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WALL ST/BLACKROCK TAKING OVER CRYPTO | ABRA INSOLVENCY #CryptoTownHall
Recorded: June 16, 2023 Duration: 1:30:39Space Recording
Short Summary
The crypto market is experiencing significant developments, including BlackRock's strategic partnership with Coinbase for a potential Bitcoin ETF, which has influenced Bitcoin's price growth. Regulatory challenges persist, as seen with Abra's potential insolvency and the SEC's stringent requirements for spot-based ETFs. These events highlight ongoing trends and innovations in the industry, with a notable shift towards Bitcoin dominance.
Full Transcription
how's my odjo man i'm testing my air pods for four minutes got all right can anyone hear me
in the audience give me thumbs up if you can hear me all right let me set the thing so i hope i hope's
not on my end let me send out the invites all right i'm getting thumbs up so i think it's uh
yeah i think it's caught having issues not me i'm the most reliable one here even though i have
my headset for four minutes and i'm in a car
Let me send out the invite, but I am the most reliable, just for the record.
All right, let me send out the invites.
It keeps showing me as a speaker.
I accept your co-host, as you are co-host, but shows me as a speaker.
Did you hear me brag about being the most reliable?
Did you hear me brag about being, can you hear my brags or not?
Yeah, I blacked out, though, and passed out, and, you know, I start hearing you talk,
I start hearing you talk about how great you are, and I suddenly, like, my ADHD kicks in.
Um, I saw on Yahoo finance.
Yeah, how'd you like that?
I shut it down.
I'm going to the gulag.
They're definitely going to put me in the camp of some sort.
Just quickly, I'll have my headset in like four minutes, even potentially less.
You sound good.
Oh shit, really?
Yeah, I think you could use the... I think you could probably be mobile more often.
I think you sound good.
I'm mobile with a headset anyway.
I always have it with me.
I don't know how I didn't put it this morning.
I didn't sleep well.
But let me...
Why is my AirPods good and then RAND is never good?
Rand?
What do you have to say about that?
What do you mean?
What do you mean, bro?
What do you mean my AirPods are not good?
Is that what you're using right now?
Because it's not good.
Really?
Yeah, it's strange.
When you come on, Rand, it's always like you're muffled for the first one second of your speaking and then it gets clearer.
Do you notice that, Mario?
Yeah, I don't know.
He's probably doing the dishes now.
It's always doing the dishes.
How's bad?
Is that better?
I mean, someone's going to do the dishes.
A little bit.
Bear market, but bear market.
All right, I've sent out all the invites.
It's one left.
Meta Lawman, who's below us in the audience.
I just invited him to speak as well.
I see him down there.
Do you want to make me co-host?
I can help you guys with the ad.
Say please.
I think I'm pushing it with Ryan.
I should probably stop.
All right.
I'm saying, cause.
Okay.
Please, sir.
And please,
I'll check for all this moderation work to...
Yeah, Mario, can you, uh,
I have a request.
At the very end of this,
can you ask Rand to give a very heartfelt...
Yeah, I will, I will.
I will.
I will.
I'll.
The entire...
Yeah, yeah, I will, I will.
I think it'd be good to get his final thoughts.
But let's look, today's,
today's space has unexpected news.
And I don't know, Scott,
maybe do a quick market update
as we wait for more people to join
and the panel to join, but...
But the news with Abra really caught us by surprise yesterday.
So if that's a gay with you, Scott, I want to kind of get, I'm curious to get more details on that.
Yeah, I would love to.
Just as for the market update, Bitcoin actually up about 25,500 right now.
And a lot of that people are attributing to the BlackRock news that we're going to dig into.
Ethereum up 1% at 1663.
Yeah.
I don't even know. Do we want to do stock market updates here?
I mean, we always do it. We can run through it.
But everything literally flat.
Yeah, I think it's useful.
Literally flat.
You know, NASDAQ 13,000.
Can we just?
A point O one percent. Very exciting.
Go ahead, Rand.
Can we just get straight to the fucking point that Blackroft is actually going to get the first crypto EDF?
Are they, though?
Can we just talk about the elephants in the room?
They've applied for 576 ETFs.
They've had 575 of them approved and they've had one disapproved.
Yeah, so this is the first one that's going to fail.
I mean, my view on this is that the SEC was super clear about this.
If you want to launch a spot-based ETF rather than a futures one,
it needs to work, these spot-based assets need to operate within a regulated spot exchange.
And there aren't any of those at the moment for something that's physical.
There is the CME, obviously, for the futures-based ones, but...
You know, that is the big stumbling block.
And I know everyone's getting really excited about Black Rock because they're big and, you know,
they've got a lot of clout.
But, you know, I still think, yes, we need to come back to the basics here and say, well, the SEC's
being super clear on this.
It's got to, you've got to have regulated exchanges.
And it seems like we're a way off that so far.
I was very surprised that BlackRock went in with a partner slash whatever they, however
they refer to Coinbase.
You've got the SEC who is actually responsible for approving or declining this ETF.
But then at the same time, you've got the SEC telling Coinbase that they've been operating
an illegal securities exchange for since they started.
You got the SEC telling Coinbase that they're looking for disgorgement for a return of
all the revenues made in the trade of these illegal securities.
And at the same time, BlackRock's applying for an ETF to the same SEC with Coinbase's effectively the execution partner.
Look, I think that when BlackRock are in the game...
Black Rock trumps Gary Gensler.
You know what I mean?
Like, there's hierarchies here,
and I think that BlackRock
Trump carry against them.
So if I were to put money,
I put money on the fact that BlackRock
actually do get the Bitcoin ETF approved.
They know what they're doing.
They also know that the SEC hasn't approved ETFs.
They wouldn't have got into the ring if they didn't think that they could get it.
Yeah, I mean, because they're not stupid.
Technically, they don't have the reputational.
Technically, it is a trust, but it's different to the gray scale trust and that it has daily liquidity, which is ultimately in any other word.
it is an
ETF in that respect. So
it is, you know,
if you look at the
original gold
fund that they created, that is a trust
too. And it kind of worked
because, you know, you,
something that's physical like this, you can't
technically have it as an ETF.
So it has to be a form of trust, really.
And that's what this is.
So, I mean, they're taking a slightly different angle at this.
It'd be very interesting to see how the SEC interpret it.
But, you know, I think in defense of what the SEC have said before,
the trust, at least gold is traded on regulated exchanges.
And physical Bitcoin is not yet.
James, I want to jump to the other James, who we brought on specifically, James, from Bloomberg, because I know you and Eric, who...
We're trying to get up on stage as well, have dug in pretty deep.
I think we should start at the beginning there with that clarity between what makes this trust or ETF different, how this is different from GBTC, how this is more similar to GLD.
I think, as James just pointed out.
Yeah, so there's a lot of confusion.
I saw it all over Twitter last night.
I was like in the middle of doing stuff, and my, Eric called me.
He was like, do you see these people are questioning whether it's an ETF?
So this is an ETF filing.
Okay.
The most ETS that you see are, they have underlying structures.
And most 95% of the assets, 95% of what you see is open-end funds or something along those lines.
Something under the 1940 act in the U.S.
Open-end investment companies often in Europe.
Things like that. That's what you're used to seeing.
But with commodities, you can't do that.
You can't operate and launch a product under those types of regulatory frameworks.
There's a lot of other underlying structures that you use to launch in what we refer to as an ETF wrapper.
So an example of that is grantor trusts, which is what this will operate as and what GBT is, what GLD is.
There's a few other options.
You can do unit investment trusts, which is what the first ETFs in the U.S. were.
That's what spy is.
It's a trust.
that's the largest ETF in the world.
There's also commodity pools, limited partnerships.
There's some ETFs that are underlying structure as a C corporation, like a traditional company.
But for all intents and purchases, this is an ETF.
And what makes it different from GBT, as I'm sure everyone on here on this panel knows, is GBTC
does not offer, operate creations and redemptions at the same time.
And that's what GBT and Grayscale are suing the SEC to be able to do.
They're suing to be able to convert and operate as an exchange-treated fund in the United States.
And this BlackRock filing is doing the same thing.
They're filing to launch and operate a Bitcoin ETF in the United States.
Now the difference here, the issue, the reason gray scale is broken, the GBT trust
is broken is because when you think of a stock, right, for the most part, the share supply
doesn't change much.
So what dictates the price of the share is the demand from investors.
So as demand goes up, if you think about it as like two bars on a graph, as
As demand rises, that's what changes the price.
But with an efficiently operating traded fund, you can change the supply to meet demand.
So as demand goes up, you create more shares.
And as demand goes down, you destroy shares or redeem shares.
And what this does is it makes sure that the price of the fund is exactly in line with the underlying value of the assets that it holds.
That process, that creation redemption process is what we refer to as like the flux capacitor to go back to the future reference.
Like that's what makes this whole thing work and why everyone wants an ETF and why it's the crown jewel of launching a product like this.
So yeah.
Okay, that's perfect clarity.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but that's perfect clarity onto what it is.
So I think that we're clear that this qualifies as an ETF.
Now we've got to get between Rand and James' debate as to whether BlackRock will be approved and what that would mean.
I mean, we've seen 22 ETF applications denied by the SEC to James's point.
This has been a very clear position from the SEC as to their likelihood to approve.
But the BlackRock just moved to the front of the line because they're BlackRock.
Scott, do you ever watch wrestling or UFC or boxing?
And they say, in the left corner, we have this fighter.
He's got a record of 575, not out to one loss.
That's basically where you're at.
BlackRock are the experts of ETS.
BlackRock know exactly what you've just said,
that we've had 25 whatever ETFs decline.
If they have come in and put in an ETF application,
they know exactly why they've done it.
They wouldn't go in as BlackRock
and have the second loss on their name.
That's the way I see it.
I'm on your side of this.
So I believe that they will get approved.
I don't think they would have filed if they didn't already know that they will have yet.
You know.
So many guys guys.
And I've made the point.
Yeah, we're going to get to guess it.
Wait, one second.
Mark Yusko came onto my show a long time ago.
I said to you a long time ago, I think it was like over a year or a year and a half ago.
And we were then waiting for an ETF result, which obviously came out negative.
And I said, do you think that, I don't know if it was Grayscale or I don't remember who it was.
I said, do you think that this company is going to get the ETF approved?
And we were all quite excited at the time that this is the one that's going to get approved.
And you know what he said to me?
He said, oh, no, no, they're never going to get approved.
The only company that's ever going to get an ETF approved is BlackRock.
I've heard him say it 50 times.
Yeah, I mean, he's been saying it literally for years.
You're right.
Maybe we should get it.
Maybe we should get him.
I just invited him.
I just invited him.
I just got you take a few steps back.
Why does that really matter?
What does it mean for crypto?
Like, if we're seeing, we've always talked about the herd is coming, the herd is coming.
Moving ethics or what's fair aside, just thinking of it from pure business perspective.
Well, the herd is here.
And now we're complaining that the herd is here?
I don't think, listen, it's just hard to cheer BlackRock if you believe in the ethos of Bitcoin.
But yes, objectively, if you're viewing it through an investment lens,
this is probably a good thing come on what i've said but i've been saying for a very long time
no no come on you're not you're not one of these crypto people that think that blackrock is bad
for crypto but black rock manage more money than probably any other finance eight trillion dollars
i'm not i wasn't making that argument i'm saying that that's what you're going to hear from the
uh bitcoin maximalist side and such but what you will hear for me and i've been saying it since
literally the day that ftx crashed and it was listening is that
This was going to be the moment when Wall Street was going to swoop in and the SEC probably or regulators, legislators,
would naturally favor Wall Street incumbents over the crypto companies that actually built this industry in the first place.
And we were going to basically just see them swoop in and Wall Street companies like Fidelity, Charles Schwab, BlackRock,
were going to be the ones to get approved.
I mean, I think you can see an influx.
You could see an influence. Sorry.
I don't care if it's black rock or white rock or pink rock or yellow rock.
Yeah, and Scott, Scott, you said, but Scott, the question I have in, and I see, I see James trying to jump in, but the question that I have is whenever we saw any of these big guys do anything in crypto back in 2017, 2018, you know, even in the recent bull run, everyone would celebrate.
Now when you look at the narrative,
you know,
it's more negative.
And Scott, you kind of mentioned that in Yahoo Finance yesterday.
I did actually watch it.
And he said that what the SEC is just unfair.
You know, they've killed the people that really innovated,
that brought crypto to where it is today.
Instead of giving them credit, they're killing them for the sake of Wall Street.
And that's what you complained about.
Well, I just think, listen, if we're being objective here, yes, it would be great if BlackRock gets approved, but are we going to see a materially different? And maybe James, you have your hands up. Is this materially different than the filings from Vanek or Valky or Grayscale or any of the others who have been trying to get an ETF approved in the past? Go ahead, James. I would love the answer to that.
Yeah, so fun, like from a first principles perspective, no, they're not going to be any different. This is the same type of filing, but I want to make a few points. One is that, yes, I agree with what you guys are saying about Black Rock. Black Rock is about as well connected as you can be with what's going on in.
in DC and the SEC and what have you, right?
They know what's going on.
If there's anybody that I trust to read the regulatory tea leaves
and have a prediction,
it's going to be BlackRock over anyone else.
So that's why if any other issue had filed this, I wouldn't...
I wouldn't have like the same strong words about like the fact that BlackRock could find this is a positive thing potentially for Bitcoin ETS.
The one thing I want to throw Wooder on on this, let this a little bit is black, even if, so I think part of the reason they're doing this is because they think Grayscale is going to win their lawsuit with the SEC, which we can get into in a bit.
But it doesn't necessarily mean even if Grayscale wins that they're going to definitively be able to convert you an ETF.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is.
Even if the odds of gray scale converting and them winning or BlackRock are less than 50%.
They obviously think the odds have gone high enough and the payout of being in line with the first or the very first or coming out right in line with other issuers.
is worth the risk of filing this.
So one, they don't take massive risk,
but obviously the payout
for taking this risk to filing is serious.
The other thing I want to say
is there is already an active Bitcoin spot Bitcoin ETF filing,
and it's from 21 shares partnered with ARC investment.
21 shares is a crypto ETF issuer.
They have a whole bunch in Europe.
they have already a filing sitting at the SEC.
So technically they're ahead of BlackRock.
So the SEC would have to perform some sort of,
I'll use the word fuckery,
to essentially deny that
and then like a month later approved the BlackRock one.
So I think this is,
Okay, go ahead.
James, you're like, fuckery is a good word for it because, you know, I fail to see what new angle that Black Rock are going to take to allow this for the SEC.
The new angle is being called Black Rock, James.
I mean, that is one angle, but that would be a sad day, right?
Just a giant Wall Street firm suddenly gets it and some other firm where there's some equally good minds tackling this.
Yeah.
doesn't get it and it just smacks a favouritism and is along the kind of theme at the moment of what's
going on with the SEC etc and it would be a very sad day although I'm keen for actually a lot more
investors to get access to this we have tons of investors saying to us look as soon as some big firm
gets in we're getting in so someone like back black rock gets in I think this is a really positive
thing if you look at
The example of pro shares when it listed a year and a half ago, there's an instant one billion dollars worth of money flowing into Bitcoin.
I mean, if it was something like Black Rocker, it would be easily $10 billion in a week we'd see inflows.
Could we link the market today with this news?
Because the market has recovered a bit.
Could be just a recovery from what we saw over the last few days.
But could it be linked to BlackRock considering market conditions?
Well, I think so a little bit.
But my interpretation of the market is kind of shrugging us off and saying,
I don't quite believe this just yet.
Yeah, not only that, not only that, I think there was a little bounce to Bitcoin because there were the announcements yesterday that Celsius was going to sell all its old coins into Bitcoin.
I think more and more the market's realizing, you know, it's probably safer, nothing better, but safer to get out of old coins and to Bitcoin.
And we're getting that period of fear.
If we've got the Bitcoin dominance, it's up to 49.5 now.
when we spoke about 10 days ago, 12 days ago, it was around 48 or something like that.
So there is a lot of fear now.
A lot of people are very scared of altcoins and they're just putting their money into Bitcoin.
And that's what's happening.
Don't forget there was also Tether fight yesterday when Tether depig.
And then, you know, that also gets people to, to, to, to, what happened with it?
What happened with Tether?
What happened with Tether?
I saw the news something about the links Tether has to China.
I know there's a lot of concerns around the Chinese economy.
Have you, has anyone read this?
I didn't see that.
I did see something around that I saw a tweet.
I don't know if to tweet anything is that there was going to be some new attack on Taylor,
which never materialized.
But I spoke with Palo yesterday, actually.
Yeah.
which will be out on Sunday. I did it on my podcast. I was trying to get him on spaces,
but he prefers the one-on-one conversations. And he, I mean, quickly dispelled this. We do this every
single round. That tether fud was nonsense. But I don't know if you did see the bigger news,
which is that actually they've had requests from CoinDess. I think it's called FOIL,
F-O-I-L, Freedom of Information, something or other. And they actually complied with it.
And that news came out yesterday after all these years, which means that...
Coin desk, other journalists, and everyone will have a snapshot be able to look back into Tethers' books and accounting from the past.
So we'll be able to see their balance sheet from previous years and now, which should dispel any issues about their backing.
But I do want to stick on BlackRock.
And John, listen, we have someone from the SEC, not currently, but obviously in the past.
John Reed Stark, you probably have more insight into what's happening, the SEC, and potentially their thinking than anyone else.
Yeah, thanks.
I'm not sure how to interpret this, but I think I can come up with a few questions.
answers. First of all, it's important to get in line for this kind of request because clearly
if a Republican administration is elected, then a Bitcoin spot ETF is going to happen. That is what
it seems to me, at least, when you look at the votes at the commission.
Secondly, I listened to the gray scale hearing, and I was really surprised.
I mean, I was almost shocked, and the other lawyers on the call can disagree or agree.
But the judges seemed very receptive to gray scale's arguments and seemed very sympathetic to this idea that the SEC's rulemaking was arbitrary and capricious, which just blew me away because I don't think the SEC has ever even been challenged on the basis of something being arbitrary and capricious.
However, having said that.
I think the reality is, what are these judges going to do?
They even said during the hearing, one of the judges said, look, can I order the SEC to not stop the CF, the futures?
Spot ETF or, you know, what action can the judge take to force the SEC into some kind of
rulemaking? They can say this was a problem and the SEC needs to revisit, but there are at least a
dozen different pivots the SEC can do and you can bet they're going to do it. First of all,
they can write a much more extensive, even though they wrote a
a fairly extensive one already, a much more extensive rejection of these Bitcoin spot ETF applications.
Second of all, they could withdraw the futures ETF. They could reconsider that. There are all kinds of
things. And it's not like they've ever backed down from anything. If you look at the Binance case,
so I don't know that gray scale matter is going to actually result in what, um,
what everyone wants on that side, which is to somehow approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. I don't necessarily
see a clear pathway for that to happen from a judicial perspective. And I see the SEC pushing back
incredibly hard on that because if you read their opinion denying the Bitcoin spot ETF,
their rationale seems to me pretty straightforward and pretty clear that the marketplace is just
filled with all sorts of manipulation and all kinds of chicanery and all kinds of grift and no transparency.
So how can they approve this sort of thing?
And the appellants were saying, well, look, they already did in the context of a futures one.
So both, I think the judges were all Trump appointees.
I can't remember on the circuit panel.
The SEC could appeal it to a panel en banc.
There are many, many different things that the SEC can do.
But if you look at the Binance case and what's been going on with it,
Today, it could happen as early as today.
The judge reported the parties reported at least yesterday that they were getting close to a consent degree.
But the SEC will have successfully frozen at least $2.2 billion of U.S. assets relating to finance.
And they did it really in the context of an emergency asset freeze, which is unprecedented in this kind of scale.
to and when you do an asset freeze i did quite a few of them when i was at the c cc and i was
there for you know almost 20 years you go into a judge's chambers and you say look your honor the
fraud is so bad here that investors funds are at risk that
Clearly, if we bring the other side into this hearing, most of these are done ex parte,
they could take the money and run.
So we need this extraordinary relief of an asset freeze.
Now, this judge, you know, some people may say, well, look, the judge isn't granting the
SEC the relief they want in the form of the TRO and asset freeze.
Well, that might be true, but she's ordered them to essentially agree on an asset freeze.
Because on all the asset freezes I did,
you always come in a week later and say, okay, here are the expenses that we'll allow.
We'll allow them to pay electricity.
We'll allow them to pay their employees.
We'll allow them to pay their lawyers.
You don't always have to do that.
Some judges will say, look, all these proceeds are the proceeds of a fraud, so you can't use them for anything.
But typically, judges will allow those kinds of ordinary course expenses after a TRO, and you might bicker and argue about those.
So essentially, the SEC is getting everything they want here.
And how are they going to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF in light of what they're alleging
at the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world?
Thanks, Mariam.
So, John, I have two questions for you.
One is you mentioned that in this case, they are freezing $2.2 billion of finance assets.
How do you get to that $2.2 billion of finance assets?
The last time that I looked, Binance U.S. had less than $200 million in the exchange in total.
Yeah, that's a great point.
That's a great point.
I probably would say that's what the SEC wants frozen.
That's what they've mentioned should be frozen.
I don't think anybody has a good idea of where those funds are and how much they are.
But the judge seems to be applied.
I mean, the SEC.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
The SEC is also asking, the SEC is also, I mean, initially came out asking for them to freeze
finance international assets, which is a real far stretch and probably would never ever happen.
I said it as it happened.
But I mean, I think the way that I understood the reaction of the judge, I'm not going to say
it's a ruling, but the reaction of the judge is that the judge said, look, I'm not going to freeze
assets.
You guys come up with something that is realistic and protect both sides and is acceptable.
Now, with the exchange that now probably has less than a hundred, it's...
Binance, US, as of this morning, was 1% of the assets of US exchanges.
Because a lot of people have already withdrawn their assets from Binance.
I think the numbers are, if anything, they'll freeze $100 million.
Well, we'll see.
I think I really don't know.
You make a really excellent point that it's tough to say from the pleadings,
and I've read all of them and all the exhibits, there are just...
dozens of accounts in question here that the SEC has looked at because they've had the benefit
of discovery during their investigation of documents from from signature bank and
and from Silicon Valley Bank and all such of other sources.
I mean, who knows?
You know, I feel like that this is extraordinary relief.
The SEC has never sought it before this kind of relief in history, in this kind of context.
You know, this is a multi-billion dollar international corporation.
Just about all the TROs and asset freezes I did were, you know, small companies, small groups of people ripping people off.
Now, there was the telegram TRO, but you remember that TRO did not seek an asset freeze.
It just sought an injunction.
So that was even then the SEC didn't seek to freeze the two billion or so assets the telegram had raised.
But they eventually got whatever assets remained paid back to those investors.
So I think any day things can change.
You know, I wrote a long Twitter post about why I think a criminal indictment is either going to be unsealed or either going to be brought forward,
given that everything that said in the CFTC complaint, everything that said in the SEC complaint is.
Given even the SEC complaint oddly, and I never did this in any complaint that I ever wrote,
and certainly I never wrote complaints that long, but literally mentioned the criminal investigation
in their complaint.
They said it had been reported, and they cited like maybe a Reuters report or something along those lines.
That's very unusual.
I never would say anything about joint criminal investigations, but typically when I was chief of the Office of Internet Enforcement,
and I was that for 11 years, we had FBI agents embedded with us.
every every week or two we would get together in a meeting with criminal prosecutors
discuss all of our inventory with them and say hey these are the cases we believe
should get criminal attention because these companies are treating us like like meter
maids giving out parking tickets and so we we want
We think these actions weren't criminal attention and criminal investigation and criminal prosecution.
And typically the FBI agents and assistant U.S. attorneys attending would ask lots of questions and we would go over, you know, share every single piece of evidence we had with them.
And if I were sharing evidence that has been revealed in the CFTC complaint and certainly the extraordinary, just the thousands of pages in the SEC TRO motion, and we haven't even seen the declaration of the staff attorney in that matter.
And remember, there are two declarations, one from the SEC accountants and one from the SEC staff attorney.
And the staff attorney's...
declaration for whatever reason has not been made public. Maybe there's just too much private
information on there. Maybe there's, there's delicate, maybe the criminal prosecutors have said,
we don't want you to share that. But for whatever reason, it's been referenced but not shared.
And if you look at,
the kind of evidence that was presented, it would take me about less than a split second
to convince the criminal prosecutors in a room in those meetings, those biweekly and weekly
meetings we had to take on this case.
So if the judge needs a little pushing and the remedies that they come up within this
consent degree aren't powerful enough, the criminal prosecutors may be, they may be triggered
to act.
So that's just my opinion, you know, based on my experience.
I could be wrong, but that's what I think.
Yeah, I mean, I did see today.
I don't know if anybody else saw,
but I saw that finance is under investigation
for my laundering in France
and that finance seized their operations in the Netherlands.
So it does feel like the regulatory net is...
is catching up with it.
Look at the hearing, Ron.
Look at the hearing when the SEC lawyer said in the hearing that, look, with this
wash trading, he talked about how when customers of Binance sign up, they sign up believing
that there are compliance mechanisms and all sorts of infrastructure to curtail wash trading
and other forms of market manipulation.
Yet that is precisely what...
the SEC alleges C.C. was doing, CZ was doing. That he said in the hearing. Now, that's criminal
conduct. You don't need a law degree to judge that as criminal conduct, and it's on record,
and an SEC lawyer has said it in court, and you don't say anything in court that isn't true
for an SEC lawyer. You don't do it. John, I want to understand something. Um,
Are all criminal conduct pursued by the DOJ?
And if not, how do they make a decision whether they're going to pursue someone for criminal conduct and not pursue someone for criminal conduct?
That's a great question.
No, you know, the answer is if you look at all.
All the cases our office brought, a lot of the fraud cases we brought didn't necessarily have a joint criminal interest for whatever reason.
Maybe the amount of money was too small.
Maybe they didn't have the resources for it or we couldn't sell it hard enough.
But typically their determinations, they need a lot of money involved.
They needed to be something that's going to grab headlines.
It's going to be important because that's how they send messages by grabbing headlines.
Right.
And it has to do with the egregious level of the conduct. And again, there could be, on the SEC side, there can be grand jury investigations on the criminal side. And because those are secret, the SEC staff can't even know about. But what often happens is the criminal prosecutors deputized an AUS, deputized an SEC law.
a lawyer and that SEC lawyer becomes what's called a special assistant US attorney.
I did that in DC court and prosecuted gun drugs and domestic violence cases when I was younger,
but you can also do that to join a US attorney's office and help them in the prosecution.
And that's probably what will happen in the Bynance case.
The DOJ will say, look, we need someone from the SEC to come over here so that we can share
with them all of these secret things.
And again, you can have typically in these situations when you bring cases like this
there are all sorts of informants, all sorts of whistleblowers, all kinds of turncodes that are
begging for attention. Remember, a whistleblower in this case can get up to 20% of any fine that
the SEC collects, and that's big money, and there are a whole slew of former SEC attorneys
who run whistleblower firms, and you can bet that they're being very active along the
lines as well. So there's lots of really, there's a very...
complexities and this is a very dynamic situation. But what will tempt, to get to your question,
what will tempt a criminal prosecutor to bring a case or not bring a case? You know, again,
it's usually the dollars involved, the parties involved, the level of importance, the programmatic
importance of bringing that kind of case. All of those things will be important to an AUSA.
And in this case, clearly there is a criminal investigation.
Clearly, it seems to me at least, if I had brought the Binance case, I would have alleged internal control violations relating to AML, especially given the AML, the anti-money laundry, the AML allegations contained in CFTC complaint.
So that makes me think that the SEC carved out that space.
They left that, that territory for DOJ when DOJ brings their case.
So those are my guesses.
Um...
I hear you.
I want to get back to the BlackRock discussion.
Sorry, John, I just,
a lot of people asking about the Black Rock discussion.
But James, I want to let you go first.
James, stay fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, real quick.
The one thing I do want to say, you were talking about, like, why did BlackRock choose Coinbase while they're being sued?
I want to point out that BlackRock already had a partnership with Coinbase for their institutional clients.
So, like, institutional clients, high net worth individuals.
They were using Coinbase to give those clients.
Likely what had happened was institutional clients, high net worth individuals were coming to BlackRock,
who used them for whatever they used them for on their portfolio management side of things and were like,
I want crypto and BlackRock had this partnership with Coinbase.
So there's already been a partnership in place.
So it's a logical next step to use Coinbase that's a custodian because Coinbase is one of the main custodians being used for any sort of regulated crypto fund, specifically Bitcoin.
The other side, which John was just kind of talking about the lawsuit between Binance and Coinbase,
I'm wondering if specifically because this is a Bitcoin trust, whether there might not be some like changing of the arguments at the SEC.
James before was talking about how the fact that everything the SEC has said was they want surveillance sharing agreements.
They want regulated exchanges for Bitcoin before they approve it.
But what they're going after Coinbase for is all the altcoins.
even they're not saying it, but
Gensler is trying to argue that Ethereum is
also a security and not decentralized.
And after seeing the Hinman emails, I don't know if everyone
here has seen them, but it's pretty obvious
that the SEC doesn't really believe or didn't
believe that Ethereum was a security.
So that means that Bitcoin is the
one area where the SEC is basically like, yeah, this isn't a security.
So I'm wondering if maybe Gary is kind of like giving up the fight on the Bitcoin front of things,
or there's rumblings internally at the SEC, and that's what BlackRock is hearing and why they're doing it.
So like I think that's part of it.
But really what Gary's trying to do is circumvent Congress here via like enforcement to Binance and Coinbase.
And as John was talking about, the finance allegations are very, very different from what they're going after Coinbase for.
And the other thing I do want to say is like we talked about being first, being in line with the people to launch.
We expect a ton of issuers to file for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
The BlackRock is the 28th at least filing for Spot Bitcoin ETF.
Over 20, 20 issuers have applied for these things.
We think we're going to see a slew of them filed today and maybe on Monday.
For example, Grayscale filed for a few ETS a couple weeks ago.
This is just a backstory.
And one of the things they filed for was an Ethereum futures ETF.
And what you saw the next day was when,
within a 13 minute time period,
three different issuers submitted their,
their prospectuses to launch a,
Ethereum futures ETF.
13 minutes from like 514 to 527 the following day after
Grayscale applied for Ethereum futures ETFs,
all these issuers are like,
we need to be in line as quickly as possible when these things launch
because we want to make sure we can get something out.
Ultimately, the SEC made them withdraw those applications,
but that just gives you an idea of what's potentially going to happen
because a spot Bitcoin ETF, there's a lot more intrepid,
issuers interested in that than in a theory in futures etf and there's a lot big lot more money at stake
here so look for a lot of issuers to just file in the off chance that they think this thing is going to get
through um let me ask this question if this happens what do you think happens to the gray scale
bitcoin trust do you think the gray scale bitcoin trust
is then automatically somehow approved.
Do you think that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust then applies to the SEC
to say, look, even though we're not an ETF,
in order to remain competitive, we want to apply for it.
I don't remember what the section is,
but there's some section that they can invoke
where they can actually do daily withdrawals.
Or do you think that Grayscale just played the long game
and say, well, tough luck, you signed up for the 2% annual management fees,
and now you're actually going to pay them?
Yeah.
I don't think it's James said, I don't think it's as clear cut as that for Grayscale because let's say they did switch to being an ETF. I think it would be a change in legal entity and therefore anyone who's been in Grayscale for many years that
sitting on significant capital gains,
it would be a capital gains event
for them to switch from one entity to another.
And then that would open up the doors for them to say,
okay, well, there's grey scale at 2% fees
is that my best option right now?
No, it probably isn't with Black Rocks launching one.
So you might see a big shift
out there. And also there are many people that be sitting on grey scale that are fed up, you know, sitting on a, I don't know what the discount to Nav is at the moment, maybe minus 40% at the moment, and fed up and want to move. And so we'll probably move quite quickly if they have this option to increase liquidity.
But if I'm sitting in grade, if I'm sitting in grade scale shoes or in DCG shoes, and I'm saying to myself, hold on a second.
I've got a contract with these people that I can indefinitely continue to charge them 2%.
If I become an ETF, I immediately lose those fees.
Yeah.
There's very little incentive for them to be.
There's very little incentive.
Yeah.
Very little incentive for DCG to change the model here.
And I mean, I also keep wondering.
why they are fighting so hard to become an ETF.
I'm kind of putting myself in their shoes and saying,
you know, if the minute that an ETF's approved,
you're getting no additional inflows into your thing.
You're going to lose your fees.
I think it's their fiduciary duty to do so.
Yeah, and GBTC would be if somebody else gets approved for the ETF, GBT, the actual trust becomes irrelevant.
So they have to either be the disruptor or be disrupted.
They don't really have a choice.
Hold on.
They haven't taken in one additional cent into their trust for months, right?
And maybe even a year already.
There hasn't been any inflows into the GBT trust.
There aren't any outflows.
They're earning 2% a year, I think it's 2% even off the expenses, which is a little bit more than 2% a year in fees.
They can continue to do this indefinitely for the next 100 years.
And they have no fiduciary duty to do anything because you signed up for that contract.
And when you invested, that was the contract that you invested in.
And that is just the way that it is.
Yeah, so that is definitely a possibility.
Like that's what Rand is saying is definitely possible, but I would say it's extremely unlikely.
You're basically gray skills giving up everything by doing that.
Like they're going to lose all reputation.
Their reputation is already pretty solely with how the discount is gone.
They've been saying they're going to convert to an ETA.
For them not to do it would basically be them taking just...
walking out and taking the loss, which I don't see happening.
What James was saying before, if one approves, what really is happening is the process to launch this is going through what's called a 19B4 proposal or it's a rule change proposal.
So if one of these get approved, then the rule change is allowed and a spot Bitcoin ETF can launch.
Right.
So basically what that means is then all the other spot Bitcoin ETFs will have to follow the same rule change decision making process of the SEC.
So if BlackRock is first or Grayscale wins their lawsuit and their first, all these other filings that are coming due after they go through the regulatory process of getting approval from the SEC, it's just basically a matter of timing when the approval would happen.
So it's like.
Once one is approved, you can then launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Pretty much any issue where it can do it.
Obviously, there's costs and legal fees and all these different things that have to go into doing it.
But it's not like one gets approved and the other people can't do it.
Anyone can do it after that point once it's happened.
So whether it's Grayscale winning their lawsuit and the SEC deciding to allow them to launch, then all these other applications can be.
can launch the timeline between one gray scale,
if they get approved,
when they can actually convert it to an ETF
is also up for a,
upward debate.
But essentially,
once one is allowed,
the rest can also launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.
And what is the benefit of having so many Bitcoin ETFs?
And like,
I mean,
what's,
I mean,
that's like,
It's not like there's any difference in terms of the stock selection.
So what is the difference in terms of...
Why would anybody put money into the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF
when I can just put money into the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF,
which is for me a much more reputable company?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, so theoretically that could be the argument, but also Grace, then I would, like, I'm just going to play devil's advocate.
Grayscale is the one that's the first one to get one of these products in the traditional finance world.
They know digital assets better than pretty much any other fun company out there.
There's a handful of others that I would throw in that camp as well.
So, like, there's reasons why you do it.
And also...
We don't know what the fees are going to be.
Grayscale could drop their fees, right?
So Grayscale could all of a sudden get cheap to compete.
What's going to happen is undoubtedly when these ETFs launch,
look for it to be a competitive landscape where fees come down across the board for all funds.
It's even going to be a detriment to like probably crypto exchanges because these things are going to trade.
The cost to trade them is going to be the bid S spread is going to be like less than a penny wide.
It's going to be super efficient.
And the all in annual fee likely from the get-go is going to be somewhere around
0.5% or 50 bips and probably go lower rather quickly as people try to get a foothold in the space.
So for all those reasons, like it's going to be pretty critical.
And it's not just on the fun side of things.
Like I said, if you want to trade Bitcoin, it's going to be really cheap to trade the ETF.
And,
And these ETS will allow for redemptions.
If you own a certain number of the shares, you theoretically should be able to hand in those shares and take Bitcoin directly.
So it's not like you also will be locked up the way your Bitcoin is locked up in GBC.
I have a question.
I have a question for you here.
If Grayscale is created or allowed to convert into an ETF.
And I don't have the exact holdings of greyscale.
But what we do know is that the grayscale GBT shares are trading in a huge discount.
Do you believe that on that day we'll start getting a huge dump of Bitcoin into the market?
Ironically, it might be the opposite that there's no way to actually know because like essentially what a lot of people have right now is just like when it was trading in a massive premium, they were long GBTC and then short Bitcoin.
So they would be they would be doing the same thing here. So unwinding that trade would mean buying a lot of Bitcoin.
Then again, also once it becomes an ETF,
you can um all that bitcoin can leave so i think there's 330 000 bitcoin in there so like a lot of
a lot of money can be ended up dumping in this form of outflows from from gbtsc
dave why don't you jump in i know you've had your hand out for a while yeah i wanted to go back
to uh the the why black rock point a bit and i also want to take issue with
the arm-waving part of John Reed-Stark's monologue.
Actually, on the Binance side, I thought what he said was incredibly insightful and very helpful.
But he arm-waved around the SEC having all this great information in their denials of Bitcoin ETF.
David, by the way, is it possible to get your mic a bit closer? I'm struggling to hear you.
Okay, I'm trying. I'm on AirPod.
Is this better?
It's the same, but all good. We can still understand what you're saying. Go ahead.
So basically, the fact of the matter is the manipulation and what's really fascinating about BlackRock is they have placed this trust.
The filing is a direct comparison to GLD, the gold trust, which is one of the world's largest ETS.
And there is no question.
You would not be able to find a person
who has any quantitative chops whatsoever.
to make the argument that Bitcoin isn't dramatically more transparent on the way it's spot trades,
dramatically less likely to be manipulated.
I mean, there have been billions of dollars of fines of gold manipulation out there
and dramatically more transparent, particularly considering that the filing allows for information sharing
with the exchanges, Coinbase that they're trading on.
it is a very clear comparison.
And so by doing that, the BlackRock ETF application is much, much harder for the SEC to wave their arms around when they make the denial.
Now, they probably will deny it.
Or maybe they won't.
I don't know.
Obviously, John may know that better than me.
But what I do know is...
that basis for the denial is going to be much, much, much harder
because there is information sharing implicit in the filing.
There is incredibly clear evidence and coin routes.
We have a lot of this in terms of how transparent the trading of Bitcoin spot is.
And of course, the real hole that Grayscale pointed out in their court case
is that the notion that futures somehow a less subject to manipulation is complete balderdash.
I mean, literally one of the dumbest things I have ever seen put in print when we all know that the Bitcoin spot market moves, the TME futures are going to move too. So it's completely ridiculous. So it's really interesting the way they've set up the trust. And I think that is a much better answer to the white black rock than the conspiracy theory that, well, they know people.
The fact of the matter is, I don't think this particular to SEC cares who they know, but I do think they care a lot about structure.
And they've cleverly structured this filing to get around the main non-stupid objections in terms of the arm waving on manipulation.
John, what do you think? Obviously, you have a chance to respond there.
I don't disagree with most of what he just said, except for the part about transparency.
I think the SEC sets forth a very extensive list.
And again, you can read any of the 150 or so crypto-related cases the SEC has brought
that there is obviously a feeling at the SEC that these markets are not transparent
that they are rampant with market manipulation, that the data relating to the markets is sketchy
at best. And I don't think that has changed in the slightest. But I think that points about conspiracy
theories. Sure. Can I make an invitation to you? Let's do a one-on-one zoom, and I will show you all the
data that we collect in real time from all the markets. And I think that that would
change some of your opinion. I am not arguing, by the way, that there isn't
sketchiness in the crypto markets. Not saying that at all. What I am saying is that
Coinbase, Crackin, BitStim, those markets, the data is very transparent on trade.
Well, let me. Until your entities are registered as broker dealers or exchanges or
clearing firms, whatever registration, whatever you fall into and subject to the oversight of the SEC
and FINRAs,
auditing, examination, and inspections,
I think your data will always be called into question.
That's just my opinion.
You can disagree with that, but oversight is important,
and that's very important to the SEC.
So if you're not regulated, you can talk about all your data
all you want, but unless that data is confirmed independently
by the SEC as being verified and credible,
may very well be, but as being verified and credible,
I just think it's falling on death of years.
There's two points there.
Point one is the SEC has no jurisdiction over Bitcoin right now.
It would be the CFTC.
But, and point two.
What's the difference?
That's ridiculous.
What's the difference?
The point is infections, audits and examinations.
Wait, John, John, John, the difference is that you just said that FINRA and the SEC should
investigate firms.
And the point is FINRA has zero jurisdiction over Bitcoin.
So you're saying something that's just not even possibly.
But here's the point.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
You're twisting my words.
John, you go back and play the tape back.
You said that they should be registered with Finn.
You said that they should be registered with as,
okay.
John, John, John, said they should be registered.
Here's done.
John, go back and listen.
Will you please stop for a second?
I'll go back and listen to the tape as soon as this is all done.
You said they should be registered as Fenera broker-dealer.
Here's my point is that they're not registered and the data is not something that the SEC can look at.
That's all.
And whether you can argue that the SEC shouldn't be allowed to look at that data if you want, you can certainly argue that.
But the point is the SEC doesn't have access to that data in the way that they traditionally would,
which is in the form of an inspection and examination and an audit.
That's all I'm saying.
Like they did with FTCS?
They didn't have access to it with FTCX either.
FDX wasn't their audits.
FDX was a registered broker dealer, John.
Oh, please.
There were no examinations.
There were no audits.
John, they were a registered broker dealer.
You just said that that's a big answer.
You said Coinbase was a registered broker dealer also.
It's a dormant broker dealer that they bought that they've never used for anything.
And you act like they're a registered broker deal.
There's no life there.
You didn't even know they were a broker dealer until I told you they were, John.
Okay.
You didn't even know how to look it up when I'm using the SEC's website.
Oh, right. I don't know anything. You're right.
John, go back and play the tape. You didn't know.
John, we argued about it for 10 minutes.
Look, here's what I'm saying.
These are facts. Yeah. Here's what I'm saying.
Okay, so this is the John show now?
The SEC doesn't audit, the SEC doesn't audit, examine.
or inspect those companies that provide this sort of data.
John, the listeners should know that you're not credible, John.
Finance and Coinbase and Bixie and Bittrix have all been charged with being
unregistered broker dealers, unregistered clearing firms, and unregistered exchanges.
Literally.
FDX was registered.
John,
FDX was registered.
Good luck to you all.
Bruce,
John,
one second.
I saw that James
was going to jump in.
let me just go to leave.
So I'll talk to you.
so this is Matt a lawman.
We've got too many Jameses.
I am also a James.
So many Jameses.
Yeah,
we're piling in here.
Just a couple,
couple thoughts on this.
For all of your listeners,
Why is it, why does it matter that this is an ETF and a different structure from the GPTC?
I think that the two James has explained it really well.
And the point is that there's this.
arbitrage mechanism embedded in
ETFs, which caused them to trade at NAV day in and day out.
And that's a really big difference, and it's what people hate about GPTC
in addition to the fees.
And so that's what, you know, you've got a lot of people listening.
Why does it matter?
Why do we care about the SEC approving an ETF?
It's because...
it trades at NAV and the point was made by somebody.
It was a really good point that you'd almost use it as an alternative to buying Bitcoin
because the price, the fees for these ETFs, if many are approved, it's going to be a competitive
landscape.
You'll get the equivalent.
of a vanguard in there under pricing everybody on fees and forcing it down and down.
And that's what's great about a market is that competition works in the favor of investors.
Second thing, I read all of the risk disclosures in the filing, in the S-1.
And it's fascinating reading. So BlackRock says one of the key risks
to the price of Bitcoin, and hence the value of shares in the ETF, is CBDCs, the introduction of CBDCs.
which was interesting, as they viewed it as a threat to the price and adoption of Bitcoin.
Second thing was fascinating is this question of the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining.
For those people who are Bitcoin maxis or own Bitcoin, care about Bitcoin, you cannot miss the fact that
that it's a political football and the attack vector against Bitcoin is not,
hey, this is an unregistered security.
The attack is you're killing the planet.
You're causing global warming.
You're using all of this electricity for some frivolous purpose.
And that's really bad.
Now, you've got BlackRock, who is the godfather of ESG.
Black Rock is the world's foremost proponent of ESG.
And it is coming in publicly and saying, you know what?
We're good with Bitcoin on this environmental dimension, and we're getting involved in it.
So inherent in that decision is an endorsement of mining and trading.
The electricity that goes into validating trading, mining, has the endorsement of a very well-connected, enormous,
organization that is very well politically connected, particularly on the Democratic side within the
United States, but they're politically connected all around the world. And so therefore, this political
cudgel, you know,
that people have been using against Bitcoin mining now has, you know, a pretty big proponent
coming on to the other side and supporting Bitcoin. And that's, that's all I wanted to say about,
about the ETF, that people should favor an ETF. I understand John Reed-Starks,
point about the underlying spot markets, there is manipulation.
But you know, you're trying, you, you, you, you establish an index.
The net asset value will be benchmarked against the index, not, hey, what is it trading at in Zimbabwe?
You know, it's going to be an index of multiple exchanges.
And so while there may be some manipulation and some of them, hopefully you get a fair price or close to a fair price.
It's not a perfect system.
But I think it would be good, good for investors to be able to get exposure to Bitcoin through that kind of mechanism.
Yeah, I think that's a, I think that is a fair point.
Sorry, I'm not hearing it.
Can you guys hear me?
Yeah, we're kidding, man.
Oh, fantastic.
I think that's a great point.
Guys, I don't know if I want to maybe pivot into the next story.
And usually we actually have Bill Baha, who is actually a speaker.
I wonder if he's actually going to join us today around this potential ABRA insolvency or alleged ABRA insolvency.
I wonder if anybody's got any insight on the alleged ABRA insolvency.
I don't have any insight.
I reached out to Bill.
Interestingly...
You guys probably noticed the news we were talking about with Abre on the spaces yesterday,
which was big, was that Abre was basically cutting off U.S. customers because of regulatory
complications and fear.
They were announcing basically that U.S. customers and companies would no longer have access
to any of their products, including yield, earn, trade, everything, right?
And so...
I reached out to Bill yesterday when I saw that news break.
And his response was, I don't even want to quote it incorrectly.
I can literally just read it here.
One second.
He said, Arbor will be fine.
Just another bullet to the head of U.S. investors who get screwed by regulators.
Right.
So he's been on the show obviously a million times.
But then the news broke in the afternoon, effectively that I believe it was the state of Texas.
claiming that they've been insolvent since March of 2023.
And we had talked about the idea that Abra had sort of been the last man standing in this industry in the United States.
And then a whole list of claims.
Now, for now, we can't see it substantiated beyond this case.
I'm trying to get Bill to come on. I have a feeling that can't do that in this exact moment.
But this is pretty big news on the tale of, obviously, Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi, and as I said, they were the ones who had survived it.
So I would love anyone in the audience, anyone on the panel's takes on what's happening here.
I know we all know Bill, or quite a few of us do.
I really hope we can get full on because he has been on the spaces almost every day.
Last week, before, it would be, you know, I think it would be great if we could get him on.
Yeah, so we've, Scott, I know you've sent him an invite, but I've got a question for you, Scott. How, I know we know, and you know more than us, Bill on a personal level, he's been on stage a few times, but how, what does that mean for crypto? Because Abra is big, but not big enough to impact the market. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I don't think this would have a market impact.
I think this would be more impacted on whatever customers they still have or potentially have,
I don't know, in the United States and abroad, could end up in another similar situation
that we've seen with similar platforms that blew up last year.
So I think, you know, we're on.
It just gives more reasons for regulators to keep the crackdown ongoing.
Yeah.
I do think it's maybe another very tiny stick on the fire.
But I think the regulatory environment is clear as to what's happening.
So, yeah, they would probably use it as a talking point for five minutes.
But I would say personally our concern here would be for the customers.
And if we end up in another one of these absurd Chapter 11 bankruptcies or insolvencies.
Bruce, I saw you look at your mind.
Yeah, so Bruce, before you jump into Scott and apologize, I just was in and out.
So just exactly what happened, like if you want to summarize it in two sentences, what are the allegations at the moment?
What do we know?
Because I've seen, what I know is that there's been money moved, funds secretly moved to a Bynast account over the last few months.
Is that true?
Or is that what the allegations are?
That is an allegation, but the greater allegations, or at least from what I've read it, going through it, is that they were exposed to literally like a litany of the...
I saw that
Three Arrows Capital
So Babel,
Three Arrows Capital
DCG in some way
I think it was with Genesis.
Basically,
we all know that there was this,
somewhat incestuous relationship between all of these platforms and companies. You would take a loan
from one, lend it to another one who is taking a loan from the other one. I don't think we need to
relitigate the entirety of 2022 crypto blowups. But it seemed that they had been clear of all of this.
And now when people are digging in, that potentially they had exposure to quite a few of them,
literally almost every single one of them to some degree. And that
At this point, probably, you know, they were able to hold on long enough and now have it.
Now, whether that was being hidden from people, whether there's transparency, violation, I can't speak to that.
But seemingly a very similar situation to ones we've seen here.
So there's two stories to this, Scott, and I want you to correct me if I get it wrong.
With the first stories that we're seeing Domino's continue to fall, okay, from what's happened, from the implosions that we saw last year, whenever that was.
The other thing is that money moved to a Bynast account.
That's customer funds, isn't it?
I actually, I would love to give you more clarity on that, but I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe somebody else has more information on that.
But what do the, does anyone know what the allegations saying?
Yeah, so I remember, innocent unto proven guilty and I want to be objective.
And, you know, a lot of people crucified Sam Bankman Fried for what he's done.
So I want to be as objective as I can.
From what we know, from other allegations, Rand, Bruce, has anyone read them?
And I'm just curious on those monies moved to Binance, those funds moved to Binance.
I read them.
What is it, Bruce? Tell us.
Well, a lot of these things, you know, and this has been going on since the days of Charlie Shrem.
Many of us remember Charlie Shrem back in whatever, 2013.
Yeah.
You know, he had gone in.
He was a young entrepreneur, one of the early entrepreneurs in this space.
He set up a popular Bitcoin company where you could buy and sell Bitcoin really, really, early, like 2011.
Yeah.
He went into the regulators who had never heard of this thing called Bitcoin and he said,
here's this thing, I'm doing it, is this okay?
He went in, I think he had something like 26 meetings with the Department of New York
Financial Services, Ben Lossky's office.
They never indicated there was a problem.
Then all of a sudden they arrested him at the airport like it was some heist movie or
something with a big SWAT team and he ended up doing jail time.
How many years did he do, Bruce?
I think he did a couple years, and the ultimate thing was failure to report suspicious activity.
And what really got him was...
helping somebody avoid the AML KYC procedures where if you do a transaction over $10,000, you report it.
Apparently there was an email that Charlie sent that said, hey, if you split it into a couple small things, you know, split into $3,000 things and then we don't have to report it.
So it was something like $3,000 or $10,000.
He was jailed for that for two years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this was in the very early days.
You have to remember.
Yeah.
I know Charlie's story.
Yeah.
He's a good,
good friend of all of ours.
Yeah.
The common theme that you see with this and some of these other allegations is, you know,
the prosecutors have an incentive to make it, you know, seem like it's the greatest crime in the world.
And in some cases, I mean, in Sam's case, I think it's,
extremely valid to, you know, call him out as a fraudster and a scammer and everything else.
But it should be, but there's a big difference between stealing customer funds and, you know,
failing to file some paperwork or, you know, something like what Charlie did.
What Charlie did is a crime.
Everybody in financial services knows that, you know, my employees should know that.
I certainly immediately terminate somebody.
if they ever did that, of course, and hopefully they would never do it in the first place.
But there is degrees and differences, and we need nuance.
I mean, Sam stole $4 billion.
He reached right into it, took client money, put it in his own account, and stole it.
And he bought his parents something like $50, $60 million worth of real estate,
you know, all these deck a million dollar mansions and planes and things like that,
completely stolen from customer funds.
With a lot of these other allegations that you see, you know, that's not the allegation.
You know, it reminds me of the, there was a Tether case where there was a big,
big press release by the New York AG.
Oh, Tether doesn't have sufficient reserve.
They don't have the money they said they have.
And then, you know, a couple days after the press release, when the actual complaint comes out,
it was over like $180.
It was like they were 180 bucks off out of $12 billion.
You know, so it's sometimes...
You know, there's an incentive to buy the press, and sometimes the people write...
Sorry, sorry, I've got a selfish question.
What's that tether story?
What did they say?
What did they say? It was $1803?
No, I don't have the exact details in front of me, but there was, remember there was a thing
a couple of years ago where the New York AG had put out a release saying that Tether didn't have the
Yes.
Yes.
Funds.
And so when you say, you know, they claim they have 12 billion and they do not
have 12 billion, everybody's like, oh my gosh, you know.
And I mean, even with the, even with the finance accusations, there's no allegation
that I've seen at least that where they're stealing customer funds.
You know, that's what the, the SEC's poster child and, and,
John hates this, but it's true.
The SEC gave Sam a broker-dealer license.
They gave Sam a broker-dealer license.
They gave Sam unprecedented access that absolutely no one in the industry has, not even close.
Wrong, right?
Who says wrong?
How is it wrong, John?
He had two meetings with the chair.
He had two meetings with the chair.
No one else.
Go ahead, yeah, John, John, yeah, go ahead.
Of course, yeah.
Let me just finish the statement.
Yeah, so John, I'll give you the mic right after, Bruce.
Go ahead, Bruce.
No problem.
Sam Bankman Free.
had two meetings. Gensler said that when they asked him, how many times did you meet Sam?
He had a very clever answer. He said, my public schedule says two. Now, to me, that tells me that he
met more than times, but he's trying to give a clever, sneaky little answer. But we know it's at least
two. And we know that at least one of those meetings was discussing no action relief. So, Sam,
who went to MIT where Gensler taught and Sam's girlfriend, who was president of F. F.T.X.,
is the daughter of the guy who supervised Gensler at MIT,
so a friend of his, a family friend of his.
And the general counsel for FDX used to be Gensler's personal general counsel
when he was with CFTC.
So he's got all his old pals, his old crew, his old cronies,
all his friends in there.
And FDX did have a broker deal.
John will probably say no,
because he doesn't apparently know how to look these up
or he did later or whatever, but you can look it up
Yeah, well, let's let's get this, Bruce.
John, you didn't know last time.
No, no, let me say.
Yeah, I know, Bruce.
Let me, please, let me finish.
Of course, of course, sorry.
I'll let it.
Same thing he does every other time.
John, last time we talked, I said that Coinbase, you said Coinbase needed an ATS.
I said they did, and you argued about it for 10 minutes.
We can pull up the tape.
You argued about it because you didn't know.
You were arguing about it, acting like an expert on this, and pointing yourself out,
saying things that are just materially false, just like Gensler does.
You said that they didn't have to.
Bruce,
linking this to,
yeah,
yeah,
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.
Bruce, Bruce.
So, yeah,
Bruce,
Bruce, we'll just move it away from personal attacks.
I love both of you guys on stage.
Go ahead, John.
I know there's a lot of much made.
Please stay away from the personal attacks.
If you want,
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.
I know, Bruce, Bruce.
Bruce, yeah, yeah, Bruce.
Let's get John to respond.
Please, Bruce.
It's a really interesting discussion.
Go ahead, John.
Thank you.
So let me say a few things. First, if you look on Twitter, I had pretty much a 24-hour debate with Mark Cuban about crypto and everything. And it was incredible. And at the end of the day, I said despite my disagreements with Mark Cuban about crypto, about Kevin O'Leary, about his role in Voyager. I wouldn't, not only would I vote for the guy for president, but I would campaign for him all day long. And you can see that on Twitter. We had this lengthy debate where no personal attacks, no...
You know, none of these ad hominems.
It's really, you know, I'm too old for it.
Most of the people on this call are young and they can handle it.
I can't handle it.
So let me, I'll address each of your points as quickly as I can without trying to get personal.
First of all, let's start with the meetings that Gary Gensler had.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm not surprised.
I would be shocked if he didn't have meetings with Sam Bankman-Fried,
and I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory about it.
Again, having worked at the SEC for almost 20 years and been chief for 11 years,
I met with everybody all the time.
I appreciate it.
Ryan, Ryan, right.
Let's get, let's get, let's get it.
Yeah, Ryan, but let's get all the points.
I'm taking notes.
I love you.
I love you.
Go ahead, John.
Thanks, Brian.
So, you know, I met with people all the time. I met with, I met routinely with the general counsels and CEOs of online brokerages who were just starting out back in 1998, 1999.
I wanted to find out, you know, what the SEC was doing right, what the SEC was doing wrong, what the SEC was screwing up.
You know, and most of the time, like I said many times, I'm an SEC critic. You can read all of my criticisms.
You know, this just happens to be an area where I agree with what the SEC is doing.
So I appreciate there's a lot of cronyism.
I don't like it.
I worked for nine different chair people, and I found cronyism everywhere.
And that's what that's a problem.
perfectly, Bruce, that's a perfectly reasonable allegation. It's frustrating and it's wrong.
But I can tell you that just having those meetings is not, you know, res ipsiloquiter. There's,
there's this terrible crime. Now, as far as being a broker dealer,
Look, the point is, is broker-dealer licensure requires that individuals be licensed with FINRA.
It requires, again, SEC oversight, audits, examinations, net capital requirements, insurance, cybersecurity requirements, archiving requirements.
There's a whole slew of things.
And typically, when I was chief...
If there was a broker dealer that was involved, for instance, selling prime bank securities, these bogus instruments that purport to represent a secondary market for letters of credit, that happened once.
So before we investigated, we sent an examination. I called up. I had five former OC, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, which is now called the Division of Examinations.
I had five of those former OC members in the group that we had hired.
And I'd say, look, call your friends over in that division and have them do an exam.
And you guys go down there and stay in a hotel, you know, a few blocks away.
And if there are problems, you know, go in there with subpoenas.
But so that's what oversight is, is that when there's any semblance or any, any, just any,
even just a tiny bit of potential bad behavior,
the SEC examiners and the FINRA examiners can get in there.
That's what registration means.
You may own a dormant broker dealer like Coinbase did.
But remember, Coinbase was specifically charged with failing to register as a broker
dealer.
Bruce can argue that, hey, that's a wrong charge because they were registered.
Fine.
But the fact is, that's what the SEC charged Coinbase with.
That's what they charged Bitrix with.
That's what they charge all these firms.
John, just on the first of it.
I think it's, it's, we could disagree, but it's, it's, it's, what I love about this is just, it just, it just, we're not an echo chamber.
It's very easy to get a bunch of crypto guys and just sit there attacking the, the, uh, the SEC and, and you know, I make fun of Scott about this all the time.
Ran as well, but, so it's good to have you here, John, to have that back and forth.
On that first point, I think that's what Rand wanted to ask is the fact that.
And I'll give you my thoughts on it, but the fact that Gensler met Sam twice,
and he kind of made it clear that this is on his public records,
and yet no one-on-one meeting with Brian who's just over Zoom.
Preferential treatment for me isn't surprising,
and I don't think that's that big of a deal.
But I know that it could mean there's more cronyism under what we're seeing right now.
So I want to get your thoughts, John.
Do you think it's unfair that he met Sam twice and Armstrong Nunn?
Without implying that there's any cronyism.
Sure.
No, I think, you know, when you look at the, when I, again, having worked for, I think
eight or nine different chairmen and chairwomen during the course of the time that I
worked there, their schedules were unbelievable.
They met with everybody all the time.
And that's,
Even when I was chief, if somebody looked at my schedule, I met with everybody.
I didn't keep a tally.
I didn't sit back and say, okay, I met with the General Counsel of E-Trade today.
I should instead, I better call the General Counsel of Schwab and Merrill Lynch to make sure they get their say.
I really didn't think of things that way.
I think, you know, one of the best points that I hear people make, which I think is true is, you know,
I didn't go to dinner with these people, although some of them were former SEC people and were my friends.
So maybe they were even at my wedding.
So it gets a little complicated if you're there for as long as I was, which was, as I said, almost 20 years.
You know, people leave and they become...
very important in the industry and you're still friends with them you don't stop talking with
them but you try to be as professional as you can so sometimes when i read about like the the
the hinman dinners for example i think john deaton and those people make some very good points
about hinman's behavior in the ripple action i don't think it's relevant necessarily to the ripple
action maybe it is but i have
I hadn't seen any evidence to that, that, you know, he was going out to dinner and talking
about substantive things with his old firm, and he definitely had a financial interest there,
and maybe he wanted to go back there.
And the ethics office apparently wrote an email that said, we do not think you should have
these meetings, and he went and had them anyway.
So that's the situation that I think warrants investigation and is wrong.
And I certainly, when I was meeting with anyone, I would always clear those meetings with the ethics council who is usually very independent and would tell me yes or no.
And I think the chairman's office was usually very good at making those determinations.
But nobody kept any sort of tally sheet.
Is there cronyism that goes on?
Yes.
I think even worse is the revolving door.
You know, there are definitely people who come to the SEC
and are just hoping to do three years
and then flip themselves over back to their old law firms.
And I see that happen time and again.
And that's always very disappointing to me.
I feel like, hey, when they were at the SEC,
they probably didn't want to upset their law firms.
I was working as counselor to director to several directors
and I would write speeches.
And I remember writing speech for one director about CEO pay, which I felt was ridiculously high.
And I wrote, I thought a very good speech about that.
And nobody wanted to give that speech.
And I think the reason was, is because everybody wanted to go out and be a CEO and make a lot of money.
So I get what Bruce is saying.
I get what you're saying.
It's human nature.
And I'm certainly not arguing against that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and Bruce, I'd love you to respond, but just like my thoughts, could this be, you know, John Klanap is meeting you're not halfway, but getting there, is that could this be, I know there's cronyism is a possibility and I think none of us will discount it 100%.
But could this be just preferential treatment? And that's business 101, you know, public companies get, companies get advisors, give them shares, purely to get their level of access. So could it just be an example of preferential treatment, which is unfair, but doesn't have to be that nefarious?
Do you mean bigger donations?
I mean, yeah, we got to remember that he stole customer money to give $70 million to Gensler's party, too.
Gensler was chairman of Hillary Clinton's reelection campaign, and he oversaw the funding of the steel dossier.
And then Sam stole $70 million of customer funds or 30, and I guess his colleague stole another 40 or whatever, but over $30 million that he gave, including I think five or 10 to Biden.
Right.
So that's, you know, so he, he had this, of course there's favoritism. He's, you know, the most, the most wonderful person in D.C. He got every door opened for him. And so the challenge with, with counselor is that he doesn't meet everybody, like John said. He meets nobody. As far as I know, I don't know a single person in the industry he's ever met. I've never seen him anywhere. I've never heard of anybody who's met him. So it's not just Brian Armstrong. It's Jesse Powell. It's.
everybody in the industry. We can't even, we're SEC registered broker and we can't even get a meeting
with anyone, let alone the chairman. We can't get an answer from anyone about anything about
legit business that we have as a registered broker dealer registered with the commission. If anybody
should be able to get a meeting, it should be us because we are legit registered and we're working
in this space and we have legit questions about our actual membership agreement.
But even we can't get a meet with anybody.
Forget about Gensa.
I don't even bother trying.
I mean, you know, who am I?
I'm just, you know, nobody who's been registered with.
the SEC for 30 years and been in crypto for 12 years. You know, I couldn't possibly help to,
you know, just because I have a broker dealer, you know, I would never assume to be, you know,
in the presence of someone so important. But we can't get a meeting with anyone. And so it does
it does feel like, it does feel very much, it reminds me a lot of a third world country where
it's kind of like who you know and everything's sort of vague. And, you know, in my career,
all my career, I've always felt that the SEC rules were clear for the first 27 years of my career.
The last three years, no.
I feel like we've gone over this ledge into this sort of third world territory where things are not clear.
You can't look up the rules.
You can't do even basic things.
And this is my main beef with John, is that John is, I think, living in the world that both of us in our careers grew up in.
The world of, you know, I started in 1990.
I think John started after that.
where it used to be honest.
You know, maybe when John worked there, I think it was.
I never, ever, ever, ever criticized the SEC once in my career until probably this year.
Never once.
Never had a problem with them.
Never had a regulatory action.
Never even been accused of anything.
I've never had an issue with them.
Always run a clean book.
Always followed all the rules.
But now you have this situation where we can't find the rules.
So you have companies like Abra who spent millions of dollars.
By the way, I'm an investor in Abra.
We didn't get into that much, but...
You know, I know that whatever the situation is, it's clearly unfortunate, but I know for sure that they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on lawyers trying to do things.
And they got a lot of these same kind of dead ends that many of the rest of us in the industry get where you get to a point where you just can't, you can't get a straight answer.
You can show them something in writing.
Like I can, you know, I used the example a couple weeks ago where I said,
INX is a fully registered publicly traded company that's filed an S-1, and as a broker-dealer, we are licensed to sell shares in publicly traded companies.
The SEC wouldn't even answer whether we could do that.
You know, something that's clearly in our membership agreement.
So basic, basic things where they are completely failing.
To me, what it seems like.
It looks exactly like what it would look like is if Elizabeth Warren or the Biden administration gave them specific instructions to screw our industry.
So they're purposely, I can't imagine they could be this incompetent.
I can only imagine that they are purposely trying to hurt us.
So I think that that ties to the unfairness of this.
Yeah, Mario, I have a question.
Yeah, go ahead.
And let me, Scott, before you ask you a question, I forgot to mention just for the audience,
if you want to come on the show or work with our incubator, anyone in Web 3 or AI,
check the pin tweets above and email us.
That's the best way to do it or just hit us up via DMs or in the comments in the
pin tweet above, mine or Rands above.
But you go ahead, Scott.
Yeah, it's really interesting the points that Bruce just brought up in John.
So I wanted to ask you about that because you said that you worked under 9, 10, 11.
I don't remember the exact number commissioners.
Is it true that potentially because of who is in power at the SEC that you could be getting more or less clarity for certain industries and that these things can change like that?
Because Bruce is actually admitting here, listen, I've been doing this for decades, never had an issue until now.
So, I mean, is it?
potentially true that it's just different this time.
Yeah, I think Bruce makes a good point and you make an excellent point.
And I've worked for, I'd say, eight or nine different chairs.
As far as commissioners, I've probably worked for several dozen because they rotate through.
And the reality is when administration's changed, now historically, again, Bruce makes an excellent point.
historically at the SEC, and I started there in 1991.
I'd been in private practice before that.
The FCC was this kind of sleepy, quiet agency that people
weren't really mad about. And then after 9-11, especially when Harvey Pitt was chair, and he
really got to New York, and he and Dick Grasso, they worked it out so that the exchange came back
online, the New York Stock Exchange. And those days were very, it was very proud to be the SEC,
be part of the SEC, because a lot of people felt that.
that the SEC was doing a great job, and I would wear my SEC clothing all the time, you know, no problem.
And then, you know, after Maydorf or so, somewhere around there, I could be wearing my SEC jacket or something or a hat, and whoever was near me would start yelling, you know,
ad hominem's at me, you know, like that happens on these Twitter spaces. So I get what Bruce is saying.
I think things have changed. It's become much more polarized. And you make a super, super smart point that
when these administration changed, it's supposed to be that enforcement remains the same, but it doesn't.
Because typically...
new private there are new program priorities there are new things like when arthur levit came in he was very upset about muny bond fraud because he worked in the muny bond markets and there was all this pay to play problem going on there so that was a big priority of his and mark cuban mentioned
in the discourse we had yesterday about the pink sheets and microcap area and how the SEC doesn't bring
those kinds of cases because they don't really do much for your career if you're within the SEC.
And he was spot on about that.
You know, if you bring microcap cases, they don't really generate headlines.
And oftentimes pink sheet cases, they don't give you the kind of,
of recognition within the building that they should.
And that was a big complaint of some of the commissioners that I worked for over time.
But when these administrations change, things change,
and I really do think if a Republican is elected,
that if Hester Perth became acting chair or someone else became chair, that a lot would change in the
crypto space because the area has become so partisan. So, John, I agree with that. Yeah, so I agree with that.
And so then the next question then becomes, what about enforcement actions that are started during
one administration under one chairman that then continue on? Let's say that.
If that scenario plays out, Hesterpers becomes the chair, but we're, you know, a year or two deep into finance and coin-based litigation.
No, I think that's a great point.
I've never seen that happen in the history of the SEC that where a case that's actually been filed because the current chairman doesn't agree.
with it, it gets withdraw.
I'm certainly not saying it would be cool,
but I'm saying could the dynamic surrounding it change.
I think the dynamics could.
I think the need for a settlement,
you know,
the chairman could reach down to their enforcement director
and say, you know, I think that this case should be settled.
I think that or, you know,
you never know what they can do.
But, you know, when it comes to independence,
there is, despite what some people on this call might think,
there is still a fierce notion of independence
from the SEC staff.
You know, things change when the administration changed, but you don't necessarily try to change with it.
You're looking to seek truth, to do justice, to make the world a better place.
And that's why you're there.
Anytime you want, if you work at the SEC, you can leave and triple your salary, quadruple your salary.
In the case of crypto, you can probably get 10x your salary if you leave and join a crypto firm.
So there's all sorts of reasons that people stay, but probably the biggest reason above all else, it's like when I was a criminal prosecutor too, you really have a good feeling about your independence.
And if you're working litigation...
I don't think you would allow for a second.
Right.
Someone to come in and compromise your litigation principles.
Yeah.
Sorry to interrupt, but I hate to ever use the term this time.
It's different, right?
The most four dangerous words in investing.
But the issue that here is that if you had regime change, you had a new chairperson,
you had potentially even a new president in general and party switch.
A lot that's underlying this case or what's being proposed here is the idea of these being securities without that ever being made clear, right?
What's a commodity? What's a security? How do you register? These have been sort of the arguing points.
If you have a Hester Purse come in who then...
proposes again the idea of safe harbor where any project can come in within three years prove they're sufficiently decentralized and are not a security. Doesn't that blow up the entire underlying premise? Now that doesn't blow up the premise for claims against finance, certainly. But if the basis here is that
What's problematic is that Coinbase is allowing these unregistered securities to be sold and they're not licensed to do so.
But at some point in that case, we get clarity that those are not actually unregistered securities.
Wouldn't that fundamentally change everything?
Yeah, I don't know the answer to that.
So you're saying something that was previously considered unlawful is by rule considered lawful.
just by definition of what the assets are that are being treated yeah i get it i i i mean i
guess that's a that's kind of a bizarre scenario but it's possible and i think you're right about hester
you know i've known her for 25 years and she's she's a brilliant person an incredible human
being a brilliant mind you know everything i happen to disagree with her on this but she's a fierce
libertarian as well
I don't know that she would become chair, but I do think, you know, the chair has incredible power.
The chair can call an emergency meeting anytime they want.
They have a giant staff.
They're the ones who hire all the division directors.
The other commissioners each have maybe three staff people.
That's all Esther has.
And those staff people are working around the clock, helping that commissioner, but they can't,
there's not a lot a commissioner can do on their own, but all the budgets of all the divisions,
everything is controlled by the chair, especially the meetings.
So, you know, a real, a chair who wanted to come in and change everything, like the way Harvey Pitt did,
like the way Arthur Levitt did, can make a lot of changes very quickly.
For instance, Harvey Pitt...
historically, every insider trading case at the SEC could be settled with what's called a one-in-one,
a one-time penalty in the amount of your disgorgement of profits for real gotten gains on the insider trading and a one-time penalty.
That was the only thing that was predictable at the SEC was that small little piece.
And Harvey Pitt came in and said, nope, I don't like that anymore.
I think if you're a registered person or an accountant or a lawyer, you have a higher duty, so we won't do the one-in-one with you.
He also came in and said, you know, this cooperative credit that the SEC talks about is a bunch of nonsense.
We need to codify what cooperative credit means when you come in and cooperate.
So he put together something called and called.
Let me ask you a question.
Let me ask a question to Scott and Rand before we wrap up.
Again, for the audience, if you're not messaging us in the PIN tweet, it's your loss.
So make sure you check the PIN tweet and email us.
But, Rand, Scott, my question to you is a simple, interesting one.
The ambiguity that we've seen in the crypto space, is that intentional or is that just the way things are in the system at the moment?
Are you going to cut me if I start talking?
No, no, I want. Go ahead. Scott, and then we go around.
Yeah, the ambiguity from the SEC, I think, yes. I think that they're being purposely ambiguous and vague because it allows them to operate.
sort of outside of the box and do this enforcement actions to regulate. Because if we had clarity
and they were forced to answer, is ether security, is ether commodity, what are these assets,
then it would be a very different conversation. I think it's very, very purposeful that the SEC
in these conditions continues to just name seemingly random coins as securities in each
of these suits, right? You get the, in each case, it's another six, another seven, I think we're up to
68, right? And if they can continue to just slowly list them off, we know that the implication is that
everything is a security, everything is an unregistered security, and that is going to be used in their
cases. So the less clarity they give, I think, the more wiggle room it has for Gary Gensler to
continue down this path. So...
That's why I was asking that to John, because the minute that we actually get clarity on some of these assets, which there are congressional people in Congress who are working to do, the minute we have that clarity, it will be fundamentally changed the way that all of these enforcement actions look, in my opinion.
Brian?
Brian?
Yeah, I thought so. Scott, one more question on your end because you do want to write.
Lucky Rand, lucky Rand. But on a serious note, last question is if we did...
I'm just driving. I am here though.
Okay, so Scott, did we, did you want me to give Rand like the final words, like his final thoughts on the space or no need for it today?
Yeah, I think you should give it to him to wrap up.
Yeah, yeah.
So, Rand, so I don't know if you heard the last question, but give us your final thoughts on, you know, what we're seeing in crypto today.
Just for the average investor, what to make of all this.
I'm sure they're confused and they'd love to get your advice.
And as Rand gives us their advice, just make sure quickly for the audience, check the pin tweet.
And email us in the email there in the Pintweet or just comment or DM us, any three of us.
But, Rand, we'd love to get your final thoughts.
Scott recommended I give you the mic, choose for your final advice for everyone.
And blame Scott for giving you the mic.
Thanks for the recommendation, as I said, at End Driving.
