US together for a special project which we'll get to but in any case I wrote something about the US leading and uh our uh our head of Asia came in and made a comment like I think this is incorrect. I think you meant to say Asia. So, we had a little

bit of a debate, but it actually was very true. And I think it is it does go back to listen, I love technology. I am not an engineer. I'm not a dev, but I love technology. But I I will say on behalf of this industry, at times it felt like technology was being built for technology's sake and not necessarily solving real problems. And so, the areas that need it most were places like Asia. I'll let Virginia elude elaborate on the uh Latam side, but in Asia there was definitely real opportunities and the regulators were quick to move to try to support this and work across each other as well. Now we're talking about in the US regulatory bodies within our own country and Asia we're talking about regulators across countries um and

working together to try to help facilitate this at at pace and speed. So I would say when it comes to DeFi, some of the things that have been happening in Asia and the Philippines with Coinsph and the bank, the central bank of the Philippines has been really really inspiring and they've gotten serious traction. But when the central banks are also helping to lead the the way, it makes it a lot easier. But I don't know about for Latam, what would you say? >> Oh no, Latam is very advanced in terms of you know all the evolution of the DeFi. We saw examples like Pix for example that they started in Brazil and now is doing crossber payments through Argentina other companies like you know Melly and or Mac Libé doing also transaction crossber payments across different countries in the region. Um one thing that we are leveraging or we

know that regions are like leveraging uh best practices are from Asia financial inclusion or when when they these countries in Latin America develop these tools is basically to support people that need to have access to payments in a faster way in a very um secure way. So that that that's when the pixes start coming up to the picture, right? Um but yeah, we we have seen also I mean LA I mean it's not because it's close to my heart because obviously I'm Lati it's more because you know they they have been evolving there are big examples in Mexico in in Central America in Salvador for example that is the first market in

Latan that is using Bitcoin as a main currency. um there's a lot of like testing from different like markets in Latan because it's like it gets a quick adoption and it's easy for us to get learnings from there. Can I just make one last point on that because I think so if we look at Brazil which is you know obviously one of the largest in the region one of the things that especially where we are today sitting here at the DC blockchain summit that I've really admired about the evolution as it relates to all this decentralized finance in Brazil is regardless of who's in power regardless of which side of the the aisle you're on the legislation and regulation has stayed and product you know process has you know continue and

progress has continued which I think that that's an area right now where we can we can really learn from and I was so encouraged just this morning going listening to some of the sessions that it's both sides of the table coming together because that is what's going to because if every four years all a sudden we switch then real progress doesn't happen and that that to me is a real concern and so seeing what's happened in Brazil with regardless of who's in power that progress has been made is really encouraging >> and and this is why we still need the clarity act to make the the regulatory guidance that we received over the last 2 days administration proof so that it is codif ified into the law because if the SEC chairman changes in two years then the next chairman could end up changing things. Um and and so we are

still working towards codifying these things into law. We look on LAM we were in Argentina last year. We saw how passionate and and important the technology is for stable coins and and a way to get access to the global economy. Also, we saw the the thriving Neoank ecosystem all across LADM. Uh, and it's incredible that money 2020 has built a frame framework where education and and best practices are able to be shared across continents. It's it it really is incredible. Um, Scarlet, I want to get to this special project because that sounded very very interesting.

>> Uh, can you tell us more about this special project? How you brought the entire global money 2020 team together? Yeah. So, I um I I'm very rarely the smartest person in the room, but what I try to focus on is signals, okay? And so, a number of years ago, I started seeing a signal. I I wrote a a book called Embedded Finance with my co-author Sophie Jubo, and we would talk every week, and we started seeing signals that embedded finance was going to be a thing. Grab back to the Asia example when we on their earnings call, they had higher revenue from their embedded finance business than they did from their primary business. And just very quickly be you know for anyone who's unfamiliar embedded finance can we just define that term?

>> Sure. Exactly. It's about it's about taking different pieces of financial services and embedding it into people's daily lives. So if you were to go to uh a IKEA and you wanted and you couldn't make the payment $300 all of a sudden a firm or a Cler or whatever would pop up and say hey do you want to you could get a short-term loan for this. So that is embedding a financial service into your daily experience. um grab you know in Asia there's a lot of super apps so they were doing that in many many different ways so they started as a delivery service and expanded beyond there so so back then this is back in 2021 there was signals that we saw and we thought we need to go write this book and we did and it's interesting because we did we got wy which for a publisher which is

great but we had had conversations with a handful and they're like this is too niche of a topic it's not going to be d fast forward 2022 at money 2020 I played a game with Sophie like let's do a buzzword bingo. Every other session was on embedded finance like it was insane. So I guess my point is taking a step back to last year they started seeing signals. This was around the time the genius passed but even really before that the number we have a lot of different data sources at money 2020 the thousands and thousands of people who apply to speak at our our stages. Uh what what people are doing in the app we have a very strong penetration of app adoption when people are at our shows.

My point is people were very curious about decentralized finance and we started seeing a big flux on that. We created a product around it called the intersection in Vegas last year. We had Devon from the CEO of Western Union come and announce the intention of stablecoin with Salana and Anchorage on stage. So I guess my point of all this is to say we saw we saw something we felt something and we said we need to go out to the next level and tell that narrative. So we wrote a book >> we wrote a book called the new intersection of money where trady and defi converge. My Virginia is one of the co-authors of the book. We have taken great stories from literally all over the world. Some of the examples that we were talking about earlier today are we

have great use cases and what we wanted to do is back to the psychology of it. Everyone here knows that this is what they live, breathe and sleep, right? But a lot of people in the world still don't and especially on the traditional finance side. We wanted to make it super clear about the opportunities in the space with real world examples of who's doing it, how they're doing it, why they're doing it, and get people excited because we get we go at the end we have some interesting uh where we're going from here examples. So >> yeah. Well, yeah. No, please. Anything to add? >> No, I think I think Scarlet covered it all. Um >> yeah, it was it's about seeing the signals and taking actions immediately and that's what we did with the book. You know, last year we heard a lot of these signals at the show and you

know, like also the Genius Act being approved and the industry moving quickly to stable coins and plus traditional companies like Western Union talking about having a a a partnership with Solana like when we know that remittances is the first item like for for countries like Mexico, US, Mexico is the first corridor like that that's a big signal, you know, having Michael Sailor at the show talking about Bitcoin and how how institutions are paying attention to buy to convert their assets on to into Bitcoin. That's another big signal. So, yeah, we just took the decision and do the book.

>> It it really is incredible the signals, the adoption. It's really happening right right before our eyes. Um, tremendous announcements like you said, Western Union and Salana, Michael Sailor's up there. give us a sense of what we can expect as we look to wrap up here. Money 2020 in Las Vegas October 18th >> to the 21st >> to the 21st. Uh and Money2020 Asia uh is coming up next month. >> Uh give us a sense of what we can expect. >> So I'll let you end Virginia on Vegas, but so Asia as you mentioned is is next month the 21st to the 23rd. We've got a lot of great great players on the DeFi and Trafi uh place coming together. I gave you a bit of a a preview, but the coins PH team, the central bank of

Philippines will be back. We're going to be speaking a lot about that. We have some really exciting announcements from companies who are going to be entering the space, which we can't quite tell you, but they'll be there next month. And then if you move over to Europe, actually our show in Amsterdam in June to the 2nd to 4th, we already have the Kraken. We have Arjun co-ceeo of Kraken. We've got the e Toro CEO. We've got the Elliptic CEO. We've got so many speakers there. We had Charles Hodkinson last year. So, we uh we see a real opportunity. But Virginia, want to give a little preview to uh to Vegas? >> Wow. First, you have to bring your sneakers uh because you have to run from one stage to another one. Uh quickly, uh a lot of good content, a lot of big like names. Uh one thing that I have to say,

last year we have 11,000 people attending the show. for 2026 I believe is going to be bigger than that because we already have secure big names and not not only because they represent big companies but this is people that haven't gone to any other show before and this is we have it at money 2020 it's the only place where you have people going fresh faces fresh voices so for the first time >> and let's just say that uh you know a topic that we've been discussing a lot the last few days here prediction markets you might see some announcements around that coming up pretty shortly. Uh we also have some interesting things.

You know, some of the largest uh traditional VC firms that have a crypto arm are going to be joining us as well. So, those announcements are coming in the next few weeks. >> Guys, money 2020 Virginia Scarlet, thank you so much. You are not going to want to miss it. Money2020 Asia next month. Money 2020 in Vegas October 18th to the 21st. We'll be there. >> Absolutely. >> We'll see you there. >> I think you should be working for us. So, you have a great you're a great adip friend. So, there we go. Sorry, guys. He's coming over. >> Well, we'll talk more about that after this commercial break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, guys.

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get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep know. >> All righty, guys. Welcome back to DC Blockchain Summit. We are live day two. We've got Eleanor Tourett, the British catloving host of Crypto in America. Miss DC herself. Some have called her, perhaps not. Perhaps that's something that I'm coming up with. Let's give some love to Elanor. Breaking all the news, Miss Scoop. Eleanor, welcome.

>> Thanks, guys. Great to be here. I can't believe it's my first time on the show. >> Yeah, it's great to have you. >> Really happy to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. First of all, it's Terret. >> Terret. >> Like Farret with a T. >> Like ferret. >> Farret with a T. Yeah. >> Got it. Good to know. Thank you. Your gracious host. Correcting them already. True podcast host yourself. No, I just like feel like Tourett just >> Why does it kind of feel like we're the guests here and Eleanor just came in right away, took control of the show and now interviewing us? >> It's a habit. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. All right, back to you. Back to you. >> What do you want to be asked about DC?

Like what are you finding most interesting? You're there like on the ground covering everything that's coming out of the White House of the SEC, the CFTC, becoming really the voice of the DC blockchain complex. I'm just curious how you're finding this evolution of the space and what you're what you're most excited about and in all of the things that you're breaking. >> I think it's been for me personally a real evolution because I started covering crypto as someone who'd never been involved in the space, someone who really hadn't heard of the space much until, you know, 2020 2021. I was a Fox Business working as a producer down at the New York Stock Exchange. I had just sort of gotten a crash course in markets

being on the floor every day and really liked market reporting and then got introduced to crypto through the Ripple case. Uh it was rippled to suit by the SEC at the end of 2020 and John Zon who as you guys know ran for Massachusetts uh you know Senate seat to unseat Elizabeth Warren last year. >> What was that two years ago now? That was 2024 right? That was the 24 election cycle. Time goes so fast in crypto as I know you guys know, but he messaged my boss, Charlie Asarino, at the time at Fox Business and said, "You guys should look at this case. Charlie, you reported on something, you know, to do with consensus in the SEC back in 2018. It has something to do now with the Ripple case. You guys should take a look." And

so we ended up writing this 10,000word opus, as Charlie called it, uh, on the Ripple case. We called it the regulatory riddle. basically kind of breaking the case down. But the overall crux of it was to say there was no regulation around crypto in the space. And as you guys all know, that was sort of the start of the SEC cracking down on every single crypto company. And then we got this news this yesterday fresh here at the DC blockchain summit. Paul Atkins, head of the SEC and a joint regulatory, I wouldn't say it's a rulemaking, it's a it's guidance with chairman uh Michael Celig coming out saying, you know, pretty much everything aside from tokenized securities are not securities.

And the previous Gary Gunzer, SEC chairman, said everything's a security except for Bitcoin, cracking down on everything. So, I would say the evolution between, you know, when I first started in the space and the attitude towards crypto coming from Washington DC, coming from the SEC, coming from the White House even, right? I mean the White House is a little bit a little bit different because I feel like they were when I first started pretty indifferent. There was not that much hostility. I think towards the end of the Biden administration you started to see that more sort of open hostility was that hostility was coming from the SEC. >> But just the the the difference between then and now it's just been it's been incredible to see and to cover from a journalist perspective. It's night and day.

>> Yeah. It feels like a full circle moment because like you said your career sort of got started in this industry with the Ripple case and then just yesterday they named the XRP token as something that is explicitly not a security. >> Right. Exactly. >> So we've we've made one full loop. We've kind of completed that cycle. Where do we go from here? What's next? >> Well, I think you've got to see a lot of rulem. I mean, we've got the Genius Act, which was passed into law last year in July. You've got I think a lot of people forget that the rule making part of all this takes a long time, right? So, anywhere from two to three years. So, that's just genius. That's 20% of what the you think of I think of market

structure genius as you know the whole pie, right? So, stable coins 20%, market structure is the other 80%. So, that is a whole process. And then market structure hasn't even passed yet as we know. Clarity act is a whole another piece of the puzzle that as we all know I cover a lot and and you guys cover it too. So that is in the hopefully the later stages of potentially getting through the Senate. Uh we heard from Cynthia Lumis today on stage that they are now thinking of a Senate Banking markup round two because they had to postpone it as we know in January uh to potentially hit go through Senate Banking Committee in April potentially hit the Senate floor maybe sometime in May. I don't think she gave a timeline

for Senate floor but you know that's that's pushing it further and further out guys. The the sort of the soft deadline or the squishy deadline as I call it is the August recess because after that we've got the midterms. So, it's a very precarious year for getting things done. Um, everybody's going to turn their attention in Washington to the midterms. But I heard an interesting take the other day from Blockchain Association CEO Summer Minger. She seems to think that it's not going to be everybody's all of a sudden going to like, you know, kind of like do a 180 and just completely focus on the midterm. She seems to think that because crypto is such a big issue, there are so many people who care about it in Washington now. Lots of people, I mean, look how many lawmakers are here. You know, Bill Hagert's on stage right now.

There's a lot of people who have turned their attention to it here who are going to push for this thing even though campaign season here is here even though people are fundraising. So that's an interesting take. I've heard most people say it's going to become sort of, you know, not dead in the water, but it's going to be an afterthought. So it'll be interesting to see how that actually plays out and whether if it doesn't get done by August, whether it can continue past that recess. So we'll see. >> Yeah. Whether it's a very very pressing topic or or more of something that that gets thrown under the rug. I feel like the sentiment shift and the kind of regulation shift that has happened as a result of yesterday's news will persist which is kind of this movement away from regulation by enforcement. That emphasis

from both Celig and Atkins has they've really emphasized that we are not doing that anymore towards the digital asset space. What do you think this means? Who are the biggest recipients of this in a positive manner? Who's going to win bigger because of this? How does this actually affect the industry? >> I mean, I think all the companies in this space who have been the unfortunate, you know, targets of regulation by enforcement. You've got all the companies who, you know, like the Ripples that you mentioned before, you know, they were the subject of a lawsuit for the better part of 5 years.

Um, so think of all the talent that is have to be, you know, pushed offshore. Um, we talk about this all the time, right? It's like we want to onshore talent. We want to onshore capital. We want to onshore, you know, crypto. again. Um, it's going to be the companies who, you know, were forced to basically leave and now they have the opportunity to come back. But I think, you know, not having to worry about a regulator always, you know, always on your shoulder, right? And I think we're talking a lot about safe harbors. We're talking about those sandboxes. We had a North Carolina congressman here yesterday talking about how he's introducing a bill to really help the US lead on these sort of sandboxes, right?

because that's a big thing in Europe where you can innovate and you can actually you know experiment without the you know with guardrails too because it's like you know you talk about these sandboxes it's like you can't just do whatever you want you know there's there's those guardrails there but it takes a lot to implement those and a lot to put them in place but I think when there's people willing to do that and willing to lead sort of in that space so I think you know it's going to be the companies that really win from this pull back of regulation by enforcement but you also have to remember that this administration is not going to last forever, right? These people have term limits. Um, say term limits, I guess, for the regulators that's not the right term, but they, you know, Atkins and Celig aren't going to be around forever,

but it will be interesting to see how this joint harmonization of the CFTC is going, whether that will last beyond the two of them, right? Like, will the agencies continue to like each other afterwards? I mean, they have staffers obviously in place under them who hopefully will continue that legacy, but that really is sort of a precedent setting moment with this MU, this harmonization effort. So whether it continues after will be will remain to be seen. But yeah, >> look, I I think we all want to administration proof this regulation uh this regulatory guidance. Um earlier yesterday, we had Solomon from Plume uh put the Clarity Act at about 25% passing. Um and I want to get to a lot of the positive things that have been coming out of this week, but you know,

he you got to kind of weigh the variables here. The theory is that we will get some positive uh news when it comes to Patrick Whit on stage talking about the yield issue that is supposed to be happening in just a couple of hours. Um so the yield issue is looking close to resolution, but then we've been talking a lot about this ethics issue. Uh the Democrats have a problem with President Trump's dealings in the crypto and its family with the World Liberty Financial Project and uh the Trump and Melania meme coins. And so you've got some the some pros and some positive factors, but he's got some cons and negative factors. Overall weighing this, Salman put this at about 25%.

>> And who put it at 25%? Sorry. >> Salman from Plume. Uh he was at chain analysis, you know, pretty uh he he was, you know, in DC for quite a while. Uh and then we had the chief of legal Adam from Chainlink put it about 45%. I'm just curious where you stand over under over 45 under 25 somewhere in the middle. Where where do you put percentages? I just cover it. I don't >> Okay. Okay. Give us a prediction. >> That's your intuition. You're not, you know. >> What does Poly Market say? I don't know. >> I don't know. Let's check. >> Poly Market or Cali. Someone told me it was up over like 70%. I was like that sounds really >> that sounds really for Poly Market. And I feel like usually Poly Market's all when it comes to this kind of stuff

anyway, I feel like it's always been below like 50. >> Clarity Act signed into law in 2026. Take a guess. 68. >> Whoa, you're close. 62. >> Okay. Okay. >> Okay. >> Miss DC herself. >> Interesting. Trust your intuition. >> So, Poly Market is more bullish than the chief legal officers and councils of some of these of these protocols. Yeah. >> Yeah. But Eleanor has got her finger on the pulse. This is uh you know, a decent amount of volume here. >> But, you know, I Yeah. I I I don't like to make predictions because that's I'm never right.

>> Wrong, guys. I'm not always being wrong, but you know, and I leave it to the experts, too, because you know, I uh you know, there's a lot there's a lot of people who um you know, will probably call it better than me, but at the same time, I think we're going to get a lot more information over the next, you know, couple of uh couple days or so. I mean, we heard Tim Scott yesterday talk about how he's going to have potential first round of deal signed. What what was the term he used? He said um you know the first the first deal on stable coin yields at his desk by the end of the week. So I don't know like how many rounds of deal you know there's going to be hopefully just one um but we know that Senator Tillis of North Carolina and Senator also Brooks

of Maryland have been very involved in those negotiations. It's kind of funny how the whole thing is kind of played out, right? Because initially it was supposed to just be a I guess a fight or a debate between crypto and the banks, right? was negotiated by the White House between the you know the White House crypto council Patrick Wit Harry Jung and then all of a sudden it's like well Tillis and also Brooks also have this big buy in because they were the ones who initially when the markup was supposed to happen in January they were looking to be holdouts because they were they were taking um you know they were taking puls from the banks and were like this is going to be terrible there's going to be outflows our business is going to die like banks businesses are not going to die no matter what no matter how many

outflows come from stable coins if that's a thing or not. Banks aren't going anywhere anyway. They took the you know they they were sympathetic to the banks >> but they had those uh those amendments right in the bill and then Coinbase did what they did stepped in and said we can't support this. So till played a big role in this. So what what I'm hearing and I think what uh Senator Lemus also said about on stage today and Senator Scott is that that deal has been at least the first round signed seal delivered to Tim Scott's desk hopefully by the end of the week. DeFi also has reached a point where both sides can live with what is on the table now.

Senate Democrats, DeFi industry. And that's that's interesting to me because that has been sort of the the sticking point I think for because DeFi is hard to regulate, right? >> Yeah. >> It's almost impossible to regulate. It's almost impossible to get something that is inherently not supposed to be regulated >> to be >> Yeah. >> get to a point where both sides can be like, "Okay, I can live with this." So, we'll see. And then you mentioned ethics. That's going to be interesting to see where that shakes out. But again, Senate Banking is not the place where that's going to happen. You will see Democrats, I think, in the markup come out and say, "I can't support this bill because of the conflict of interest."

But Senate Banking does not have jurisdiction over um the ethics provisions. So, it will get added in later whatever, you know, when it makes it to the Senate floor. So there's still a ways to go, but I think it's a quote Senator Lumis from this morning. We're a lot closer than we were a couple days ago, couple weeks ago. >> Good. One of the things that you mentioned was this safe harbor pathways. I know the SEC kind of talked about some of these. Are there any in specific that you're that you're you know excited about or is there kind of a general way to think about these safe harbor pathways different from kind of the classification of the assets?

>> So I heard Paul Atkins yesterday talk about safe harbors in terms of fundraising. So I think that excites a lot of these you know yeah fundraising VCs especially who are kind of like where do we go in terms of like you know what's legal when it comes to you know potential ICOs or you know ways of fundraising in the space that you know it's operating in basically a gray area for the last you know however many years right but I think with these potential safe harbor sandboxes whatever you want to call them there's going to be at least some some rules of the road there.

Um I think there's also language for sandbox and or um safe harbor in the clarity act. Um not entirely sure like which section but yeah there's there's definitely language in that and then also in in what the SEC plans to do. So it'll be in there. I think it'll be interesting to see. >> Yeah, we have this segment uh that we do called rumor mill. Just curious if you've heard any rumors lately of rumblings, anything that you can share that isn't being talked about enough in your perspective.

>> Rumor. Um h >> she's got so many. She's just trying to pick which one. >> I'm going to sit by coffee and think about coffee. Oh my gosh. I don't know. This is hard. Um >> I don't know. What are you guys hearing?

>> Uh we're hearing obviously today that we're going to get some uh talks on the on the stable coin yield part of the Clarity Act. But uh >> that's a rumor that they literally told us that yesterday morning. >> Okay. So that's what we're hearing. Clearly, we're asking you because we're not hearing a whole lot around here. You live here. Perhaps a better question. >> I don't live here. >> Oh, you don't live here. You live in New York. >> I live in New Jersey. >> Jersey? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. >> Do you Do you like being a reporter? Do you like your your job? >> I do.

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> What's your favorite part about it? >> Um, I like talking to people and I don't know. There's nothing like getting a good story and, you know, just chasing it. I think chasing a story and getting all the aspects and really nailing it down and, you know, you just feel good about it when you you feel good about it when you know you've done it right. >> Yeah. >> Um, that's kind of what I like prided myself on, you know, doing this work and being in the space is kind of being a decent reporter, I think, like just in terms of like, you know, um, sourcing, right? And I was taught well by my mentor Charlie Aspino at Fox. You know, he taught me just, you know,

basically basic rules of journalism. Um, you know, always protect your sources, always make phone calls, always check before you tweet. And that's something I had to learn the hard way, too. You know, like I think there's a big, you know, there's a rush to be first in this space, especially in crypto, crypto news, crypto Twitter. >> It's very fast. >> It's very fast. Very fast. Um, and there's always like a, you know, um, give and take between, you know, being first, being right. And I like to be first and be right. But yeah, just do it right always. Um, it's kind of my, you know, and always apologize if you do it wrong. Never be uh, above saying I got it wrong. Um, but yeah, I

do like my job. Um, I love being a podcast host now. Uh, because I've obviously transitioned from big media to doing my own thing and that's been a really interesting interesting journey. But I've been done it with Jacqueline. So you guys know Jacqueline very well and she's been a great business partner and it's been a lot of fun. Been a lot of fun for sure. >> Yeah. Uh looking ahead, what are some of the next regulatory signals or milestones that you're excited about from the rumor mill here? What is coming up? What are some of the things that you think I mean you kind of laid out a couple of these in order, but what are the material changes or impacts that you're most looking forward to? Uh, I'm looking for the tokenization exemption from the SEC.

>> I think that'll give more guidance as to what companies, especially Wall Street companies, I think a lot of them are waiting on specific kinds. I mean, we know Wall Street, right? Like they don't like to jump until Wall Street or until the SEC says, okay, you know, >> the water is safe kind of thing. >> Yeah. >> Um, and there are a lot of these big name companies trying to get into the space as we know, many of them are here today. >> Yeah. But I think in terms of like deploying capital and really getting serious about tokenization, we know the NIC has intent to build you know an on is it onchain tokenization platform.

>> Yeah. >> Y perhaps a blockchain. >> Perhaps a blockchain, right? Yeah. So they don't want to, you know, announce too much more until they can, you know, really feel good about the regulators, right? So once that hits, I think, you know, you'll see a lot more announcements like that. You'll see more concrete details from DICE and players. Um, also prediction market guidance from CFTC. That'll be a big one. Possibly crypto perks too. Um, oh no, that was it. Sorry. We just got prediction market guidance from CFC. Crypto perks, I believe, um, Celix said, could be rolling out in the next couple days to weeks. Um, so I mean, they're not sleeping over there. That's the thing.

It's like they uh they >> they've been getting to work. >> Oh, yeah. They're crazy over there. Um, as we wrap up here, I've got some rapid fire for you. Lightning round. >> Um, MVP regulator, >> Hester Purse. >> Has her purse. Yes. Implementing privacy into all these regulations >> and she was our first guest on crypto in America. She's great. >> She came on our show as well. I mean, she was incredible. We were uh we had to cross our fingers cuz it was during the government shutdown, but she came on uh she did an incredible job and she's been uh really instrumental before Atkins, before Seal Lake. She really set the tone. Uh so big shout out to Hester P and the whole uh the whole team.

>> Yeah. >> Um >> most underrated Congress man or woman in the blockchain industry? >> Underrated. >> Underrated. Yeah. >> Um >> someone who you think is doing a incredible job doing great helpful in in getting these things done uh but that maybe doesn't get the credit that they deserve. >> Let's see. Um and it could be Senate or House. >> Sure. Yeah. I know this is rapid fire and I'm failing at being rapid. Um, >> your favorite anyone your favorite politician.

>> I'm so bad at this game. Um, >> Tim Scott. >> Tim Scott. Shout out Tim Scott. Favorite restaurant in DC. Oh. Uh, Bill Korea. >> Favorite place to have a drink in New York. >> Um, >> I don't drink. So, >> okay. >> Um, >> she's English, but she doesn't drink. It's one of a kind. The names of your cats. >> Simba, Bonnie, Cass, and Arthur.

>> Nice. >> Ter like, >> thanks for joining us so much, Elanor. >> Thanks, guys. Pleasure. And I'll I'll think about that rumor mill question for next time. I'll be ready. I'll be ready. >> Bring one. >> Thanks y'all. >> We'll see you next time. Thanks so much. >> That is Elanor, the host of Crypto in America, guys. We'll be right back after a quick break. We've got some more policy folks and founders joining the show as we wrap up for the last hour here, guys. Be right back. >> Stay tuned. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

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Summit on the blockchain floor. Wait no no we're not. Blockchains don't have floors. We're live with Ben Survey the general counsel at chain link. Ben great panel with Senator Bill Hagerty. I know you're a securities lawyer. You have a lot to say about what happened yesterday from the SEC. First things first, how you feeling, man. Welcome to the show. >> Thanks. It's great to be here. Love what you guys are doing. Um it was great meeting the Senate. I've never met him before. I mean, he's a real statesman, so really just kind of set him up and get out of his way.

>> Y >> and um he's deep interest in financial services. And you know, I've been at the intersection of law, technology, and finance for almost 30 years, which you know, I guess this means I'm old, but uh you know, I've seen I've seen a lot. I mean, I saw the the internet um coming into the securities markets. I I've seen, you know, crypto. I won an OG at uh Chainlink and uh been there six and a half years as general counsel. So really grew up with the company and um we're doing stuff I feel I've been working my whole career uh has pointed to uh how do we tokenize securities change the

markets and uh as you said we got great guidance from the SEC uh yesterday which confirms unequivocally that link is a digital commodity which I think we all knew but it was nice to see in writing. >> Yeah. Um, it's a it was a a big step by the commission and and they really I think it was easy to pick off a few things in it that people like or don't like and they were I was just speaking with a couple of staff members and they were saying they were trying for the Goldilocks approach because they knew that certain people were going to be happy with certain things but overall it's directionally it's correct. It's saying things that need to be said. Uh I spoke to Chair Atkins yesterday and he's just like we couldn't wait anymore. We

just had to put something out and uh applaud them for doing it. I can get into the meat of it and want to bore your listeners. But >> no, I mean so obviously we got these classifications from Paul Atkins yesterday on stage here live at the summit. And you know the big taxonomy separation is tokenized equities are securities tokenized securities are securities pretty much everything else on chain is not >> right >> but there's more nuance. Can you kind of debunk what really was said and kind of get into the nuance here of why this is more than just one separation?

>> Yeah. So uh people you without clarity you people try to play games and or make clever arguments fundamentally securities transaction is securities transaction security you can tokenize it the SEC actual guidance um about a month ago which was the start of their taxonomy when they looked at a security that's tokenized and they said if it's a hey listen if the issuer is doing it it's clearly a security if it's someone else doing it. Well, it's clearly a security and then are there more concerns about how you sell it? And then if it's a securities based swap, it's a technical term meaning something

that's tied to the value of a security. Well, that's something else. It is not in itself a security. It goes into the security based swap rules which apply the SEC and CFTC together. Um that was something that came out of the DoddFrank um act. uh and it was a it's sort of a controversial topic now but not well understood. So being able to get into well understood ground so that there's precedent and you're not going to get core challenges cuz things are well understood. There's a lot of value to that. In terms of what chair Atkins said yesterday, you know, I think they're just looking for a basic taxonomy to bridge a gap to market structure. Market structure is still needed. We're still

bullish on it. Um, but this is very low hanging fruit in the meantime while we wait for that implementation. It's stuff that's been banded about for quite a while. So, for example, that a digital commodity is not a security. It is a commodity. It's in the name. >> Yeah. >> But it can be sold in a securities transaction. And we regulate transactions. We don't regulate securities. So people constantly get tripped up by that. They say, "Well, is it's still a security." It's like that's not really the point. It's a digital commodity that was sold as a security.

Now I'm getting wonky right now. >> So eventually the next sale should not be a security sale, >> right? >> There are some questions now. There's going to be about like what are the efforts that people are making? Does this mean decentralization? I I think they I think they walked a line there and didn't cross it where they're letting the market uh play a role in deciding, you know, sort of how these transactions happen. And you'll see more rulem coming. So, this was just an interim step. And it's also important to note that this was a uh commission interpretive guidance at the commissioner level. Um, so if it's at the staff level, the people that work

for the commissioners, that could be easily overturned by new staff. So this is something that protects these uh allows market certainty so that people can actually do business. It's great for America. It's great for our industry. putting the guidance that was announced into a concrete example. There was um an announcement earlier today that Hyperlid is partnering with the S&P uh to launch an S&P perpetual on Hyperlid. Uh they partnered with Trade XYZ to facilitate this. The S&P is an IND index of securities

assuming that makes it you know a digital security. It falls into that fifth category, that classification. What does this mean for Hyperliquid? Do they need to be a securities broker, broker dealer, for those that are looking to list tokenized securities? What is the process to make sure that they are compliant? >> So, I I can't really go into hyperlquid. I'm not aware of the circumstances but I I will say this that uh the securities laws are well understood in terms of how someone who's actually in the business of providing services in that industry whether they're what kind of broker they're are they a clearing broker are they introducing broker um are you know

there are different lanes for different people the problem we have today is a a lot the what is going to go on as the pipes is not understood and may often look like something that and if you're listen if you spend your life you know looking for who's a broker dealer you're going to find one everywhere if you're looking for money transmission you know you call you know and you and you call an antitrust lawyer they're going to tell you there's an antitrust problem >> so there's a lot of um room for interpretation um and I expect the industry will engage with the SEC. Um, who now has uh, you know, they have a great staff. Um, my my former deputy

general counsel is there now. He's incredibly energetic and understands law very well, but he understands the technology and he understands how one thing may look like another. And I So the avenue for that is what's called no action relief, right? So if there's something that could be and you give them a description of why it's not and they believe that comports with both law and policy, you can do that. Now that's a brutal process. It's very expensive. >> Yeah. >> You know, can can smaller companies do that? Maybe not. I don't know. Um, but they're trying at least to give that certainty because they know that it's

going to create the next generation of financial markets in the United States. They're keenly aware of that. So, I I I feel like they're the good partner and I I grew up where the SEC was a partner to the industry. >> Yeah. >> We we talked back and forth. People went back and forth. >> Yeah. >> Um, and I I think that got lost for a little bit. Um, and I I don't think you have to be a Democrat or Republican. Uh, and there are a lot of Democrats at the SEC today. They're staffers. They're career people. Is not a These are securities slots issues.

>> Yeah. >> These are broker dealer issues. They're not Democrat or Republican issues. >> Yeah. It's it's a nonpartisan issue, right? This entire landscape should be governed in a non nonpartisan way. and the agencies and entities involved should operate in that way as well, not kind of this clash of the two sides, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. And I and I think you're um in with the uh the recentou that the CFTC and the SEC did which is you're two indust you have two uh two competing for a long time competing government agencies and like you're trying to do business and you're like well these guys

are telling me this and these guys are telling me this. I guess I got to do both. It's inefficient. It doesn't help investors. >> Yeah. So um the fact that Chair Atkins and Chair Celig are very close is going to be helpful. The fact that they you know uh have a deep knowledge of the law is going to be helpful to setting the the reason why American capital markets are the best and the most popular is because of safety and soundness. >> Yep.

>> And I think that there are a lot of questions that are unanswered and yours is a good one. Uh, it's going to come down to the technicals of how things flow. Is there already a broker dealer in the mix? Why am I regulating this twice? >> Yeah, >> there are interesting policy questions there as well. >> Yeah, Ben, thank you for spending some time with us today. One last thing, >> one last thing. We're going to get your teammate uh Adam up in just a moment to close this out, but I I I'd love a chance to just get your your takeaways from uh the p the panel that you had with Bill Hagerty. Um you you mentioned like he's a statesman. you kind of set him up, let get out of his way. Uh what were some of the most uh you know

important things that he said that resonated with you? >> I think the story he told of how he you know worked to get genius passed. People sort of think that this is just you know something you know magically happens in Congress. You have uh the staffers behind the scenes are constantly working. They're talking to industry. They're talking to each other. We see this, you know, we mostly talk to staffers. We don't talk to the members because the members are have the staffers doing all the work. >> When you see membertomember work like that, it's inspiring. You know, it's how the country is supposed to work. It's how our founders set it up. It's supposed to be difficult.

There's supposed to be consensus. Yeah. and the fact that he was able to go doortodoor and get enough votes so that he could get 68 and like but there's a politics there too. I don't know if you heard the part where he said the hard part was getting to 60. Once we got to 60 we get to 68. >> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. >> Yeah. And I've talked to members about this and they're like, well, if the if the ranking member is against it and I don't care like why am I go against her and you know why am I picking that fight if it's not an issue I care about? So there's there's policy and then there's politics.

>> Yeah. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Uh appreciate you giving us an insight into that stage and uh helping push the entire industry forward as well as >> Thanks, guys. >> Thanks, man. Really appreciate it. >> Cheers. >> Appreciate it. Yeah. >> See you next time, >> guys. We've got Ben's colleague and friend of the show, Adam Minehart, the head of public policy coming up on Miclabs. And yeah, we're live. It's going to be on conversation kind of reflecting on what happened the over the last two days. We had the opening with Adam and we kind of talked about what he expects, right? I want to get I want to see >> I want to get his takeways, his reflections >> and now what we're in and a lot has changed in this in this last two days.

Um I put a tweet sync policy is kind of dry. I don't know how people do this all the time but man I'm telling you this has been some of the most active two days of policy. I'm very glad that we came. I'm very glad that we came to DC. And so we're gonna get Adam up and we're gonna we're gonna talk about what his what his key key kind of reflections and takeaways are of this event. Look, I'm I'm just I'm extremely grateful to Chain Link. I think part of the work that Adam and and Ben are doing uh in DC is pushing the entire industry forward. Um, you know, chain link is mentioned in uh the regulatory guidance by the the SEC and the CFTC as a digital commodity.

There's only a handful of names that are mentioned there. The reason that Link is mentioned in that list is because they've done the hard work of getting their hands dirty in this city, in this town, talking to the right people to impress upon them how important it is to label these assets as commodities. And so it's no coincidence that Link is mentioned. Uh I'm extremely grateful and I think the entire industry should be grateful uh to the work that Chain Link has done to push uh everyone and this industry forward. >> Let's get Adam up.

Adam, when you're ready, come on over. Come hang out. >> Sounds Sounds good. >> Yep. >> Let's go. >> Let's get Let's get you in here. We're live right now. And uh guys, ladies and gentlemen, we've got Adam, the head of public policy at Shane Link. Adam, we started this entire show, this entire conference with you, opening up and really just getting to the bottom of what we expect here, what what to look forward to. It feels like a whole month has been squeezed into two days. It's been a very busy two days.

>> It re it really has been. I mean, between what we heard from SEC Chairman Atkins, CFTC chairman Celig uh what's coming out of members of Congress today a lot of news crammed into two short days I think the industry feels extremely bullish right now and coming out of this uh market structure is is next uh but also we're hearing lots of bullish comments on that so really impactful two days here hats off to the digital chamber amazing lineup >> crowd still packed lots lots going on and you guys here having you guys here.

Always awesome to kind of broadcast what's happening. >> Thank you, man. Yeah, absolutely. Um, we couldn't have done it without you guys. Shout out to the entire Chainlink team. Uh, we just spoke with Ben who was on stage with uh uh Bill Hagerty uh speaking about how he was able to get genius done. Obviously, that was an extremely uh important piece of legislation that went into effect. I'm curious, what are some of the highlights from you? Patrick Wit, I think, you know, just went on stage. He's about to go on stage talk about this yield rumor that we've been hearing about. um the SEC, CFTC, so much has happened. What in your perspective has been the most important out of this week?

>> Uh it it really is the uptick in chatter on a deal on yield. Um I think it's occurring in the background of this, but I think the fact that um parties are coming together, we're likely to see something. Who knows? But we're likely to see something. So there's still inertia here on market structure, on yield. That would be number one. Um I think Patrick's comments very very welcome on that front. And then uh SEC CFTC announcement yesterday on the taxonomy and the uh interpretations for crypto assets just critical to hear that from them. It's a lot of what we've been hoping for they basically said and put

down pen to paper. So really really stabilizing for the industry to know that while we're waiting for market structure, we have regulators who are giving us as much clarity as they can. So huge huge announcement. >> Yeah. I mean it it almost felt like yesterday's >> announcement supersedes clarity. Like I mean their shatter do we need clarity? Obviously we we need to codify this rule into law. >> But this is almost like a really nice intermediate stepping stone for the industry. you could feel it boiling up where like people were waiting for a resolution. Y >> feels like yesterday we got something that people are excited about hopefully more today. What's your thoughts on kind of the process ahead here now?

>> Um yeah. >> Um I think we see text on yield stable coin in the next week or two. Uh I think people are going to digest that. You guys will probably hear from a lot of people on that. Do we like it? Do we love it? Do we hate it? Um hopefully everyone likes it. I don't think anyone's gonna love it, but I think there will be an agreement of we can stomach this. Then I think we work through those other issues, D5, 505, uh Title 3, and I think we're looking at a markup in April. I we heard Senator Marino talk about that. Uh I don't think this has to be marked up in April. I think it could be May, it could be June, but I think we're looking at an April

May markup in banking committee combining it with the A piece which has already gone through Senate floor vote and then over to the House. I mean, this could happen all by, you know, April markup, Senate floor May, House consideration, maybe even in the end of May. So, we're still alive. We're still in the game. This can be done in in July. Like people are saying, "Oh, it has to happen in April." Like the deadlines are helpful in pushing everyone towards something and we keep blowing through them, but the reality is this could happen in July. There's no reason it can't. So, uh, after the election, yeah, all right, things get dicey then, but anytime

before the election, it's all in play. This is a priority for so many members. >> Yeah. Adam, LA, last thing for me, uh, it's been incredible to have you guys support our show here. We've been able to talk to so many great people. Um, chain link was mentioned multiple times. Uh, we we saw uh Mr. Wickoff out of the White House talk about link uh on stage. Uh, and then also mentioned link in the digital commodities regulatory guidance from the SEC and the CFTC. Just curious to wrap us up, what does it mean to have link and chain link as such a important instrumental piece in the entire DC blockchain complex? it like really as a company we've talked about this is being effectively the the infrastructure that connects CFI defi governments stratfi to

various blockchain technologies it's fitting that we play a similar role in DC uh we don't have extremely hard parochial interests we are generally working to move policy forward uh that helps the industry and consumers kind of adapt crypto So I you know for us it's really about the big picture not so much a parochial interest. So it's a great role for us where allows us to support lots of people that we work with and that's how we like it.

>> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for joining us today man great. >> I'm sure you have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks as we >> definitely we'll stay in touch. Thank you for everything you guys are doing. >> Awesome dudes. I hope everyone watches and you guys like completely blow it up. So thank you all. Thanks, Adam. >> We'll see you next time, Adam. Thanks. >> All righty, guys. This is day two of the DC Blockchain Summit Live. We're going to take a super quick commercial break and be back in just a second. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we

get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know we get deep know we get deep. We get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep we get we get deep we get deep we get we get deep know we get We get deeper. We get deep, you know. We

get deep. We get deep. We get deep, you know. We get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. >> All righty, guys. Welcome back. Day two, DC Blockchain Summit Live. We've got the tast Glendy Cam here. Glendy, how are you doing? How's DC treating you? >> It's been great. It's colder than I expected, but it was it's the event is awesome this year.

>> Great. Great folks, great speakers, a lot of progress. Tell us how Tacet fits into the DC scene. What are you guys doing here? Why are you here? >> So, Tacet is a blockchain payment settlement company. We have been working with digital asset companies to help them to make payments and also do settlement on chain. uh recently we have also launched our tokenized money market fund on link network and uh so everything around blockchain is extremely relevant to us and also the conversation in DC is really important as you know that there's been some really critical uh regulation passed last year uh so those are making huge impact in the industry and especially the work that we're doing around them

>> certainly I mean genius act last year uh and then also the regulatory guidance out of the SEC and the CFTC Stable coins are one of the classifications. They labeled five stable coins are one of them. You know, they made a distinction between payment stable coins and then everything else maybe yield coins or yield bearing stable coins. Could you just help unpack the stable coin classification in that guidance? Maybe what's the difference between a payment stable coin and a yield coin? Why are they classified differently? >> So, I think um one thing that's very important, stable coins been around for a long time, right? and and also there are the tokenized uh uh tokenized asset that behave like stable coin. Uh payment stable coin is particularly important

because that is that has been growing like significantly. You can see that there's about like 300 billion in uh in the market right now and uh huge volume volume increasing a lot. So the using stable coin to make payment is really important not just for traditionally for the digital asset community but also now it's going into mainstream and it's really facilitating a lot of the money movement and we can also see uh banks are start contemplating how they can actually start involving genius act provide a very good uh framework for banks to collaborate with the digital asset community and also stable coin as well. Yeah. So when you guys are doing the tokenization work that you are

doing, what kind of assets are you guys bringing on chain? Who are you guys working with to facilitate the uh tokenized money market fund that you spoke about and other kind of products? >> Mhm. So we have uh launched a tokenized money market fund on link. So that is tokenizing uh uh uh money market fund and then allow the participant on the private permission network to transact with each other uh so that they can move the money market fund from one participant to another in a very fast seamless way. And also the most important thing is the yield in transit uh feature that we put into our uh link network that provide a uh um very short time frame uh for not only short time

frame for the uh asset to move but also during that time uh the asset continue to earn yield for the participants. >> Yeah. um earlier today, yesterday and and I think just now on stage we're hearing rumblings, rumors that the yield issue uh in the Clarity Act is coming to a resolution. Uh there's going to be some sort of compromise between the banks and the digital asset industry to to reach a compromise when it comes to yield on stable coins. How does yield on stable coins impact yield on transit? uh maybe you could just unpack a little bit more what yield in transit means with stable coins and how the regulation

could affect what you guys have with uh yield in transit. >> Okay. So, it's really important that uh the the highly debated um uh stable coin yield topic in in DC and with regulations uh is focusing on the payment stable coin. the UN trust model that we have is not is not um link is not or or the the token on link is not a payment stable coin that's very important to differentiate it is truly a tokenized money market fund so the inherent nature of having yield on a uh tokenized money market fund that is comply with all the law existing laws regulations um the deal in stable

payment stable coin that's coming into the genius act to get clar clarify uh that is completely different than what we have. >> Yeah, Glendy Cam, we are going to come to a wrap here. There's a really really cool panel that we want to see and we're going to put live on the show. Just kind of closing thoughts. What's your reflections from the event from the conference? What are some of your key takeaways? >> I think this year is very different from the previous years that I attended. Uh previously all the conversations around uncertainties like will there be regulations? how would they be formed and uh what would be the impact to the market. Uh that uncertainty is over. Uh so this year you can hear a lot conversations are about like uh what are

the new innovations and uh what are the real use cases like the institutions are looking into real use cases of stable coin and also most important is a lot of discussions a lot of panels on infrastructure. So only when things are actually becoming realistic and uh real adoptions are coming, people are talking about how using infrastructure to make it uh be able to work at scale. >> Awesome. >> Beautiful. Thank you so much, >> Lindy Cam. Thank you for joining us. Hope you have a great rest of your trip here.

>> Thank you. Thank you. >> See you next time. Thanks >> guys. We're going to go to a quick break. We're going to throw the live stream on the main panel here. Let you guys tune in live. So be right back and we'll get that up for you in just a second. Heat. Heat. We get deep. We get deep. We know we get

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You know, we get deep. >> This shouldn't be just about the biggest guys. I like banks whether they're the biggest or the smallest, but this has got to be about everybody because we've got a big country. We've got to serve uh communities all over the United States. And and that's what the Cary Network is all about, which is serving the big and the small and giving the uh low and moderate income people as well as the richest people an opportunity to build their businesses uh you know, at the forefront of technology.

>> Yeah. Yeah, when I was planning for this panel, I actually saw that the midsize bank Coalition of America actually endorsed Car's approach, which was interesting to me, you know, and Carrie's set for the release of the MVP, minimal viable product, at the end of March, then a pilot program in the third quarter, and then I think it's fully expected to be out in the fourth quarter. Um, so do you kind of see this network initially appealing to more midsize banks uh than emerging ones or than the really big wellestablished ones? And if so, why? >> The network is for all banks. There there's no doubt for the smaller institutions, a network opportunity is essential because right they'll have one or two business customers that trade

with each other, but typically they're not going to have a whole bunch. Huge institutions will have their business customers often trade with each other. So it's it's critical. But for all institutions for all banks to have a bank centric safe trusted way to do this activity uh is essential. It's all about trust. So the carry network is for institutions of all sizes but uh you know it is it is most essential fits you know enormously not best but uh essentially in this smaller end of the marketplace.

>> The word that comes to mind for me is interoperability on this front. across all of these different aspects and components and obviously on your side that is probably a very big theme for you guys. So how do you think about that in terms of this integration? >> Uh so I I want to come back to what Jean said before the history of financial institutions and money is the history of trust. It's how do we construct the civilizational level economic cooperation in a way where people who have not met each other from opposite sides of the country or different countries can trust that the transaction is going to be executed correctly and it starts with the institutions but now today what blockchains really bring as innovation is the automation of trust by

using cryptography. Now this only works with u uh you like in in in specific configurations uh uh with public chains and what is now being done with uh with carry uh by using previdiums is giving each individual bank their own private rails that enable them to do what they want under the control which is mandated by regulators but they are all connected to Ethereum. they're using Ethereum as this open standard for uh synchronization of and settlement and this enables every bank to connect to each other. So it like the banks on the car network and the banks that are

directly building on Ethereum and the banks that will be using preidiums to build their own private networks on Ethereum can all interoperate because blockchains provide this shared open standard. This is very very valuable. Mhm. >> Well, you know, two things you'd mentioned, Jackie, I think bear emphasis. One, we're deeply honored by the Midsize Bank Coalition endorsement. That's a big deal because this is a a bunch of highly uh qualified uh executives that are really thoughtful about what they endorse. And I think the reason they did it is because what we're building is the first bank standard uh uh you know digital exercise where customers will be you know totally safe

with the highest quality compliance and safety and soundness tools. Uh and that's one of the reasons we uh wanted to uh to to work with Matter Labs. Um because this is a bank standard safe safe way to really do their businesses and enter the 21st century uh with flags flying. >> Yeah. Do you think this is going to ultimately rival traditional stable coins? >> I think they can all exist uh together. They're they're they're different they're different uh technologies, different approaches for different purposes. And I think that's what we're going to see.

You know, you're Alex's really an expert in this area. Um I know a little bit about banking and um uh but what we're going to see I think is a variety of different solutions that solve different problems. But for those customers who need safety and security and the and the banks that need to live in an ecosystem of safety and security, uh this network approach that we're jointly uh engaged in is uh it seems to me the must do, the way to do it.

>> I I I fully agree. The tokenized deposits have all of the properties of traditional deposits. They are insured. They're guaranteed by the bank. they they they are running within this secure perimeter of the banking um uh protection systems. Uh but they the banks are not precluded from also using stable coins if they are willing to to to expand and they can be using them on the same infrastructure. They can be connecting to other uh public crypto markets using stable coins uh in combination with tokenized deposits. So they it's a different instrument now at their disposal to to integrate but for for the banking purposes stable or

tokenized deposits is is the actual immediate value uh adding mechanism uh that they get from from blockchains because they can move from this infamous t+1 t+2 t plus 5 days directly to t plus seconds move at the speed of the digital economy on the internet >> and this is only possible with this cryptographic protection of trust. cost because if the transactions happen irreversibly within seconds, there are no humans in in between who can intervene and and and serve as circuit breakers. You really need incorruptible financial infrastructure that guarantees the correctness of uh all of his transactions. And just think of a small business, you know, you you're you've started a business and uh for many small

businesses, they need an instantaneous uh and secure uh transfer of wealth from what they buy to what they sell. And the more they're able to really know what that balance sheet looks like, the more they have can avoid being taken advantage of when the check just doesn't arrive and they can't really pay for the goods. So for a small business this is essential in some of these activities it's small business don't have hundreds of people running around they got to do things late at night or early in the morning and the 247 opportunity is critical and often these small businesses are serviced by banks that are not the largest in the land but they're banks of all sizes and often in

their communities and this will allow those businesses and those banks to really participate in this important transformation. >> Yeah, I agree with that. I was talking about this yesterday on the T+1, T+2, T+5 settlement times and like at the very least if people are going to be, you know, maybe cautious about entering the space, they could understand that speed is at least like a positive and they want that, right? They want it instantly. Um, and the existing infrastructure really doesn't provide for that. So, do you kind of see the future of like payments and then the blockchain technology really kind of reshaping the way that you know banks and even small startups to your point uh integrate with these things?

>> Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a transformational moment and and and it's a it's a wonderful thing as currency has gone from rocks in Mesopotamia and clay tablets to uh to precious metals or metals of different kinds all the way through paper. This is a transformation that transforms not only how people make payments and does do their business but also offers to them opportunities they've never had because smart contracts can be attached to these so that they can not only be secure and the instantaneous payment but they can have qualifications of when payment is made uh uh which will really help make them safer and actually run their businesses better. So this is a transformational

moment. programmable money, which this allows, is something that's never existed before in this uh kind of an environment. And now it's becoming available to banks within the regulated uh uh sandboxes that that they have to operate within >> like the because the the pressure from the open crypto economy has been very significant with stable coins obviously taking a lot of money out of the banks and and this creates systemic pressure for the banks and they have to adopt >> and the fact that deposits come into the banks and that they use deposits. I mean those deposits are available to make loans and support the economy of the United States. That's why this is such an important part of the overall digital ecosystem. If everything were to go out

of the banks, uh you there's just not the infrastructure to be able to support loans and basically build the build the economy. >> Yeah. I mean, to that point though, do you think this is kind of alleviating the current tension between, you know, crypto companies and the stable coin yield issue and banks on the Clarity Act? >> I would hope so. I think this is a time when there shouldn't be conflict. there's a got to be an opportunity for for working together and that's what I love about the interoperability uh nature of what matter Labs and uh Pervidium is building here because you know there will be those customers that want to you know speculate there'll be those customers that want to basically have securities uh as tokenized

securities that want to you know operate their own lives in different ways and this will give them that opportunity to do it in a safe and digital environment. >> Yeah. And lastly, with all of this in mind, uh I think you mentioned before it's like a shift coming. How would you kind of describe that shift looking forward when we think about the traditional financial infrastructure, tokenized deposits, and everything that both of your companies are working on? I I think that what we were seeing is really for the first time the the implementation of crypto's original promise to build the internet of value that is all connected. Previously we we had this several separate networks like

the network of banks, the network of trading companies, the network of of like you know the emerging crypto networks. Uh now for the first time they are connecting. So if stable coins are just one transaction away from uh traditional uh banks tokenized deposits that enables uh truly seamless movement of money across the entire economy that's great for economy that's great for crypto and that's great for banks because they are now being elevated from this era of 1970s with cobalt based mainframes they're reproing directly into the future >> and making this safe is absolutely essential. You know, in one sense, this isn't really so remarkable. Uh, if you

have a deposit, you have a often have a checking account and you write a check and have a check and you transfer the check and then it gets, you know, changed into sort of a an account at another institution. This is just a tokenized check. It's a digital check. It's a virtual check in a in a sense. And what it does do is it allows for people to utilize this important technology and be safe within the confines of a regulated set of institutions that cares about privacy that by law must privacy and fair lending and fair treatment. uh uh anti-money laundering. The banks will be

having their own anti-money laundering systems they have now. We'll be putting other protections on top so that people could participate in this environment for smaller um kinds of activities for critical activities in a in a safe and sound fashion and it ties the whole it seems to be digital infrastructure together. >> Yeah, I'm excited to see how it all pans out. Congrats to you both and thank you for your time and thank you to everyone for listening in. >> Thanks very much. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, John. Thank you all for that excellent dialogue on recent innovations.

Next, we turn to the House of Representatives and the evolving digital asset policy landscape overall. Please welcome Congressman Brian Style of Wisconsin, chair of the House Financial Services Committee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and AI, moderated by Sebastian Bea, president and chief investment officer of Reserve 1. All right, here we go, Brian. Um, thanks everybody for the time here. Uh, you know, I think you've heard a lot of great things about policy and the

momentum, but I I just want to before we get started, I want to make sure you all know where you are. Uh, this is the most important conversation actually of the blockchain summit. Uh, and it's because it is in this subcommittee um, chaired by chairman style where it all started. Remember stable and which became genius remember clarity? It all came out of the House Subcommittee for Digital Assets. Um, now Brian, um, my notes suggested, okay, so you've been in Congress now for I think this is now your eighth year.

Um, you've had very big impact. Um, and I think it would be great for the audience to understand firstly, you know, where we are in the House and maybe specifically maybe some perspective on the Senate, right? The Senate now has clarity. they are uh in negotiations. What would be your views? What would be your advice for them in this process so we can bring clarity to fruition? >> So I I think some of this is the work that we've accomplished in this Congress in many ways. Uh we stand on the shoulders of the work that's been done over the past handful of years. uh then chairman Mckenry uh and then subcommittee chairman French Hill uh did great work on FIT 21 and really doing some of the basic blocking and tackling

and building out a framework with which we could put in place um and and ultimately move forward on clarity. And so our ability in the House to have this runway and buildup gave us an opportunity I think to move faster than what we've seen in the United States Senate. So in the House uh we moved forward with clarity. We brought broad bipartisan support. We passed that with large Democrat support and all Republicans in the House. Uh twothirds of the entire House of Representatives uh in a narrowly divided majority. That's that's a statement into itself. And then we pass it over to the Senate.

We've watched the Senate struggle with this a little bit uh to pick up the momentum on this legislation. I think in some ways the Senate move slower in in the House. We always joke, right? The opposition's the Democrat, the enemy is the Senate. Um, but I say that of course jokingly, but the Senate moves slower and there's different politics and different pressure points in the Senate. I I'm hopeful that what we see is the final discussion points come to a head in the Senate and we break the log jam to unlock clarity and get that signed into law. I'm of the view that there is very significant amounts of capital both financial capital but also human capital that is still on the sidelines waiting to be deployed uh until clarity is actually passed and signed into law.

>> That's fantastic. Now, we were speaking earlier um and I asked I wanted to go back to one of these points that we discussed just now around your motive. We get deep. We get deep, you know. We

get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep. Know we get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep. We get we get deep. We get deep. We get we get we get deep, you know. We get deep.

We get deeper. We get deep, you know. We get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. >> Ladies and gentlemen, we've got our caffeine and we've got our local anchor man, Frank Shuparo, here to break down what happened this week at DC Blockchain Summit. We've got this guy fully on the hyperlquid train. I expect maximum shilling. Frank, >> I mean, it's hard not to be on the train given everything that's happened over the course of the last week.

>> I agree. I mean if policyy's the topic dour here the number one topic dour I think hyperlquid is topic dour numero do >> just mixing languages here. >> How do you think is the word of the dour? >> So um >> I feel like this news was extremely shocking. People were like how did they pull this off? You know what strings did trade XYZ pull? I mean, listen, uh, if you've been following me, I had a lot of people come up to me over the course of the conference saying, "Why do you keep posting all these job ads on Twitter from LinkedIn?" And I said, "Well, if you had followed some of them, you would have noticed S&P's been building out

their DeFi team over the past few months with new job ads posted every week." And so, this is, I mean, this is part of a bigger story of them trying to tap into crypto, tap into DeFi, and it makes sense. I mean, you look at the volume growth. We're up to almost a billion dollars a day across hyperlquid platforms. Um, at least over the course of the last month, there's insatiable demand to trade these trade assets, highquality assets as you guys say, with some degree of leverage 24/7. And they don't want to miss that train, just like the rest of your listeners, just like you two fine gentlemen also don't want to miss that train. And so for from my perspective, what I see reading between

the tea leaves of these job ads is that this is just the beginning. >> And it wasn't just the S&P news. Moody's also came out this morning saying that they're going to further entrench themselves in the intersection of crypto and credit rating analysis. And this is super important because obviously we have the experiments proven out to be true. People want to trade these assets on these types of platforms and Wall Street's interested, but they have no way to gauge to assess counterparty and credit risk. And the fact that Moody's, the one of the biggest ra rating agencies in the world, wants to help facilitate that and S&P wants to help

facilitate that, those are the guardians at the gate. And now that they're going to help Wall Street get in, there's really nothing that can stop it. >> Yeah. So Rob and I were talking about the trade XYZ thing. >> Yes. >> And we were kind of going back and forth. I was saying that the S&P was frightened by Hyperlid. They wanted to come in and basically give themselves a chance to to kind of put their stick in the ground and say, "Look, we're using this platform legally with our our license. Here you go." But we didn't quite get to the bottom of whether this license was like prohibitive to use from other exchanges. The key word that that you used was scared that S&P is scared and Hyperliquid is coming from their

lunch. I think this is much more of a partnership in the sense that we're going to see more asset managers, asset issuers, indices, S&P, and more issue licenses to gatekeep and choose winners in terms of the venues that they're championing for their asset class. You know, this isn't bad for for XYZ. It's not bad for S&P. It's bad for whomever does not have access to these licenses, right? Like all the other purposes. >> Exactly. Exactly.

>> So, you think that if you permissionlessly list the S&P 500 via a different moniker on lighter or insert purpose here that the S&P could take action against that? In a permissionless world, you can list whatever you want. >> I mean, you So, this is the thing. This green lights the ability for them to access uh offer this type of product to their users in crypto. Many people have tried to offer synthetic exposure, synthetic derivatives to these types of products. And I always remember just thinking >> you're going to get your ass suit off because this is this is their indices index.

>> Um and so from their perspective, is it is it them being scared? No, it's them seizing the opportunity to get more distribution via a different channel that they didn't have access to before. And so what I anticipate to happen is not um them retreating or them losing market share in any sense. I imagine their competitors, other index providers are going to look at this and say, "Well, can I go to lighter and maybe have them license my index product?" Right. Exactly. Right. And there's going to be a proliferation globally. Right. globally, not just well, no, not in the US at all. Right.

>> Right. >> Right. Right. Right guys. Um >> um there's going to be a proliferation of these assets launching onchain. Um so the losers are the losers, right, are brokers that that that don't offer these onchain assets as if they move further onchain. So if you're a, you know, a a broker that offers index products and um you're competing with the hyperlquid platform that does it better really. >> Right. Exactly. Um in a similar vein um the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, everyone's got a tokenized equities offering looking at launching networks.

S&P chose to partner with Hyperlid as the primary venue for their tokenized offering. On the other side, we have NYC ICE looking at launching their own networks, building them out themselves and launching their version of what that venue looks like for tokenized asset classes. I've called this the new L1 trade. How do you see the difference between partnering with existing venues that are a bit more cryptonative that already have distribution in this audience versus someone building it out themselves and trying to build this from scratch?

>> Well, there's certain things that they can build and can't build, right? Like equities is unique relative to to crypto because the lanes have been carved out, right? You have, just as an example, right? Something like Coinbase, which is a trading firm. um they're a prime brokerage in some sense of the word. They're a retail brokerage in many senses. They're they're an actual custodian of these assets. They're an asset manager. There are many things and there are a lot of crypto businesses that look like that as well. in equities, right? All of those different uh activities or functions are are siloed off and you have a custodian that operates as a custodian, an asset manager that operates as an asset manager, and an exchange that is just an

exchange. So, I don't imagine you'll see NY decide to be a retail facing broker or decide to be a prime broker to to link up institutions, they'll they'll act as an exchange. So they'll be they'll they'll their service is providing the matching engine and the connectivity to market through which other brokers will then uh facilitate the actual execution piece. Um and it doesn't matter right like basically what NY is saying is we are we are neutral whether we're going to facilitate the matching of equities onchain or offchain which is smart right because

>> where are where are the users going where's the activity um happening at breakneck speed it's it's onchain and it's also outside of market hours >> CBOE um put out data uh something to the effect that suggests that um uh non 9 to4 930 to4 trading has increased from 450%. >> Yeah. >> So if you look back to 2024 I ran the numbers it was something like 3% of markets uh of market volume notion of volume it's now around 6%. So when we think about where people are trading

outside of market hours and the fact that it's increasing, they want to be there. >> Yes. And and you did a podcast with the NIC. I believe it was in their vault or it was in the ice vault. >> Yeah. >> So that was their cafeteria. They basically took the cafeteria in their basement and reconstructed it into this nightclub type vibe. Um, and we spoke with the the lead uh strategy person at ICE. >> And so the conclusion is that they'll offer a neutral platform that allows onchain brokers and off-chain brokers to tap in.

>> Yeah. Well, a reporter today, for instance, reached out to me at the journal and she asked, "Are there anyone any folks you can connect me with who trade uh tokenized equities?" And I was like, "No, nobody I know trades tokenized equities. They just trade equities." >> Right? And I said, ultimately what will happen is when you go on to Schwab or you go on to um E Trade, which is owned by Morgan Stanley, or you go on to Robin Hood, those orders will just route onchain as opposed to uh the way in which they're they're internalized today. And that shift will really happen without not the not the awareness of the general public but

probably with very little awareness of the general public. >> Yeah. Guys, one more thing that I want to put in front of you guys is today there was news that Kraken is actually going to delay its IPO again effectively. It's not going to happen this year. Is most likely the case. Uh they cited market conditions. They had a filing, I believe it was last year, the year before. There were some iterations, but not yet able to get that through. What's your read on that? Yeah, >> it's a good question. It was actually surprising to me because I feel like we're in a period of the market where the the token window has closed.

>> It feels like the window for for equities still is open. You know, the the demand for equity exposure >> in crypto is really high right now. um and you've seen it in um a lot of the a lot of the deal making activity. So to me it was surprising. Um but it's interesting in as much as it marries what we're seeing with the token market where >> you know it's funny a lot of projects are coming out and saying we got to wait. We're going to wait one month, two months, three months and so Kraken's really just mirroring that.

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's interesting. And then Frank, you guys at GSR announced this week as well a $57 million acquisition of Autonomous and Architect. >> Yeah, I have no money left. So, I didn't need to spot spot my dinner tonight. >> What happened? Why acquire these two companies? What does this bring to the GSR suite that you guys did not previously have? So what it does is it supercharges our capabilities to support token projects and founders at the earliest stage of their development. If you think about crypto, it's really unique because you have early stage companies that have kind of maybe found some degree of product market fit with a publicly traded token that lives in the

market. And so unlike in equities where you maybe wait 10 15 years to go public and then have to worry about public market sentiment as a crypto founder you got to worry about that a year into the picture maybe two years into the into the picture. um sometimes as as soon as you kind of get going and those questions that hang over a founders's head about navigating the public markets are super thorny and there's not a lot of venues that can help support you through that process with thinking through how do I market the token how do I go to market with the token how do I address and engage with high caliber capital so that they can

understand the value proposition of this token. And you see this problem in the charts, right? Even the highest quality of assets that we all love are down 80 90% off the highs. And the reason is because there's a secondary market clearly that doesn't see the value in those tokens and there's a gap in communicating that value. And so I think that's where we'll sit in a quasi sort of advisory underwriter type format that helps crypto companies navigate public markets >> or the crypto version of public markets.

>> Well, the the token structure is changing, right? I mean, these things are going to start >> and they don't know what to do, >> right? I mean, these things are going to start to look a lot more like equities. There's a different way of launching these things. And I I was telling you about this in our podcast in New York, right? like old token governance token, new token this quasi equity structure and it sounds like kind of that's where GSR is leaning in and also sees this as the major shift in token structure. >> Maybe it's a commodity structure, maybe it's a collectible structure as you said and now that we have the guidance, >> now we have some guidance. Correct. >> Can figure it out.

>> Fresh man, thank you for wrapping up DC blockchain summit. It's been a two-day sprint for us. >> What do you guys do? 770 interviews. >> Exactly. There you go. >> Something like that. >> So, those numbers up. >> We're going to be in your home city. In your home state next week at D. >> We're leaving DC. >> You're you're wrapping us up here. We're going to be in New York City in the Empire State Building and on the Digital Asset Summit floor. Um I take it you'll be there. >> We'll see you there. >> We will see you there. >> Get some rest, guys. >> Thank you so much, Frank.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to flip back to the panels ongoing. There are quite a few more that I want you guys to see as we wrap up here. Thank you for being a part of rollup TV of the rollup today and yesterday here in DC live guys. See you tomorrow from the nest in the Empire State Building. >> Principal uh at KPMG. >> Wow. Insane transition. Bada bing, bada boom. >> That was a great transition. >> My designer's like obsessed with Tuck Carlson out of nowhere.

>> You're welcome. >> Yeah, we got it. We'll dive in. I know we're around Patrick. >> Yeah, it's Patrick. >> Let's start Patrick with you. Uh, man of the hour. Um, >> let's start with a little bit of history, your office, the role, how it fits in because I think we want to lay some groundwork before we just like dive into clarity and everything else that you're working on. >> Yeah. So, the original idea was the president had obviously made a number of promises on the campaign trail that he wanted to make the United States the crypto capital of the world. that we were going to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve on and on. And he had uh made those promises um to voters that went out there and a not insignificant portion of the voting population that

cares deeply about digital assets voted for the president because he was going to be the first real crypto president, pro- crypto and pro- innovation president. And so um the idea was all right, that's going to involve some legislation. It's going to involve inter agency action. The authorities here are going to touch on the Treasury Department, the SEC, the CFTC, the FDIC. I mean, you can run down the the entire alphabet. Um, who's going to centralize and quarterback those uh those responsibilities and those actions? Um, so the office was intended to be that centralizing authority that would harmonize and and centralize the actions. Um, and that happened when my predecessor Bo Hines was in the role uh

getting some of the executive orders signed. uh with the Genius Act getting passed playing a very important role in that uh getting the digital assets report out there that really established the entire playbook for all of the different agencies that are involved here. uh what moves they were going to make. And then since I've taken over in the executive director role, uh my uh my duty has has mainly over the past few months really become uh championing and and trying to quarterback from the executive branch in partnership with with Tyler and the Treasury team and everyone at the those different agencies that I mentioned to get this uh this market structure legislation passed. So that is that is definitely my uh my burden right now. uh labor of love, but uh I'm very encouraged by recent

developments and I I think we're going to uh be able to get this across the finish line >> and absolutely like thank you for all the effort. It's not an easy job. Uh I know it's late nights. It's not some like Kush government uh thing. You guys are burning the midnight oil doing a lot. And you're absolutely right. It was a campaign promise. I think a lot of us were probably in the room uh in Nashville when Trump came out and said, you know, that he wanted it fire Gary Gendler. And I think he almost could like see that's the spark that was like he was like oh my goodness that crowd was really excited about that. So that was I mean it was a defining >> he said it again you need that you know that was the confirmation at least in my mind personally I was like that that's

the moment that crypto became the defining issue. Um, so Tyler, you're at Treasury. I'm not exactly sure what you do. Uh, let's Yeah. Okay. So, let's take a step back. Besides, uh, what is, >> how does Treasury as an agency fit into this? Uh, and then what is your role at Treasury to accomplish this mission? >> Just historically, Treasury and the White House like serve sort of a a conduit process like Treasury Department is often the chief economic spokesperson for the United States. We collect taxes.

We do lots of fun stuff like that. Um, and we have a close partnership with the White House. And I think one of the important things that people forget sometimes about the existence of Patrick's office is that it is a common sort of like nucleus at the White House that serves to bring everyone together across the government for digital asset policy. So, we work in close partnership together. Um, something we spent tons of time on is obviously the report that we wrote that we released in July. Um so if you sort of take a sequential approach through what we did uh when President Trump first came into office there was a couple executive orders report there was the establishment of the office uh the creation of sort of the the durable policy under genius the work that led up to that and then also this report that

serves as sort of everything across the government that we're working on. Uh so treasury department plays a big role in that. We have um you know three different offices across the department. domestic finance. We work a lot with the market regulators. We play a coordinating and convening function there. Uh we work with the bank regulators. Then we have the international affairs department that serves as sort of the fine finance ministry apparatus. So we work a lot with other uh regulators and finance ministries across the globe. Uh and a lot of coordinating activity that we do on digital asset policy there. And then we have uh the um terrorism financial intelligence and that's like OFAC and uh the BSA AML uh regulatory regime. So that's the main Treasury Department.

Then we have tons of bureaus underneath that. The IRS, the OC, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing the Mint, etc. >> So it's a lot. >> We got rid of the penny. Are we going to put our coins on? I >> I don't I don't have an answer to that. No breaking news on that. >> Okay. Um so Patrick, let's let's check in on clarity. I I don't think you've probably you've been living, sleeping, eating clarity for the past two months. Probably not what you really planned on on happening from an agenda perspective at the turn of the year. Um we had news yesterday. We had both chairman CFTC SEC out here. Uh they have a memorandum of understanding. How can we piece that together as an industry sitting here thinking, "Okay, we just got this agency action, but we're still full force on

clarity. We need clarity still. Chairman Atkins was very clear about that. Um so can you tell us a little bit about you know how have the past two months been for you? Uh and then where where are we going from the administration uh with this memorandum of understanding because I think as you've said on social media you know this needs to be pro- innovation. We're moving forward on this. There is a ton of capital uh on the sidelines waiting for clarity. Uh so how's your life been? in the past couple months and where are we going?

>> Um well number one let me start by saying it it is a privilege to serve in this role uh to have this opportunity to to really try and shepherd and uh be a good steward of the interest of of this industry and this technology. Um it was unfortunately maligned and became a political issue uh because of the the prior administration. uh were writing a lot of the wrongs uh that took place during that time and uh I consider it a huge privilege to to be the one um helping to get this across the finish line. Our job in government ultimately is we're not the builders. We're we're the people that uh try and establish the the groundwork to allow the builders to come in and and do the all all the amazing things that they do. And unfortunately, so many of them had to go

offshore in order to to build their companies. Um and and we want to make sure that the US does truly become the crypto capital of the world. This legislation um we've been deep in in specific parts of it. Obviously, rewards and yield has has dominated the headlines and we've been u very intimately involved in in trying to find a solution there. But uh we always encourage the different members, Republican and Democrat, to let's take a step back and remember what we're doing here. We are trying to put in place a regulatory framework that will allow the United States to be globally competitive in the future of finance. And we get outreach all the time. Tyler and I were

just talking backstage from uh foreign finance ministers, uh central bankers of of different countries, international organizations. They are uh paying attention very attentively to what the United States is doing. The Genius Act is a perfect example of when we get it right, when we actually legislate to to innovate, to allow innovation. We've seen that market explode. There's new entrance uh uh joining every day. I feel like there's new headlines there. And uh we think we we kind of got that Goldilock zone of not too much regulation to stifle innovation but just enough to allow the appropriate uh level of confidence for the institutional players and for uh capital overall, consumer protections, you name it, to

allow an industry to flourish. We're trying to do the same thing here uh with the market structure legislation. And uh it's it's going to touch on many more facets of uh American capital markets uh than Genius did, which is why it it is complicated, more challenging. Two committees of jurisdiction, a lot more stakeholders, traditional players whose business models might be uh affected by it. So, um that's why it's taken a little bit longer to get it right, but uh we've made tremendous progress uh over the past uh month. Uh Chairman Scott was up here the other day talking about that. I'm very hopeful that we are on the cusp of delivering a a durable compromise on the rewards yield issue.

Um that's not the only issue to be resolved. There are still uh some others there. Uh but what I would say is uh we believe solving this issue will be a major domino to fall and then I would uh for all the senators paying attention out there and the staffers uh be ready to move very quickly uh to resolve those other remaining issues because I think once we get this one uh off the table the rest is going to move quickly. >> Okay. Um, so in that vein, Tyler, what are I mean, yield has sucked up so much energy in the conversation specifically here. Uh, and I think there are other really important coordination efforts and things in that bill. Um, what's that high level that this room should be aware of? Maybe you speak to the the

senators and representatives in the room like what what do they need to coordinate on uh and get this out? I think I heard blank on which panel it was, but it was, you know, saying, you know, May of this year, this bill needs to pass um if it's going to pass at all. >> Yeah, I was sort of chuckling to myself. It's like there's been so much time and attention to focus on uh the yield intermediary issues going on within the market structure legislation. It's almost as if, you know, crypto Twitter and people have forgotten that the entire bill is about regulating uh a set of, you know, products and services that haven't been regulated in a a wholesome federal level. Uh that's what the effort is about. And Congress has been working on this for a long time now, dating back to 2021. people have sort of gone

skipped past the fact that fit 21 was um passed in uh I think 2022 2023 and then uh we've had good work that has been done the clarity act in the house last year so there's been tons of momentum and ultimately what this is about is sort of uh regulating products and services and sort of a division of uh regulatory labor between the SEC and the CFTC and other regulators heard a couple panels uh earlier today talking about uh sort of the the blockchain regulatory certainty act and the good work for uh incentivizing builders and developers to come into the United States and giving them legal certainty about what they're building. So there are many other important facets of the act itself that are really critical to getting done. And

what Patrick was saying is totally true. Um you know the Treasury Department, our international affairs team, they work with um regulators in other jurisdictions all the time. We hear from finance ministries and what have you on the Genius Act and how they're thinking about it and how they are thinking about updating their rules and regulations and how they're contemplating their own legislative processes. Um, and I I would just, you know, remind people that in almost I I can't think of another area in financial service product development where the US has seated its um innovative uh methodology or thinking to the rest of the world. This is no different. We uh have always been a home for innovation. We have always led sort

of the new frontier of technology. Uh this is just the same with that. It's really important that we get legal certainty in the United States so we can have the innovation occur here. >> I would I would just add on that um to the point about the the rest of the world is is paying attention to what we're doing here. we have a tremendous opportunity to solidify America's role in leading global finance and uh establishing really being the standard setter as we have been in the world. So we can't miss this opportunity. It's too critical to pass up right now. Uh we've worked through so many challenging issues that felt as intractable as this rewards yield one. I'm I'm confident that uh we've solved those. We'll be able to solve this rewards yield issue and then uh ultimately close out the

rest of them. But uh this moment is is critically important and we have to rise to the occasion. >> All right. So I every confidence it's going to ship. It's going to pass. We got it. What's next? I mean we've got this amazing report like so detailed. Is it fair for industry to think of that as a road map in terms of like where your you know next priorities because it's probably unfair for me to say what's your next highest you know what's the next thing you're going to move on to next. Uh but is it fair to call that the road map? I mean that's published that's out there. It at least in many areas it does appear to be that it's kind of checking down and going down those priorities.

>> It absolutely is the road map. It's the playbook. Uh obviously Bo uh before me in the role also being a football player. Uh me being a football player we think about that like the playbook. Always consult that look back to it. Where are we going? That's ultimately you know we we set the direction back then. And some of those items we've already checked off and we're going to continue to check those off. Some of those are in flight. the rulemakings that will get announced soon that ultimately don't require legislation. But um you know if ultimately we are successful in getting the Clarity Act passed um it's going to kick off another round of rulemakings and as we're seeing with Genius right now with a lot of the work that that Tyler and his team are doing uh putting out those notice of of proposed rulemakings um it's ensuring

that the the bill and the intent of the legislation is then followed through on uh coherently in the rulemaking. So, um, Genius mainly directed a lot of rulemakings over at Treasury. Uh, Clarity would ultimately direct a lot of those over at the SEC and the CFTC. So, they're, uh, they're staffing up and and getting ready for, uh, an onslaught of of work to be done. >> Follow through. >> Crypto is an industry of, uh, and maybe DC in general. What have you done for me lately? Um, so I think a lot of people forget about uh, Genius and that we have that. Uh, so Tyler, you were telling me how easy it was to implement Treasury.

Uh but maybe that ingest um how how's that going? That that's got to be uh honestly a nightmare. I mean that's a lot of work, a lot of agencies to cross coordinate, a lot of rules, BSA. Give you a minute to talk about that work. >> Yeah, I mean I would I would say I think we've made tremendous progress on uh the implementation schedule as have the other uh uh bank regulators who have responsibilities under Genius. But in in general, I just think about um uh rulemaking as sort of a jigsaw puzzle. you like build the edges first. At least this is how I do it. You build the edges first and then you fill in the meat in the middle. Uh and right now we've done a couple things at Treasury. We issued we issued an advanced notice to propose rulemaking. We asked a bunch of

questions to industry. We got tons of comments back that were really thoughtful and that is critically important to rule making process is having the public engage and provide feedback. Uh we did a request for information on innovative methodologies and techniques to interdict elicit finance. We had that. Um people have seen that the OC has gone forth with their rule writing effort, their notice of proposed rulemaking. So the the what's next is we'll move forward to notice of proposed rulemakings and ultimately get to final. >> Um that is critically important to getting genius up and running so that we can have firms that register, get licenses, all the good stuff that make stable coins real in America and abroad.

And then beyond that, what I've talked a little bit about in terms of the regulatory engagement, a lot of jurisdictions across the world that have had stable coin regulatory regimes are now coming to us and having dialogue and sort of thinking about what do they need to do to update their rule books so that they can have sort of a an healthy engagement with the the Treasury Department regulators in the US. >> All right. Um, standing with each other, it's your Treasury. I would be remiss. I'm a tax guy. I got to ask you a tax question. uh we want the US to be a crypto capital. I spent years under bad administrations whatever helping on my clients get out of the US. What can we do on tax bring them back? It >> it's another big uh legislative

priority. In the report that we wrote, we sort of put a priority list of things that we were going to work on and then we put a priority list of things that we wanted to work with Congress on and ideas. Uh, one of the big ideas that I think is critical to answering what you just asked of getting uh, making the US the crypto capital of the world is incentivizing the foundations and labs to actually come into the United States. So, I think if you want builders to build here, there needs to be like the appropriate regulatory regime for the tokens, the assets themselves, which is why we need clarity done and why it's really good to have the SEC and the CFTC working together. Uh but we also need sort of the legal infrastructure and we need the tax status to buttress all of

that. Uh >> tax more tax I love it. >> You said not me. Um but if you answer those questions all of a sudden you'll have the foundations and labs that have been building and existing outside the US looking at it and saying oh wait a minute we can avail ourselves of this >> platinum card in there too. I I know that's kind of like TBD on stuff and you don't have to unveil anything, but I mean to bring these high net worth individuals, these innovators, these really smart guys that have been living abroad back to the US, I think regimes and and ways to do that are helpful. Um Patrick, with our last few seconds here, um you're a busy man. You take a lot of meetings with the industry. Um how can industry make those more productive for

you? What are the best things you see in those? Um because the last thing we need is to be wasting your time. Um, we're fielding requests incoming from all sorts of different kinds of companies that have issues, everything from Bitcoin mining over here to a broker dealer issue over there. Um, the scope of issues is is very, very broad. Um, helping us and not just our office, but anyone in government, uh, Tyler and the Treasury team, same thing. Coming in and really being able to lay it out at a at a high level like you would brief an executive. Here's here's the issue.

Here's what needs to change. Here's ultimately the authority that you have to change it. And here's why it's important not just for our business model, but for everyone similarly situated and why it matters for American competitiveness and and our leadership uh in financial markets. >> Come prepared, drive the agenda, do your homework, don't waste his time. So, all right, we are at end here. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate the conversation. >> Thank you. All right, thank you all for those insights. It is truly wonderful to continue witnessing the support from the industry by this administration.

Next will be a panel highlighting how to build quantum resilient infrastructure. Please welcome Yousef El Madars, co-founder and chief business officer, and David Holtzman, chairman of the board of Naoris. Hello everyone. I'll start with this. Uh as you're all aware uh a lot of politicians here. The White House issued their cyber security strategy a few weeks back and that strategy is all around quantum cryptography, network security uh which emphasizes only how important

security is today and is very often overlooked by everyone. Um what we do for a living is purely cyber and the context of blockchain is we're the only company that brought blockchain technology to solve gaps in security. We distribute the surface of attack uh to to make it much much harder and economically not viable for threat actors to breach into the same networks. Now there is a big buzzword uh that's happening today which is quantum. People invest a lot in quantum computing but often forget that it comes with risks uh which are related to quantum cryptography. U I'll let David actually cover that part if you would like to.

>> Sure. around what is quantum cryptography. >> Well, I won't not going to go into detail. So, presumably most of you know vaguely what quantum computing is. What one of the things that our products at Noris do is they're postquantum enabled. So, they are um they are not going to be breakable or not breakable by quantum computing. Most things are going to be breakable by quantum computing. There's a term people in the industry use called Qday. And Qday is the um the point where um standard RSA encryption will be broken by a quantum computer. And that day has gotten um much much shorter than it seemed like it would be five or 10

years ago. So a lot of people and myself believe that we're within two years of that right now. And when you think about the quantum threat, it's not just ongoing message traffic or financial information. There's a concept called uh store and and or harvest and decrypt. And a lot of intelligence agencies are doing it where they're storing everything even though they can't read it. And then when QA hits, they'll go back and read it and the bad things are going to happen all over the place. And anyway, that's what our technology is designed to deal with.

>> Thank you, David. Uh, one more important thing uh to emphasize on is obviously a pride for for us to have been uh cited on an independent paper on the SEC's website. Uh the only reason I'm mentioning that is that again security is of utmost importancy. People should not neglect that. And like David was explaining once the quantum uh quantum singularity event happens it's actually already too late like it's inevitable just like the asteroid came for the dinosaurs back then quantum is arriving and threat actors that you know everyone knows of but we cannot name name as as as we all know uh are having a massive advantage there and we'll be able to

break uh all type of encryption that includes you know your secrets your bank accounts, your greed, uh, which is pretty bad. >> Well, I just wanted to, uh, express the similarity in my background. So, one of the things I I did historically is I designed in part and ran the domain name system during the com bubble and the root servers and all that kind of stuff. Um, which is arguably the most important network in in the world during that time. And I'm doing this stuff now with them because I think quantum is equally important. And I think when we do get to this point where quantum computing disrupts um everything certainly uh

finance and when when that happens um it's going to be in the front page of every newspaper and we're trying to encourage people you know it's our business but we're trying to encourage them to work with us now and incorporate quantum proof uh capabilities in their in their enterprise because it may be too late if they wait for two or three years and then do A very important statement also most people associate that quantum threats with Bitcoin. Yes, of course, Bitcoin, Ethereum, all big blockchain projects are vulnerable to this. Uh but what what I'd like to to say to that is that crypto should be the list of their concern. Like once there is a quantum computer efficient enough

to come after whatever they want to come after, they won't go after crypto. They might take over energy sector first, finance sector, control the money. Um so that's something I would like you guys to reflect on. The policies uh are actually in favor of that transition. Uh the move has already started and please join us. Thank you. >> Thank you. stacked lineup of policy makers who are

here to explore how digital assets fit into America's broader strategic and economic advantage. Please welcome Representative Troy Downing of Montana, Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia, Senator Ted Bud of North Carolina, moderated by Fred Theel, chairman and CEO of MARA. Okay, good afternoon everybody.

Appreciate having an esteemed panel um with us today uh to talk about digital assets and a little bit about Bitcoin mining. Um I'd love to kind of start it off obviously um digital assets is this broad topic. Uh and there have been there's been a lot of work on the hill around this over the past uh year. Amazing how much work has gotten done. still some work to be done but I'd love to hear from each of you your thoughts on uh digital assets it's their importance around things like uh the US being the leader in the world why that's important national security um and then we'll take it from there so we'll start

with you again thanks for having me today thanks um I I look at every technology as having an implicit worldview built into it um when you think about China the PRC uh it's actually a means of social control for them. Uh when you look at their uh their digital currency, they can uh adjust social credit scores, they can deduct your balances. So they have incredible power uh over that. So our technology and assuming that we win, never assuming, but should we win actually uh promotes more freedom uh personal autonomy and I think that's really some of the uh idea under these digital assets is personal autonomy. not only you're not beholding to um an

authoritarian government, you're not beholding to um a large in financial institution. Um it's one of the reasons my my bill uh keep your current keep your coins is inside this market structure bill. So I think just having personal autonomy um and that reflects or disagrees with these government's worldviews. Great. >> Well, first of all, thank you for having us here. We appreciate the opportunity. Um I'm excited. I'm very excited about the future and about digital currency and and what role it'll play in our financial systems throughout the world.

I think it's extremely important for the United States to be a leader in this. I think it's uh going to be important for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is our national security and and I I don't say that lightly. I'm I do feel like it is extremely important. I think it's going to be important for us, as I say, to lead. We know what has happened in Europe. they've kind of made a mess of it and we know the dangers that lie ahead of us if we let China get ahead of us. And it's important that we that we act without stifling innovation. That that's something that we talk about quite often on the energy and commerce committee that I serve on. We have uh as you know a very broad jurisdiction and whenever we are trying to deal with anything uh

you know just an example would be um would be the internet and and kids online safety. You know, I I remember my dad used to say all the time, when you're not doing something, you're doing something. And and if we're not doing something, we're doing something. We're kind of ignoring uh what's going on. That's why we need to address this and and and take the lead and and I think it it will behoove us to do that. >> Well, it's uh it's been really exciting for me to watch where we've come to and where we started. You know, we were talking backstage a little bit. Uh I started out as a research scientist at the Kuran Institute of Mathematical Sciences in the computer science department at New York University. And back in the '9s just seeing this stuff

just starting to come alive. And then uh you know in the mid in the late 90s I did a little uh startup company that became Yahoo. So that was kind of an interesting time in in history. But to see how everything was every tool you use back there was a hammer and we have such sophisticated tools right now and so much you know opportunity in front of us and it's exciting to see it evolve faster and faster. I mean that curve is going to get you know it's not it's not hit its uh apex yet and it's getting steeper and steeper but a lot of the things that that I think about now is you know I went from technology to something much more exciting. I was a regulator for a while and uh regulating securities uh before I was in Congress.

You know, Gary Gendler's SEC was was horrible. You know, there was this complete, you know, uh digital assets were the enemy. And there was this uh you know, just lack of uh clarity on on anything people were doing. And so, we're looking at what happened with BlockFi. We're looking at, you know, all these things where uh these digital uh asset uh companies were coming online and they were being attacked by the SEC for uh unlawful sale of securities, for doing securities offerings and and being attacked by that. So there was this complete ambiguity in how we dealt with digital assets. So to go directly to your question on on the national issues, I mean first of all what Gendler's SEC showed us is that we need clarity on when something is a securities offering

when somebody something's not when it falls under SEC when it falls under the um uh commodities the CF CF I'm sorry the letters sometimes leave my head you know when when and how we deal with that because at the end of the day we need to be innovators in the United States of America and to do that you need to know where the bar is and where the rules are so that you can do that without worrying about somebody coming after you, you know, shutting you down or worse. And so that's important. And one other thing that I just think is also goes onto the more national uh side of this is uh you know, we passed the Genius Act and the Clarity Act in in the House and the Senate still has some work to do, but uh one of the things that I think uh was

important about the Genius Act is making sure that it was dollarbacked. Mhm. >> So that's the reserve currency talking about, you know, national security, about uh American prosperity, American socialism, American opportunity. Having that being dollar backed was huge and I think that was one of I mean there are a lot of important things that we did there, but I think that was really important. And the next thing we need to do to make sure that we continue to innovate in the United States of America is have a clear framework on how we're going to treat digital assets going forward. >> Absolutely. I I think uh you know we just saw that the chairman of the SEC put out rules >> um essentially that uh hopefully as the Clarity Act comes to fruition uh will instantiate in law. Um but this is

clearly a first step that clarifies it. We're seeing an institutionalization of digital assets happening and the trady world kind of absorbing things uh which is super exciting. But a as we look at clarity, I mean, what do you think needs to be done to get this over the line? >> Well, legislatively, and I appreciate the hat tip saying that we need to do a little work in the Senate. We certainly do. Um, I mean, right now it's about funding DHS that's doing there. There are other things in a way in the way. You've got the essentially a BOA constrictor that's trying to to eat the chicken and you've got a lot of other things to work its way through right now. So, I I think our priority if you're on the banking committee, the equivalent to the House Financial uh services committee, and I missed my days

there when I was on that committee. Um, but I think once we get those other things out of the way, it'll start to take effect. I'm understanding from my great colleague Cynthia Lumus may have been here earlier today and indicated that there's an opportunity perhaps in April. Um, I would love to do that, but once you start moving towards the midterms, there's actually less time on the calendar here in DC and more time in one's home state. Um, so it'll be the further we go, the more the odds drop. That puts it into the 120th Congress, which starts January 3rd of 2027. So for the rest of you kind of as you look at uh at clarity um what do you think

the implications are going to be when once it passes and what if it we can't get it done until January or potentially you know well >> go ahead. So on on on the implications, you know, one of the hardest things about running a business is knowing where the bar is. And right now, nobody knows where the bar is. And you know, I think that it's it's properly named clarity because it's hard to build a business without knowing what you're building to or how you're going to be regulated, how you're going to be treated, or how you're going to be fined or put out of business. So I I think that that part is incredibly important.

And from what I understand in on the Senate side, and excuse me for if I'm speaking out of turn, but a lot of the conversation is is on on interest and what that does to community banking and having that that argument there in solving that. And I understand both sides of it. You know, if I was building a business and, you know, digital assets, I would want to be able to offer a lot of, you know, incentives for people to use my business. I mean, I I completely understand that, but I also understand the importance. I come from a very rural district and having, you know, community banks that lend to, you know, farms and ranches and folks out there is important, too. So, finding that balance is incredibly important.

But, uh, I think the implications of passing this is it gives everybody a framework. And here here's the deal. You want to have sideboards that are close enough to make sure that you're protecting the general public, but wide enough to know that innovation is not just happening here. that people want to innovate here. They want this to be the doicile. And that's that's really where we need to get is make sure that people are not looking for a better doicile. And most folks, you know, want to have reasonable sideboards. You know, they always say bad actors are bad for business. Nobody wants bad actors in their business. So, you got reasonable sideboards and all the innovators that are really trying to, you know, change the world know what the rules are. You know, the sky's is the limit,

>> right? A lot of us come from a business background. So we think anytime you're venturing into anything, you want to know what's the regulatory environment. Is it good or bad? And then how certain are you that it's going to stay that way. So it's two things. One of them is just de facto. How is it? And then is it going to get better or worse? I think right now it's been a good environment. You've got a very friendly administration, pretty good policy since 2017 and forward, you know, the four-year interim. But now we're moving towards uncertainty where we realize there you know we don't know what the next administration is in 2029 and how much capital how much do you want to invest in the industry now that's why clarity is so important uh genius was a great win u I think we need to get uh clarity

done so we will have clarity I think it's very well named >> but that that that was a good point that that you just made though because right now we can do lots of things with Atkins and the SEC right now but it's fungeable with a future administration So again, you got to be careful on how much you invest in something, not knowing what the next administration does if we can't codify that. I think that's a good point. >> And if I might add, and I don't mean to be repetitive, but uh to your point, we got some pretty big fish to fry right now. So, you know, it's quite quite frankly, it's not on the front burner.

And whether it should be or not is another argument, but it's the the the de facto sense is it's not right now. But to your point, when businesses come to my office, you know, they want certainty. They want to know what what they're going to be able to invest in. And if they're making these billion-dollar investments, they they need to have some kind of certainty. I don't think there's any better example of that than what we went through here recently in the way of um clean energy. you know, we went through the Biden Harris administration where everything was green and and you know, all of a sudden we had all these incentives and to to invest in that and then all of a sudden they went away and and and now you know, particularly and and and I'm

not trying to get too much in the weeds here, but if you look at the way our government has been running here over the past x number of years where essentially we've been run by executive orders and and and not necessarily by uh actions of Congress and and to to Troy's point, we need to be codifying some of these things. I think that's that's going to be >> I think that's key. I mean, nobody wants that that moving target. >> You think about the equity markets in the US represent about 50% of the equity markets globally.

When you think about the importance of having clarity around digital asset rules and regulations, uh that has a huge impact on the US potentially and if we don't do it, it could also have a huge impact on the US in a negative way. Um is there anything else in your minds we could do to try and drive this focus towards uh the US being the leading innovator in this space that we're not doing today? I I would I would look at first first of all, capital is going to flow where it's respected. It's respected as a rule of law here in the US. I think there's many things we can do better including clarity. Um but I would look at NEPA reform because especially when it's a you're looking at

an energyintensive environment and this was all all the rage, you know, starting 2017 forward and then we start talking AI's been there. The term's been around since the late 1950s, but we're now we're looking at very energyintensive data centers, and it's chasing in my state and probably a lot of other areas, it's chasing underutilized pockets. We're starting to run out of those pockets. Uh, you know, if we had a a factory that was unfortunately lost in North Carolina, a furniture factory or textile factory, now they're reusing it with data centers. But unless you get more electrons on the grid, it's going to start looking outside of our country.

it's going to begin looking at the the Russas or the China or um who knows who else. Um even more friendly places in in the Gulf States. Uh maybe a little more hostile right now, but again regulatory friend friendly. But I think we have to have NEPA reform. Uh the National Environmental Protection Act makes sure that you can't sue these projects into oblivion um for uh frivolous reasons. >> Yeah. just to underscore what you I mean that's one of the biggest limiting factors that I see right now is we don't have the energy to do this and we've got a very prohibitive way uh system of getting new energy in quickly. So permitting reform is huge because we have adversaries out there that are

going to put up, you know, power plants in the time it takes us to just get through an environmental impact study, you know. So we we need to fix that problem. >> And and you know, when businesses come into my office, it's it's always the same. And no matter what part of our economy it is, whether it be technology, whether it be energy, whether it be uh healthcare, it it's always the same. Permitting, regulations, crushing us, crushing us. We need to get that we need to get that under control. But to your point about energy needs, it's and again I serve on the energy and commerce committee. When we talk about energy needs, yes, we need to address that obviously, but there's so much more that goes along with that. Transmission lines, how how you going to get it there? Cyber security, all these

different things that we have to take into consideration. >> Yeah, it's interesting. You look at um Duke University did a study last year where they basically said the AI industry is going to need 40 plus megawatt gigawatts sorry of power um and yet we have 72 plus gigawatts of power available if the AI industry could curtail for 2% of the time. And it's one of the things we as Bitcoin miners have done for years is be that consumer of every last electron that can't be sold otherwise. and transmission is a huge issue because you look at all the renewable energy that was funded and built that can't sell energy into the grid because of

grid congestion, >> right? Plus the fact that it's intermittent and that's one of the areas where Bitcoin mining has been a huge uh enabler of consuming that and done a great job I think in states like Texas where you know we can provide that flexible load to the grid. Um but as we look at other states um especially under regulated markets this becomes a lot harder and I think um some of what you both shared um definitely affects that. Where do you see as you look at energy going forward? You know, what can we as an industry uh Bitcoin miners, AI data center developers? What can we do better uh to help you do a a better job at

getting kind of more energy to us and getting better reform and regulatory? >> Well, I mean, one thing is that just got brought up. I mean, people talk about generation all the time. they don't talk about transmission as much and uh not every data center can be next to the point of generation. So when we talk about permitting reform again that's you know um pushing uh you know pushing that capacity up and that goes back to the whole permitting reform and everything else. But uh just one other thing that's been kind of popping up in my state at least is there's a lot of folks that are putting wrong information out there about you know about data centers and the impacts that they have on the environment on the impacts are going to have on consumer rates and a lot of it is just sensationalized and blown out of

proportion. So, one thing that could help is to counteract that propaganda with truth. And uh that way we don't have, you know, folks, you know, with their fists in the air saying we don't want data centers because uh I don't know how that's doing nationally, but at least in my state, you're starting to see a lot of um I'll say advocates that are trying to push a false narrative on that. >> And I want to accentuate that because I think you just hit the nail on the head. And you need to be very careful because I will tell you, as we all know, perception is reality. And the perception is those data centers coming in are going to cause my rates to go up.

I don't want them here. I want them out. And we're we're getting push back from a lot of people with that. >> Yeah. >> People are down on what they're not up on. If they don't understand it, they're going to tend to be against it. So, communicate not only here in Washington, but also with your your your counties and your cities um and your state regulators. Go to whatever your state capital is, Raleigh for us, and make sure you're making the case why this is good for the economy, good for the state. It does have jobs. It may not be as the same job profile as a factory from the 1980s, but this is this is good. It's going to you're going to have HVAC, plumbing support, construction support, concrete, all sorts of things that you need.

>> I mean, you look at the amount of capital it brings into the state. You look at property taxes, you look at the tax implications for states, it's huge. >> Absolutely. >> And it does have stable demand, which is good for the for the base load. I think it actually creates an incentive to put more electrons on on the grid. So now we start talking all of a sudden about potentially data center operators being energy utilities, right? If they start building energy generation, operate behind the meter and then sell energy, excess energy into the grid, now you're actually doing a net benefit to the grid.

>> That's also a regulatory reform issue, though. Now you've got to operate behind the meter, >> right? >> So this is becoming a weaponized argument. Um, and I think definitely in the midterms this is going to become a very loud voice. Um, as you look five years into the future, where do you think the battles on digital assets, um, data centers, where do you think they're going to be? What do you think the topic is going to be? Because we'll soon get past this, for lack of a better term, nimism around I don't want a data center in my backyard. Um, you know, we still need transmission lines. We still need more generation um put out there. But what do you think the big battles in four or five years are going to be that

the next administration? >> I think it's going to be on the world stage. I I really do. I think and that's where we really need to to make sure that we succeed. >> Yeah. >> That we're the leader because I I think it's um I don't think there's any question that that's going to be one of the biggest challenges. >> Yeah, I don't disagree with that. Um, and and I'm I'm kind of making a broader uh statement there, not just uh you know uh blockchain, not just digital currencies, but you know, artificial intelligence. I mean, this is the modern-day arms race, and we need to make sure that we're leading.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. You're going to see the tokenization of assets. So, that's going to be a great thing. And things move more digitally. You're going to see um the need for more cyber security. Uh you're going to see also more crime happening digitally. Um, you're going to see quantum and the need for postquantum encrypt encryption. You're also going to see AI and physical AI in the form of robotics and what that does for the workforce. That's the number one thing our office works on is getting our our office works on here in the Senate is getting the workforce ready for the age of AI. And I think one of the underpinning technologies while you may think about it in the term of you know choose your favorite coin but it's really a technology that underlies all this which will enable so many other industries.

>> Absolutely. I mean, blockchain technology is a core part of AI's ability to interface with other systems and um financial networks and AI needs digital currency to be able to operate. >> Yeah. If I could just double down on something, you you'd mentioned quantum and that's and you talked about, you know, future issues. Uh what really scares me is, you know, I remember not too long ago when you couldn't export 128-bit encryption in this next generation of quantum when encryption is now meaningless. What are the next version of protection to make sure that we have that cyber security when we have the ability to just grind through who cares how many bits of encryption you

have there? you know, what does that next generation look like now that our entire lives are on our device there and the only thing keeping bad guys from us is the ability to encrypt it? I mean, what what does that look like? I always find it interesting that people talk about quantum computers and Bitcoin as being Bitcoin being the target for quantum. What they don't realize is every single login that you have on your bank account, anything, email, it's all RSA encryption. >> Exactly. >> That's what Quantum's going to go after. And oh, by the way, they've been recording all of these >> internet transactions for years.

>> That's what I lose sleep over. You know, what does that look like? >> So, as we >> just for the record, I don't lose sleep. We'll make sure you >> what what I'd like to see on the government side is actually more take this seriously. We don't just operate in the defensive. We actually need to operate offensively and hunt forward operations. Um, I mean, you see what happens. You know, if somebody threatens us um overseas, we take serious action. If you threaten the very infrastructure which enables our lives, we're going to take serious action and we'll do more of that in the future.

>> And we know that's where the next war is going to be fought. I mean, we know it's it's, you know, the first shot is not going to be from a from a tank or from a ship or something. It's it's going to be through through transmission lines or through cyber or something. And when you think about I'm earlier part of my career was very involved in building internet of things and looking at industrial automation the infrastructure I mean what controls our electrical infrastructure what controls our water and utilities infrastructure is old technology that was designed and deployed before the internet existed >> and we have some major upgrades to do there. I mean that's what where salt typhoon and vault typhoon were very vulnerable and those things are still

embedded out there and the teleos are trying to get those utilities are trying to remove those but again that's what we all live and breathe by. So to kind of close off the topic around um digital assets if you had a magic wand and in kind of you know 30 seconds or less could wish for something related to digital assets what would it be? We'll start. Well, exactly what we're trying to do is get clarity in what that ecosystem looks like so that we do have innovators that don't have to innovate here. They want to innovate here.

>> And I would say that uh you know we we do need some kind of federal guidelines, but let's don't get in the way. you know, government has the the the tendency to get in the way, but but I I just want to make sure that I reiterate how excited I am about this and about the future and what this leads to. >> Great. >> The one ring that seems to rule them all is energy and the electron. So, I would say more power on the grid. We win through industry, win in AI, we win in in blockchain. >> More power to you. >> Absolutely. >> Love it. >> Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you for your service and uh really appreciate everything you do. Thank you for >> Thank you. Thank you all for that

thoughtful perspective. We really appreciate the time that you've taken to be here today. Moving on, as the industry grows, governance, compliance, and risk management becomes increasingly critical. Please welcome Ian McKinley, partner at Sidley Austin, and Sarah Wheeler, director at Marfire, moderated by Dean Soalos, chief legal officer at B2C2. Uh good afternoon. It it is great to be here. Um uh long two days, productive two days. Uh and uh I want to start off

with a thought. Uh we've all sat here and we've taken in the uh the the conversations and the content of these sessions. And one thing that struck me yesterday was probably the simplest point uh that was made in the two days. And it's when Perry Anne said, uh, this has been going on for 11 years, the digital chamber summit. Um, and, uh, this is the 11th, uh, session we've had. Things have clearly evolved, uh, significantly. Uh, we're no longer talking about a sector and whether or not it will be regulated. We know that it's regulated. uh we're looking at the financial prior the the regulatory priorities on financial integrity, sanctions, AML architecture and they're

shaping the structure of markets. We're here to talk about that today, but we're here to talk about it in the context of a more important question. And what's missing from these conversations is is this is how are boardrooms making these decisions and shaping their strategy based on what they're seeing on the regulatory horizon. Today we're very fortunate to have here with us uh two panelists that uh cover the spectrum of these issues enforcement supervisory governance and high level uh private sector experience uh and I'm looking forward to the conversation. First uh to ground us globally uh a uh we have a contributor the uh current president of the CVM the SEC equivalent in Brazil uh

uh President Axioli has given us a uh a video that we're going to be presenting for two minutes to help us ground this uh conversation before we get started. >> Dean and greetings to everyone attending the digital chamber summit. Although I was not able to join you in Washington this year, I'm pleased to share a brief perspective from Brazil. One of the most important developments we've seen globally is the growing recognition that dig that digital asset markets are no longer operating at the margins of the financial system. They are increasingly interacting with traditional financial institutions, payment systems, and capital markets. We can see this happening in Brazil very clearly here.

These markets have evolved quickly from early experimentation toward a more institutional phase of development. Although we are still transitioning, establishing a clear and credible regulatory framework has become an important priority. Over the past year, Brazil has concluded a series of public consultations and regulatory measures establishing establishing authorization, governance, and anti-money laundering requirements for virtual asset service providers. These steps bring digital asset activities more fully within the country's financial regulatory perimeter. As with other areas of financial regulation, our focus is on ensuring market integrity mainly through the protection of investors. Protection

not from themselves and their own choices, but from lack of understanding of what they're buying and of course fraud and malfeasance in general. As with any financial regulator, we share the challenge the challenge of designing frameworks that support responsible innovation while ensuring necessary levels of transparency, accountability and risk management uh to be expected. My view is that we should try not to be held back by what the established frameworks have been and put an extra effort to trust entrepreneurs to come up with new solutions through through the spontaneous and decentralized process of market innovation instead of trying to forcing the new tech into the current structures and all regulatory beliefs.

Some regulatory proposals make me think that if a similar mindset had been applied to the internet revolution in the 90s for example uh emails would have would have to be sent in floppy discs by mailmen mail distribution centers etc just because that's the way it had always been. Deep schumpitarian transformations are harder to come by if uh if the regulatory mindset is crystallized in those shapes and because this these markets are inherently crossber continue the dialogue and cooperation among regulators will remain essential as the global regulatory landscape continues to develop. I wish Dean and the panelists a very productive discussion and I look forward to following the conversation. Thank you

very much. uh great context setting where I'll get to the global perspective. I think that's built into how this conversation is going to evolve. Let's kick it off with Ian McInley um former director of enforcement at the CFTC. Uh we are uh happy to have you on this panel from an enforcement perspective. What are regulators focused on right now in the digital assets market as a general starting point? >> Yeah. Uh and thank you Dean and to the chamber for having me. Um, I think, you know, a starting place in terms of of the the current thinking in government, um, is the the Blanch memo, I think, out of DOJ that came out, um, last year.

And, um, Dean and I worked together at at DOJ back in the day at SDNY, and we were colleagues with with with with Todd Blanch at the time. Um and and that memo really lays out, you know, when you're when you're looking at um cases involving cryptocurrency, um the government is looking for willful misconduct, right? Uh and you look at the regulators, the CFTC put out a statement at the time essentially adopting that policy and saying, "We're going to focus on willful misconduct um in digital assets. We will not focus as much on registration violations." So has someone you know fit a particular category of reg um unless there's evidence of willfulness. Um so someone

knew or a firm knew of registration requirements and specifically chose um to to avoid them. So so that is kind of what I look at as the the big policy. Now, within it, I think there's there's there's some interesting features and and why, you know, this this area is is still very important, even though it it's certainly been interpreted as a more um a more hospitable environment. But, you know, the the focus on whether digital assets are used in furtherance of of any other conduct, I think, is is is very important. And the the Blanch memo, you know, notes that, you know, to the extent that any any kind of digital asset is used, you know, in furtherance

of cartel activity or or, you know, any kind of narcotics, think things of that nature. Um I think there's still still a very high risk when you're thinking both in terms of DOJ but then also other other regulatory organizations because we are in an atmosphere now where I think there is much more of a whole of government message in terms of what's important and where um resources should be focused and so you know to the extent uh boards right and we're we're trying to really in this panel get out what's going on behind the scenes and how do you how do you prioritize risk in a world where there there is so many different levers and and areas to focus

on? But, you know, if you look at the DOJ cases where they've charged um uh unlicensed money remitting um charges of that nature that you you see there's a little bit of a theme where they're focused on cases involving, you know, North Korea um countries uh that, you know, are not really considered friendly uh to the United States. So I I think that that those areas um you know will continue to be an area of emphasis and something that businesses need to consider. And it obviously sounds very obvious to say, you know, if there is any connection to, you know, a transnational criminal organization, but as we all know, things don't start that obviously, right? It starts with a one suspicious transaction um from from from

maybe a place you don't, you know, necessarily see business from um and then can go from there. >> Yeah, certainly welcome developments. I think there's consensus on that. Thank you for that, Ian. Uh let's jump to the supervisory side and build on that. Sarah Wheeler uh formerly of uh the head of AML for SEMA which uh has one of the most disciplined AML frameworks that other jurisdictions model after. Uh what are regulators thinking about AML sanctions risks uh as this market has matured in the past couple years? >> Yeah. And before I answer that question, I I just want to comment on something Ian said because it strikes me that in this current landscape in the US where you have um the law hasn't necessarily changed, but the guidance and the

appetite to enforce has changed. It's such an interesting time for lawyers advising their clients. Um and it's such a an interesting gray area now. Um so I don't envy all of you who have that task in terms of advising whether someone can act or not act. It's an interesting space. But um I digress because I'm going to do something controversial now, which is not to talk about the US, but to talk about the Cayman Islands where I'm currently a director and um as Dean said was formerly head of AML at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. And I'm also going to comment just broadly on the Caribbean region. Um and it is still entirely relevant for a lot of US practitioners because where you have complex corporate structures you will always have a place for tax neutral

jurisdictions including the Cayman Islands and so we've seen a lot of um symbiotic business with the US and people setting up structures. Um and when I joined the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority six years ago um we were really starting from zero. We I mean we were saying this in the preparation for this panel. We're in a place of to a totally unique time where you had an entirely new way of engaging financially um of of placing transactions using new technology devised and invented by people who were completely outside of the traditional financial system and then on the other end you had regulators and policy makers who had no experience of that and we had to try and come together to manage these

risks and set up registration and supervision regimes. So the current landscape in Cayman is is a fairly benign and happy place where we have um we have had clarity for quite some time on the simplicity of our rules which are it's quite clear where the regulatory perimeter is. We have one regulator for any virtual asset activities um and where you have tokenized funds they're treated as funds rather than VAS which is um a development that's happened recently. So from the regulators perspective there um the key issues we do care about non-registration actually in the Cayman Islands. So um that's one of the things that they will carefully look at because they want actors to engage with the regulatory regime. Um but equally we

don't uh it's very clear that most people um who aren't conducting um centralized activities won't be in scope of regulation. As I said funds will be treated as funds. So this year is going to kickstart I think a huge amount of growth and innovation just because we've got this um very simple and easy to navigate regime in the Cayman Islands. >> Okay, enforcement supervisory uh let's start talking about the boardroom a little bit and let's also pressure test this a little bit with something current on this stage. Uh yesterday Paul Atkins uh signaled a much narrower view of its jurisdiction. Uh and the question from a boardroom perspective uh given that you both now uh function in that capacity, Ian uh as a partner in a u an

international law firm, Sarah and advising and uh uh playing a significant governance role. Does that create more clarity any risk of adding uncertainty? What do you think Sarah? >> Yeah, I mean so I sit as a director for a number of entities. Some are regulated virtual asset service providers in the Cayman Islands. Some are foundations housing protocols. Um so that covers defy that covers um deep pins that covers infrastructure crossbridgeing and then some AI folks. So a really broad spectrum of activities that can use a protocol to housing Cayman. And so to answer your question about board considerations, it will wildly different depending on the activity of your client

and whether they are subject full suite of regulations or um more just the kind of AML sanction side. But it is a great paradigm I think of of this current mood and appetite to say we should you know dere not deregulate but keep regulation simple, encourage innovation, free up free up people to kind of you know operate in safe harbors. I think that's what was discussed yesterday in the SEC announcement. At a time where sanctions are still one of the most popular tools that the Trump administration has at its disposal because when you're talking about the AML side, um there's never been a greater need for full compliance and considerations in of that nature um we're seeing still huge demand for um

sophisticated tools, blockchain analytics staff um and on a global level. So we're also seeing a lot of um risk assessment of outsourcing and providers and all the challenges that that poses. Um certainly my clients who are all in the virtual asset space because they they tend to be operationally all over the place. And I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean that literally. Their servers could be in the UK, their compliance team could be in Lithuania, their head office could be in Singapore, but their main folks are like in New York. So we do see that challenge.

>> Thanks Sarah. Ian, I have to ask you this. Does that change does Paul Atkins announcement yesterday change the enforcement risk? Does it change where it shows up? What's the significance of it? Yeah, I mean I think you know to kind of step back guidance regulation I think is is generally welcome right we were talking about this when we were preparing I think regardless of where where you kind of stand in a lot of debates clarity is a good thing particularly for businesses right so to the extent that the guidance gives clarity and it certainly certainly does on certain assets and whether those are considered securities or commodities or something else um that's a helpful data point when you're counseling clients For sure. I think that, you know, and this

has been a theme of of this summit. I think that where the these conversations get very interesting though is when you talk about future proofing, right? And how do you make sure um that the advice that you're that you're giving and how you're advising clients is going to be sustainable because, you know, you hear back from clients often, right? Like, well, but will this change? And so I think you know that that's why there's there's a very I think large consensus for some form of legislation or or regulation that has that kind of of permanency. So because businesses love certainty of course and that and that makes total sense. Um, so to answer your question, I do think it's a it's a very

helpful data point and and and that's to be encouraged, but you know, you you you want to be able to get with a client because when when you're thinking about risk, you know, in our in our world, right, as lawyers, everything is is in retrospect. And, you know, most, as we know from from our time at DOJ, most most offenses, it's a fiveyear statute of limitations. sometimes, you know, who's ever looking at that is is not looking at it until the fourth year. And who knows what that world looks like exactly where we are right now. >> I could ask you this, but I'll ask Sarah, let me be a difficult client and add a global layer to this. We have a different approach in the US, Europe came in, uh, we have MA passporting in

to 27 jurisdictions. If I'm a if I'm a if I'm your client and I'm asking you, are we moving more towards a coordinated framework or is this a kind of world regional regulatory block system that I'm going to have to contend with as a someone that's a director or also someone that is giving counsel on how to navigate that? >> Yeah, I mean I'd love to say that it's uh it's the latter, but I think slightly it's the former in the sense that we have lots of kind of siloed regimes that have come up. I mean there are funny things about Mika that just I don't see in other places such as like the 14-day withdrawal rule which have you know implications on pricing and if you're a token issuer and you want to do that in multiple jurisdictions you you've got to

just comply with all these it's very difficult to kind of keep track on that and it does create sort of strange different lanes if you know what I mean but I think um ultimately if you're a board director as I am I mean I'm taking the target from a lot of people and putting it on myself you need to be absolutely aware of every single arbitrage there is in in terms of regulation and compliance and you need to be doing that gap analysis and understand it yourselves and being sure that you've got an excellent compliance team who are managing mitigating that >> more operational complexity or more opportunity when you're navigating that what do you think >> I think those who are well advised and well informed and have good staff and have ad you know robust compliance programs are actually can be first

movers because they can see the opportunity there. Um, it's usually the folks who are a bit reticent to to do that necessarily inquiry or spend that money, shall I say, who then find themselves left behind because they then can't operate or they can't act in those sense. So, um, yeah. >> Yeah. So, we're talking global. Uh, that discussion has to include a discussion of the UK. Ian Taylor from CryptoUK is out here. Uh, Ian, I'm going to I'm going to pick on you and ask you a question. How are firms dealing with uh the UK and the FCA? Are they leaning into the UK or waiting for some more clarity with recent developments?

>> Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, Dean. Um, so the question is, are people leaning into the the regulations in the UK? Well, I kind of don't have a choice. Um, because if you don't get compliant, then you can't operate and you can't sell your services into that jurisdiction. And so, what do you do? You move to Europe. The same thing applies because there is a regulatory framework. And so what I've seen time after time Sarah you said it these teams are decentralized. They operate in multiple jurisdictions. Engineering teams might be in Asia leadership team might be in Europe might have some product folks in the US and so it is very complicated for leadership to your point Dean to be able to get able and compliant with a new regulatory

framework. It requires a lot of capital, requires a lot of resource. And so what I've seen is at times outflow out of particular jurisdictions because a regulatory framework hasn't necessarily been rolled out proportionally and supported the builders of products and services. So it's been interesting to hear hear this week some clarity from US regulators that will hopefully force other regulators and other jurisdictions to let's say come come on side with that. >> Yeah, >> thank you Ian. And if I may add, I I have a vested interest in that comment because I used to be at the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK for many years um and was involved in the policy side of um the crypto regime as we were drafting it back in 2016 2017. Hence why

I enjoy being here with all these policy folks. Um but I would say there's a kind of existential question um that the UK has got a bit bogged down in which is how much do we need to protect consumers? like are people actually able to make their own financial decisions even if they're high-risisk or should we prevent that from happening and I that's my personal view of what has really been tricky in terms of innovation in crypto um in Cayman Islands they don't see themselves as a conduct regulator at all so we don't have those kind of barriers wrongly or rightly um we can discuss that over a drink later but um it does create then you do see the jurisdictions that really focused on that and I know that um our colleague from Brazil

mentioned that Brazil are looking at that as well. But that is where you you have that tension point between an innovation and development and then risk to your average door on the street. So >> crossjurisdictionally um I'm sitting in a boardroom and I need guidance. One of my questions is going to be to what extent are regulators coordinating internationally? Are thereUs? Is there informal coordination? How do I need to think about that as a board member? >> Yeah. Well, there's a lot of work internationally. I mean um the financial action task force um as you may know is doing it uh its assessment of the USA currently um so we'll see what comes out of that because virtual assets is a key focus for them. So a lot of what you see is a trickle down effect of people then

implementing laws and regulation because they've been told to in their recommended actions by the financial action task force. Um and so we may see a kind of global harmonization in certain areas. I mean, DeFi is the obvious thing where there is so much regulatory anxiety about that where people just can't use their traditional tools to lift and shift to to be able to to address the risk in DeFi. Uh, and it's never a better time to mention it than when we had a week where we've seen a 50 million trade go down to 35,000 um through a DeFi protocol. So, uh, that's I think going to be the most interesting kind of convergence of regulatory thought um, in terms of in intelligence exchange of information.

Yes, they happen routinely already and I know that there's lots of kind of global initiatives on the credential and AML side to work together in governments. Yeah, I'll just add to that. Um, you know, having been at a regulator recently, um, there is a lot of cooperation and I think one area to to really watch and, you know, chair Atkins gave a speech in Bokeh last week where he talked about substituted compliance and spoke, you know, favorably of that. And I think that when, you know, whether so substituted compliance basically means, you know, if you're complying in one jurisdiction, it essentially, I'm going to paraphrase it, it basically counts in the US. And I don't know that that you know that has not obviously been adopted wholesale when it comes to digital assets but it has been adopted

in other areas and I think to the extent you are interacting with regulators and trying to show your good faith right and and and particularly where there's a situation where the rules in one jurisdiction are not as clear if you can say look we are registered in this jurisdiction those requirements are very very stringent. in fact they mirror either your guidance or where you think this is going. I think that that is you know a good thing for businesses and advocates um to really consider especially because the general tone right now right on on regulation and you saw the SEC and CFTC sign a memorandum of understanding and there's there's certainly a movement to not have

overlapping regulations. So I think that that's an interesting area to watch. >> Excellent. Um I feel like this is a billable hour. Thank Thank you for that. It might be. >> Yeah, let's see. I I would I would love that move actually if I got that. Um we have two minutes left. Uh this is a conversation that can go on for the better part of an hour. That was the biggest challenge of this panel uh topic. I've really enjoyed preparing. Let me end it with a bit of a lightning round. Again, boardroom perspective next three years. You're advising a board. What are the key issues that you would advise a board to be paying attention to in the US in Cayman and also globally with everything that we've heard today?

>> Absolutely. I'd say it's your it's your transaction monitoring, your AML controls. In a world where there is increasing lack of tolerance for vi sanctions violations uh and an increasingly turbulent world, that is absolutely where the best money would be spent. Um lightning answer. >> Yeah. uh two quick things. one be just very cognizant of uh how any particular matter may impact larger US policy and whether that it's going to be a priority and fits within you know that kind of framework because that that could be higher risk and two we didn't really touch on it that much because as you said there's just so much but there is a very kind of golden opportunity now to

cooperate when some when you are sitting there and something goes wrong you know DOJ CFTC a lot of other agencies have put out some very strong guidance where if you go in and cooperate early and quickly, it's not just a presumption in favor of a declination against the company. It is a it is a declination. >> Yeah. Um yeah, thank you for this. I think this has been a great panel. Uh I'll tell you on a personal level, uh our company operates in seven market centers. We're dealing with decisions on capital allocation, jurisdictional strategy, compliance, investment, uh enterprise risk as we all often are. And these are the tough questions that we're trying to grapple with, taking regulatory ambiguity, making concrete decisions. Uh

give a round of applause to this great set of panelists. Um I it was a total pleasure preparing for this and a great pleasure having you on stage. Sarah, Ian, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Ian, thank you. Oh yeah.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have two incredible panels left. But before we get into the final sessions, I mentioned in my keynote yesterday morning some very exciting news that we are partnering with money 2020. We want the digital chamber to be the convenor of traditional finance and digital finance. And when we look for partners, who better than the greatest convenor of fintech leaders, of traditional financial institution leaders in the entire world, we promised that there was going to be more details about the partnership later in the program. So, Scarlet, I'll turn over to you.

>> Well, thank you, Cody. First of all, thank you for having us. This has been an incredible, incredible two days and looking forward to wrapping it up and bring Tom out in a second. But the team has been working really hard. We like to look at signals. We see what's happening literally all over the world. We get thousands and thousands of submissions from every planet. I mean, all all all states, all countries across um United States, Europe, Asia, etc. And we started to see a theme and we see exactly what you talked about, Cody, which is this intersection and convergence of Tradfi and DeFi. And we're really excited. So, we actually wrote a book about it um because we've heard a lot and I've been just sitting here and listening to the sessions for the last two days and a lot of it is a

lack of education and a lack of awareness and we really want to bring that TRDI world uh into the DeFi space and so we wrote a book about it and it will be uh launched out in Amsterdam. It's on the uh convergence of tradi the new intersection of money and you happen to be in the book u with a lot of other great people that you would expect some real live use cases of what's happening in different regions all around the world some of the great speakers you've had here are part of it as well so we're looking forward to that so thank you and in the meantime while we're talking about the trady world I'm going to bring out Cody I mean I'm going to bring out Tom if that's okay so Tom CIO of Swift please join me for our chat Well, so we made another announcement.

No, we have a great one right now. No, I'm just kidding. That just be announcement crazy. But um Tom, you and I have known each other for a bit now. Both Americans, both, you know, New Yorkers living in New York, but also uh there's been a lot a lot of conversations and we're both exankers, right? and and have both worked at European banks, BBVA, Barclays and the US banks with uh Bank of America and me with um with BBVA and USAA. And so I feel like our perspective is going to be a little bit different than what you've heard uh and you and I have both been listening to a lot of the content over the last two days and I really want as we're kind of wrapping up before Richard from Binance joins us as well on thinking about where we're going from here and we've heard a lot of great

conversations a lot of focus on what's happening in the now but what I haven't heard much of is around settlement and I know you might have a perspective on that being the CIO of Swift. So for those of you who don't know, Swift serves roughly 11,000 financial institutions from over 200 countries and you know both of us sit at this global uh perspective now and I think bringing some of those learnings and lessons to this conversation will be helpful. So can you just give a little bit of background on Swift for those who may not know the role that you play and basically the underpinnings of almost all things payments around the world?

>> That's a big uh big agenda for today. But I I like the I like the idea the starting with the framing on on banking and I actually jumped into market infrastructure uh just shortly after the financial crisis in 2008. So between the largest clearing house in the world uh the FX settlement bank and then now with Swift I spent the last 16 years in market infrastructure and so even though the banking background um you know the way that things really move especially on a global basis the market infrastructure is is critical to that and and um and and Swiss really kind of the fabric that holds that together. And I like the way that you set this up because we've had a lot of conversation about what's happening now and speakers telling you what's happening with legislation or what's coming in terms of rules and that sort of thing. Um but I

it would be good to kind of walk away from this conference with some things to think about uh in terms of what is coming because everything about genius for example is around issuing um stable coins and money which we all know but we haven't actually talked about yet is there's $300 billion of us of stable coins most mostly in US dollar and they all settle on chain now now today um swift is the fabric swift is that trusted network that ties all of these settlement utilities, the market infrastructures, the settlement banks, the banks, the regulated financial institution ties that together. And so it really is a trust network and sometimes and probably appropriate for this crowd that said, you know, Swift's kind of the OG DAO

started over 50 years ago, right? Completely decentralized uh and connecting disparate payment systems. And so we do reach into over 200 different uh countries. um half of the uh half of the the traffic on the network is crossber payments for what we're known for, but the other half is FX and securities and we're talking 50 plus million messages a day. So really robust, really important for market infrastructure. I think the other thing that is is good especially for a crowd like this is it kind of levels set some of the the myths or or things that aren't communicated properly or somebody runs with on crypto. Twitter, for example, you know, 75% of the messages and payments that go across the Swift network get to the beneficiary bank in

10 minutes or less, right? So, you always see this, oh, you know, Swift takes three days or 5 days and it costs this much money. I mean, there's definitely friction. There's definitely things that need to get worked out. There's definitely a last mile problem and all of that, but there's a really strong foundation for us to build on top of. and and and and and we'll talk a little bit more about this as this goes on, but we've um we announced at the end of last year that we're actually going to put a blockchain infrastructure on top of the Swift network and that gives us a really substantial way to step into digital assets and new into new settlement locations which are probably private and public blockchains.

>> Well, and I think one of the things that's exciting about that is it it is about the whole reason why we're here and the convergence of these two worlds coming together. thinking about my my hat 10 years ago and when fintech was coming in the wave that it did back then and now a lot of these are some of the most uh privately valued companies in the world. One of the challenges that the tradi had or that they would say that that fintech had was you don't have scale. So I just want to talk about this a little bit when you think about the the structural barriers preventing digital settlement from scaling internationally.

What do you see are some of those actual barriers? So let's ignore the legislation and talk about the actual technology. What are some of those barriers that that are not allowing us to scale faster? >> Yeah. Because because I think we know the technology works, right? If you look back, you know, 2, three, four, five years ago, it wasn't clear that the blockchain technology was going to work at scale. That that's been proven and we we've also proven that there's a real demand for digital money just with the 300 billion. And that's even before the banks get started with deposit tokens and token tokenizing every asset in the world, equities and money market funds and everything else. So we know the technology works. So the the real difference is there's a there's a you know I always say that $50 is not 500 million, right? um speed matters, low

cost matters, you know, not having problems matters. But when you get into institutional money, when you're dealing with the largest corporates in the world and you're doing that in a complex crossber environment, what actually really matters is certainty. You know, if I'm if I'm if I'm sitting here in the US and I'm I'm paying uh one of my suppliers in Malaysia, for example, um you know, if I sent you $50 and and it didn't work, I'd see you next week at Daz and say, "That was kind of odd, right?" And I would just, you know, do it on Venmo or, you know, through our wallets or whatever, however that works. If I'm instructing about $500 million payment that needs to be converted into local currency in Malaysia, that has to work. I have to know what rules that goes under. I have to know that it's

completely compliant, right? Um, I have to know what happens when it goes wrong. You know, do you go to court in the US or go to Malaysia? So all of these things around certainty, you know, the authority, the rulebooks, that that's where the institutional market is very very different than the retail market. I'm not saying these things don't matter in the retail market. They do. They matter in all the markets. But the trust that you have to have in institutional markets that and the result and the objective being certainty is is a is a really key differentiator. >> And you mentioned a few minutes ago around, you know, 300 billion settled on chain right now. So I I hear the point on certainty. I think that's a very smart point. But I I am curious when we think about the barriers now. There is

the there is the the technical piece, there is the regulatory piece, but there is also the psychology of the the trady world and that institutional trust. So where do you kind of see all of those different variables impacting uh the real scale here and like where do you see as the biggest barrier of any of those? So I I think I think we have to see the trust kind of in action. Um and you know that's why you see kind of soft launches of of new services. Um but you see you see a lot of that happening now right? So we're kind of over PC's we're kind of over and say PC fatigue has set in. You know people in and banks for example they want to do real

experiments. They want to say when I get this done I'm going to be able to offer my customer something I haven't done before. Um 24 by7 payments. So in in launching the the Swift ledger, um we've narrowed that down to an interbank market and the ability for and and we had 40 banks sign up in two weeks. So demand's there, right? Um we had 40 banks sign up to to work with us on it. And what's happening is they said we want to use a deposit token, you know, that's that's a liability that's on their balance sheet and be able to do a crossber payment with that. Very practical. and be able to do that 24 by7 because that's that's another service they want to be able to differentiate with and offer to their customers.

Right? When when when people think about the Swift network, you know, banks compete with each other every day on the Swift network. It's kind of the network for competition. They can only do that where they have full trust in it, right? So so as these are are are being developed, there's kind of a product management piece. There's a how does this work in the workflow of the bank? How does it actually, you know, work with our treasur or cash management? doesn't impact our liquidity reporting or capital requirements and then but ultimately how can they service our customers better. So what we're doing now is to say how do we help you service your customers better >> and I think that's a really important point and and 40 40 banks signing up in two weeks is great. you serve 11,000.

And it reminds me of a point that the former FDIC uh chairman Yelen McWills said earlier today when she talked about the 4,700 roughly financial institutions in the US, of which roughly 450 in her time uh at the FDIC was actively working with crypto andor fintech. So 40 is good, but 11,000 is a long way to go. I'm curious. I know all your all of the the customers you serve are are your favorite, but have you who have you been most impressed by? like are there any banks that you think that are doing this really well? Um >> I can name on this stage that you >> are Yeah. that you can name on this stage? Have you anything that you've seen that you've just really felt like this is a great example of what this looks like?

>> Well, I mean I I'd say that the samples that you see are the banks that are being kind of the most aggressive. And what they've started with is kind of building out digital assets for their own networks, right? For the big G SI banks, the big uh global banks. um they're building out and they've built deposit tokens for their customers to offer additional services 24 by7 or dollar clearing crossber and that sort of thing and we've seen some of the banks do that and they've got really good results where swift comes in I think there's two things one is it's actually where the banks actually need to work together so as big as a bank is and as big as their network is in any given country whether that's a US or in Hong Kong or or Singapore or wherever um um when they come to swift they're

saying I now need to work with another bank. >> I now need to make a payment in a in a in a location or jurisdiction that that I don't have a full operation. That's kind of the traditional corresponding banking business model. I'll tell you the other thing that I think is really interesting, what I'm impressed with is I go to conferences like this and I talk to the new entrance, you know, the first OC digital bank, right? um the stablecoin issuers and my question always to them is like you say that your target are institutional customers and banks h how are you not on the swift network because they're all connected to us and we're a network we're not competing with you're a network we're a trust fabric how could you not be on the swift network and sometimes I get you

know I get kind of a it's not really a blank stare but they look at me and like yeah I didn't actually really think about that I'm like well let's go let's figure it out and so we've seen a lot of where I see a lot of really interesting builds are the people that have that are going for the licenses that are building kind of the next generation of infrastructure because they're they're joined on the Swift network as well and I think that combination is really really powerful. >> Yeah, I the idea of banks working together I remember back in the early days of this being in one of the early early members of of R3 when it was first starting. Uh I'm curious because one of the things there was there was some cultural nuance with some of the the Asian banks typically never working

together etc. given your global purview, have you seen any regions, of course the US, we're all going to everything we've heard over the last two days, but have you seen other regions that have really done this well? Like who are you impressed by from a geo perspective? >> Um, well, I think that I mean the the the policy and the regulatory environments are obviously different around the world. Um, and so so they're kind of moving at different paces and they have different uh priorities and that sort of thing. I I I think I think this swift and what we're doing with the ledger is a great answer um to really avoid things like fragmentation. So let's say one part of the world, Southeast Asia or the Nordic banks or South America decide to get together and

say we want to do digital assets, you know, we're going to use stable coins, whatever, you know, kind of bring whatever money you want, any forms of money you want. If every bank or bank groups of banks went off and did their own solution, you you might actually outweigh the friction that goes along with that and the fragmentation that's actually created with that actually might outweigh a lot of the benefits you get from introducing a digital asset into your into your flow into your customer base anyway, right? So, so it's the way that you get scale. The way you get scale is that you um is that you standardize things, you standardize market practices um and you and you go to the settlement environments in a consistent way. You know, the bank, the industry just adopted the ISO 2022 um

payment message type, right? And I don't want to get too technical on this, but there's a standard way to describe a payments. Fed wire is on that as well, right? So when you get these standards, that's actually what ends up driving your scale and that's what avoids the fragmentation. Um any particular part of the world, I I I think we see energy everywhere. I mean the US to me is like really a catalyst here. >> Um and you and we've heard that for two days. Yeah. Right. I mean it's really energetic. So step one is kind of the US being a catalyst. Step two is how other people respond to it. There's a there's an equivalent stablecoin bill in Hong Kong for example, right? To the Genius Act. Very very similar.

>> It's true. And and I'm glad that you got into to standards because another word that is a buzz word that we haven't heard so much here, but it's definitely true around interoperability. And I'm curious from your perspective, do you think that, you know, interoperability at at highest success is really around establishing those shared those shared standards or is it around aligning governance and control frameworks across networks? Like where do you see the the perfect match there? Well, so I we have a lot to build on top of and there's a lot of really good work that's been done with interoperability both on on on chain and then obviously that's a big play for what for what Swift has always done, right, is interoperability. But I I think I think we we need to do more

than this and I think we need to move from kind of just connecting systems together in a standardized way to be able to kind of orchestrate the out the settlement outcomes. Um, you know, we're in a really unique position where one part of the transaction could settle on traditional RTGS at a central bank and the other one could settle on a stable coin on on Ethereum, right? So, this kind of mix and match. And I guess the the the assumption that we're starting with is we're going to live in a multi-chain, multi-leddger world. A lot of the existing payment rails, for example, a lot of those are new. Like virtually every G20 country and region has has installed an instant payment system last 5 years. Nobody's going to tear that up because we have blockchain technology, right? So, one assumption is that we're going to be in this kind of

this this state of kind of constant improving what we have in addition to all these new capabilities are coming along with the blockchain. And so, I think we're going to have to go beyond interoperability. We're going to have to organize and orchestrate settlement outcomes. Some of those settlement outcomes exist. Some of those are going to be implemented in new private or public blockchains. But I'll tell you the other one that I've spent a lot of time on recently is I think that we're going to have to have um like a new trust or governance layer >> in there. And I think you know if you move a an asset from one blockchain to the next, it can't lose the providence.

It can't lose um the compliance, right? I was trying to think of a good analogy for this and I was thinking about a bouncer at a bar, right? That would let you in. Well, if I go to another bar, they go, "Well, let me see your ID." It's like, "Well, I I just showed I just showed him." Well, that you know that doesn't or maybe they get they get they get a system and they work together. It's like, oh yeah, they can verify. Well, that only works in Washington DC. How do I do that when I go to Singapore, >> right? And so this this idea of, you know, how do you kind of if the if the if the bouncer is compliance and we want to be within the law, I think we're going to need some kind of additional trust layer um for the tokens. And I

think we're going have to put a lot more inside of the token when it's issued so that that proof kind of travels along with it. That makes a lot of sense. I I'd love to try to get two more in quickly, but let's see if we can do it because Sarah from Chain Analysis was talking a lot about how they were leveraging AI. I'm curious if you think about liquidity management really being run machine to machine. >> What is the role of the human in that when it comes to oversight and who's responsible from your from your mind? >> Um the role is going to be diminishing, right? We're not far off from algorithms or you know agents if you want to want to get the headlines. Um making decisions that humans make. Uh and with that, you know, that governance layer is going to have to prove who's

accountable. You know, when you made that payment, which one of your policies were you following? Which rule were you following? How why exactly do you can't just say to a regulator, oh well, you know, it's algorithmic. They, you know, it just does what it does. You're going to have to say that happened at this time, right? And and and today when we have a problem, we kind of reconstruct the problem. When you have a thousand payments a day, you can do that with an exception. when we have a million payments a day, you can't. So, agentic AI and algorithms are going to outpace human ability to kind of keep up to reconstruct, which to me means you're going to have to do all those compliance checks up front.

>> Somebody can't take that token into their wallet. You have to prevent that from happening as opposed to explaining why that did happen because there's going to be a million of those a day. You're not going to be able to reconstruct that, right? And then and then the real question is not going to be is this allowed um or could you stop it? there's some good services have been built out there where you stop it from happening. Um the real service is going to be you know do you have permission to do that and if so what permission did you have to do that so it's all going to become the humans might come out of the decision-m but the accountability squarely sits with the institution and that's this extra kind of governance trust layer that I think we have have to build and I think we're going to have an

algorithms make decisions a lot sooner than people think. Okay, very last question. Hype hyper hyper fast. So, convergence of tradi, we've been sitting here talking about it the last two days. On a scale of 1 to 10, one being just getting started, 10 being we're done. Where do you think we are in the journey? >> Uh, I think it's completely inevitable, but I think these things take a lot longer uh to settle in at scale, especially on a global basis than than than people would like. So, we're going to have pockets where it's expedited very fast. But I I think it's inevitable. I think all forms of value are going to be digital. I think every asset can be tokenized. We talked about this before in terms of liquidity and transparency was set on the stage. It it's it's actually too good. So in my

mind, it's it's inevitable. It's just a matter of do we have the right frameworks and can we build this in a responsible way and then how quickly can you do that matched up with the benefits we're going to get from it. >> So maybe we're at like a two or three in terms of possibilities in terms of where we can go. There's the infinite. All right, Tom CIO. So, we have 75% of payments right now being sent in less than 10 minutes. And we'll hear from Binance next. But thank you. Thank you, Tom. Thanks for being here. >> Thank you guys both for the conversation and congratulations, Scarlet, on your book. All right, guys. To close out the today's conversations, we turn to one of the most influential companies in the

global digital asset ecosystem. As the industry continues to mature, the role of exchanges in shaping market structure, innovation, and global access to crypto remains critical. Please welcome Richard Tang, CEO of Binance, in conversation with Matt Rosac, chairman and co-founder of Hemi. All right, this is the uh the final cleanup crew of the day of the conference. So, it's uh uh welcome. Uh my name is Matt Rosac. I am co-founder and chairman of block. We're a blockchain infrastructure company. Uh last year, we launched Hemi, which uh

provides programmability and yield on Bitcoin. Uh so, please check that out. Uh I've also been investing in the space for uh for 10 years uh plus and then also proudly serve as chairman of the advisory board of the chamber. I was one of the first uh members uh and volunteers uh back in 2014. So if you can imagine those days uh which was very heavy in education then quickly went to defense and now thankfully is feels in a in a growth mode. So uh it's awesome to be here in the 12th year of the chamber.

Um, and congrats to Cody and Perryanne and the the team uh at the chamber for putting on such an awesome show. Um, with me today I have uh Richard Tang uh co-CEO of Binance. Uh, and you've you've gone through this last uh kind of regulatory crucible. So, we want to hear more about that. Uh, but maybe uh tell us a little bit about your background uh quickly for the uh for the room. >> Well, so my background has mainly been in financial services regulation, right? So I spent my formative years with the central bank of Singapore then became chief regulatory officer at Singapore exchange and then CEO at financial services regulatory authority before and it's actually there that I started to regulate the crypto sector. So I got my

hands dirty um got to know a lot more about blockchain and the more I know about it the more I believe is going to be the future of finance. I joined Binance in 2021, so about close to five years back. So the rest is history. >> Amazing. Amazing. And um I I think it's important to put some perspective on the size, the shape, and the scale of Binance because I think in the US, you know, we think uh about uh Coinbase uh Circle uh but globally, if you look at the the the world as a heat map and seeing what uh what's operating globally, I think it's interesting to hear the Binance story. Well, so if you look at um our just our market

liquidity, right? So last year we did about 34 trillion in terms of volume. Um and if you stack us up against the second to the next to the 10 largest exchange, right? Uh we probably you know are still bigger than those all aggregated together. So that's the size. So anybody that's looking for best execution, the deepest market liquidity uh institutions know that you know Binance is the is the firm they go to. We have close to 310 million customers globally now. So just end of last year we reached two thresholds important milestones. First is we crossed 300 million in terms of global customers. So we're very grateful to our users for

their support. and and I looked that up and that's somewhere between like a a Netflix uh and a Spotify. So it just kind of shows you the growth and the kind of uh perspective there. >> Yeah. So we started 2024 with 170 million users. So we ended last year with 300 million. So on average we onboard more than 60 million new customers on any given year. Right? We are the most regulated exchange um now with 21 different jurisdiction under regulation and we are actually the first to secure a home regulator in a form of um financial services regulatory authority at UpperWab global market right so they regulate us on an endto-end basis KYC IB transaction monitoring our risk management measures

our listings and also our global liquidity right so I think nobody else can boost something like that we took a lot of time and energy to secure that global license went through a lot of walk work through workshops with the ADGM on that front. So we're pretty proud of that. So you know those are the two key milestone that we managed to reach. uh but we believe that you know regulation is the way to go as crypto continue to pivot now you have I mean in the past you don't have institutions and family offices and corporates in this space right crypto is a very unique asset class started by retail embracing it right for for all other major asset class stocks secure bonds uh forex etc it's always the institutions that

embrace it goes down to the corporates and then finally the retails gets it here you have a unique situation is the retail that has embraced it for the longest time. the institutions and corporate saying that you know it's passing fat it'll go away and then that embracement only start to come about in the last two years and once that take place the mass adoption comes through very quickly right so it's very exciting to watch that's something that when I started to get involved in crypto regulations in 2017 2018 at that point in time crypto adoption was less than 1%. And my thesis then is that for it to go mainstream I mean this is such an important technology but for it to go mainstream you need two elements to come

into play. One, you need clear regulations because the early adopters can ignore the regulations, right? Because they believe in the technology. They believe that this is going to be the future of finance. But for the mass marketplace to come true, they need clear regulations, right? And they they need that certainty. And then secondly, uh for the asset class to gain maturity, you need the institutions to come through, right? Because institutional adoption is very important. uh in the past the price action tends to be extremely volatile. It goes through, you know, periods of pigs and trough. So with institutional adoption, you know, with long-term holders, with smart money coming in, with different strategies at

play, you tend to see less volatility, right? So my thesis then is that you need these two and I'm very happy to see that that's coming through uh in the last two years in a big way. So very very bullish for the long term. >> Amazing. And though the way I think about it, given this the size, the scale, the volume, the footprint, it's kind of feels like the Amazon of crypto like the best distribution if you have a digital asset uh there's no better liquidity uh than Binance in a way. I mean, it's like uh what what competes with that. So that's at least how I think about it is like this Amazon of crypto.

>> Yeah. Um uh so Binance went through a regulatory reckoning uh paid a large fine and went through the uh kind of regulatory compliance crucible. Um what was that like? >> Well, you know, again, if I can bring you back to 2017 when Binance was formed, the landscape then was totally different, right? So the is the regulators was just ignoring this space. There's no clear regulations. the institutions were saying that it's a passing fat. So the the company was formed during those years right the landscape was totally different and even today I mean regulations in the US just

just started to come through in a clear fashion now right last year with Genius Act and hopefully with clarity act coming through but for majority part of the world major part of the world the rules and regulations are still not clear I mean we're regulated in 20 over places now where the rules are clear enough for us to deploy but a lot of places the rules are still not so clear right so we still face up some uphill hurdles on that front and we wish for more clarity I think one of the key challenges on progress is perfection right if you try to get perfect rules you'll never get there so what we do work with a lot of government agencies around the world policy makers is to really bring through the educational

process there's a lot of misgiving a lot of you know wrong understanding of of blockchain and crypto So u so we we try to bridge that knowledge gap and we actually try to really support new legislation coming through and new regulations because that's for the good of the entire ecosystem and the industry right so the more we can give clarity to it the better off everybody is because at least you know what's the boundary to operate right so that's something that we firmly believe in uh and we work across many jurisdiction on that front uh you mentioned we pay a hefty fine yes indeed that's the So for our past mistakes, for some of the legacy issues, we paid very heavy penalties. But I think what's important

for institutions, financial institutions is really to acknowledge those mistakes to invest in the right area and then move in the right direction. Right? So that's what we have been doing for the last two to three years. Right? So we have invested greatly into into our compliance function. If you look at our compliance headc count now, it stands at about 1,600 people. That accounts for a quarter of our global headcount and workforce right? >> I wouldn't have guessed that. Yeah. >> I don't think anybody >> um if you look at our competitors or look at major financial institutions, it's nowhere near that figure, right? In terms of percentage of headcount. So that shows the seriousness of what we do

you know but is as you know compliance is a continuous journey standards are evolving so we need to continue to invest we deploy a lot of AI now into different parts of the of the organization in including to in compliance to make it much more effective and efficient on that front. So it's something that we continue to invest right but if you look at the effectiveness of it which is the more important part from 2023 to to middle of last year and this is based on public data just in terms of sanction related risk we managed to reduce it by 98%. And that fares much better than you know the other six global exchanges um on that matter and people will know people in blockchain knows that we can't

stop transfer into the exchange right I mean we do things like transaction screening transaction monitoring we don't allow you know wallets of concern to transfer money but you know the transfer in we can't stop but once they reach the platform we can work with law enforcement agencies throughout the world to freeze those assets to freeze illicit funds and then work on restitution on that front. So those are things that we work very closely with law enforcement agencies. I believe last year we have managed to freeze around 131 million on the platform. We have help our users avoided fraud to the magnitude of close to 7 billion right um so those are things that we continue to invest a lot and work tirelessly with global law

enforcement agencies to make sure that we keep the we keep the ecosystem clean. Does it feel like a competitive advantage now because you have to invest so much in systems and people and process versus a constraint uh you know high growth companies it's like you know uh you kind of do that you're trying always playing playing catch-up here you kind of accelerated that so >> no we have pivoted very very strongly and we will continue to do so and because the landscape is is changing as well right so in the past is less institution now you know we have many partnerships with institutions around the world whether it's banking whether it's payment whether it's you know financial giants around the world and you know we intend we have the ability to invest hugely into compliance and we intend to do so

to make it a competitive advantage right so I I can't say the same for some of the smaller exchanges right so you you see some hacks coming through because some of those platforms underinvest into their areas of security the areas of control uh and and into compliance right So we are able to invest into all these areas right quite heavily and it's very important that we turn them into a competitive advantage going forward and it's like an entirely new muscle group of crypto compliance versus banking or you know stock exchanges or other kind of financial services platforms. So it's uh it'll help take the industry forward based on a lot of that. So I think

that's uh that's awesome. Uh so so that was kind of like let's say yesterday now today where where is Binance today and how how do you think about Binance from a you know is it an exchange is it financial infrastructure or you know what's this turned into >> I I would like to think of Binance as an ecosystem ecosystem where you know is not only going forward known to be a crypto exchange is everything exchange um is going to be a multi-asset plus multi-jurisdictional global exchange where we support our users globally in terms of their needs. So earlier this year we started to introduce things like precious metals contract and those have done extremely well uh in the course of uh two months right. So in terms of if

you look at trading volume just skyrocketed. So we will throughout the course of this year uh we'll continue to innovate and push out new contracts we will continue to expand our global footprint in terms of global licenses working with regulators policy makers on that front. uh our ambition is to reach 1 billion customers and to reach that number uh you just have to continue to broaden your reach in terms of geography and then also your reach in terms of asset classes right um and to allow more choices to to consumers. So those are things that at a management level, at a board level, we are working very tirelessly to chart out what's next for ourselves uh as we look forward to

continue expansion u using proper risk management control, proper compliance as advantage >> and and then um how do you think about like 2026 priorities? It's like sometimes people say you know narratives in crypto matter. uh it's like the fashion industry every week there's a new narrative there's a new uh you know kind of vertical >> uh but you know the the you know stable coins institution uh DeFi AI like how do you think about that visa v Binance uh this year >> I think what's important is to build the long-term momentum in terms of use cases right so it needs to be sustainable my view has always needs to be sustainable it has to solve a problem statement right if you look at stable coin why it

has taken off in such a big after the genius act was introduced is because it solved fundamental problems. If you I mean I've been involved in financial services for a long period of time now close to more than three decades and you know transfer of money especially cross border is so painful right so you do a crossber transfer takes two to three days for the recipient to receive the money if you are corporate treasurer right you want to transfer money from Australia to Europe to US etc you have no certainty of when the money is arriving you are being charged huge fees uh same for you know the mom and pops the retail in different parts of the world if they do small amount denomination transfer

anything less than $500 US you pay fees up to 12%. Right? So which is huge, right? But if you do it via crypto and stable coin, it's instantaneous at a fraction of the cost. They have certainty. So corporates find that they need to hold much less capital. There's much higher capital velocity. They can put their capital to work. Um and you know they just can plan better, right? They need to they can do everything much faster. So once the certainty comes through you can see all the different financial institutions the banks themselves said hey I'm looking to issue stable coins as well right because it solve a fundamental problem same for things like real assets tokenization which is excellent use case for

blockchain right so I mean you you look at whether it's New York stock exchange or NASDAQ saying that they're going to put their assets on chain now and the more assets are put on chain the better it is for platform like ourselves right we can start trading all those assets globally. Uh, which makes perfect sense. If you look at public markets today, they trade, you know, I'm not quite sure what's the US trading hours, 9 to5, 9:30 to 5, 4:30 maybe. But, you know, you know, the market is moving 24/7, right? Especially for a lot of global contracts, right? Whether it's equity, whether it's precious metals, whether it's oil, etc. is subject to world events. It's subject to new information flow. Um and if you are not allowed to manage risk through the wicked ads

you know you a lot of institutions find that they're holding on to huge risk in their books right so which is why you're going to see a lot more asset class move onchain trade on a 24/7 basis which which blockchains allow which crypto has been trading for for the last 10 15 years is trading on a 24/7 basis because it allows you to manage risk better take position right Um, so that's why we're going to see a lot more of those coming through and it's a perfect use case for blockchain. We're going to see a lot more utility coming up from that. Crypto payments I think is going to continue to to increase it momentum. Just give you some anecdote. We started last year,

beginning of last year with 11,000 merchants signing up to support things like crypto payments on our platform. By the end of the year, we have 21 million merchants globally looking to support crypto payments, right? And we're integrated in Brazil with the likes of PICSS, you know, direct payment into their national payment network. So all those are important momentum which are very strong, very sustainable and that explain my bullishness why all these important use case will continue to develop very very strongly going forward and as new use cases is coming through.

I mean you look at the D5 space there are new use cases coming through. So what we aim to do at Binance is we want to bring about the convergence of web 2 and web 3 industry. We want to be the best CDI exchange right bring together the best of centralized world and decentralized space on that front with different features um to support our users in terms of their needs and we are working tirelessly behind the scene with all these new new product and features. We introduced Binance Alpha 2.0 I know last year and you know for those people that actually use it around the world is something that is a feature that they love. U so we continue to look at new areas for improvement.

>> There was massive volume on on Alpha. Were you surprised by that? >> Well uh are we surprised by the volume? We are thankful for the volume. Um we we do think that it there's a gap there that we need to fill. Uh and a lot of this good feedback actually come from our users, right? So including things like Binance Junior, we have parents, we have users that come to us, hey, I want to teach my my children crypto and blockchain literacy. I want to help them save from young. Yeah. So can you come out with something which allow them to save. I don't want them to trade, but I want them to save and earn and learn about crypto and blockchain from a very young age. We say fine, let us work on it. And we came out with Binance Junior.

That's also a very popular product globally. Um so we continue to come out with all these things because our user group are very passionate group of people. They keep giving us very very good feedback and we take those very seriously and we work on those and roll out new product features. >> Awesome. Um and just kind of in in summary here um you know we're here in DC uh what what's your message to people in this room in this town uh in March of 2026 in terms of you know Binance is the biggest player in the space. Uh the US wants to be the crypto capital of the world. Yeah.

>> Uh we're getting our regulatory game on, you know, having uh Paul Atkins and Mike Celig uh doing all the amazing stuff that they're doing. Uh the wind's at your back. And so what's uh what's the message to the >> No, we want to be very supportive, right, of us. I mean, US is the largest capital market in the world. The largest global economy is very significant. Whatever the US does has outside influence on the world, right? So, US has gone from very anti-crypto under the past administration to extremely pro crypto in under President uh Trump. So, we are very supportive of that. Um and because of what the US has done, the rest of the world is forced to sit up right whether it's Europe, whether it's

different parts of Asia Pacific, Latin America to say, hey, in order to keep our competitive advantage, we need to try to match up to what the US is doing. Right? Because President Trump is extremely strategic. He say that we want to be the AI capital of the world. We want to be the blockchain crypto capital of the world because these are the two fundamental technology that will transform every economic sector going forward. Right? So we being the largest ecosystem, we want to be extremely supportive and we think that we can play a very important role in that. Uh at this point in time, we're not deployed in the US yet. We continue to look at ways and options. uh but you know we do think that we can bring a lot of value

to the table whether it's in in terms of investments or other things on that front and we can make the US crypto economy and ecosystem much more vibrant than what it is today and inject a lot a lot more investment into this area. >> Yeah. No, I agree. I think the the growth ad is is tremendous. Uh and thank you for joining us. So, please uh join me in thanking Richard for uh >> Thank you guys for closing out our conversation so well. Well, everyone, it has been wonderful being your MC today.

Thank you to all of our speakers, partners, and attendees for being part of this year's DC Blockchain Summit. We appreciate you spending the day with us, and we look forward to continuing these conversations in the months ahead. Finally, to wrap up today's DC Blockchain Summit, we'll hear closing remarks from someone who has helped bring many of these conversations together. Please join me in welcoming our CEO, Cody Carbone. All right, I will be very very brief because I saw the bar was already open outside. Thank you so much for joining us for the last two days. We had over we

had 39 members of Congress, over 50 policy makers. I was just looking at the last panel. There was 20,000 live stream viewers on X. An incredible moment. The last two days have been amazing with news that was broken from the SEC, the CFTC. We're getting market structure updates. It all happened here at the DC Blockchain Summit. We were thrilled to put it on and it couldn't have happened with all of you who have attended. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope that you will join us again next year. Reach out to us at the digital chamber if you're interested in advocating with us in educating policy makers. We're trying to build as big of a tent as possible.

Our roots are here in DC. We will always double down on DC and ensuring that policy makers here in Washington have a resource. We want to be that resource. But as you've heard throughout the last two days, we are quickly expanding. We've gone to London. We're going to Asia. We're doing work in the UAE soon in Latin America. We're focusing more and more on all of the innovations that are happening around blockchain technology, AI integration, quantum computing, prediction markets. Anywhere where there is disruption to be had, we are leading the charge. We want to bring all of you into it and to be a part of it. You've already taken the first step in joining us here today and I hope you

will continue to work with us. So, please reach out to me. I'm very accessible as my team knows on LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever. Reach out to any of our team members as you see them out throughout the day. But thank you and truly truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming, participating, and educating and advocating with us. Thanks all. Have a great time at the happy hour.