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State of Crypto Regulation 🏦 The Aggregated Ep. 150
Recorded: Feb. 20, 2026 Duration: 2:07:48Space Recording
Short Summary
In a vibrant discussion marking the 150th episode of the 'State of Crypto Regulation,' panelists explored the evolving landscape of crypto regulations, highlighting trends in institutional interest, the impact of potential tax policies in Europe, and the importance of partnerships in navigating these changes. As the industry faces both growth opportunities and challenges, the conversation underscored the need for a united front to advocate for favorable regulatory frameworks.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, everybody.
There we go.
Sometimes the music doesn't want to quit uh there was one space i was on i think a couple weeks ago
uh it was actually with alex she couldn't get the music to stop like it was just playing for like 30 minutes everyone kept on saying hey the music's you know it's continuing what's going on
the music's you know it's continuing what's going on and uh she was she kept pressing uh for it to
end and it just never stopped so i'm glad we we got that taken care of um looks like everyone is
starting to join and filter in i just want to say hello to everyone here on this friday
to everyone here on this friday we're here every friday we generally discuss different types of
topics and today we are kicking off state of crypto regulation this is episode 150 that that's crazy
rock we we hit 150 150th episode i just want to say thank you to everyone that's joining us a lot of friends here
in the audience thank you to all uh the gigabrain chad uh friends and speakers that are joined us
today on the panel so i can't wait to pick your guys' brain today and just catch up on regulation.
This is something that I'll be honest.
I'm in this space.
I'm building in this space.
I'm CSO at Lunar Digital Assets.
That's our full-tech blockchain venture studio.
I'm co-founding LitVM, the first Litecoin later too.
But regulation is just changing all the time and I think a lot of
people want to know what's going on including me and so I'm I'm here to learn today with uh with
all of you guys I'm happy that we have some experts here on the panel uh Rock how are you
doing today we just jumped off a you know really big pitch and uh so
um i'm doing well brother yeah beautiful yeah do you introduce yourself and then we'll start
introducing everyone on the panel and just jump into the meat of the conversation hey guys i'll
keep it short rock zacharias ceo of lunarar Digital Assets, Venture Studio, Incubated Polygon,
QuickSwap, etc. I'm the head of the Global Leadership Council for Michael Turpin's Bit
Angels, co-founder of QuickSwap, of course, you all know, and some some other things advisory board for polygon etc cheers guys you took a page out
of out of my book kept it short i love it man yeah you're being humble uh rock is really just
doing a million things in this space and i'm uh so happy to be working with you on a lot of things
throughout the years it's been it's been amazing I want to go ahead and introduce everyone here so
I don't go any particular order just left to right on my screen as soon as I have everyone
introduced we'll jump into the meat of the conversation on the aggregated.
You can just jump in.
You don't have to raise your hand.
If you're not talking,
I'll probably call on you and try to get your opinion on,
on whatever the topic is at the time.
But again,
you don't have to raise your hand,
don't have to raise your hand just jump in it's like a bunch of friends around a big table rock
just jump in.
It's like a bunch of friends around a big table.
likes to say it's uh like the roman bath house of web three we're all you know in the bath together
uh talking about philosophy drinking wine eating grapes i stole that one from rock but
i let yeah let's go ahead and get everyone to introduce here maybe let's go like six robes optional yeah in the room in the bathhouse
so I I'd love for you guys to just give a brief um explanation of you know what you're doing in
the space who you are but I have an icebreaker question uh so go ahead and introduce yourself and then here's
the question is it easier to build now given the current legal frameworks than it was five years
ago so it's just your guys's opinion but let's go ahead and start off with panels
everyone can hear me perfect just a little quiet but I can hear me
perfect just a little quiet but i can hear you okay great uh so yeah hi everyone uh i'm panos
uh i'm my background is in finance and accounting i've been in crypto for over a decade and for the
last three years co-founder and ceo of annals labs one of the leading DeFi projects on the XRP Ledger,
and also currently building a new bank or financial superop. And answering your question,
I would say right now is a much better time to build because we have the technology, the rails,
everything has advanced, for example, from interoperability
to like everything
has become more efficient, on the fronts,
all these kind of things.
And we're also getting more
regulatory clarity.
So I would say it's definitely a better time to do right now.
I love it.
It's great to start this show off with some
optimism. I think one of the last episodes we had, it was just one of those brutal red days and the conversation started off a little rocky, but love uh really great to meet you panos and um can't wait to pick your
brain here i'll pass the mic on over to flipping finance what's up brother
yo what up gmgm everybody um shout out to everybody shout out to you my bro aztec uh shout
out to you rock uh shout out to everybody in the audience uh i'm flipping finance
i essentially what we do is um financial satire and of course i'm a heavy supporter of litecoin
and essentially that's uh that's pretty much what flipping finance about just making you know crypto
a little more fun than it is.
And yeah, so I'm pretty honored to be here having this competition with y'all.
Yeah, much love.
Everyone has to follow Flippin Finance.
You have to check out the skits and things that he does.
It's amazing, very educational, but funny at the same time.
Just maybe like a real brief brief do you think it's
easier to to build in this space with current regulatory you know clarity um what's your
thoughts brother better than than five years ago or worse well personally i don't know to be honest, but I mean from my perspective
I think it's a bit
context dependent
because with
the United States
and just considering how this
administration has kind of like
made things a bit easier
for, you know
with your whole Clarity Act and the other
legislation that you're passing and
trying to make things easier for companies to integrate and
go to this function in the United States without getting witch on it.
I think it's kind of great, but then we're saying conversely from the
EU side of things, it's kind of tough, right? I mean,
they're having conversations around um
you know essentially uh their own version of a digital euro and you know there we are also
saying in netherlands where they're uh putting essentially you know regulation to tax um
capital gains uh unrealized gains, crypto gains,
and all of these things
that can make things
a little difficult over there.
So my perspective,
it's kind of getting better
in the United States,
but in Europe
and these other places,
I don't think it's really getting better.
But yeah.
That's an interesting take.
I, and I agree.
I think some, some things, uh, everything's so dynamic in regulation all over the world.
Uh, so yeah, we're definitely gonna dive into these things today.
Great to have you here as always.
Raph and, uh, yeah, much love much love man i love everything you're doing in
the space i'll go ahead and pass the mic over to jere welcome
i and i apologize if i'm saying your name wrong it's j J-Ray? No, no, no. Sorry. It's like, it's Simon here, like on this as I said.
So thank you guys for having me here.
And I was actually listening up what the rest of the guys were saying and very happy to be here with you.
So I will just straight away jump into my, into about myself and what I do.
So I'm like in a crypto space since late 2018 so it's been
like a decades for some of the guys who are listening and you know it might feels like it's a
you know it's almost like a half of the century had was the time where we actually when i joined
and i saw like a lot of things happening from outer angles
and the things that i was doing on that front was um working with the projects on the luna ecosystem
back in the day i used to work with the guys from a bunch of angles in the d5 before it was even
called the d5 and i was working with the guys in the NFT space, I was part of a few projects.
Like recently, before I joined the Protofire team, where we are handling every single aspect
of the supporting and growing our own products and supporting other builders in this space.
I was part of the DeFi protocol, which was allowing to stake anything or any chain. So I've seen a lot
of things and getting to your icebreaker question, I would say if it's better or worse to build like
now or five years back. I would say it's a bit of both because one thing is from the technical perspective, we have experience already.
We know how to build some things. We can use some modules or dev tools that can help to build the solutions.
And that's just, it was more of a fun for all of us back in the day when there was like nothing that we were just, you know, reinventing a wheel or actually we're just creating the first DeFi or crypto wheels in that front.
But right now, you know, we are getting regulated.
We see that, you know, the big players are jumping into this space.
It's showing like and adding a bit of, I would say this institutional spark that we can see.
But from the other perspective,
the back of the day you were just working alongside
and working to be on the other end with the other builders
and the DGents who are building something.
And right now you might be just part of the race with some institutional players
who had much deeper pockets and much better lawyers than most of us have.
So yeah, I would say it's both in that front.
Yeah, fair take in my opinion.
And I do want to jump into the institutional side of things in just a second,
but let's go ahead and introduce Dennis.
Simon, thank you so much for being here.
And again, can't wait to pick your brain.
Dennis, take it away.
Yeah.
Choppy. A little choppy there try again a little choppy well okay we'll try to make it uh work best but let me know if it's uh if it's too choppy i'll try to find a spot no that's
better now it's better yeah okay amazing first of all i bit my tongue with the margin call reference of waiting for the music to stop.
Really, really nice spot on and one of my favorite movies of all time.
So it's good to know that you're paid at LDA to know when the music stops.
That's a credit to you.
Second of all, wow, what a fantastic panel.
What a great place to be in.
What a powerhouse.
Lunar Digital Assets is just an amazing team,
top to bottom, and absolute privilege to be here today. I've long joked that us at ERC3643 have
been on kind of the more boring side of the fence, and we're kind of moving over to the
better, cooler DeFi party. And boy, has it been an amazing experience.
So a quick background for me,
I started my career as a NASA aerospace engineer,
did nearly 22 years in banking finance,
working on TrillDesk for 18 years of it.
I had many large market makers, primes,
and last job I had was at Bank of New York Mellon
for treasuries, We did $7 trillion
a week in settlement, if you can believe such numbers, back a decade ago.
These days I wear three hats. The biggest hat everyone knows I wear is ERC 3643 and the president
of the association. We just had two great announcements this week with World Liberty
Fi and announcing the T-REPS network on Polygon, which we're super
excited about. We have over 140 members. We have $35 billion in assets. Includes the largest
fund admin in the world and the largest depository in the world. We're in 12 different projects
in terms of institutional like Project Guardian. I work with SWIFT and EPBW,
Boffin in Germany and ISO in Spain.
So we do a lot of prominent projects.
And then of course,
we had two major wins last year with the SEC
that we were very much a part of.
We had a nice shout out
from Chairman Atkinson Committee last week,
which we're very much looking forward to on that had a nice shout out from Chairman Atkinson committee last week, which we're very much
looking forward to on that.
The other hats I wear,
I'm one of two strategic advisors
for DTCC.
The other one's Nitin Guhar,
a great friend of mine
and brilliant thinker
in his own right.
Nitin and I are responsible
for the interface
of DeFi and DTCC
and understanding the different relationships.
And we're super excited what's happening behind the scenes there.
And then, of course, the last head out where is a partner and CTO at PSD Digital.
It's a global asset management business for over $9 billion in assets.
We're launching a new platform in the U.S. called Ascend,
which we're calling as the world's first on-chain investment bank.
And our prime directive is to bridge permission, called Ascend, which we're calling as the world's first on-chain investment bank.
And our prime directive is to bridge permission tokenized RWA securities into DeFi, which today made a little bit of news for Chairman Eakin saying, in Denver, that's the direction
of travel.
And, you know, well, we agree.
So some really great stuff going on.
going on. In terms of your question, is a good time last five years? 3643 made EIP, I think,
In terms of your question, is a good time last five years?
in 2024. So that was our really inflection moment. We could barely get anyone to acknowledge
the standard from the regulatory side. Our big breakthrough was first in the Middle East,
and then in Asia. We actually presented to Chairman Gensler and the FinHub in 2024,
which was interesting, to say the least. And then 2025 was our breakout year. So for us,
on the very boring permission token side, where we care about things like identity compliance and
rules, it's a golden age for us. And not only do we feel like we're driving a lot of the regulation that exists,
we're on our side of the crypto universe.
We don't need too much regulation right now.
But as we look to push into DeFi, we're going to look more on either no actions or exemptions.
The point about Europe, it's absolutely true.
We do a lot of work in Europe, about five different countries, and it has stalled a little bit.
In Asia, we've noticed as some places are hot, some places less so.
But for us at 3643, it's a golden age, and we're just looking to really bring billions and about trillions of dollars of assets on chain and get them into DeFi.
So super stoked to be here today.
The water's very warm in our proverbial Roman bath
and looking forward to the insights.
Thank you guys for having me.
Oh, for sure. I can't wait to pick your brain.
It sounds like you're wearing some very big hats there
and working on some exciting things.
So yeah, I'd love to jump in.
Jay Ray, I think you disconnected and came back. I'd love for you to introduce yourself
as well. Yeah, thanks guys for having me. Yeah, Hashtag Arock. Yeah, some usual X-Spaces buggy
bugginess, but yeah, I'm COO at TGP or Tokenized GBP. We're the only live GBP-pegged stablecoin issued by a regulated entity here in the UK.
Yeah, I guess from a past life, I actually come more from self-custody and DeFi, so
had founded a self-custodial stablecoin wallet focused on savings and remittances in emerging
markets, and that as well as a decentralized P2P exchange. So now kind of going back to your point, like, is it easier to build now or back five years
ago? Definitely from like a regulatory perspective, much easier, even though I say my heart still
lies in kind of like the freedom of access and all of the cool financial tools we're
building. The regulatory bit made that very hard, I think, to scale a product to the masses.
But now I'd say even in the UK, which I'd say aren't as friendly as the US administration,
there is still, I think, a big effort into opening up these products. And there's almost
an acceptance now that this is going to happen regardless of the regulation. So it's better that these regulatory rules are in place that protects the consumer and
also, I guess, protects the competitive environment too.
Right.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And it's really great to have you here as well, J. Ray.
It is so fascinating seeing all the changes in the regulatory environment over the last five years
um before we jump into the meat here we got the legend and gary cardone i think the last time i
seen you gary was uh it was in uh it was with shib toshi at i forget the boxing it was like a crypto boxing fight night in Austin Texas but uh yeah much love
please introduce yourself and um and I'd love to you know hear your thoughts you know is it do you
think it's easier to build uh in crypto over the last five years or worse guys. Gary Cardone here. Just joined the space because I've spent a lot of time
helping regulations go through on disruptive industries,
and so I was more interested in listening.
Do I think it's easier?
I'm not sure, man.
It seems like we do need some uh on a number of fronts so
i'd like to just listen though listen to the experts appreciate being here
awesome well great to have you here and if you want to jump in please uh please do and uh yeah
great to have you here yeah let's dive in guys so I think we've had a general consensus that it's a
mixed bag across the board with crypto regulation and you know Flippin Finance was kind of pointing
to hey things are pretty green light in the states nowadays now I'd love to dive into some of the, you know, the regs that recently
came out in the United States, cause I'm, I'm not a hundred percent sure,
you know, about, um, how that will affect things.
But, uh, also there's the other parts of the world where there's some pretty
interesting things happening that aren't
as positive so overall it does seem to be a mixed bag i guess where where we can start is
in your guys actually and where if i could jump in on that icebreaker as well
thank you so yeah i think i think we're in So, yeah, I think we're in a good place, guys.
I think we're in a great place.
It depends on how our market structure stuff, you know, turns out.
It depends on this kind of battle that's happening right now.
So far, regulations have been relatively good for our industry.
There's minor stuff I would have liked to have seen done differently.
Interestingly, giving the yield to the consumer is something I spent a lot of time talking to Paul Atkins about.
And now that's the big battle on stage.
So I hope he, you know, listens or remembers some of the key stuff that I was telling him.
You know, I really was pushing to him and he was very receptive about it.
So I'm hopeful that just knowing how he thinks and how he was a little more, you know, open with me over, you know,
drinks that he, I think he gets it.
He gets that the consumer matters.
And I don't think he's like a big bank guy.
You know, when we were talking about all of these issues,
he really did seem like he had the consumer at front and center of his focus,
which is the key here, because what's happening is the banks are trying to lobby to get protection,
more protection. And I don't think the banks need protection. I think they've had enough protection. I think we need to allow the free market to work. And yes, this is scary when the US system and the
global system all rely on a very embedded banking system. But if we keep doing that, we'll eventually have just complete zombie
banks and a zombie financial system. And I think it's really important that we let the free market
work and that we allow crypto companies like Coinbase and like DeFi to compete on an even playing field and not have different rules
for them and the banks. So I think Atkins gets it. He really said good things about this when
we were talking. And I was hoping to push him in a, in the direction of focusing the consumer, but I didn't have to push hard. He was, he was on board with it. Yeah. So we'll see how that shakes out. But
overall, I think we're in a good place in the industry. I think it was actually interesting
in some ways. I think what Gary Gensler did was good for us. I know that sounds crazy, but
instead of making rules before we understood crypto more, as in the regulators and the politicians and the businesses, they took their time.
This is what the U.S. did with the Internet.
And it's what we're doing now with AI, which I think is the right play is you have to leave some room for growth, leave some room for exploration, leave a little bit of Wild West.
And I didn't like that Gary was trying to come down on us with a hammer when we had no rules.
That was silly, obviously.
But the fact that we didn't make rules too quickly and we allowed things to kind of shake out and see what the free market could come up with,
I think was actually good for the industry.
And I think right now not rushing into any rules is also good for us, because if we rush
into rules, there's a chance they try to squash us, right?
Could be.
It's an interesting take there. And also, I guess if those rules came with sandboxes,
our friendly ways for us to slowly grow within this dynamic regulatory environment
could be very positive.
Of course, that's more of like a best case scenario.
I'd like to get your guys' opinion here.
So anyone can jump in, but where is crypto regulation today?
I heard some points on some of the good things, some of the negative things.
things but where are we today what is the most important thing that i guess the audience would
But where are we today?
want to know about where regulation is today more broadly speaking well i think, I'll jump in. I think the regulations aren't locked in, but I think what matters as much as the regulations themselves in many cases is the voice or the kind of listening to the general sentiment of the regulators.
And I think the sentiment right now is good.
You know, love or hate Trump.
He definitely pushed all of the whole,
the entire political system into exploring our industry, which is great. And it was good for us.
There's some things you can argue he did that people don't like, like launching a meme coin,
et cetera. But at least he said the things that we would like to hear a president say,
that this is the future. It needs to be protected. We want this to be an American industry.
And I think that got a lot of people thinking.
I see Dennis has his hand up.
And then after that, we also have Alex Damsker
has joined the panel and we'd love to have her introduce,
but go ahead, Dennis.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
And so here's the way we look at it, Ascend and 3643.
I see it really as a spectrum from easy to hard and from Shrad 5 to DeFi. So where 3643 is and
really like the permission standards, we're at like the extreme end of the institutional side, right? So a lot of
repositories, fund admins, a lot of heavy regulated businesses are required to use 3643
or something similar for full securities, full shared registry on chain. And that was
something regulators have historically demanded. And so for our vector or our parts,
usually we don't need a specific change in rule or law.
We're able to comply with the existing laws,
just the medium or vehicles, I call it, you know, change and chassis change.
And so we've been able to accomplish. we need to through innovation exemptions and no action
letters.
And I think we solve a practical problem for the SEC in terms of that being a neutral
standard.
It's a good way to orient industry as a practical matter.
The next one, which sort of like gets more interesting is redefining traditional roles, right? So these are your digital transfer agents, your transfer agents that are doing like the direct share issuance model, your special purpose broker dealers, your custodians, you know, the 15c3 action.
either you need an individual to align with you and give you either no action or some sort of
relief, or you may need some sort of a clarification on those rules or topics. And that's really what
you're seeing with direct share registry issuance and other things. Then the next one over is going
to be more like, well, why do we even need to have share registry on chain?
Why do we need all these cumbersome things to the point about like, this is more contentious.
Do you force Aave to be a broker geo license?
It's with PILIT overnight, obviously.
And so why even have or force DeFi to comply with laws that really are not one-to-one applicable?
You know, my favorite analogy to this is airlines don't pay for the land that they fly over,
where railroads have to pay for the real estate, right, just because the medium is different.
And so in that case, you know, that's where you're seeing a lot of things on Genius and Clarity Act,
where, you know, these businesses fundamentally cannot comply and they
shouldn't comply, at least in my opinion. And I'm the institutional guy saying this, you know,
we believe in a permissionless DeFi. You cannot force crypto into the same box as TradFi because
it's inappropriate and the mechanisms are different. And that gets to the last one,
which is, you know, your virtual asset service provider license, you know, do you then give a
whole new set of laws and regulations?
Is this Clarity Act around tokenized stocks,
DeFi protocols, where there is really no good definition
and they really kind of need either a standard
or they need a license
or they need some sort of covenant to work under?
Should DeFi protocols have direct relationships
with regulators?
Are they still technology vendors? That sort of classification. And that, to me, as great as our current
administration has been, I still ought to see more activity on. And I was very encouraged today
by Chairman Atkins' supposed remarks in Denver and kind of halfway up like around tokenized stocks.
Because I think you're going to want to give consumer choice.
It's important to consumer understand the different risks in owning a tokenized stock
versus a full bonafide security.
And it's not right to drag DeFi to meet, you know, this.
But that also means that all these regulations are meant to create, you know,
what has done which in the post 2008, you know, mega bank monopolist structure and the comment
on zombie banks, there is value and consumer protection and some of these things. And so
the work to kind of translate what was the core theses of consumer protection identity and this sort of thing and recourse
into DeFi.
It does make sense in some cases.
And some other jurisdictions like VARA in Dubai have done a really good job of showing
what that path could be in the United States.
So I would like to see almost a VARA equivalent.
I know the CFTC and SEC's joint task force is a great sign on this, but I really think it's important to keep DeFi as it is
and to create rules and norms around DeFi
that are appropriate for DeFi while protecting consumers.
So that's the spectrum that we look at.
Obviously, being on the side where we don't need the most regulation,
we've done a lot with that.
And then now we're kind of pushing the voucher on our side
and say, hey, listen, if we could preserve market structure on chain, we've done all this work.
You know, what's our... Can we go into a DEX? Can we go into a borrow land? What does that look like?
You know, where exactly is the line between permission and permissionless market structure?
And that's some stuff we're excited to have. But ultimately we don't believe in institutional DeFi.
We don't believe in cuddling the banks
to preserve the status quo.
Hopefully that's helpful.
That's really helpful.
And thank you for that.
I think it's...
Sorry, I'm having some connection issues here.
Rock, can you take it?
Yeah, sure. Alex, how are you doing? Good to have you here.
Why don't you give us an introduction for those who may not know you?
Hi, I'm Alexandra Damsker. I'm a corporate securities lawyer used to work at the scc and a big firm and i headed a practice
and had my own practice i founded two companies i exited i moved into blockchain in 2016
and i've been in ai and quantum computing since 2019. i i was asked'Reilly, which is a big publisher to write a book on DeFi and
finance, which I did came out in 2024. It's called Understanding DeFi is doing quite well.
And I advise funds and a bunch of other like platforms and stuff on all sorts of things
regarding blockchain and rails and things like that.
And I'm co-founder of a company called Populous right now,
which is, it has an aspect of blockchain in it,
but it's actually for first and family wealth.
So it's a different type of company.
So that's me.
I just...
Sorry, go ahead.
Somebody's trying to talk.
Okay, I just did a discussion on tokenization.
And it was...
I tried to actually live stream it also on X, but the platform, I guess, didn't work very well.
So one of the streams didn't work.
But anyway, I did a very, like an hour and a half on tokenization.
Gary, I think your mic is not muted.
Gary? Thanks. So there's a lot going on right now there, and I'm not entirely sure where you're actually, you know, if there's an area that you're focusing on, because there's
so much going on right now. But a lot of what was just said is really relevant from Dennis. And one of the interesting things
is actually having an SEC chairman come to ETH Denver, home of CryptoKitties,
is pretty remarkable when you think about it. We, we've come a long way in a few years,
right, to have, you know, the SEC come and say, this is an appropriate venue for me to talk about
policy. This is really kind of an amazing thing. I think that there was Atkins and Peirce who were
having, you know, real policy discussions. And some of the discussions really like the, the I was actually in Cayman,
I wasn't actually, I wasn't in, I'm not in Denver, but some of the, the information that's been
coming out of Denver has been like, you know, it's a very sober affair there now. It's like all
the grownups are in the room and people are talking about institutional buy-ins. And one
of the interesting things that I read was like,
people really know when their tokens are going down to zero
and they're kind of, it's not a very degen-focused affair.
And I think that's kind of a very relevant statement
for a lot of the industry right now.
I think that that's probably a good thing
because it's kind of time for this whole industry at this point to understand that there's business that's being done here.
And if we don't understand where the business is being done, then the business is going to be done without us.
So that's what the institutionals have finally picked up on,
right? And they're running payment rails, understanding that at its core, a lot of
what's happening is financial and about making sure that your assets don't sit, right? That's
one of the three main things that blockchain does better than anything
centralized is financial. And institutions hopped right on that and said, okay, well,
if they don't understand business models and they don't understand revenue and they don't understand
that it's not just about number go up, it's about really making
real money, then we understand that stuff and we can just build back-end rails that no one sees
and no one gets a piece of these tokens. And we're just going to build this stuff ourselves
and we'll make all the money here. And that's happening, right? There's a lot of that that's been happening. A lot of money is being made in blockchain that a lot of retail is just not even seeing.
that are going on. And hopefully a lot of the retail investors are actually looking and seeing
and asking questions like, what are you doing in this industry? What's happening here? What are we
not seeing in the retail channels that is actually really successful here? What's going on that's
actually making money? What are you building that we're not a part of? Is there a retail piece of this? Is there a way for us to replicate this? What can we do? Because we're
missing out, right? If we're not part of that, then we're missing out and institutions are just
going to take over. So on one hand, that's something that we really need to look out for.
The other thing that we need to see is that
a lot of the regulation that's coming out now is stalling. There's about 50 pieces of legislation
right now in Congress, and a lot of it doesn't make sense. So fundamentally, none of it makes
sense because, remember, tokens at their heart are totally different than any other asset that we've ever had because they are shifting dynamic assets, right?
So stock, debt, even fiat, it's the same thing.
Whoever holds it, whenever they hold it, it stays the same.
But a token can be seven different things in the same same holder between holders, right? It could be
different things. And often you don't even know what it is until after an accountant has applied
an accounting method after you spent it. So a lot of our regulatory methods, which include like
what your mental state was when you purchased it, or what the institution told you when you
purchased it, or even what you did with it when you purchased it, a lot of these things don't
really apply to what happens with crypto, right? So a lot of our regulations are based on things
that work with static assets, but not dynamic assets. So most of the regulations
are stupid, but they're kind of what we have. But they don't really make sense, right? They're
not going to make sense when you look at the fact that, you know, the regulations say you have to do,
you know, all of the transactions in a particular, on a particular chain, for example, are going to be categorized as A, B, or C, depending on the age of the blockchain or depending on the intentions of the founders.
When that may be completely irrelevant because of the use of the token, right? And that's really because the people in Congress really have very little understanding of how blockchain works and how it's actually used.
the people who actually use blockchain and the people who are making the laws are not talking.
And I really honestly feel like it's like...
This is so scary because I agree with you, Alex, and as a cyberpunk,
when there is that disconnect, it's really troubling.
And I just want to let everyone know, I see a hand up, you know, just jump in, you know, where we're applicable.
Alex, please.
Well, I just kind of feel like.
Actually, I wanted to, Alex, you know, I love what you're on a roll and I want you to stop.
It's actually great.
But, you know, to Atkins and Michael, to Chairman Atkins and Paul Michael's credit, the concept of the innovation exemption, I think, is really key here.
And this was a lot of my conversations with them, is that you get into Catch-22s, where,
you know, what I love that you're espousing, Alex, is something I talk about a lot, is
blockchain is the first technology to challenge the 1930s FDR 100-day paradigm of all these
segregated liabilities, you know, based on the 29 crash and the way it
worked. And, you know, unfortunately, FTX did show what happens when it's mismanaged. But I'd love to
hear your thoughts on the on the innovation exemption, because I think that is a tool. Again,
it's temporal, it's non-binding, all those caveats apply, but it's a practicality
mechanism because of all the things you espouse correctly. That's very hard to get codified law,
even laws that the industry largely agrees on. We were literally at the SEC, the hour they're
ratifying the Genius Act, and it was a tense view. But I'd love for you to talk, given your tremendous background,
on your thoughts on the innovation exemption framework
that they have put together for the SEC.
Yeah, and if I could throw some flowers your way, Alex,
you're on fire.
It's good to have you on this show.
You're coming out swinging this morning,
or it might be night for some, but yeah, much
love.
Love to hear your thoughts here.
Oh, that's so sweet.
I really appreciate it.
Honestly, I really do.
So the innovation exemption, and this is essentially, you know, the idea that you can actually have like a little, God, I can't speak English right now. I've had
no coffee, but essentially like a place where you can try out platforms, essentially, where you can
have a place where you can... Sandbox? Sandbox! Thank you so much. Thank you. This is something that
Atkins and Peirce have actually worked on together. And I know that this has been something that's
close to Hester Peirce's heart for a long time. And right now, as far as I know, it's to make incumbents in TradFi and crypto native firms, make them able to
trade tokenized securities in a particular environment and look at what actually happens
so that whatever regulations are formed are formed intelligently. And I love this idea.
I personally think that this kind of thing where you see in real time what is actually happening.
So instead of saying, I think that these people are going to be hurt and these people should be protected and this is what we need to do and let's put up all of these walls.
should be protected and this is what we need to do and let's put up all of these walls instead
saying let's actually see what happens who gets hurt who can protect themselves and what naturally
grows i i think that that's pretty amazing to be honest and and i actually think that they should
yeah i think that they should pull data from past trades.
Like, honestly, they should go back through DeFi.
And one of the things that we have is that Gensler has previously said, and I know we don't invoke his name, right?
But Gensler previously said that DeFi was off limits for the SEC, right?
for the SEC, right? And that is something that we can still hold on to and say, okay,
he previously said that this was something that the SEC was, it was not territory that the SEC
could actually touch. We can actually use trading habits from DeFi to say, okay,
trading habits from DeFi to say, okay, if there were tokenized securities, they would probably
operate in large form the way a lot of these DeFi exchanges might operate because what they're
really trying to look at first is how would an automated market maker work with tokenized
securities? Well, we can pair together what automated market
makers and securities look like and DeFi, right? We can pair these things together and say,
where are the protections that are needed? And Alex, just on that, but behind the curtain,
so 3643, we were, I think, one of the first projects named in the innovation exemption
of Project Crypto in August. And I have to say that the crypto task force was truly incredible on this.
And, you know, at that time, ERCP 643 had 20-something,
1,820 different jurisdictions where we were either given clarity
or were given implicit clarity to operate for commodities,
private securities, and in some cases, derivatives. And the envision exemption
was a really powerful tool that the task force could do to essentially say, well, anyone that
wants to use 3643 in their filings doesn't need a specific no action letter. So it cured a
practicality for them. And then they would review the issuance on a case-by-case basis. But it did so. It kind of
cured an issue of like, well, whether or not we're going to recognize technology that attempts to
meet some of these sort of existing qualification and compliance rule sets. And in the particular
one that we got exempt had Chainlink ACE, which is a dynamic rule set. And so then for in December, when we had the DTCC SEC,
that was considered maybe parts of an exemption,
but then they started to go for a full no action letter.
And so seeing behind the scenes around the exemption is,
in my view, cures a lot of these issues.
And I'm not surprised to
hear in Denver today that they're looking at a no action for the tokenized stocks, which is a
hot issue depending on, you know, the institutional or DeFi side, because you have just different
paradigms on what representation should be or not. And I think it gives them like a really great
material way to put this out to the market,
see the commercial opportunity,
realize whether or not there's a demand for it.
And I think that's important too, is a demand.
And I say to people, you know,
we can join in and it doesn't result in your activity.
It really didn't mean much.
And then from there,
form policy, which right now it's policy or pre-policy, depending on your stance, and eventually codified into a rule or eventually into law.
So it's a long-term view, but I think we have three years minimum to enjoy it.
And I really hope that they use that innovation exemption action with some of these more edge case scenarios like DeFi lending and tokenized stocks
and that sort of thing.
If you're looking, just as an aside, it's free, right?
If you want to listen to my tokenization discussion,
it's on my LinkedIn.
It was also supposed to be on X,
but again, that feed didn't work.
But you can go to my LinkedIn and it's recorded
and you can see the live stream and it talks about, you know, what tokenization is and how
it works, the regulatory structure, you know, who should and shouldn't tokenize and how it's
impacted the stock bond and crypto markets. So if anybody out there is
interested in finding out more about tokenization, because it is leading the next phase of the
crypto market, check it out, again, free. So just take a look at it so you can get some
information about it. And there's no spin on it.
There's nothing in it except just facts.
So it's there for you.
But this is actually something really interesting.
And one thing I thought was really funny, and this happened today, is the DTCC, for those of you who don't know, the DTCC, the Deposit and Trust Corporation, whatever,
credit, I don't know what the hell that's for.
Clearing.
Clearing Corporation.
Thank you so much.
Depository Trust Clearing Corporation.
I'm going to just announce ahead of time my bias.
Thank you, everybody, for fixing that.
I am not a fan of theirs, right?
I think they do a lot of, I'm not, I'm not a fan of the DTCC.
They are basically bankers and brokers, right?
That's who the DTCC are.
You know, I'm a strategic advisor to DTCC, right?
Okay, don't listen.
This is going to make you feel bad.
I don't want you to feel bad.
I'm so sorry.
I don't mean it personally.
No, I can take it.
No, give it to me. I'd you to feel bad. I'm so sorry. I don't mean it personally. No, I can take it. No, give it to me.
I'd love to hear it.
Dennis has thick skin.
And Dennis is, one thing I love about Dennis is,
I think he's one of the few people that I think,
you know, comes more from institutional side
who really does get the DeFi and, you know,
the Web3 value.
I think that's something that has been great in us in our multiple calls together.
I'm like super, I'm a super fan of Dennis.
Honestly, I like love what you say.
I'm like, oh, it's just like where people are, you know, they're like, oh, you worked at the SEC.
You must love all regulation.
I'm like, nope.
But so I'm not. You never know with people. I'm like, nope. But so I'm not.
You never know with people.
Don't judge, right?
You never know with people.
Actually, real quick, before we go into this topic,
can Anthem, good friend, is here.
Can you introduce yourself, Mr. Anthem Hayek Blanchard?
Happy New Year. I don't think i've been
on your stage and thanks for having me on your stage rock and aztec and quick swap oh you've
been here before man right you've been on you've definitely been on several of our spaces i'm
pretty sure you've been on this one several times too not in the chinese new year for sure and i'm
not sure if in our whatever greg year, I don't even know.
It's above my pay grade.
So good to be here.
Anthem Hayek.
It's my middle name.
I was named after an economist.
I'm excited to be here.
I really kind of started Spaces, I think, with BitAngels.
And that's how I got acquainted with Rock.
And so super grateful to Michael Turpin and Elise Tham and just all all the great people that we've known each other longer than that man we uh i think that's where we started doing a lot
of speaking together and and got a lot more i think i guess intimate uh for lack of better
but platonic platonicly intimate but i mean i think've been, we've been DMing each other on like Facebook for
probably 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, well, when I, when I first, so this is crazy. So not to go
crazy, blah, blah, glaze, but, uh, I met, so I met my wife and she was working at a company called
market wire. And that was a company that Michael Turpin started. So we met in a bar in New Orleans on All Saints Day, which is November 1st in 2004. So that is like a crazy connection. Then I met Michael Turpin
in person at his BitAngels event pre-CES. We did a table sponsorship for a company that I had
founded at the time, Anthem Vault. And we had just did the world's first gold tokenized uh token that was you know
credited by reuters as a marketing publicity stunt backed 100 grams of gold and a fractional
allocated central um database system and was hugely popular and successful so much so that
we built a layer three gold token off of a counterparty, which was a layer two off of Bitcoin.
Hugely successful. The whole thing, we had like hundreds of people in the beta. It was all working
great. And then Bank of America shut down our accounts. I've been operation choke pointed four
times. I'm actually, I got to be careful because I'm in a civil lawsuit with the SEC right now.
It's been a dragnet operation since 2021 officially on that one. So I think
I've been choke pointed four or five times. I've lost count now. So choke points gone on for
really since. So pre the USA Patriot Act, which was in the works for over a decade, pre 9-11,
there was actually a precursor to that called the Bank Secrecy Act. And this all stems from
the Bank of International Settlements, ultimately. And the banking system is required or else it wouldn't be here. God
doesn't make mistakes. It's a supernatural system. And it's just been necessary because
God doesn't make mistakes. So here we are. And I'm super grateful to have this conversation.
Go team, public protocol, voluntary contracts super exciting much love everybody love wins
always sunshine cures all super grateful much love thanks everybody thanks and i'm
yeah much love it's great to hear your voice i'm i'm out in the sun i'm taking rocks
uh advice as he says every friday go out and get some sun. And so I'm not in front of my computer.
I don't have all the scripted questions and everything,
but I'm ready for this conversation.
Alex is out here swinging.
She was about to swing on someone on the panel.
No, I'm joking.
And it wasn't me this time.
No, but I'd love to also hear what Alex alex was gonna jump into because it sounded uh interesting
there but yeah great to have you anthem also i want to shout out richard um showing his writer
on the panel uh much love brother we we do a lot of work together all throughout lda and LitVM. Did I get everyone that's joined?
Because I'd love to...
Yeah.
Alex, please take it away again.
No, we missed...
Did Simon introduce from Protofar?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
That's the beginning.
Okay.
We did.
In the beginning, I was in the background inviting some more guests.
Alex, so something about the DTCC
sounded very fiery.
I know.
I feel bad now.
I really don't.
I'm not trying to stir up, you know,
crap on your stage here.
No, Alex, please.
No, please.
Go ahead.
Please, Alex, take your shot.
I'll take it.
Go ahead.
And then just before she does that, everybody, get out and walk.
Seriously, that's an order.
Go walk.
Get some sun.
Exercise your body.
Get your heart rate going and exercise your brain right here with us.
Okay.
Alex, help us exercise our brains.
I'm heading from here to the gym, so I'm about to go do that.
But so, okay, so this DTCC just got custody.
They're permitted now to be custody for tokenized securities, I believe.
So I saw this post on LinkedIn where DTCC got this right.
DTCC has also been trying to have its own chain for the securities markets. Because fundamentally, that settlement piece, right, is unnecessary once something like the markets become like basically go on blockchain, go on chain, right?
So the markets are moving on chain.
We see that as a trend, and that is a good trend.
Fundamentally, a lot of the problems with the markets happen because people are involved.
When we take the people out of the system, all the things like naked shorting and things like that,
problems with settlement, anything like that, all of that stuff comes out when we actually have
closing and settlement on-chain. So tokenized securities, tokenized, you know, making sure that the stock market actually
moves fully on-chain, all of that stuff is actually a good thing. What does it hurt?
It hurts companies like DTCC, right? So what did they do? They finagled themselves into a position
where they actually had a seat at this tokenized security, you know, like the tokenized marketplace,
which I thought was pretty, it's
smart, but it's also pretty funny. I'm because I actually made a comment like, you know, of course
they made themselves custodians because otherwise they have no purpose. So, which I thought was a
good thing personally. That was my. God damn it, Dennis. Now, now, now it's, now it's my turn.
Dennis.
Now it's my turn.
First of all, a lot of the work I do at DTCC,
and again, I have to be careful here
because it's not a DTCC sanctioned event or whatever,
but I guarantee you that I mean that.
So Dennis is here representing himself and not the DTCC.
There we go.
Disclaimer.
Now you can say it.
He's allied with the DTCC.
He's allied with the DTCC.
I am.
And, you know, I'm not even going to up the ante
and tell DTCC exactly what you said to them later today.
Do it, do it. Tell them.
I think I came from a company prior called Securrency
that was purchased by DTCC.
And for 10 years, DTCC was the post office.
Everyone kicked them around and said,
they're going to be the ones being disintermediated.
They're just a blockchain.
Who would all need a depository
on a decentralized ledger, right?
And the acquisition of currency created a new thing
called DDA or decentralized DTCC digital asset.
And DDA and DTCC has significantly shifted their thinking
on public blockchains.
They have a very aggressive, comprehensive view
that I think embraces public blockchains as much as possible.
The other thing I would say is if you're the DTC no action letter
with actually a massive gift to the industry,
and you're going to say, well, that doesn't, of course you would say that, Dennis, but
no, I'm serious.
Because as much as the SEC loves blockchain and everything, there's one uncomfortable
truth that they won't tell you, which is that they do not see blockchains as serious settlement
infrastructure yet.
We call these tier two, tier one.
We call these tier two, tier one.
And by the way, everything I'm saying is public.
You can look it up on the SEC no action letter.
So DTC is doing as much as possible
given the regulations and requirements
they're forced to have.
Because as a Reg SCA, Reg SCI is a depository,
they must comply with these regulations.
And the SEC task force is one saying,
fine, you can go on different networks,
I'll call it that.
But if you do so, you have to give us certain assurance that the national securities infrastructure
won't be compromised in doing so.
And so the three-year pilot that the no action letter started out is on the path
to broadening that horizon of actual securities on chain.
Now, the problem is, can blockchains meet those requirements? Should
they be able to? No, not at all. Number two, do we need severe regulations on securities as we
previously had to? Probably not. Number three, are we going to have only one mode of representation
for security, meaning tokenized stocks, direct share registry, full-on securities ownership, or even like a third market OTC bulk trading?
Maybe so. So I think DTCC and DDA, when I speak about DTCC, and the team I work with directly,
are actually extremely crypto-centric. They are very aware. There's been a lot of hard
discussion behind the scenes. Even my own project Ascend is about building a full investment
bank on Ethereum and bringing full native issuance and all that sort of stuff. And there
are real challenges. And DTC has actually pulled out Uno reverse card saying actually
we could go to these different networks, make the securities issuance possible. They have the technology developed. And then it's
a matter of the regulators to say, and also all the community to say, that's one way to do it.
That's not the only way to do it. And we think that some ways it's good, some ways it's bad.
And then cure that either through no actions, innovation exemptions, or through different law.
And ultimately, the main goal is what is the
boundary of market structure? How much permission do you have to do on chain before you can translate?
And this is my core life right now. When I speak to the head of Ethereum and the head of different
networks, the number one goal in my life right now is getting bonafide actual securities on chain,
but accessible to DeFi for everybody.
And that's the work I do.
So I would love, Alex,
it's the first time meeting with you.
You're obviously a very brilliant person and connect.
And I will assure that any concern or regret you have,
I will give it right to the top of DTCC.
So thank you so much for bringing that up.
Oh, 100%, let's connect.
Cause I think this is actually a really interesting project. And one of the things that's actually very interesting is if you read that
tokenized statement from the SEC, which is the dumbest fucking, excuse me, I'm swearing all over
the place, but I am trying to control it, but it's hard for me. Okay, this statement that came out from the SEC regarding tokenization
was kind of as straddling the line as possible. And I have a lot of swear words that come out
usually when I try and discuss this thing, and I'm trying hard to control it so that I can act
like a grown-up here. But, you know, the way that it works out right now is when you're actually
trying to do an issuance, if you're an issuer of tokenized securities,
you still have to have, you know, the paper version, right?
You have to do the ledger, the, the paper ledger at the same time.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Digital twin.
Yeah.
It's a digital twin.
Yeah.
And,
and they even have this idea that you would have a crypto version that does nothing but signal that I want to trade my stock to this particular person,
this particular wallet, which has already been, of course, KYC'd, and you need to change the
ledger there. So essentially, the movement on chain is nothing but signaling, has absolutely nothing to do with actual ownership registration change.
And that to me is like that that misses the point entirely of the market itself.
So, I mean, this to me was very it was it was almost a ridiculous sort of idea that everything is still done in paper.
I mean, it was.
Yeah, no, we agree.
I mean, everyone agrees.
And the reason for that stupidity is that the SEC and the regulators, whether it's NIST or CFTC, don't have the comfort.
I'm not just talking beyond the leadership, which is very kind.
I'm actually talking about like, you know, the task force and everyone. It's in the no action letter.
So you can read it in the DTC no action letter. But the gripe was that, and again, this isn't
actually, this is where DTC gets stuck in a rock and a hard place. You have regulators who are
going to enforce heavy restrictions and compliance like failover stay, resiliency, SLAs, and all these other kind
of heavy stuff to prove that they are a bona fide settlement infrastructure. And then on the other
side, you have blockchains like Ethereum would say, we're up for 11 years. We're super resilient
with most hardened, you know, the Lazarus Group has gone after us. And so who says, who proves
it who first? Like Sue, you know, do you ask the Ethereum or Solana Foundation
to purposely fail over part of the blockchain
to prove to the regulators that they're resilient?
Of course not. It's absurd.
So this is like part of what I talk about in terms of the rule set is,
well, how do you cure that?
How do you cure one side which believes,
hey, our technology is provably better than what you have.
Another side that says, yeah, but we have a rubric that we're forced to implement that
says this is how we know for sure.
So it's a classification issue.
And DTCC is not built to solve that.
They're trying in the way that the SEC allowed them to.
And I think that's going to be a big part of when I taught, when you see like market
structure clarity, one of my personal things I look for is,
can a blockchain, natively, public, whatever,
be a tier one native settlement layer?
Can you get rid of these stupid digital twins,
which just report back to bulky centralized infrastructure?
Get rid of the paperwork.
And by the way, I'm going to give a shout out to a project I worked on,
which is the ADDM DLT Foundation Framework
in Abu Dhabi and Dimitri, who's
behind that. The reason why I shout that out is we work very hard that there's actually
no paper twin or legal entity for DAOs and DAO frameworks. It's effectively a safe harbor.
The DAO gets incorporated in ADDM, but it's not jurisdictionally bound. It doesn't have
legal paperwork next to it. It's a true digital issuance in that case. It's one in ADGM, but it's not jurisdictionally bound. It doesn't have legal paperwork next to it.
It's a true digital issuance in that case.
It's one of the few ones I know of a pure digital issuance.
This is a real problem.
It's not a DTCC-specific problem.
What's that one called again, Dennis?
ADGM, Abu Dhabi Global Markets, DLT Foundation Framework, if you want to check it out.
But what Alex is saying is absolutely right, and it's very much debated internally, internally as well as like, why do we have to do this if it's a superior
infrastructure? And this is the catch-22 part of the innovation exemption is no one, who is to say
that the prior rules should apply? And how do you force the blockchains to apply to them? Of course,
that's absurdity. So that's work to be done in my view, like when you want to get into the real
weeds of what
we talk about, is exactly one of those things, Alex, that you are correct in thinking it's
multiple expletive issue. Like for real. And I'm thinking almost like, you know,
is it computer share that is actually, you know, like the major transfer agents that are coming in
and trying to make sure that they have a stake in this or something, because, you know, the need for duplication at some of these choke points is kind of ridiculous
and it's embedded, you know, and the fact that you can make third-party markets on OTC markets,
but you still need a digital twin for third-party markets through this new piece of
regulation. This to me is, why? Why would you say something like that? It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, but it affects equally. So even if you take the direct share issuance model like Superstate
and Securitize that they're doing, they're still bound to the same common denominator that a blockchain is not a
bona fide settlement infrastructure.
This is something that DeFi has absolutely enjoyed.
And I think was, you know, if they didn't,
if Genster didn't try to kill Aave and Uniswap through regulation,
they could try to kill them through definition of what the technology they're
operating on is.
It's a big problem.
Why are they paying that, Dennis?
Is there like a main thing that they're pointing at?
Yeah, so to be a national settlement infrastructure, this is like comes from 9-11 and that time.
So if you're NYSE, ICME, CBOT, DTCC, Euroclear, Clearstream, you're what's called a SIFMU or a GCIF
for your globally systemically important
for institutions,
which means that if a lot of people think
in terms of like Basel requirements,
like Fed requirements for reserve,
but this is actually about hardware,
you know, talking servers and data centers.
And before blockchain was a fight,
cloud was a major fight.
And the reason is that the regulators
severely scrutinized the hardware infrastructure and data center infrastructure that these GCIFIs use because they could be national security attack.
Like the U.S. stock market infrastructure is at the same level as the nuclear triad or a power plant infrastructure.
If you were a nation state in order to materially attack a data center, it could be considered like an actual act of war, believe it or not.
And so the scrutiny of this is extremely intense.
Now, obviously, you hear me saying this, you can imagine that now you bring in a global
decentralized ledger, hardware nodes operated by anybody and everyone across the world that
is way more resilient, way more latent, all this other stuff.
Well, then how do you manage the U.S. securities infrastructure on a ledger they don't fundamentally
control?
And this goes to the separation of monetary policy and state.
And this is something that's going to have to be looked at in terms of how we view our
hardware settlement infrastructure.
Because every bank that has this has to go through very serious, you know, they're observed by the regulator.
It's all public, so you can look it up.
And they're forced to failover to data centers, meet certain requirements on latency, meet certain attack,
meet certain cyber requirements, meet certain, like, concentration requirements.
A lot of people talk about, oh, blockchains, they're on AWS or Azure or Google Cloud or whatever.
This is to a whole nother level.
And so who at the blockchain foundations do you force to comply to this?
And the answer is you can't and they won't and they shouldn't.
And that's really the rub of what we're talking about.
And DTCC sits on top of that, as does all the transfer agents and everyone, really.
And it's a deeper problem that's being figured out now.
Well, it's difficult because the regulations were built for centralized companies.
And now we have disruptors.
We have blockchains that don't need and, like you said, shouldn't have to be required to
and, frankly, can't conform to those regulatory standards.
And so that question becomes, do we blunt, do we slow down,
or do we force them to comply through some weird and roundabout ways
and basically slow them down and make them as inefficient as the banks?
And that's what's happening, interestingly, with Coinbase
and this fight happening right now also.
But do we slow everyone down to have like a
handicap to stay with the rest of the people so it's a fair playing field? Or do we allow innovation
to thrive and allow things to be disrupted? And I hope that the regulators see and they're not,
you know, bribed too much with campaign donations, that they, you know, slow us down instead of forcing the banks to speed up
or the, you know, all the other entities to get on our level.
And last point on this, if people are curious, you know,
this is not the SEC necessarily or the CFTC.
This is actually part of the OCC, the Fed, and NIST,
the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
that set a lot of these requirements.
And my argument to all the world chains is prove that you're a better standard or a better infrastructure.
Go and show them.
And I think in this current administration, where you have the innovation and consumption, you have mechanisms,
mechanisms, you know, that is going to be a natural thing. And to DTC's credits, they did
you know, that is going to be a natural thing.
absolve the bank, the blockchains from having to comply with this. As you can read in the no action
letter, they kind of punted, but it was not a easy topic as far as I understand. I think it's
the blockchains credit. I personally believe that, and again, I worked at Bank of New York Mellon.
I believe that the settlement infrastructure on tokenized treasuries is superior.
Sorry for my alma mater.
It's superior.
But who is going to be the one
to tell them that?
Who's going to be the one
to listen to that?
How do you actually qualify that?
How do you deal with
like serious issues like,
you know,
big,
or nation state.
It can't be just
seeing the shoulders that, that no we don't
unfortunately
and again
it's right
we don't have
proof
is Dennis cutting out for others
he's cutting out for me and I'm missing words
Dennis the last
10 seconds there
oh yeah hey guys can you hear me better yeah so Dennis, the last 10 seconds there. Oh, yeah.
Hey, guys, can you hear me better?
Yeah.
So I disagree that it should be on the blockchains as a responsibility.
It should be on the rule makers to reach out and actually create a pathway framework to show that blockchains is superior infrastructure.
And I think what I said is that working at Bank of New York Mellon, you knowon you know I believe that you know tokenized treasuries have been on blockchains now
for at least four years and I don't think they've ever had an issue um and so that needs to be said
you know to that it is actually a superior infrastructure well someone has to mobilize
around it right it's probably the reality so rwa.xyz is an awesome website to see exactly what you're talking about there with, you know, U.S. Treasuries oil coming on chain.
Practically speaking, I don't have insight into the banking securities like you all do.
I do have a little bit of insight into like the power utility infrastructure and trying a failed startup that dealt with cybersecurity, the challenge I saw was that metered, gridded
administrative operators, it's just too much security risk ultimately, because there's
all of these credential risks that are just inherent with administrative networks.
And I think behind the meter, so to speak, is what they kind of call it in the power
is just a necessity of math.
And I think very similarly similarly i can see kind of
parallel maybe like you know i'm assuming dtcc has a new co that's probably doing this as a new co
you know as well as like trying to you know hope for the best kind of thing within the existing
you know administrative construct it's just you can't really make an apple an orange, so to speak. You know what I mean?
Well, yeah, I think the ideal case, and again, talking amongst my friends at DTCC,
is that they don't really want to have to deal with that, right? Is just say that a blockchain
is a tier one compliant infrastructure. And, you know, honestly, it's a liability on DTC to operate
on these chains, which is also kind of not fair.
And I think that's actually one of these things where you have the appearance of gatekeeping and, you know,
but it's really these kind of like minutiae, you know, kind of deep in the details like,
oh, wait a second, we actually haven't certified these blockchains,
but should we even kind of things that have to be brought out into the open?
Because, again, this is the benefit
of having this open regulatory,
back to your first icebreaker question
is we're now able to get to the point
where we can actually talk about the key issues
of separation of monetary policy and state,
which is on the hardware level.
So I'm hungry for information on this.
Anthem, if you have more,
I'd love to hear more about it because I'm still learning on yeah you're welcome to DM I I host a co-host
a daily space called brother the crypto in life it's three to four Eastern I'm part of crypto
spaces Network with the largest media group on X and you're always welcome to join and welcome to
DM me anytime uh my phone number is pretty public 702-569-3431 you can text me however you
want to get a hold of me uh i'm i'm honored i've i've been in crypto um commercially uh
technically since like 2012 like as like an architect builder and then i started actually
i spoke with alex a little bit about this alex you'll be happy to hear that i've continued the
law app since we kind of spoke about it over the summer, roughly. And I actually had to kind of probably going to,
I was calling it claw. Now that clawed bot is such a big thing. I actually have a really good
rebrand for it, but I'm not going to mention it this time. So, but yeah, I'm actually, I'm starting
to use cursor AI and 5.3 codecs with like a 5.2 is kind of my general and so that that's been
really good i've been doing that since pretty much the beginning of the year so i think about two
months away i've got like four really really cool law utilities like agreement adjudicator e-signer
uh liability personal liability tool and like a timeline tool basically on v1 so all web 3 on the
back web 2 out of necessity
on the front of course so yeah we'll see we'll see i'm gonna give it give it a roll no investment
no tge just like pushing it behind a liquidity pool basically all the receipts basically of you
know pos so we'll see how it goes we're giving it giving it a roll see if we can do what satoshi
did for money for law here give it give a go. Why not? Right. Anyway, much love, everybody. Much love.
Thanks for the opportunity to be on stage. Always fun.
Yeah. So I've got a question.
So I want to say, first of all, like, thank you, everybody that has, you know,
that has spoken so far.
I've learned a lot about the state of regulations and what's actually going on to a very good extent.
But the question I have is, all of this is happening in the United States, right?
What's actually a conversation like in Europe? Because from my my own perspective it appears like there's an
actual conversation going on in the united states oh how are we going to do these what are limitations
what are constraints how can we work around it are we going to work around it but from from the
direction of europe right it's just like oh yeah we don't care about any of this shit like we're
just going to block it all is that really what's going on or is there like a conversation like this happening over there yeah i can tell you before someone goes in more oh yeah more technically
i'll let you jump in there simon i mean i'll just say that from a very high level view um and you
know knowing a lot of people in europe and people that actually are various companies and including
our venture studio and our portfolio companies who have moved out of the UK, out of Europe, because it has been so bad for crypto and so aggressive against them
and threatening basically their livelihood, their freedom, their family's freedom.
And so when you look at the European Union over the last 15, 20 years, I mean, they've made a series of bad decisions.
They decided not to embrace energy.
They embraced less energy.
They did not embrace crypto.
They are not embracing AI. And so every new technology and every important piece of the puzzle, they're deciding to rule against in the name of safety.
the opposite, in the name of safety.
And this has just put them so behind Naples.
I mean, if you look at energy production,
I always bring up this chart.
It's just such an important one to see,
really just like where the world is going,
where the different regions of the world are moving.
And you see that it has actually gone down
in energy production in the last 20 years,
which is insane to me.
As a, you know, you're supposed to be a growing civilization. You should be going up in energy production in the last 20 years, which is insane to me. You're supposed
to be a growing civilization. You should be going up in energy production and consumption.
They've gone down. The US has gone barely up and China has gone up by 10 times. So we've gone up
by like 20% in the US. So we're fucking up big time here too. But basically, Europe is making
all the wrong decisions, in my opinion. And it's sad to see such a beautiful, historic, you know, center of culture with so much history just destroy itself.
I think it's indicative. Culture is dead. Trust is dead. Commerce is dead.
Administrative systems are dead.
The digital natives on the planet outnumber us analog natives. I'm 46 years old. I am firmly an analog native, even as a privileged
white male, even privileged within the most privileged nation state as I've been alive.
And even today, even still, right, a digital native can whoop my ass today, right, like in terms of actually being
relevant commercially, and so it's just math, right, that's just how I look at it, and like,
this is indicative, I mean, let's be honest, you know, we say U.S. is a Judeo-Christian country,
like, it's a really all-Roman, the Rome, I would suggest, you know, the culture still, so
it's just things to look at, these are just observations you're making, Rock, right, it's not like, you know, you're not saying, oh, you're not like indicting anything. It's just like, hey, these are just observations, right? These are just messaging observations.
Yeah, Alex, you got your hand up?
So legally, right, I'm involved with like several projects and several groups that are primarily European.
And it's interesting. the MECA law, right, which conforms with the FATF, which is the Financial Action Task Force,
which we're also obligated to comply with, which is actually a lot of what the Senate Banking
Committee's version of the Clarity Act draws from. It draws from some of those Treasury regulations
that actually come from FATF, which we're supposed to be complying with. That's the whole thing about
VASPs and stuff like that. All of that stuff, how we view digital assets and things like that,
that's all in MECA and how a lot of the world that deals with, that's 200 countries that deal with FATF, they're all looking at
digital assets. And primarily, they also have a couple of other issues. One of them is this
fundamental right to disappear. Immutability and right to disappear are fundamentally opposed,
right? So there's this general construct that, remember that
blockchain has three areas where it is fundamentally superior than any other technology,
right? Identity, finance, and ownership. But with the right to disappear, you have two of those
areas that become questionable. They are not really willing to experiment with blockchain
in these two areas, even though it can protect identity and identity through ownership because
of immutability, which is, in my opinion, it's a huge mistake. But that is the way it seems to be
shaping up in Europe. And it's not my country, so I don't have any say there. So finance tends to be shaping up in Europe, and it's not my country, so I don't have any say there.
So finance tends to be where they're focusing. The issue right now with finance is the areas they focus on primarily all deal with central banks, right? So everything there, when they're
talking about what assets to tokenize, what things would settle, Almost every asset that they talk about is something that is central bank,
is a central bank asset, right? Central bank like fiat or something like that.
And when they're talking about other assets, the problem that they have is the biggest
European generally, right? Stock exchange isn't even European anymore, right? The London Stock Exchange
is the biggest exchange there. You don't really have an exchange that is as recognized as the LSE,
and it is not included in the EU. So you don't really have another exchange that has the depth
as another exchange. So we have several stock exchanges where we could take the stock that has
a huge amount of liquidity and talk about tokenizing those things. We have a lot of
liquidity in those stocks. They don't have that, right? Like the German exchange, the French
exchange, those have some liquidity, but not nearly what we're talking
about is these gigantic international exchanges like LSE, right? So the biggest issue that they
have is that they don't really have these assets that have the same type of international liquidity
as the assets that we have. And it's a real problem problem so when they're talking about what exactly would they put on these
exchanges financially they don't have many um assets there that uh other than raw assets right
so you could talk about like um raw assets like um like uh like you know um uh like kind of rare
earth type of things right like uh you know things that you dig out of the ground, energy, things like that.
Those kinds of things you could tokenize.
But when you're talking about secondary assets, they don't have very much.
And they don't have a general EU policy for derivative assets, which they're considering,
like Bitcoin or Ethereum, because those go by country.
So it's very difficult, for example, like remember when there was this big sell-off of Bitcoin?
And that was because there was a little municipality in Saxony, in Germany, that had seized a bunch of illegal Bitcoin and they had to get rid of it
by whatever it is, 150 days after they'd seized it. And so they just sold it. They didn't know
what to do with it, right? So you have basically a bunch of municipalities that have all these
different policies about what to do with digital assets or various other assets. There's not really
like a unified policy. So they don't really have like a collection of giant, deep liquid assets.
So it's a really difficult thing when you talk about Europe. It's very different than, say,
something like China or something like, you know, even something like, you know, Indonesia or Singapore, Japan, something like that.
Because there there's a policy, a unified policy of something where all of these deep assets would be moving forward in one in one systemic way.
Here it's it's just very difficult for them.
So all they really have is the is the European Central Bank.
And that's basically all that they're really looking at tokenizing.
Yeah, thank you very much for that, Alex. I really appreciate that breakdown.
Hey, guys, I just want to say I have to go, but it's been an enormous pleasure being with everyone.
Thank you, Rock and LDA for having me so much.
I really appreciate it.
It was a pleasure meeting everyone, Alex and Anthem.
And shout out to Gary Cardone.
I'm actually a student of the 10X Mentorship Program,
which actually was one of the best mentor programs I've ever taken.
And I owe a lot of my success to that.
So a shout out to you and your brother.
We're fantastic.
Thank you guys so much for having me.
I really appreciate the opportunity today.
And please check out Ascend.
We're looking to be the world's first on-chain investment bank
and build a full bridge from RWA into DeFi on-chain.
So a pleasure here.
Thank you guys so much.
Yeah, Dennis, we'll get it.
Our pleasure.
Great having you here on the show, Dennis.
Rock, you were saying?
Yeah, we'll get actually something from Ascend posted to the Jumbotron.
Richard, can you find something and then post it to the Jumbotron, please?
From the Ascend account?
And I recommend to follow Ascend.
They're doing really good work,
really excited about what they're building,
really merging TradFi and Web3.
Please follow everyone up here on the panel,
taking time out on this Friday
to discuss these hard questions.
And I really appreciate everyone here today i'd love to you know i see that we've kind of outlined where we
are today with the regulatory climate uh we've talked about you know some of the big players
talked about, you know, some of the big players, some of the pieces of
regs that are out there, you know, also some of it being stalled, some of the issues, etc.
I'd really like to ask the panel here, where do you see us going from here today are we going to see much of the same
is the regulatory climate going to get better in your guys opinion uh what can we expect for the
future i wanted to echo and i want to echo the things before i'll give a quick little brief on
my take before i'd like to listen to the rest of the panel.
And thanks, Rock and Aztec, a quick swap.
And really awesome panel.
I think we're in for a hardcore credit contraction
in the next few weeks, potentially.
Look at the Interbank St. Louis Fred rate.
You'll see it's eerily similar to what it looked like six years ago.
They post every 15th of the month.
And I think this is a big bailout of
china i think um it's just a bunch of u.s treasuries that landed on belgians uh balance
sheet through china ultimately this is a big administrative bailout globally it reminds me a
lot of like kind of a japan on steroids 35 years ago or so um and so i would be very very careful
and so I would be very, very careful.
That said, you can see that there's been about $8 billion of spot assets
that have been added of real-world assets, mainly U.S. treasuries.
If you look at RWA XYZ, you can see it clearly.
Canton, Ondo are interesting chains to me because of that.
And those numbers don't lie.
If that spot in the banking system can do probably 200 easily X leverage on that, I mean, 8 billion, you know, you're looking at easily like trillions of dollars that have been added leverage basically into tokens already, but that are just sitting dormant basically, you know, not in central exchanges so you know i've also noticed you know some black rock money
coming on to some central exchanges recently more and so again i'd just be really really careful
of big big liquidity sponges you know u.s treasuries to me look super hot right now if i
was if i was a big time guy you know if i was little time guy you know i would just be really
careful you know stables like usdc or t you know, stables like USDC or Tether
or whatever, or something like that.
Do IOR, I would just be really, really, uh, lots of opportunities right now.
Good time to like DCA start like small DCAs or monthly, you know, cost averaging or weekly
in my view, just, you know, I would be really, really cautious the next few weeks.
It looks like a gigantic credit contraction.
And the Clarity Act, I think, is basically being used as a way to administrate the timing,
basically, whilst the mandates from all of the big TradFi institutions that are mandated
into crypto are able to basically get their clients in, of course, get themselves in and
get their owners in.
That's already been happening, which is good.
This is like a peaceful orderly progression
from administration to automation.
The owners are bought in,
us peasants are bought in,
the rest of the bourgeoisie middle-class
administrative class effectively obsoletes.
We all become solopreneur architects.
It's here, it's here, it's here.
Super exciting, super exciting.
Much love, Love wins always.
So I think that it was actually a great, great thing. And I want to give like a few things from my side from when it comes to this sort of like a direction, because know the case here is that we never know what can happen like it can go like one way or another there's like uh the
grass is green on the other side of the rainbow and you know i would say that direction right now
that we are seeing that we might potentially see might be better but more complicated but it all
will also depend on who you are in a space and what you're doing.
Because I think that in 2026, we actually shifted from existential phase to implementation phase.
And whether it's better depends entirely on who you are in the market. So for institutions, it's vastly better because rules like Genius Act and some others have
turned crypto into the another regulated assets class on their balance sheets.
However, for retail and DeFi, it feels worse or at least more complex as we are in a transit
phase from a parishioners wild west to a world as, for example, like a 36% unrealized gains taxes in Netherlands and the Mika enforcement.
So I think that prioritizes this surveillance over privacy.
And it might just go like in both ways, to be fair.
Because I know that like the, you know, the Canada, it's actually mirroring the Genius Act.
The UK is finalizing its own stablecoin rules.
The Singapore, Hong Kong, Brazil, everyone is moving because nobody wants to lose the capital to other markets.
And I think that the tone globally shifted from how do we control it to how do we attract those.
And that's actually the fundamental change that we'll be seeing with every single person in that front.
And about the MECA regulations, I actually saw that there's like one single country that haven't put this into the vote and it's actually Poland. So the Polish president,
it's actually the new one who actually voted against Mika rules. And I just checked recently
that because of that, he wants to attract new crypto builders and startups heading that direction.
But the projects that are actually
based over there and they're building, they just need to go to be regulated abroad. So like to
Lithuania or Estonia. So that's actually a pretty interesting sub case for this one.
But the response on it, it's actually that he just wants to make sure that the builders and the people who are inside of the Web3 space and are doing things with the Bitcoin will not be in some sort of like a regulatory vacuum just to have the like some bits of freedom with that being said.
bits of a freedom with that being said. But getting back to the longer window, I would say
we might just see there will be things that are built like relatively open, unregulated DeFi
infrastructure. It's something that's still open, but it will be not permanent. And the question here will be like, it's whether the DeFi gets regulated fully, or it's whether or not that regulations that comes in written
by people who understand what they're regulating. So that's one of the cases. And that's actually
the positive signal here, I think, because in 2025, a lot of courts started to protect their open source developers,
ruling that if you write the code and deploy it without controlling custody,
or they're like the sole system users, you're not primarily liable for what happens on top of it.
So that's actually a huge thing from that front.
But the other thing is also the tax piece because
the thing that I said about the tax side of things, it's with Netherlands. They actually
did the first 36% tax on unrealized gains going to kill their market potentially and you know i think that this it can be some sort of like a
canary in a coal mine because the dutch lower house approved it and on the february like a few
weeks a few days back and you know it's like a 36 flat tax on paper profit, you know, if it goes up to 10k this year, you owe like 3600 even if you
didn't sell a single way out of it. So it can just slatter everything and it's supposed to go
in at the full scale like by 2028. And I think that in that case, you might be like, if you're
owner and you're having your assets and you're not doing any single bit out of it, you'll pay rent for having your assets to the government, which is actually the saddest part out of those.
So, you know, I think that from that, if we're heading into direction, it will be better or worse.
I think that it will just be will be something we will notice like in
an upcoming weeks. And I think that Anton just mentioned it like pretty nicely
and widely, that some of those might be just actually interesting to have an eye
on and the next weeks and months will give us like a proper clarity check on
everything.
That's very interesting taken.
One of my fears is that things just get stalled or that they, uh, it's more of the
same, you know, I would, I would love to see well-written regulation put in place
in sandboxes like Alex was referring to earlier.
in, in sandboxes like Alex was referring to earlier.
But Alex, do you have a take on how you see the future
of the next five years in regulation looking like?
Oh God, like five years.
That's like a century and a half, right, in crypto?
century and a half, right, in crypto. So, you know, I don't know. But I'm not really optimistic
So I don't know.
about the regulations that are coming out now, because if you see the versions that are coming
out, they're extremely different, right? So it's really hard to comport the version that the Senate comes out with, with the House version, right?
They're looking at things from such different angles that it's like, it's really hard to reconcile these issues.
And there isn't really an impetus right now that is pushing them to reconcile, right? If you look at how fast the
banks pass a law, like literally in two days, they can get something through Congress. We don't have
that. We don't have that impetus. We do when Trump is motivated, but he's not right now. He's got
other things that he's focused on, and we're too disorganized. That is a big problem in the U.S., right? We're disorganized,
we're self-interested, we're tribal. We've got too much going in too many directions to unify
and pull together legislation that will just move the technology forward.
the technology forward. That's a big problem. We need to figure out how to speak as one for the
technology. And then we can be however tribal we want by ourselves, right? Like, look, man,
you argue around the Thanksgiving table, however the hell you want, but someone comes after your
family, you're one united family. And I know everybody comes after me and says, you want, but someone comes after your family, you're one united family.
And I know everybody comes after me and says, you know, there is no, you know,
there's no united front in blockchain or whatever. That's the problem, right? That's the problem.
The fact that we're all, we all have all of our different groups and the fact that we all have all of the, you know, like we we've we've grown these chains by by tribalism. Right.
And that, you know, Bitcoin fans are completely separate from people who who back other chains and who backs a particular chain matters. Right.
And and that if you back one chain, that means de facto you can't back the other
chain. That's all stupid. I mean, it's really all fundamentally stupid. You know, we don't have the
institutional support of a lot of money, right? A lot of institutional money. They're not supporting
us. Institutional money does not support us, right? They work against us. Really, what they want are private chains that don't need regulation, right? They don't involve regulation because they're really just backends to their institutional money. The stuff that's being regulated is the stuff that moves towards retail.
is an understanding that, look, some chains are going to fail and some will succeed.
Some protocols will fail and some will succeed.
It really doesn't matter.
All of us need to understand that together we have to put forward this idea that here
is what we need to succeed, whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana or base or whatever.
It doesn't really matter.
We need to put forward this united front that this is what we need in order to succeed.
These are the people that we're trying to protect. These are the people who don't need protection.
These are the rules that we'll comply with. These are the rules that make no sense.
We're the ones that need to come forward because they're making rules without us.
And that is damaging us, right? It's damaging the technology. It's damaging our ability to use it.
They will put up walls instead of gates.
There are no gates, right?
Regulators do not understand how to put up gates, right?
A wall with a door, right?
If you pass this, then you are able to enter.
It's either an open hole or a wall.
And if we don't-
How do we do that though,lex like i think you're right
you know i see that i'm in the space i see the the um
everyone at each other's throats how how do we make what you're saying happen in your opinion
like do you or is there anyone that you you think is making headway here with bringing everyone
together? I don't really see it. I mean, we need somebody who's just not as devoted to one side or
the other. And everybody who's got a loud voice in this space seems to be devoted to a particular thing, right? We give space, we give platform, we give
voice to the people who are vested in something, right? We give backing to them. We need to stop
doing that, right? We need to stop giving voice and backing to people only because they know it.
We need to give backing to people who because they know it.
We need to give back to people who are promoting something that's everything better for all of us.
And the problem is many of us don't even see what's better for all of us.
And truly what's better for all of us is to keep access open, right?
Because remember, fundamentally, the biggest issue
and the benefit for retail investors is the accredited investor rule.
Most people do not have the ability to invest in anything that has the opportunity to have multiple layers of growth.
of growth, it takes seven years to do something in the private sector that it takes 40 years to do
in the public sector, right? So if you invest in something that's in the private early stage,
it takes you seven years, right, to create the kind of growth that it would take you 40 years
in the public stock market. That is the kind of multiple that you're talking about. Now, that's because of the
accredited investor rule. What retail investors have access to in crypto is the ability to invest
in new companies that have the ability to grow. The problem is there's a lot of garbage. That's
not unique to crypto. That's not unique to crypto, right? There's garbage everywhere. The problem is
they're trying to save us from garbage being created and invested in. Guess what? Rich people
invest in garbage all the time. Poor people can invest in garbage too. Retail investors can invest
in garbage, right? It just costs less if it's crypto, right? But this is the issue is that we have to keep our eyes on the prize, right? We have to keep our
eyes on the goal. Well, exactly, Alex, and honestly, liability, which Dennis brought up,
because I'm dealing with this directly with the SEC right now. And I did like multiple Reg D
exempt offerings before this. I had like all accredited from an investment advisory,
and they still up and down my ass for a $5 million raise that I lost by far the most in.
And it was a 25 grand minimum per person.
So capital formations or securities in the U.S. is basically dead for startups.
And basically, if it's dead in the U.S., it's dead everywhere else.
Everything has to be tokenized now, practically.
People will figure that out sooner or later for themselves.
I know that for
a fact because i'm living that perspective right now so that's a reality i mean but but like alex
like what what do you think about stand with crypto or or do we need to create some type of
like association where where you know it's based on a Dow and I don't know, there's some, like, what do we do?
It's focused on the idea that it's unaccredited investors. It's not just crypto, right? This is
the thing. We're so narrow. Everybody thinks so short term, so narrow. This is not just about
crypto. This is all unaccredited investors.
How many people are that?
Hundreds of millions.
Millions.
Let's talk about non-accredited investors.
They need to understand what this is.
Now, here's the thing.
Blockchain should have an exemption for the way that it's raised, right?
The way it raises capital.
Why?
Because whenever we try to raise capital the way VCs love us raising capital,
it gets screwed up.
They love their MVP lean startup model.
And we can't do that.
We can't build on a fast timeline.
That forces off-chain builds.
That's where scams come from, right?
A blockchain build is a very different thing. It requires a community. It's much longer. It's come from, right? A blockchain build is a very different thing.
It requires a community.
It's much longer.
It's in public, right?
And you do have to raise money from your community.
It requires a different structure.
I don't even think you have to do that, honestly.
I actually disagree with that last part.
I think you can just push it all behind the liquidity pool these days.
But I love everything else that you feel.
You could do that.
You could.
You could do that.
But the liquidity pool who's funding.
Well, ultimately, you can from credit card receipts is the way I see it from, you know, people using a service that actually is kick ass and people love using.
Like, why not?
But how do you build your service?
You can do that with agentic AI.
I mean, I'm using frickin like eighty dollar a month tools basically right now.
Now, I've been an architect for over 20 years, but i've only started coding since september i didn't even read but that's but that's if you're doing then you're
not doing something on well i am doing stuff on chain i just haven't gotten there yet and i already
know what to architect on right because i've been in this space building for over a decade so i've
gotten my hands building as a creator for over a decade architecting products in the space i've
done like three gold stable tokens internally
we did multiple builds externally with harris soft or third party web3 custom builds for people that
we had to do because guess what nobody in administrative enterprise wants anything
immutable or anything that's incorruptible or has 100 uptime they need the delete button why
because dennis said the word liability.
It's that simple.
It's just freaking math.
Administrative systems have infinite more liability than automated systems.
It's cut and dry.
There's no competition.
And now that language models have gotten to where they are,
it's only a matter of probably another two halving cycles at best
before language models and agentic all go public protocol administrative list as well
at this point because that's basically that and then like the web itself practically which
obviously we all know is like been attempted for over a decade on web 3 with like eth domain names
etc so i mean all the pieces are there and now that the legacy is coming in and you can see it on the RWA is like RWA XYZ website.
It's clear as day what's happening.
It's clear as day what is happening.
So I have to take off, but I'm just going to say, and I appreciate what you're saying.
The only thing I'm going to say is that you can't many, many people have raised money by doing something else in order to raise funds for what they're doing.
Most people, most bills are millions of dollars, and they cannot fund the build, like the heavy build.
They used to be.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
You used to work at the SEC, Alex.
I have actually worked in self-funded startups of millions of my dollars for over 20 years.
Hold on.
Please hold on. Please hold on. I because i architect could be system two years ago it cost
me millions of dollars to do today it cost me less than thousands of dollars there's a million
the time efficiency practically on software build that's a fact i live that fact i know that i love
you love wins always sometimes cures all that's it okay i understand what you're saying let me
just finish all right i have to get going i'm'm really, really late. But I'm actually, my next discussion,
my next talk is on AI and LLMs and how they work and all that stuff. So if anybody's interested,
it's on Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific. The only thing is that this is a separate thing that has to actually be that there should be a hole for this.
There should be an exemption for how blockchain is built because it is fundamentally separate from the way most things have to be built.
And the way that we get this stuff passed is by bringing people together that are not just in blockchain, right? We have unity with people that are not in blockchain in, not just in blockchain, but in general,
people think very small. They think only in their lane. And they really need to think
much bigger. Like, think about how the benefits that we can bring from laws that we pass can
benefit everybody who has a restriction from accredited investor rules. The benefits that
we bring from a loophole can benefit everybody with heavy builds, right?
There are all sorts of things that we can bring.
And these are all things that we can bring unity
and pass laws this way.
And I really appreciate the stage.
Thank you so much.
Much love, Alex.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, everyone.
I also have to go.
Anthem, it's really great talking to you. Alex, I'd love to, and I know you're heading off, so I'm not sure if you'll hear this, but I'd love to sync with you again. system on litvm i think a lot of these pain points that we've been discussing today are things that
i'd love to tackle in the future and so i hope to discuss with everyone here that was on uh you know
finding ways to to solve these things uh but rock i i have to go also i i'm not sure if uh you want
to continue going here we've been going for
two hours unless we have any other conversation yeah yeah unless we have any other big guests
coming up darren that are scheduled that we need to stay on for uh i got a bunch of stuff to do too
we've been on here for two hours it was a pretty exciting discussion uh learned a lot actually
as i always do on these spaces um so i think we could probably
call you here i will say yeah um is alex did she drop okay yeah she already dropped yeah i want to
link her up with uh ascend later actually part of the reason we brought ascend and her was to get
them to meet i think they might have some stuff to talk about and that's one of the things we try
to do on this show is connect people uh all right guys episode 150 we are almost at three years and uh yeah look forward to that show
that'll be an exciting one there will be some kind of announcements and maybe some changes and
things and uh yeah a little teaser but okay guys cheers everyone thank you much love thank you. Much love. Thank you, Aztec. You guys are here every Friday. Have a good one.
Take care.
Have a good one, guys.
Thanks, Anthem.
Thanks, Darren, for helping put this all together. Thank you, Flippin' Finance.
Thank you, Flippin' Finance.
Have a great, wonderful day.
Take care.
Take care.
Take care, everybody, man.
Much love.
Day in God.
Darren's the man.
Thanks for coming, Flippin' Finance.
Everyone else, thanks to the audience.
Bye, man. And we'll, flipping finance. Everyone else. Thanks to the audience.
Simon.
and we'll catch you all next time.
I see a lot of people in the audience that we know. Uh,
let's see.
Shamana,
John Sharp,
Christopher Cialone,
scientist,
IP nerd,
American flag lasers,
Patrick.
Good to see you,
Patrick.
Uh, Narush. Oh, Patrick. Patrick. Patrick. Yeah. uh american flag lasers patrick good to see you patrick uh narush oh patrick patrick patrick yeah narish kumar oh awesome good to see you bro uh uh yeah also um digital fellow thank you for
for joining every friday uh i see burb in the audience as well. I see a lot of Litecoin friends and family here.
Guys, we're going to do a Litecoin Megaspace soon,
so look forward to topping it up on some Litecoin combo.
Jared, who else do you see?
Rohit.
Kenneth.
King, Dink, Kush, Wise.
Yeah, a ton of friends in the audience.
Kara, Christopher.
I'll read some quick comments before we hop off.
Yeah, Aztec, I know you had to go, but if you want to hop, you can hop while I read these comments or stick around.
You got it. Much love, Brody. bro much love always good hanging out thanks for scheduling that call that i had to
be up at 6 a.m this morning for they picked that they they picked that they told us when we would
when they uh we would be there so i i promise it wasn't me yeah i mean it was a great call great
call man um yeah it's good to see big institutions taking. I mean, it was a great call. Great call, man. Yeah.
It's good to see big institutions taking interest in this space.
It was a call with a pretty large institution.
So, yeah, good stuff.
All right, guys.
Here, let me read some comments.
I hope the cars in the background aren't too loud.
I actually got my dad out here also for a walk now, walking some hills in the neighborhood.
Okay. So so scientist says,
yeah, Europe has been that wild streak of bad decisions.
It's quite scary.
Man, it really is.
Jared says, boo, regulate my butt, okay?
Woof says, GM chat.
Caruso says, the aggregated episodes are always unique
and educational.
Glad I didn't miss out on this one.
Jake Balch says state of NFT regulation and put a Medivix in PFP.
Leroy J says we're live for episode 150, baby.
Kenneth says episode 150 already.
Anthem said here for Aztec and rock and fam.
ZD says waiting three cycles.
Richmond says I'm happy and excited to be in the space.
PhiloMEXC says good evening from Germany.
Bogie Graveyard says thanks all.
Sinja says GM all.
I think that's enough for now.
I think a lot of the rest is spam.
But okay, guys, cheers.
See you on the next episode.
