Trump Signs GENIUS Act

Transcript

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hello. Well, I have to admit, President

Donald Trump hasn't quite signed the Genius Act yet, but it is imminent. I'm Katherine Ross. I am the news editor over at Blockworks, as well as the writer of the Empire Newsletter. And I've got Casey Wagner, who is our senior policy reporter, as well as one of the brilliant minds behind the Forward Guidance brand. Uh Casey, while we're waiting for President Trump to sign the Genius Act actually into law, I'm kind of curious if you can lay out what is in this bill and why it's such a big deal. Yeah, definitely. Um apologies for my voice. I sound like I've been partying, but I really just had strep throat and tough week to be sick. I'll say that. Um so yes, this week in the House, it was crypto week. There were three big bills.

All of them ended up passing. The Genius Act is the one that everyone is talking about today because that has already passed in the Senate and President Trump is expected to sign that into law any minute now. The Genius Act focuses on stable coins. It's the first of its kind. There's never been legislation focusing on stable coins ever before at the federal level. The industry is very excited about it. Um most of the industry, I should say. So, this bill passed in the House last night in a vote of 307 to 122. I believe there ended up being 102 Democrats supporting it, which is pretty huge. Um, I believe there were 68 Democrats in the Senate that approved

it as well last month when it passed over in the other chamber. And the basic of the bill is it requires stable coin issuers to keep fully backed liquid reserves. This is dollars, dollars equivalents, um short-term treasury securities mostly. This is huge. Um it's helping to prevent runs that we've seen in the past. It's ensuring that, you know, people that are investing in stable coins, their money is safe. Um entities with 50 billion or more have to go through annual audits. Um and these are done through third parties. And that's also something new that we've

never seen. Some stable coin issuers have done that on their own, but there's never been a federal regulation requiring them to do so. And really the the biggest kind of point in the bill that the industry was excited about, there's also some controversy about is the role that this bill gives state regulators. So issuers that exceed $10 billion in issuance must be overseen by federal regulators unless they're granted an exemption which can happen and those who issue less than 10 billion are able to be overseen at the state level. There are some caveats here. So um you know the state regulators are required to

maintain similar regulations to federal policy and these will be reviewed once a year. So those are the main gists of the bill. I'm you said that there's controversy and I mean I've got to admit everything that I'm seeing online right now is pretty positive. So I'm kind of curious what that controversy looks like. Yeah, definitely. So, the main issue that those who did not vote for the bill had is this Genius Act does not have any language that prevents the president from issuing a stable coin. Um, so we know that Trump and his family have crypto interest and there were a couple

amendments put forward in both the Senate and the House to try to make this a clear line. Um there was not the these are not successful amendments. Um during Monday night's rules committee debate around the bill. Um Representative French Hill, who's the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he was actually asked outright why he wouldn't support an amendment that explicitly prohibited the president of the United States from issuing a stable coin. Um and French Hill, you know, he said that Trump is not the issuer of a stable coin. He's a part owner of a company that has issued one. He also noted that there will still be ample disclosure

requirements and reserve requirements that will help protect consumers. And he also mentioned that the bill passed in the Senate with bipartisan support. So, you know, there might be some Democrats that were concerned about this, but there were enough to not be concerned to pass it. And what happened earlier this week? There was some headlines like we thought that crypto week was off to a great start. Then there seemed to be a bit of a hiccup and now it seems I mean arguably it's a great week for crypto. Yeah, it's um it's been interesting. I mean anyone that follows policy knows that anything can happen and things often do not move as quickly as some people might hope even when you know that the votes are there. Um, in a

nutshell, what happened this week is basically when when a bill is being presented to the floor for a full vote, it needs to pass through the rules committee. So, the rules committee has a hearing. They pass a rule that allows the house to then vote on a rule to then vote on the bill. A lot of steps. Um, the legislative process is complicated for good reason. Um so basically this procedural vote was very important. It failed on Tuesday morning. There was some controversy. Some um Republican lawmakers were concerned about the nature of the three bills being separate. So these three bills were the Genius Act, the Clarity Act, and the

AntiCBDC Surveillance Act. All three of which did end up passing. But there was a faction of the Republican party that was trying to combine the Genius Act with the AntiCBC Surveillance Act. And without their votes, these procedural votes did not pass um until later. It it did take a while. There were a lot of closed door debate meetings, I was told. Um it went late into the night. I think they ended up passing this procedure like after 11 p.m. on Tuesday. Um or yes, on Tuesday. And eventually we got it over the finish line.

Nothing is ever dull in DC, huh? No, it's not. It's not. Um, my other question for you is why would they want to marry these two bills together? Yeah. The the faction of the Republican party that was concerned about this was from the Freedom Caucus. And there is a lot of concern about CBDC's from this fact of the party and from other parts of the party as well. I mean it's in the name of the bill anti CBDC surveillance acts. This is a bill that um prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail stable coin. Um proponents of the bill argue that it's necessary for maintaining financial privacy and the holdouts in the Republican party wanted

that set in stone with the Genius Act. um it's easier to get things done that way. Of course, if that would happen, they would have had to send it back to the Senate for the Senate to then approve it again because it would be a new version of the bill. Um and it would complicate things, which is why it ultimately didn't pass. But there was, you know, a strong enough part of the party that was pushing for that that we end up getting delayed. And what about the momentum here? Now, we've we still haven't gotten the signing yet. I'm watching the live stream, but assuming that we do get the signing today imminently. Um, do you think that this builds up enough momentum to get the other two bills

across the finish line? Yeah, I'm I don't know. Um, we know that President Trump said that he wanted to see a stable coin bill and a um market structure bill passed together. We're obviously not seeing that. Um, so the Clarity Act is the other bill that passed in the House that will now move on to the Senate. This bill, it's a lot longer. It's like 500 pages. I think the the Genius Act is around two or 300. Um, it's more controversial within the industry. It's definitely more complicated. It breaks down the rules between the CFTC and FT the CFTC and the SEC, excuse me. And it defines digital commodities, which is really big for the

industry. It also includes a lot of definitions around decentralization which some of the industry is really excited about. Other parts of the industry argue that these definitions are too strict and they feel like their protocols are decentralized sufficiently. However, according to this bill, they would not be classified as such. So, it's more complicated. Um, we're going to see a lot of lobbying efforts move forward. Coinbase is a big fan of the bill. Some others aren't. um it's going to take longer. I mean, we saw that the Genius Act, it it did pass in the Senate with pretty strong bipartisan support. However, you know, there weren't the the Clarity Act's a lot longer.

I I saw a tweet from Miles Jennings of A16Z, who I'm also assuming is is a proponent for this bill because he said that he liked the maturity framework and that it's the best uh regulatory approach to decentralization that he's seen proposed. Is that kind of what you're hearing from people who are pro this bill? Yeah, they definitely there are aspects of the bill that a lot of people like. Um there's some rules for it allows for self-custody. It protects software developers um and other protocol people that work in protocols from adhering to some of the more strict um disclosure requirements requirements that they argue they they don't even have the data to be able to comply with.

Um so that's really huge. But like I said it's it's a more complicated bill. I think the Genius Act was fairly straightforward as straightforward as you know a multiundpage bill could be. But the Clarity Act is is seeking to accomplish something that is just a lot broader. Okay. So, I think we can give your your voice a break here and we can bring on another Casey because there's so many Casey's here. Yes. Hello.

Welcome. I I don't know if you like I a lot of people have this thing where they're like they don't want to they hate speaking their own name. I don't know if anyone else is like that. So I I like I something about saying Casey kind of get when I'm referring to myself gives me the itch. So this is like this is a very rare thing for me to actually say the name. Yeah, me too. It's fun. Um well, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, of course. Of course.

Catherine, do you want to kick it off or shy? Why don't you? Okay, great. Um, so Casey, your partner at Spart and Kissle, we're curious to hear your perspective on the Genius Act. Um, let's start with the non-bank financial institution aspect of this bill. So, you specialize with non-bank financial institutions. From your experience, what does this bill how does this bill impact those um issuers? Well, it for for for the non-banks, it really opens up the playing field. Um, you know, there there is a path to issuing stable coins uh that is that is very clear and there is a path for them

to become regulated by uh by the OC by the federal government uh which was not necessarily a clear path before. uh that largely related to the OCC's power to issue bank charters under the National Bank Act. Uh and then the National Bank Act, I I should add the National Bank Act of 1866. Uh that's how dated we're talking about. Um so there there's a there's a clearer path for that. Um and one of the big upshots there there are two two things that that really jump to mind right away. The first is that uh a an OC trust charter uh which is an avenue

available to these players now uh is not a bank for the purposes of the bank holding company act. So you can have a a non-bank uh or even a non-financial institution uh top level company that can can engage in stable grain activities. So it doesn't necessarily have to be limited to a to a financial institution like a Coinbase for instance. It could be you know entities engaged in commerce can jump into this field. Now uh that was not an avenue that was available and it is in some ways the culmination of this you you know destroying of the

separation historical separation between banking and commerce that was first established in the GlassSteagall Act of 1929. So uh or 1933 sorry. So you know that that that's one thing. The second thing it does is that non-bank stable coin issuers can potentially get access to Federal Reserve master accounts. And that's the way money has to move in this country. Uh regardless of whether it's an a, whether it's a debit card transaction, credit card transaction, PayPal, what have you, ultimately all roads lead into the Fed and the Fed master account structure. The only way

to move money is unless it's cash is to move money between one Fed master account to another Fed master account. Uh and this this now opens that possibility to non-bank stable coin issuers. So those in my mind are the two the two big ramifications. So I kind of have a twofold question for you. I'm going to start with one and then we can go to the next. The first one is can you define what those non-bank institutions are just so we understand.

Uh yeah I mean it could be uh so it could be could be basically anything there that the the defined terms are you know federally qualified issuers and uh and state qualified issuers. Um, I think your previous discussion with the other Casey um was uh or first Casey, I'll be second Casey, uh kind of touched on the the the the qualification levels for for each and the larger issuers would need to go through a process of uh of getting OC approval where smaller issuers with under 10 billion in issuances could uh could be regulated under a state level

regulatory regime that doesn't necessarily really exist right now. Um that's that's one of the things this this structure where you have the option of going through a state regulatory scheme that doesn't necessarily exist is something that has already been tried and tested which is which has to do with the uh mortgage loan origination licensing scheme under the safe act which has been around since was that 2000 safe act was 2008. So the response of the state regulators was very quickly to set up a state regulatory scheme and I would imagine there's going to be a race among state regulators to to issue

to issue regulations or statutes that respond to the the federal empath. And what about demand? What kind of demand are you seeing? Well, there's there's I mean in some ways that's an open question. uh stable coins have been a method of settlement in this in this industry for for quite some time. Uh we see that with the the duopoly between tether and USDC uh as mechanisms for settlement of transactions in other digital assets. Um this kind of does open up the possibility of retail stable coin use for for payments transactions u that

that does not exist now. There's a there's a huge market for for digital native retail transactions. I mean, you could see it with Cash App and Vinmo and PayPal. They're ubiquitous. Uh if the if these payment stable coin issuers are able to get transaction costs lower or improve the user experience in some ways, I think the demand could be pretty gigantic. Um and and we'll see, you know, the the this the Genius Act would permit merchants to to take, you know, payment in in a payment stable coin. So the in some ways the sky is really the limit. Uh it's just a question of

whether the stable coin issuers can issue can can support transactions that are more economical than the currently existing applications that are out there. If they can, then they can steal market share from Venmo Cash App. Uh if it's more expensive and more cumbersome and a worse user experience, they won't steal any market share from. So it it does open up the marketplace uh very broadly. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, we've seen so much more stable coin adoption in the last couple years, but obviously regulatory clarity is expected to really open the floodgates. So I'm I'm excited to see more of those use cases. um play

out. Um Casey, you mentioned the state regulatory aspect and how states are going to be kind of racing each other to to come up with these regimes. I mean, do you think states are ready? I know like certain states, New York for example, has its bit license regime. They're a little bit further ahead of the curve on um on on crypto regulation. Are there certain states that you're watching? How do you feel like state regulators are broadly I guess um positioned to take on this responsibility?

Well, we still need we're still going to need regulatory guidance uh from from the Treasury Department uh to to guide, you know, what the what the baseline requirements are going to be uh with the state regulators uh what they'll have to kind of the floor that they'll have to write their laws to to meet. Um, but you know, the the the the the states that I would expect to be very active in pushing for a state regulatory scheme as quickly as possible. Uh, you know, New York has Adrien Harris is is the over the Department of Financial Services, the state regulator. You know, she's put a marker in the ground for

years now that she wants to be the the most cryptoforward state regulator, at least among the large states. So I would expect New York to be uh to be a major player in this space given its position in the financial markets and and you know the the DFS's stated position. Um you would also expect to see the same out of out of states like Wyoming which has been very forwardleaning. Um, I would anticipate, um, among the larger states, Florida might be a little bit more forwardleaning. Uh, California is kind of, uh, up in the air. I know there are some, you know, California is the home of so many tech firms that would want to

leap into this space. Uh, but number one, most of those players are probably going to be over the 10 billion threshold very quickly. Uh, they'll probably want to go the federal route. uh and California, you know, this there may be some consumer protection worries that they're that they're the only state that has their own consumer protection department like a state level CFPB. So, we'll we'll see what California ends up doing. Same as Texas. Texas has a very robust uh very robust state regulatory scheme for financial institutions. Very wellrespected staff um of of that office. Uh they have, I would say, not been, you know, leaders

in the crypto space necessarily, although they're not going to be that far behind. Uh but they they're more cautious than the average onlooker might might uh expect. Um the other st so Louisiana has also they have a uh the equivalent of a bit license. I would be interested to see how quickly Louisiana moves. So they're they're you know kind of the the the folks you would expect to to lead the push. I I would expect that to continue. Um, you know, I'm not expecting and maybe there's a small state other than Wyoming that tries to jump in just to, you know, steal regulatory market share if nothing else, but we we'll just have to wait and see.

Yeah, definitely. Um, you mentioned consumer protections. I definitely want to go back to that. But first, so the the $10 billion threshold does allow if you have over $10 billion in issuance, this bill allows you to apply for an exemption to be overseen at the state level versus the federal level. Can you explain like why an issuer might want to go that route? I mean, we know that the state regulators are going to have some federal oversight. you know, there's certain requirements that they'll have to meet, but why would an issuer prefer to be overseen at the state versus federal level?

Uh maybe they perceive that a certain state might have a lighter touch regulatory scheme. Um and you know, it's really, you know, at the examination level, certain, you know, certainly the OC has a very large examination staff. They've been in this game a very long time. they they are used to examining and supervising the largest banks in the country. U so they they know what they're doing and have the resources to do it. Um, you know, whether whereas some states, especially smaller states, have have lower budgets and less staffing and maybe there could be there could be a perceived regulatory

arbitrage opportunity there where someone as a big player might be at the state regulated by a state uh that does not have that type of um that the type of resources to really hold their feet to the fire. Um, I don't know. Uh typically the larger players in any regulated financial market, they t they tend to want the federal regulation if they can get it just because it's a lot easier to deal with one regulator than multiple regulators. But um again, that's we still we still have to wait on on you know what the what the Treasury Department's guidance is going to be to

states uh to see what what this framework really looks like and then everybody can sit down look at look at the regulatory framework as it exists and and make their determination. I got one last question. I it does look like Trump just signed it um a few seconds ago. So geniusly law. There we go. Look at that. Both Casey's on this call. Good luck. Yeah.

Okay. Casey, you mentioned CFPB. So I I want to just hit on that um in my final question, which is just that there was a lot of debate about whether or not the bill provided enough consumer protections. It doesn't complicitly give oversight to the CFPB, but I'm curious if the AY's power will remain intact through the existing sorry the through the existing um jurisdiction. Yeah, I mean whether whether we have a CFPB in a couple months is anybody's guess. um if the staff gets shrunk down to about 150 person skeleton crew, they're not going to be doing much of

anything. Uh just because they're they're not going to be able to, you know, the bulk of the layoffs would be in the examination staff. Um, as to whether whether there are consumer protection implications, um, uh, right off the bat, regulation E would apply, um, unless there's some sort of regulation that would exempt stable coin issuers from our ghee that we haven't seen yet. Um so there there would be and and the general prohibition on unfair deceptive and abusive acts and practices applies across the board and even state attorneys general can't are deputized to enforce that. So this I don't expect there to be a huge CFBB angle to this

market in the near term. uh if things change, you know, 383 years from now, we'll see. Uh but at at the outset, um you know, the the the consumer the there there are a number of state regulators and private litigants who can enforce certain consumer protection laws. So that's that's kind of where issuers need to be cognizant of the risk. It's not necessarily at the CFPB level the way it has been in the last uh 14 years or so. Uh but the legal risk is still there and um and the issuers will have to be cognizant of that.

Well, Casey, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and talk about this this bill and now it's in law and we appreciate you uh celebrating this milestone with us. All right. Anytime. Thanks. Thank you. All right, we have another guest waiting to join us. Anna, I believe, is backstage. We'd love to get her out here. Um, Anna Yuan, welcome. How are you? Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a really busy week for you.

I'm sure you've been watching everything super closely. Um, why don't you start by telling us what your company does? I know it's a stable coin infrastructure provider. I'm really curious to hear your insights into the Genius Act, but in your own words, tell us about you. Sure. So, I'm the founder of Piranha. Uh Piranha currently runs the largest stable swap on Salana. Uh we're building stable coin products. So, I actually started off and this will tie into Genius Act. I started off wanting to unify fragmented stable coin liquidity on Salana in the very DeFi native way. Previously, I was at Salana Foundation.

I saw the inflow of dozens of stable coins launching and I'm like okay these stable coins need liquidity. Now coming back to how this bill passes it will impact the singleness of money because previously on chain stable coins are traded slightly off peg and this is what a lot of critics are saying why they prefer tokenized bank deposits over stable coins because stable coins are not truly pegged. However, I think and this is where PNA is also transitioning is into the crossroads of permission and traditional like centralized finance and DeFi. And I think those will coexist and we'll be able to offer this mimic the

singleness of money with various stable coin issuers at a onetoone level because these issuers are now regulated and we can trust that they're offering um their stable coins are properly collateralized and we have a relatively standard risk framework. Therefore, these stable coins can be onetoone. So, the Genius Act probably feels like a long time coming for you. I think that, you know, I I said this a few minutes ago. We've obviously seen a lot more stable coin adoption recently, but I think that everyone was kind of waiting for regulatory clarity as a catalyst for more adoption. So, I'd love you to kind of expand on that. I mean, what are you

expecting? Where do we go from here? And and what has Genius kind of set up the industry to do? Sure. Um earlier I saw Casey's uh other guests like commentary on some of the regulatory things. So for example the consumer protection side and more of that much of that is on the domestic US use case. Now the critics on like FT Wall Street Journal etc. They're arguing that stable coins are actually worse form of money for US consumers. However, they neglect the fact that stable coins are the tool for the dollar to maintain its dominance and further its dominance globally and also to further increase use cases that previously were too high

friction for dollars to actually settle and now we can settle. So specifically what are those use cases? Those are typically crossber transactions that previously the the economy just didn't have that output and now we can have those economic output via the settlement of stable coins. Those are further remittances, peer-to-peer and all of those are the base layer of payments and what comes with robust payments is you start having lending because you start having on train record of transparent mutually agreed upon information and that information leads to credit. So in the US we're really used to having credit bureaus um rating everybody and there's like businesses have credit ratings by say S&P and Moody's.

Internationally most of much of that does not exist. So therefore, individuals don't get loans and businesses don't get loans or they get blanket loans. And that's super powerful with like having stable coins be adopted. And we're at a precipice where the it's actually very smart, albeit it's a trade-off, for the US to pass the Genius Act because with this regulation, it means more and more both domestic and international um businesses and individuals would be willing to hold these regulated stable coins and therefore further the dominance of dollar and therefore further the dominance of dollar in financial markets for borrow land and for all the use cases later. So that's I think a very uh it's a long process like in the next 10

years 20 years I'm super excited to be in this career to see the transformation but a lot of these were just seeing like step one um in the multi-year journey I guess like in Oh sorry go ahead Katherine no go ahead Casey um no I was just going to say like in terms of the current stable coin landscape what kind What kind of opportunities does Genius open up for growing that? Why do we need more stable coins? Where do we need them?

Yeah. Um, arguably one does not need more stable coins. Like it would be great if everybody uses one. While the but it was smart of like the US to keep it separate and we nobody really wants a CBDC. Um, so why do we need so many stable coins? um different use cases, different value transfer and value assignment. So generally speaking in the whole stack of like stable coin issuance, you have the issuer, the technology provider provider, the banking partner, the collateral, uh the the like reserve manager, etc. And then there's the distribution partners. right now pre- Genius act passing major players were either offshore so that's

tether under MTL structure the circle or under the NYDFS like state level uh license which is like uh paxos being one of the more notable ones post genius act passing a lot of that will get properly bucketed into onshore stable coins for the the ones that are above certain threshold and the ones below which is the state regulated now all these get more which previously Casey talked about they're getting more access to the Fed uh the ledger at the Fed to to various other things that previously non-bank financial institutions did not have access to those will impact the distribution layer because previously you like let's say tether simply don't

have US banking rails I don't think they were able to I well they they are but they don't really advertise that they can send money to from JP Morgan. You can't send money from Chase to go mint tether. Now, this corridor is going to get slowly open open where there's like compliance costs, etc. But in the beginning, you see only large mint burns. Now, we're at the point where like for our stable coin, you can mint a dollar through our um our licensed banking partner to get the stable coin. In the future, it might be like less than a dollar. You can mint it anytime you want. it's going to be instantly settled and you're breaking the barrier between onchain and off-chain dollars, but the onchain dollars can do a lot

more things. So, bucket-wise, there's privately issued closed loop stable coins. Some of them are really just used by fintexs because it's cheaper uh like FBO accounts. So, so if you're a fintech, you hold like 200 clients money on a bank with your banking partner. That's a whole lot of headache versus you just hold 200 clients money on a blockchain and you have a list and you can manage them any way you want. That's super easy. That stable coin maybe never sees the light of day outside of that company's own ledger. That's totally fine and totally cool. Uh other stable coins are like branded stable coins. So kind of like how IP is distributed or intellectual property. Like for Prena, we're a distributor so we're strong at

branding. Uh how we distribute is we work with other collateral and other issuers where maybe we're Y lababeling them or we're using partially their collateral and we distribute to our end customers so the end customer would know who we are. There are plenty of other brands or orphan platforms or etc that have their own core audience that would do the same. Um and then lastly I think the financial institution stable coins are like a whole beast on their own and they're looking at the more consortium landscape. Uh if you look at like City, JP Morgan and uh was it Bank of America, the three of them are like kind of trying to figure out what to do so they can keep their market share. Um I think that's on on one hand like people like us, we're all like, "Oh, we want to

disrupt the banks." On the other hand, it's quite nice to see banks reacting to this because you hope that they will provide better service to the end customer. And I'm going to have to send that whole response to my father-in-law because he had that exact question for me last weekend and I think I just kind of doawled through it. I don't think he totally understood how I was breaking it down, but you did such a good job. So, I appreciate that. Um, you actually mentioned Bank of America and I kind of wanted to touch on these institutions because this week alone we've heard Bank of America CEO once again reiterate they wanted their own stable code. We also heard Charles Schwab, CEO, say that they want their own stable coin. Um, I'm curious if this, they've all obviously been waiting

for the Genius Act to go to be signed. I'm curious if this is the next catalyst that you see for stable coins. I think it is, but I don't think it's the main wave yet. I remain cautiously optimistic because if we see I remember like reading through announcements in 2021 or even 2018. I think 2018 was peak when Ripple and all the banks, every single bank announced an LOI on moving payments on chain and nothing came about from that. So I would say this is the time where these banks in 2022 shut off their entire cryp blockchain team uh or most of them did and then 2025 rebuilding that. So it's going to take a while before some of the pilots come to

fruition. Now this is where I'm particularly excited because between that period and the last 5 years there some of these institutions kept a team and they kept iterating on it. So for some of them, I won't specifically say which ones, but they've been they have been piloting and I think they're close to integrating some of those services into their main technology stack or tech and service stack, whereas others are way behind trying to catch up as in like for example, Bank of America seemed a little bit more behind because they were previously quite um negative towards crypto.

wavewise, I don't think the average US consumer will hold stable coins. Um, I don't think more than 10% of the average US consumer will will hold stable coins by the end of next year. So, I think we're still very early. However, on average, businesses that run international trade, I think five to 10% could be holding or could have touched a stable coin, even if they didn't know that, but they probably will have touched stable coins by the end of next year.

I just have to say it's kind of cruel on a call with two journalists to say, I'm not going to name names, but we can move past that. Um I prior to this week I was having a lot of conversations with people and one of the things I kept hearing because we've been covering stable coins so much is that they're starting to get stable coin fatigue. Like I literally had somebody in a meeting say, "Please don't ask me another question about stable coins." Um and so I'm wondering if the signing of this bill kind of reinvigorates the narrative a bit.

Um I think it will. I think it I I hope it will because stable coins is my whole life and I love talking about it. I will never get fatigued. So, please ask me. Um I think it will in the sense that there's so much more to stable coins. We kind of anchor it off of stable coins, but what I my mental model is composable currency because different types of assets are storage of value. But when you think about meaningful what what is money, right? Like storage of m value, medium of exchange, unit of account. Previously, an asset only fulfilled one and a dollar only fulfilled other the other. Even like a money market fund was outside of big banks and Fortune 500s where you can use it as both, you only

fulfilled one function. But what composed currency is unlocking is that okay we understand stable coins now allow money to move at the speed of the internet which is kind of mindboggling that humanity accepted the fact that it doesn't for so long after the internet exists. But what's next? So what's next is not only does the dollar or euro or other fiat currencies move like currencies but other assets can move like currencies too. So one example is um trading strategies. Previously didn't even have a name for this asset class. I I think they should be called an asset class and it is a prime example of a prime case study of how it could be

turned into a currency that is really stable once you understand the risks. Uh and what's further is that dollars are not dollars are actually very not composable in traditional finance to the point where we all hold dollars in various different accounts and most of it probably just sits there and most we earn some like fed fund minus 1% rate. Um however what's going forward is all these dollars that people especially like businesses or sophisticated institutional players hold can be used in so many more ways on chain and what we that's what DeFi calls composability but in traditional finance it was just like super siloed um I think many other

asset class will come and one day people's maybe when people are so stable coin fatigued they will start talking about RWA and give RWA a more apt to name than uh than what tri hates which is like it means something else outside of crypto. Um but stable coins is like the first RWA that's coming and there's like a lot more that's coming. So I think in addition to revolutionizing payments, there's like a ton of other financial engineering and the the entire financial infrastructure will become I hope it will be completely different from when we first started which is like almost 10 years ago when Bitcoin um

began and then 20 years later it'd be like an entirely different system. So yeah, this is why I'm not tired of talking about stable coins and I think it's like super super interesting. Hey, I appreciate it because I can also talk about stable coins all day, but I won't take up any more of your time. I think we've taken up enough. Uh we really appreciate you joining us today, Anna. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I hope you're doing something fun this weekend celebrating and celebrating. Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's going to be a really busy next few months, so hope you get some rest in before that. But yeah, thank you so much.

Bye. All right, Casey, we've only got a couple more minutes left. Um I we kind of talked about the more like, you know, laying out the bill and all of that at the front. But I kind of want to get your thoughts on it now if that's okay. And if you've got thoughts, which I'm assuming you do, on the bill. Yeah. like on the bills signing, what what you've heard, what the next steps could be, any of that. Yeah, I mean, I I do think that uh like I said before, I think that stable coin adoption a huge barrier was regulatory clarity.

Um I think we we have that now, but I think Casey Jennings earlier made a really great point that it is going to take a while. Um we're still waiting for federal regulators to tell the states what the requirements will be for their regulations and then after that we have to wait for the states to develop their regulatory regimes. So it is going to take some time. Um I I do think that there's a lot of excitement in the industry right now. I think that like I said this is a huge barrier that's been blown out which is amazing but it is going to take a lot of time. Um, and it's something that we'll be watching, something we'll definitely be writing about and covering. Um, for the industry, it it was a a landmark week. I

mean, this is the first federal law that regulates stable coins. That that is huge. Um, for the crypto industry, I I don't think it's catching on mainstream quite yet. Um, a lot of my friends in finance actually hadn't even really heard of the Genius Act. Um, so I I think I'm curious to see how that kind of maybe starts to change in the next few weeks and months and maybe as the Clarity Act moves over to the Senate and we we hear more about regulation and legislation on market structure, stable coin legislation will also just become more popular. Um, so yeah, I'm excited.

It was a really busy week. I'm excited to have a nice weekend and stop doing congressional live streams. Um, but yeah, it's been exciting. It's It's always fun to cover an event that the whole industry is excited about. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I agree with that. I think what's kind of funny is that and I'm not trying to take away from this bill. It's huge. I don't I don't want to understate that, but it does kind of feel like a hurry up and wait situation where we kind of get over our skis as an industry where we're like, "Oh my god, this is it. They're mentioning it in earnings calls. We're going to see real action on this." But everything kind of moves at a snail's pace and we almost have to slow ourselves down because otherwise like you said your banking

friends aren't there yet. I have talked to people who are also like I don't know like it's cool but what does this actually mean you know like we are getting too excited. Maybe we need to calm down just slightly. Yeah it's definitely early. Um but like I said I mean anytime the industry is is all talking about the same thing it's always fun just as a reporter. Um, and yeah, I'm I'm really curious to see which states issuers start flocking to who has the best regime. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be I think one of the things that I'll be watching out the most in your reporting because obviously you very specifically cover this in the forward guidance newsletter.

Um, so I kind of I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, a lot a lot on the horizon. All right, we are just about at the 50-minute mark. So, we are going to bid a do and let Casey get to her weekend and rest her voice because I forced her to talk a whole lot. And we officially have this in lot. Yeah. And get some get some tea, please. Thanks so much, Catherine. This was great. And thank you to our guests and all of those you of the those of you who tuned in. Thank you. Thank you all.