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These television companies and more, including Mediacom. | |
| This is binging, that's buffering. | ||
| This is a meetup, that's a freeze-up. | ||
| Power home, power struggle, security detection, no protection. | ||
| You can have this or you can have that. | ||
| This is MediaCom and this is where it's at. | ||
| Mediacom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Joining us to talk about federal oversight of cryptocurrencies is Amanda Wick. | ||
| She's founder and CEO of the Association for Women in Cryptocurrency, a also former senior policy advisor for financial crimes and enforcement network for the Trump administration. | ||
| Amanda, welcome to the program. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you for having me. | |
| So what is the Association for Women in Cryptocurrency and why did you found it? | ||
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unidentified
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So we're a professional association. | |
| We're actually a 501c3 nonprofit that is educating, providing networking opportunities and advocating for the greater inclusion of women in the future of digital finance. | ||
| And tell us about your experience in the federal government with cryptocurrencies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| Well, I came to crypto somewhat non-traditionally in that I was a money laundering prosecutor at the Department of Justice. | ||
| And I caught a crypto case back in, I think, 2012. | ||
| And I fell in love with the technology and its potential to do amazing things. | ||
| I later went to work at FinCEN, as you mentioned at Treasury. | ||
| I was a detaile there. | ||
| I left, went to a industry, a blockchain analytics company, and then came back to serve as the lead financial investigator for the January 6th committee investigation on the attack on the capital. | ||
| Okay, so let's start at the very beginning, which is what are cryptocurrencies? | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, so it's funny. | |
| People use that term to describe a lot of different things, and it's become this catch-all. | ||
| Like fundamentally, what it is, is it's just a representation of value that replaces kind of like the trust that we put in an intermediary, like a bank or a PayPal, and replaces it with basically cryptographic proof. | ||
| And I know that sounds really techy, but essentially all it was was the concept of disintermediating finance and taking out those middlemen that we pay a lot in fees to that take time and create friction and creating a digitized version of value that could move faster and would be more efficient and frankly often better at payments. | ||
| So when you say a digitized version of value, is there actual currency, hard currency, or are there dollars behind those? | ||
|
unidentified
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So it depends on the type of cryptocurrency, which is why when people clump them all together and say Bitcoin and stable coins, these two things are very, very different. | |
| So you have cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are their own representation and value. | ||
| And Bitcoin is just Bitcoin. | ||
| We say it has a dollar value, but that's really just tracking its supply and demand. | ||
| But then you have technology called stablecoins. | ||
| And some of those are, in fact, fiat-backed or what you would say dollar-backed, or they could be yuan-backed or ruble-backed. | ||
| But dollar-backed stable coins do, in fact, usually have, depending on how the issuer issues it, but usually those have dollars behind them that are held in reserve. | ||
| So that if you were to present your stablecoin, just like if you were to present a paper dollar, the issuer of that paper dollar or that stablecoin would have to present you with the equivalent of a US dollar or an actual US dollar, which is why some of the stablecoin issuers have massive amounts of U.S. chartery bills, because that is how they hold dollars in reserve. | ||
| And how does one use cryptocurrency to buy goods and services? | ||
|
unidentified
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So it depends. | |
| One of the things that's taken a while for crypto is the use of payments. | ||
| There are a lot of companies now that didn't used to exist. | ||
| Now you have things like the PayPal stablecoin, I think it's PayPal USD. | ||
| You have Circle USDC. | ||
| There's a number of payment mechanisms. | ||
| It's a question of how you buy crypto, how you keep it in your wallet. | ||
| All of this can be done on your phone almost like an Apple wallet, but it's an industry that is moving towards smoother and smoother apps so that people don't even know that crypto is in the background. | ||
| But essentially, it's just digital money as payments. | ||
| And people get wrapped up in that because the news tends to focus on meme coins, crap coins, and things that are really sexy clickbait. | ||
| But really, it's just the future of digital money. | ||
| It is cryptocurrency week in the House. | ||
| I want to start with a couple of the legislation and ask you to go through it. | ||
| I actually want to start with the Genius Act, which did pass the Senate last month. | ||
| Can you explain what is in that and what impact that that could have? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so the Genius Act is basically something to regulate stablecoins. | |
| And so there's a number of bills going through right now. | ||
| And so it's important to keep clear the Genius Act and the Stable Act because they're both aimed at regulating stable coins, but they have pretty key differences. | ||
| And I would say the biggest one that you probably need to know is that the Genius Act has what's called a dual regulatory approach, which would allow state and federal oversight, whereas the Stable Act is basically prioritizing stricter federal control. | ||
| And so that's probably, there's also some size requirements for issuers for Genius Act that stable doesn't have. | ||
| But that's really the biggest thing for Genius is that dual approach, which kind of matches historically our banking system where we've had that dual regulatory system of federal regulators and state regulators, which has always been really important as the United States has a very strong federalism system where the states have certain rights and the federal government basically has what's left that wasn't allocated to the states. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation, if you've got a question about cryptocurrencies or the legislation that is currently at Congress, you can do so now. | ||
| Amanda Wick is with us for about 25 minutes. | ||
| Democrats can call us on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Also, if you happen to own crypto, we'd love to hear from you. | ||
| You can call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can use that same line to text us if you'd like. | ||
| Another piece of legislation is called the Clarity Act. | ||
| What is that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so the Clarity Act is different. | |
| It doesn't focus on stable coins. | ||
| It really looks at the market structure overall. | ||
| And part of the crypto industry's problem was that there really wasn't clarity. | ||
| And the previous administration, the Biden administration, unfortunately had a head of the SEC who really not only didn't engage with the industry, but actively attacked it. | ||
| They did some legitimate fraud cases, but they also took some actions that really were trying to crush the industry instead of engaging with it. | ||
| And now, if you look at commissioners like Hester Peirce, very engaged, very educated on the topic, very interested in trying to foster innovation while also regulating responsibly. | ||
| And the Clarity Act tries to do that by basically giving some, I hate to say clarity, on certain definitions about what are digital assets, what are digital commodities, getting past this word crypto that kind of lumps everything together that everybody has this perception of, and says, okay, how do we have a more predictable regulatory environment for the crypto market so we can attract institutional investors, foster innovation, bring business back to the United States that left during the last administration, | ||
| and also make sure that we have that regulatory certainty so that a company says, I know the rules of the road and I can build here. | ||
| There's some consumer protection provisions, but mostly it's really about focusing on which agency is responsible. | ||
| Because unlike some foreign countries, the U.S. has the SEC, the CFTC, and you have this fight over who's responsible. | ||
| And so the Clarity Act clarifies which agency is going to be responsible for something and does it qualify as a digital commodity and it should be regulated by the CFTC. | ||
| And when is something a security and it should be regulated by the SEC, which was a horrible battle and the way that it played out over the last four years under the Biden administration really had a hugely negative impact on the industry. | ||
| I want to ask you, going back to the Genius Act, one of the critics of that is Senator Jack Reed. | ||
| He's a Rhode Island Democrat. | ||
| And this is what he said. | ||
| And I'll get your response. | ||
| He says, rather than provide meaningful protections for consumers, the legislation weakens existing state laws on cryptocurrency to make it possible for stablecoin companies to operate with near zero capital, meaning that companies could be unable to weather a financial crisis. | ||
| Furthermore, the bill makes it possible for stablecoin companies to avoid getting an independent audit and makes it virtually impossible for the government to revoke a stable coin company's charter, even if the company engages in fraudulent activity. | ||
| What do you make of that assessment? | ||
|
unidentified
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To be honest, I'm not even sure what parts he's picking apart because unfortunately, the Democrats, some of the Democrats, a number of the Democrats have chosen to kind of make up a narrative about the bill. | |
| And don't get me wrong, the bill is not perfect. | ||
| I think it's really important to understand that many people in the crypto industry, regardless of your politics, would say the bill is not perfect and there are issues. | ||
| And if those are the issues, that's fine. | ||
| But the risk of not having regulations over stablecoins are pretty massive. | ||
| And I think people need to understand the larger issue, because if you just pick apart a bill because it's not perfect, that's not a reason not to pass a bill. | ||
| I think Democrats would acknowledge that with Obamacare, and yet right now are very much nitpicking on some things that don't really matter. | ||
| But right now, the largest issuer of stablecoins is a company that's based in El Salvador that has no supervisor, no authority, isn't examined. | ||
| And so you have the 19th largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills who could sell them at any moment, completely unregulated with no legal relationship technically with the United States. | ||
| And so when you're thinking about something, I think what people need to understand is that dollar-backed stablecoins facilitate international demand for the dollar. | ||
| And one of the things that Representative McCormick mentioned, I believe, is the strength of the country's economy. | ||
| That comes from the exorbitant privilege we have of the dollar. | ||
| And when you see all these articles about de-dollarization and reductions in dollar dominance, which a few of us have been literally screaming about for the last two or three years, soaring up dollar dominance, one way to do that is to create a path for stablecoin issuers who buy up dollars and give them clear regulations. | ||
| Just because you don't like tiny parts of the bill isn't a reason not to put into place extremely necessary regulations for a massive class. | ||
| What are those regulations that are that would be proposed in this bill? | ||
| Like what would happen as a result if this bill becomes law? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so under the under the Genius Act, they would have to have certain reserves on hand. | |
| They would have to be regulated. | ||
| They would have to register. | ||
| And I think those are things, and frankly, it would be more clear who is their regulatory authority. | ||
| And I think that's something that, you know, the size-based distinction. | ||
| So in the Genius Act, issuers with less than, I think, $10 billion in outstanding stablecoin issuance, they can opt into state-level regulation if the state regime is substantially similar. | ||
| So I think people get hung up because they think if it's not federal regulation, it's not good. | ||
| But I think people don't realize how much of regulation is handled and examined by the states and whether they're doing it effectively, that's a different question. | ||
| But if you look at the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, if you look at the state bank supervisory authorities that exist right now, that's currently what we have for traditional finance. | ||
| And what stablecoin issuers are saying is we would like the same system. | ||
| If it's good enough for banks, why wouldn't it be good enough for stablecoins? | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| Ann is a Democrat, Buffalo, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Anne. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And thank you, Ms. Wick, for your thoughts. | ||
| I appreciate the distinction on the Genius Act referring to stablecoin. | ||
| I have one quick question, and then I have another question. | ||
| Is stablecoin a proof of work model? | ||
| So that is one of my questions. | ||
| The other question is, has to do with the environmental impact of particularly proof of work mining practices. | ||
| And I know that Ethereum, which is the second biggest crypto, switched to proof of stake, which does not involve mining and uses 99% less energy than, for instance, Bitcoin, which is the biggest miner. | ||
| So what are your thoughts on that? | ||
| Do you think that we should possibly come up with some kind of regulation against mining? | ||
| Because it's not only energy vampirizing, if I can coin such a term, it also is the e-waste is extraordinary. | ||
| The terminals used for mining have to be switched out like every 18 months, and there are warehouses of them. | ||
| So the environmental impact is tremendous. | ||
| But also is stablecoin proof of work or proof of stake or what's the model? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Amanda, you'll have to explain that question as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let me just say, I think her name was Ann. | |
| And let me just say that if the majority of the United States was at the educational level that Ann just presented in that question, we would be crushing the world. | ||
| Let me just say the majority of the world doesn't know the difference between proof of stake or proof of work. | ||
| That's a technical difference that most people don't even know the difference between Bitcoin and stablecoins. | ||
| So Anne is officially my hero. | ||
| Let me just say that. | ||
| To answer her question, the majority of stable coins are minted on blockchains using proof of work consensus mechanisms. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| The issue is that not all proof of work consensus mechanisms work the same and they don't necessarily take the same amount of energy. | ||
| I do want to quote Representative McCormick because he said something to the effect of be very, very careful where you get your information because there's so much misinformation out there. | ||
| And that is incredibly true. | ||
| There are states that are actually using miners to actually balance out their grid usage because we all use energy during the day, not the night. | ||
| And Bitcoin miners can actually be programmed to run during the night so that a grid is more stable. | ||
| So what's not Amanda, Bitcoin miners? | ||
| What's being mined? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so I think people think that somebody's digging into the ground and reaching in and getting like digital gold. | |
| That's not what it is. | ||
| Remember, I said earlier that cryptocurrencies are just replacing intermediaries with cryptographic proof. | ||
| Without getting too nerdy and mathy, the calculations that have to be done by the system in order to keep the blockchain going, those are done using computers. | ||
| And the people who run those computers basically attach them to electric systems and they do all the calculations that are needed to maintain the blockchain. | ||
| And so when people say proof of work, it's the work basically that those computers are doing to constantly update and conduct transactions, update the chains in that the blocks in that chain. | ||
| And so when we talk about proof of work, it requires that process. | ||
| And so you hear mining because it's the miners who literally do the work to keep the thing going and then they get a bonus of payment. | ||
| And that's how new Bitcoin are created. | ||
| Not every proof of work blockchain works like that, but Bitcoin is probably one of the most commonly known. | ||
| And so it's the easiest to explain. | ||
| But proof of stake is a different consensus mechanism where instead of those computers doing that work, people put in a certain amount of their crypto to basically stake the transactions that are happening. | ||
| And this is an oversimplified explanation. | ||
| As you can see for people like Ann, it gets really technical, but the key difference that you have to understand is work does take more energy and stake is just a completely different model of how they reach consensus over what transactions were conducted. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's talk to Andre in Hinesville, Georgia, who owns crypto. | ||
| Go ahead, Andre. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, ladies. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My question is about winners. | ||
| Are they going to allow crypto to be backed or stable coins to be backed by commodities? | ||
| Like they already have it with gold. | ||
| So are they going to allow oil? | ||
| Are they going to allow corn? | ||
| Are they going to allow cocoa? | ||
| Are they going to allow rice, soy? | ||
| What do you think, Amanda? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| I do actually think that's one of the things that, and I can't remember if it's genius or stable, but I do believe that's one of the things. | ||
| I think, don't quote me, but one of them does actually propose even allowing algorithmic stable coins, which is a type of stablecoin that's literally backed by an algorithm. | ||
| This is the most, what we would say, risky one, because this is the one that everybody thinks of when they think of Terra Luna and the crash that happened. | ||
| But to Andre's excellent point, you know, most people, the largest market right now is by far fiat-backed currency stablecoins. | ||
| So this is your dollar-backed, your Euro-backed, a country's issued money that is what's backing up stable coins. | ||
| But Andre's right. | ||
| There is already, I believe, gold-backed stablecoins. | ||
| I've heard of them proposing oil. | ||
| I don't know right now what exactly is okay and what's not okay, but I will say those are going to become more prevalent just because once you have something identified as a commodity, it's moving to it being backed by a stable coin is a very straightforward thing. | ||
| So I imagine it will become more and more common for commodity-backed stablecoins to become a thing, especially given how popular gold-backed stablecoins are becoming. | ||
| We have a question for you from Mike in Keyport, New Jersey, who by text, will stablecoins make credit card fees no longer a thing or will new laws allow stablecoins to make new fees? | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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This is a great question. | |
| I appreciate Mike's question. | ||
| So you might have seen, like people, people are watching right now, MasterCard and Visa. | ||
| I think people would say Visa is a little bit behind. | ||
| MasterCard has announced a partnership with Pfizerv and all of them, MasterCard, I think, has been leaning into digital currencies much faster. | ||
| But all of them are looking at how much faster and cheaper stablecoins move. | ||
| I think you're going to see MasterCard, Visa, and the credit cards looking at the competition that stablecoins present and figuring out as adoption grows, as regulation basically clears a path for them. | ||
| The whole point of stablecoins was to make money move faster and cheaper. | ||
| Now, the interesting thing here is that stablecoins are privately issued. | ||
| So there is a profit aspect. | ||
| You are going to pay fees. | ||
| Unfortunately, right now, what's happened in the United States is a very politicized narrative where CBDCs have been made a boogeyman because of the government having control over your money. | ||
| But what people are watching is the state of Wyoming is issuing its own stable token, which will be essentially like a tokenized representation of dollar value issued by a state, which will be close to a public good. | ||
| So merchants in Wyoming will have extremely discounted fees. | ||
| People in Wyoming, when they get this up and running, it'll be a really interesting project because if you could get rid of the kind of fear-mongering that people have been doing with CBDCs, there's an argument that if the state or the federal government were to provide payments as a public good, like some other countries are trying to do, it would massively reduce fees for people. | ||
| It would massively reduce fees for merchants. | ||
| So you're going to probably see lower fees with stablecoins, but you'd see likely even lower fees from government issuers who are really caring about merchants and the consumer. | ||
| Jim, Austin, Texas, Independent Line, you're on with Amanda Wick. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, so with crypto, I'm wondering why is Trump into divesting? | |
| Sorry, opening up the gates for more crypto. | ||
| Is he just a very smart guy? | ||
| And I think McCormick said this earlier and he said, you know, Trump is very big on the economy doing well. | ||
| I will say the thing that Republicans tend to leave off is Trump is also very much into himself doing well. | ||
| And part of the problem with the whole discussion about this is that crypto has been a really good boogeyman ever since some really bad companies and some frankly bad representatives early on in the industry, right? | ||
| And so when people in hoodies come in instead of people in suits and they want to run financial services, people tend to not think well of it. | ||
| The thing with Trump that's really problematic is that, you know, when Bernie Madoff happened, people didn't say shut down banks because somebody perpetrated fraud. | ||
| When corruption happens in banks, people don't shut down the system. | ||
| When Nancy Pelosi's husband made $4.7 million in one day in the stock market, people didn't say shut down the stock market due to corruption. | ||
| Corruption is going to happen in financial markets. | ||
| It happens, frankly, I can tell you as a former prosecutor, all the time. | ||
| But you don't shut down the technology because somebody might be using it badly. | ||
| And the thing right now is that where people might be upset about how Trump is using the crypto, that is a wholly separate question from the fact that the Trump administration as a whole has been infinitely better than the Biden administration on regulating a technology that has massive plus sides to the future of digital finance. | ||
| And the problem in a country where we've lost nuance, we're down to seven second soundbites, and there's tons of politicized misinformation is that it's very hard to navigate in between that and say the technology can be good, even if somebody uses it in a bad way. | ||
| So people who are upset about the conflicts of interest and Trump owning crypto, fine, pass a bill that prevents conflicts. | ||
| I personally would love to see that for the stock market, for banks, for crypto. | ||
| I'd love to see our politicians on both sides stop being corrupt, but you don't shut down an entire technology that has massive benefits, that other countries are competing faster because it's the future of digital finance. | ||
| You don't shut down digital finance because you don't like how the other guy is using it. | ||
| And that's a huge problem we're facing today. | ||
| Amanda, this is what John in Norman, Oklahoma says. | ||
| Many major crypto holders are Silk Road drug dealers who had windfalls of crypto. | ||
| Crypto itself is inherently an offshore product. | ||
| If there's anything that needs tariffs, it is crypto. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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With all due respect, and I'm sorry I didn't touch his name at the beginning, but John, that I can tell you, if you want to read data, that is a myth that's been perpetuated. | |
| I can tell you, as somebody who, at the very beginning of prosecuting crypto, saw all the criminal activity, and that was absolutely true. | ||
| Criminals are always the first adopters of technology. | ||
| And back in 2012, 2013, it was 100% largely used by criminals. | ||
| Now, that's not the case. | ||
| Now, to the extent that a lot of the crypto is offshore issued, that might be true, but that's not entirely fair because those companies had to move abroad to find regulatory regimes that were fair and willing to work with them, right? | ||
| There were lots of companies. | ||
| I'm looking at Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, all three of those exchanges decided to be based in the United States and incur probably billions of dollars in compliance costs to try to do it right and to try to create financial services here in the U.S. | ||
| And they mostly got lawsuits in return, right? | ||
| There were exchanges that operated abroad without any regulations that didn't initially didn't even have locations. | ||
| And it took too long for the United States to do anything about that. | ||
| And so I think you have to be really careful because usually when people say like announcements, like, well, it's criminal money or it's things like that, that's usually something pushed by people who are very unwilling to acknowledge the nuance, acknowledge the gray. | ||
| There's tons of criminal money in banks. | ||
| I will tell you, as somebody who prosecuted lots of money laundering, if people were really concerned about money laundering and terrorist financing, they would be working all day and night to revise the Bank Secrecy Act, which is the statute that regulates that. | ||
| But they're not. | ||
| Elizabeth Warren really wasn't that concerned with terrorist financing in the millions, if not billions of dollars that was hiding in banks and shell companies. | ||
| But when $100,000 of it was publicly sitting on a blockchain, embarrassing everyone who wasn't doing anything about it, crypto shines a light on what's really happening because it's very visible. | ||
| And it turns out what was happening is we actually really weren't that good at caring about money laundering and terrorist financing. | ||
| And I know that's like a roundabout. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| So I was going to say, Amanda, how is it very visible? | ||
|
unidentified
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So people don't realize that most blockchains are completely visible. | |
| So like imagine if I could see the ledger of your bank publicly and I could see every transaction that your bank processed. | ||
| The difference is I can't see your identity, right? | ||
| So your bank is tied to your identity, whereas crypto is very transactional based. | ||
| You could go online and see all of the transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. | ||
| I can't see that Nimi did this transaction. | ||
| I can't see that Jim did this transaction, but there are analytics that I could do that transactions of a certain size or certain amounts, I can see that. | ||
| But when you're looking at a blockchain and I can see this is where Hamas sent funds, the visibility of crypto, it's like basically conducting funds out of a glasshouse. | ||
| I can see all the funds that are coming in. | ||
| I can see all the funds that are going out and I can do a massive amount of analytics on that. | ||
| But I can't do that with banks. | ||
| The banks are like black hole silos. | ||
| And most countries don't even have sharing regulations that allow banks to talk to each other. | ||
| And in the United States, we have one that's optional that's not frequently used. | ||
| So when people say, oh, we can trace money, if you talk to a prosecutor who's ever worked traditional finance and crypto and they're trying to trace money laundering and terrorist financing, every single one of them would tell you they prefer the visibility of crypto than the process of trying to find that money through banks. | ||
| And so I think it's a perception issue that the ability to do compliance in crypto is actually really strong. | ||
| It's just that's not what you read about in the paper. | ||
| You read about FTX, you read about Barclay, you read about Haktua. | ||
| The ability to do incredible compliance in crypto is not sexy clickbait. | ||
| So, this is why I tell people you have to look for this information because what will find you, aside from folks who take the time to have nuanced conversations, which is why I'm really grateful to you, Mimi. | ||
| But mostly, what you'll find is kind of unnuanced garbage. | ||
| Let's talk to Caleb, Charlestown, Indiana, who owns crypto. | ||
| Caleb, you're the last call for Amanda Wick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I have a question, kind of theory I have with Bitcoin. | ||
| Do you feel as with the Genius Act and what Bitcoin can represent, that essentially you'll have Bitcoin being utilized to cut our current deficit? | ||
| And then kind of piggyback on users, users that own crypto and people that don't know how to get in the space. | ||
| So essentially, people that own crypto, like myself, store it in a cold wallet. | ||
| Some of that stuff is super confusing for people. | ||
| Do you think banks at some point are going to start offering custody of crypto to help your everyday person understand how to use it and feel safe about using it? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Let me address the second question first because it's so critical. | ||
| And it's something that we're seeing now with the banking regulators that have just, I think all three of them have issued guidances that are giving banks the ability to custody crypto if they follow certain rules and maintain certain risk management guidelines. | ||
| But that question is really important because, you know, you said a lot of users generally get in into cold wallets. | ||
| And a lot of people, you're right, don't know what that is. | ||
| It's just a wallet that doesn't have access to the internet. | ||
| It's much safer. | ||
| Some people call it self-custody. | ||
| It's the ability to hold your own crypto. | ||
| But actually, a lot of people, frankly, get in through exchanges like Coinbase, like Kraken, like Gemini, because those are very accessible and it looks like their bank. | ||
| If you were to go onto one of their websites, I'm just going to use Gemini as an example. | ||
| If you were to go on the Gemini website, it presents like a bank. | ||
| It does KYC, know your customer, it does due diligence. | ||
| It asks you for the same information that a bank does. | ||
| You provide your bank account. | ||
| You give them money. | ||
| They give you crypto. | ||
| Sometimes they hold it, but they can also give it to you if you want it in your own wallet. | ||
| But that model was literally created so that those centralized exchanges would make people feel more comfortable into entering in. | ||
| The problem is, is that people crapped on those and made them sound so scary. | ||
| And government agencies under the Biden administration came after them when they were really trying to do it right most of the time. | ||
| And the problem now is, is that as banks see a president that's more friendly to crypto, regulation that's more friendly to crypto, as banks see the business opportunities, now banks that, I mean, my mom had her account shut down from a bank that didn't even ask her any questions, just boom, de-risked her when she sent one transfer to Coinbase. | ||
| Those same banks are now getting into crypto and offering custody services. | ||
| And some of that is like the CD industry after Napster saying, well, we can do digital music too, right? | ||
| When competition comes to crush you, you start to figure out how to adapt or die, right? | ||
| And I think that's what board-leaning banks are doing and they have been doing. | ||
| I've been really impressed that some credit unions were leaning out into digital assets long before the big banks. | ||
| And for every Jamie Dimon quote where he crapped on crypto, everyone knew that JP Morgan was building Onyx, right? | ||
| And then Connexus or whatever it's called. | ||
| So as much as some of the banks were publicly anti-crypto, they absolutely knew that their rails were old, unimprovable, and that they were likely going to have to move to the technology underlying crypto, which is improved digital rails. | ||
| And so you're going to start seeing more of these traditional finance companies incorporating crypto and blockchain technology and distributed ledger technology, which is the tech that runs this, which is oftentimes lost in the narrative. | ||
| But yes, you're 100% right that we are going to see more traditional finance institutions kind of creeping into crypto without saying it's crypto as they incorporate the technology that moves money faster and cheaper. | ||
| Because if they don't, they'll die. | ||
| Amanda, finally, I just want to ask, how confident are you in House and Senate lawmakers that they understand this concept and this industry enough to regulate it properly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not confident. | |
| I think some of them are much better than others, right? | ||
| If every one of them was an Ann or a Jim or a Caitlin, like I have to tell you, if the callers that called in were running around the halls of Congress, able to directly communicate with their representatives, the country would be better off. | ||
| I think that's why initiatives like Stand With Crypto and other things that try to get people activated and say, call your representative because they're not paying attention to this. | ||
| They probably think that it's about, you know, Bitcoin or Fartcoin, but it is really about America staying competitive in the future of digital finance. | ||
| And I really worry that a lot of Congress people aren't. | ||
| I will say full disclosure, I'm an advisor to a group called the Global Blockchain Business Council, and they kill themselves all day, every day, putting out explainers, working with staff. | ||
| There's other trade associations that try to do this. | ||
| So it's not like the information isn't out there, but you've got young staffers, you've got septogenarian and octogenarian people on the hill who explaining crypto to can sometimes be hard. | ||
| So, you know, to quote a law enforcement agent I worked with, crypto kind of unfortunately exacerbates the two things that we don't really do well, which is financial investigations and technology. | ||
| And America has to really get better at both very quickly. | ||
| My hope is that especially Democrats will look at the policy and not the politics. | ||
| We need stablecoin regulation. | ||
| If you don't like how Trump uses it, that's another bill. | ||
| That's another discussion. | ||
| But if they do what they did with infrastructure where they don't pass it in Trump won, and then it's the first bill that the next Democrat passes, I still remember that. | ||
| Many moderates, independents, and Democrats still remember that. | ||
| And if the Democratic Party just keeps saying, well, we're just not going to do what Trump wants and that's our policy position, I 100% agree with Representative McCormick. | ||
| That's going to be a really perilous path for them that will lose them midterms, just like it lost them the last election. | ||
| Amanda Wick, she wrote a book called The Catalyst, The Accelerating Forces, Forging the New World Financial Order. | ||
| She's the founder and CEO of Association for Women in Cryptocurrency. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today, Amanda. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for having me. | |
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