Making America Pro-Crypto | Congressman French Hill

Bankless Nation, the question today is: Is the U. S. flipping pro-crypto? The United States has either been anti-crypto or neutral since the birth of Bitcoin. That’s starting to change. For the first time, we actually have momentum in D. C. There will be many battles ahead, but right now, crypto is making progress. What would a pro-crypto America look like? What laws do we need to pass to get there? Who do we still need to convince, and how close are we? ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙 KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞 MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🦄 UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚡️ FUEL | EARN FUEL POINTS https://bankless.cc/fuel ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🗣️ TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/33?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 06:01 Trump's Assasination Attempt 09:28 Thought On VP Nominee JD Vance 12:59 Why is Crypto Important to You? 16:11 Legislation 20:36 Why Didn't Democrats Pivot? 23:32 SAB-121 Status Update 29:03 The Next Generation of Products 34:22 Gensler's SEC 36:52 Election Impact on Crypto ------ RESOURCES Rep French Hill https://x.com/repfrenchhill ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ https://www.bankless.com/disclosures%E2%81%A0

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, the question today is the United States of America flipping pro crypto? I certainly hope so. The US has been either anti crypto or neutral since the birth of Bitcoin, and that's starting to change. It feels like for the first time, we actually have momentum in DC. By we, I mean the crypto movement. That's not to say there's not going to be battles ahead. There will certainly be battles, but right now crypto is actually making some progress. The question for today is what would a pro crypto America look like? And what laws do we need to get us there? Who do we need to convince? How close are we? Today, we have pro crypto Congressman French Hill, who gives us his take on how to get there. We discuss a few things today. Number one, Trump's new vice president. His name is JD Vance.

• 0:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Would he be a crypto friendly vice president? Number two, what we learned from the SAB 121 repeal, the vote that got passed in Congress, and then Biden's veto of it. Number three, the legislative roadmap for crypto in the United States. Number four, Gary Gensler and the administrative state. Number five, how to keep crypto bipartisan. Number six, the impact of a Trump presidency on crypto. I want to do our usual political disclaimer before we get in today. Bankless, as you know, is not a political podcast. We don't divide on red or blue lines. We have no party affinity in the US or any other country around the world. What we do care about is the values of decentralization and autonomy and power to the people that underlie this technology of crypto. And to the extent those values are political, so are we.

• 1:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  But they don't necessarily divide on party lines. We'll continue to give a voice to those values, no matter what political party they come from. So let me just say clearly, anyone from any party is welcome on Bankless. And lastly, on a personal note, I started this conversation asking Representative Hill about the impact of the Trump assassination attempt. It was just top of mind for me. I couldn't escape it. And I can tell you in preparing for this interview, the words assassination attempt against Trump were just surreal to write, and they were even surreal to ask in the conversation. I almost had to will myself to say the words. It's like- My brain couldn't fully accept the gravity of what actually happened. There really was an assassination attempt against the current presidential nominee,

• 2:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  and it was almost successful. If there was a slight change in the wind, a different turn of the head, we'd have an assassinated president killed in broad daylight and witnessed by the entire world. These are just the times we're living in. And through them, I'm hopeful we find ways to unify on the values that made this country great. We have disputes settled by protocols instead of political violence. The Constitution itself is a nonviolent coordination technology, just like crypto. The best American values are also crypto values. And that's what today's episode reminds us of. All right, let's get right to the conversation with Representative Hill. But before we do, I want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our recommended exchange, the place to go buy and trade your crypto.

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• 5:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation Representative French Hill is a Republican Congressman. He's representing Arkansas's 2nd District. And I think of particular interest to crypto listeners. Representative Hill is the Vice Chairman of the Influential House Financial Services Committee, and he leads the Subcommittee on Digital Assets. So that's us in crypto and financial technology. He's also had a history in banking and finance, something that we affectionately in crypto call TradFi. And he's previously served in the US Treasury. Representative Hill, welcome to Bankless.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  It's great to be with you. Thanks for the invitation.

• 5:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're excited to talk to you. And these are very interesting times. May you live in interesting times, as the saying goes. I actually think we need to start here, though, because this is on everyone's mind as we're entering this episode. I definitely want to talk crypto and legislation. Let that be the bulk of the episode. But there was a recent assassination attempt against President Trump during an election event on Saturday. So this is political violence in America. I can speak for myself. I was in absolute shock as this happened. I feel like many Americans were as well, concerned at the fallout from this. Before we talk about crypto, just as you zoom out, what are the implications of Saturday's assassination attempt?

• 6:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just like for the future of this country, like what do you see on the horizon?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Well, unfortunately, through our 248 years of existence as a country, our country's been no stranger to violence and been no stranger to violent attacks on our political candidates and presidents. I mean, it sometimes it seemed like it was a routine experience from Lincoln to Garfield to McKinley in the last quarter of a century, in the 19th century, to, of course, my youth where Jack Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy were all murdered in an assassination attempt. So I think it's part of our culture. We've got

• 7:20Speaker 02

  to recognize that. I feel horrified for the people at the event, the firefighter from Buffalo, who was killed protecting his family, others that were injured. And as somebody who's been in around presidential politics, literally since the late 1970s, and having done presidential advance for events before, I also, as a member of Congress, was shocked and appalled by the lack of preparation by the campaign advance team and the Secret Service for leaving those

• 8:00Speaker 02

  vulnerable, cutaway shot windows open. This is just a violation of what I call advance 101 for a political event, or any event for that matter, if you're interested, if there's a security risk, which is that you don't leave an open line of sight to the stage for a political event from any direction. And so there'll be a major investigation. Speaker Mike Johnson has announced that. But, look, let's all turn to each other, to our neighbors, to our friends, and really work to dial down the demonization of the people who don't agree with us on every

• 8:44Speaker 02

  topic. I mean, by golly, I mean, we agree with on 90% of stuff, and there's just no reason to

• 8:52Speaker 02

  People because they're in a different political party. I mean, it really, this is a new thing to me. I mean, I'm 67 years old, so I've been around the block. And I didn't pick who I went canoeing with, or backpacking with, or mountain climbing, or playing golf on a Saturday morning, with who, what their political party was. I didn't even know what political party they were, or what religion they were. And this kind of obsession with this, in the last 10 or 15 years, has gotten really tiresome, and it lends itself to environments like we witnessed over the weekend.

• 9:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well said, particularly on the point about unity. I guess political violence has been in the past in America. It is new for a kind of a new generation who hasn't experienced it, but it's certainly not new for America. And speaking of new generations, so Trump's VP nominee was announced yesterday, a gentleman by the name of J.D. Vance. Curious, what do you think of this candidate? So he's on the millennial side, you know, like skewing towards maybe crypto interested. I think he's like 39 years old. If elected, would Vance be a crypto-friendly vice president?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  I think the short answer to that is yes. He has asked a lot of questions in recent weeks in the Senate about the prospects for crypto-related bills. He's been drafting one of his own. And we've tried to provide everyone in the Senate a full look at what we've done for the past four years on this topic, both in stable coins, and in creating a market structure bill, a regulatory framework bill, for digital assets. And I suddenly see some interest in the Senate. Senator Vance is one of those people, but Senator Hagerty

• 10:44Speaker 02

  of Tennessee, obviously Senators Loomis and Gillibrand have been leaders for several years. And then just last week, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and John Bozeman of Arkansas, my senior senator in my home state, had an ag committee hearing with Chairman Benham from the CFTC, the Commodity Future Trading Commission, on the spot market for Bitcoin. And also, just, and I think Chairman Benham did a great job outlining

• 11:15Speaker 02

  His general support for regulatory framework. So we're making progress over there. I think Vance would be a pro lean pro crypto participant if he's elected vice president. As you know, he's a Yale graduate. He's a former venture capital in Silicon Valley, venture capitalist from Silicon Valley. And President Trump has made some positive comments about our market structure and crypto innovation. So I think, I think that would be good. And we've made, for those of you listening who are big Biden supporters or Democratic administration supporters, we've really worked hard the last three, three

• 11:59Speaker 02

  years, three and a half years, building a consensus in the Biden administration that a stablecoin regime and a market structure bill like FIT21 that I wrote with G T Thompson and my colleagues is exactly the approach that we need to take to move innovation, venture capital, blockchain usage forward in our country.

• 12:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's fantastic. And as we move into kind of the legislation, I want to ask a higher level question of you, Representative Hill. So you get an A on a website that we often refer to, it's called the Stand With Crypto website for your track record on crypto. It's because you've co-sponsored the SAB 121 repeal bill, also co-sponsored FIT21, also co-sponsored the Uniform Treatment of Custodial Assets Act, also co-sponsored the anti-CBTC bill. So you've got the receipts. You were, you were in crypto and doing things here with respect to legislation before it was cool. And I'm glad other members of Congress have, have joined you recently. I want to ask you though, at the highest level, why is crypto important to you? Why do you support it?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Well, for my whole career, I've always had a interest in financial services. Obviously, I started my financial services career back in 1979. I was a bond trader and a bank analyst early in my career. But I've also been on the operations side of banking and finance. And that's where my interest was peaked. I'm a huge believer in a blockchain operating system that it resolves so many of the concerns that I've always had in my career. What are those? How do you have a more efficient system? How do you reduce errors? How do you have less fraud and less confusion?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  How do you compress agency costs in the distribution of a product, thereby offering consumers, business to business or business to consumer, products that can cost less and have more accuracy? And I believe that many of those challenges are solved in the use of a blockchain operating system. Another thing that I've been engaged in, when I was in venture capital, private equity, and then owning my own financial services company, we were very involved in private placements of private securities for our own portfolio or for other clients.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  And those over-the-counter markets, one of the broadest, I guess, in the history of the country until Bloomberg came around, in a way, was the municipal bond market, small public finance issues around the country. But like the remittance business that you referenced a minute ago, large, over-the-counter, thinly traded securities also have a high bid-and-ask spread and high agency costs, like in 144A debt securities or in some municipal finance, although that's narrowed. You get my point. So I've always been curious about putting stock ledgers and bond ledgers out on a blockchain.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And then also facilitating a secondary market through a blockchain. And I think, and look, there are many people, this is not, we're not, you and I are not talking about revolution now. People are doing what I'm describing now because it's an obvious place inside the financial services industry where people want to deliver better service, more effective, less fraud, more accurately timed with a tokenized payment and do it at lower cost. And that's why I think as blockchain methodology improves, you'll see that expand.

• 15:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  The metaphor of a blockchain is a financial operating system. I think it's more than a metaphor, too. It's like a reality. I, I hope that gets more widely distributed in terms of the US government's knowledge on this subject. But we, we stand with you in our hopes for this space and kind of our vision for this space as well. I think it could be a revolution in the way the US does finance and bring benefit to an extraordinary number of Americans. Let's talk about how we get it done. So let's talk about legislation and I want to go through some recent legislation, some victories, some almost victories, some defeats. Let's talk with the, let's talk about the SAB 121 repeal. Okay. And I'm naming legislation here. I think Bankless listeners will be familiar with it.

• 16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  We did an episode with Patrick McHenry, you know, the week that FIT, FIT 21 was going out and you know, SAB 121 was, was just on the back of that vote. But let's talk about SAB 121. So Bankless listeners will remember this is a pro crypto bill that cleared up, that would clear up an accounting loophole that the SEC was using to prohibit essentially US banks from holding crypto. And it passed the House and it even passed the Senate. And this was the surprise. It passed the Senate with bipartisan support. So you had Democratic senators, even Chuck Schumer in the Senate, voting yes to the SAB 121 repeal. So SAB 121 made it all the way to Biden's desk.

• 17:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is kind of the first major pro crypto legislation, pretty simple legislation for his signature. And he turned it back. He vetoed it. So it was vetoed, dead in the water. Last week it went back in front of Congress again, but this time, of course, to override a veto, we need a two thirds vote in, in Congress. It couldn't make that two thirds threshold. I'm just curious, from, from this whole experience, what did we learn? What can we learn from SAB 121? What are the takeaways? What did you learn?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Well, number one, I learned that the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission's staff and perhaps some of its commissioners don't know what they're doing and don't understand custody. Number two, I learned that this could have been crafted in a much more effective, narrow way and maybe met the standard that the SEC was looking for, but not sweeping up all these other participants. Number three, I learned that the SEC, once again, demonstrated to me they don't coordinate their activities with other major financial services players in Washington. Both Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, and Jay Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve,

• 18:25Speaker 02

  both have testified before our committee they were not consulted on Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, changing custody rules. Now, this is ridiculous because custody is really a bank supervisory thing. It's not an SEC thing. SEC issuers, markets, investors, brokers, right? 33 Act, 34 Act, and brokers use custodians. And so to impose their Staff Accounting Bulletin on here without coordinating it, I think, gave the SEC perhaps a black eye in the inter-agency process. And then finally, I found that, look, common sense prevails. Wait, what? What?

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Common sense prevails and is bipartisan? That this was not coordinated, not effective, not the right approach. We had 21 House Democrats vote with us on our Congressional Review Act, led ably by Mike Flood of Nebraska, my good friend and colleague from Nebraska, entrepreneur, businessman from Lincoln, Nebraska, before he was in the state legislature and now in Congress. Mike led that effort. And then, as you point out, we got 12 Democrats voting with us in the Senate, including the Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. So, it's bipartisan. We have a better way to go about it. And then FIT 21.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Which members could then vote on the very next week, we correct all this custodial confusion. So those are some of my takeaways. I wish President Biden, I mean, it would have been OK if he'd, I mean, he has his right to veto it, but in the veto message, he could have said, and I have directed the SEC to work with bank regulatory agencies and do this in a different way. Or I've asked him to pull it back and start over. You know, I don't know, but they didn't do any of that. I think it was a black eye to the administration on crypto, once again, by, I think, a mistaken judgment by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

• 20:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you have any speculation as to why this was vetoed? So as you said, yeah, common sense prevailed in Congress, but it didn't seem to prevail in the White House. There are multiple ways to handle it. As you said, you could veto it, and you could say, Gensler, SEC, go take care of this in the background. It doesn't even need an act of Congress to resolve this, so go fix it. They chose not to. And this is at a time where I can tell you the crypto community was hoping that crypto would be bipartisan, was hoping that the Democrats, in particular, the White House, would sort of pivot over to the crypto side of things. And it seemed like this was an intentional choice not to. Do you understand why?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't on that, but don't forget, they have pivoted. They've been very constructive on working with us on stable coins and then on Fit 21. It is very important for the whole ecosystem to know that thanks to the leadership of Janet Yellen and others in the administration, the president did not threaten to veto Fit 21. They had a statement of administrative policy that's called a SAP, an SAP, and it said, hey, there's some things in it we would like to change, but we are not issuing a veto threat, and we'd like to work constructively in a bipartisan basis towards the regulatory framework. I mean, that is huge.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  That's huge. And as a result, we got 71 Democrats, I think we could have possibly gotten more, who joined all the Republicans in passing FIT 21, which is our Market Structure Regulatory Framework bill, across the House floor, 279 votes yes. So, and we had about maybe 10 or 15 people not voting that day in the House. So that's, that's not a bad, bad vote. So I think the administration is working constructively with us. I think they should not have vetoed the Congressional Review Act. They should have just said, you know, we're going to direct the SEC to withdraw it. They didn't. So we had a veto override

• 22:36Speaker 02

  message. We didn't hit the two thirds. But I really do want to be on record. They are working constructively on a regulatory framework and solutions here. They keep being put in a bad position, principally, frequently by the Chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, who keeps going into court and losing. He's been told by federal judges that his rulings are arbitrary and capricious. I don't know any lawyer before any bar in America who wants to have on their resume that a federal judge says that what you wrote is arbitrary and capricious. Hester Purce, please read what Hester writes. Hester is a Republican

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Commissioner on the SEC. She has a marvelous writing style and she's a very effective economic policy thinker. So she is a great voice inside the Commission for Common Sense.

• 23:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Representative Hill, we never miss a Hester Purce dissent. She's fantastic. I think she'd do a fantastic role in that job of Chairman of the SEC herself. Well, let's go back and tie the loop on FIT 21. So, this is for Bankless listeners that know about this. This is a major pro crypto bill that clarifies basically which crypto assets are securities and which are commodities, you know, some clarity to the industry. So we don't have this power vacuum and a power grab by rogue regulators at the SEC or some other administrations. So the passage you were talking about was a Passage by the House and it was another historic vote. It was bipartisan. So 71 Democrats in the House joined 208 Republicans to pass this.

• 24:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm kind of confused, though, as to what the process is now. So pass the House and now it's in the Senate. So kind of like, now what? We were sort of hoping, I think a lot of people on the back of SAB 121 thought, okay, now the Senate votes and then Biden has a chance to veto or let it pass. But it seems like it's stuck in the Senate. Like, can you just give us some insight into the procedure? What has to happen there? Does a senator have to kind of pick it up? Do they have to recraft it? Like, how close are we from this getting to the president's desk?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Super questions. And this is where everybody in the venture ecosystem in and around blockchain and crypto can be helpful.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  That is a strong definitive bipartisan vote. And you combine it with the staff accounting bullet. That's why I'm glad you started there. Both those send a market signal that the House has done their homework. They've done their education. They've reached consensus and they've moved a product forward. And I would say the same is true on stable coins. But we have not taken that across the House floor for a vote. But I do, I want to be clear that I think we've also found that consensus around payment stable coins as well. All right. The Senate has the following choices. They can introduce their own bill.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  And as you know, Senators Loomis and Gillibrand have had legislation pending. Senators Stabenow and Bozeman had their hearing on the commodity aspects of this last week. So they can introduce their own legislation. And both Stabenow has been working on a bill. Loomis and Gillibrand have some legislation draft. Senator Vance, the new Republican vice presidential candidate, was in the process of looking at a crypto bill in the last few weeks. Secondly, a senator could introduce FIT 21, the House-passed version.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  No one has done that, but certainly people from the venture community could encourage it.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And any combination of those, they also could add a stablecoin bill, you know, into the mix as well, which was really the Loomis-Jillibrand approach. So, yeah, we're caught a little flat-footed now because we've done our work. We have only a few weeks left in this Congress. And the Senate just doesn't have very many legislative days left, you know. But we're going to work our tails off to find a bicameral, meaning House and Senate approval of something in this realm before the end of this Congress, which ends at December

• 27:17Speaker 02

  31 of this year, including a big lame duck session after the presidential election. We'll be pushing all during September, the last two weeks in July and all of September. But time is short. If for any reason we fail on stablecoins, Fit21, or rectifying the staff accounting bulletin, these will be the top issues when we go into the new Congress in the new year. And I will be right there pushing and leading as soon as that Congress turns over. But I want to be clear on a podcast, I'm not giving up on this yet. We can't give up. As John Boehner once famously said, the former Speaker of the House, "Congress moves very slowly until it doesn't."

• 28:01Speaker 02

  So the fact that Sherrod Brown has indicated he might be interested in this topic, Chuck Schumer has said he's interested in this topic, Debbie Stabenow has had a hearing, you get the movement, but it may be too little, too late for this Congress. But we're going to push hard and we need all of our friends who think Fit20 Fund is a good market structure or first step. We need that help over in the Senate.

• 28:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does seem like the winds have certainly changed. We've got some momentum, whether it happens in this Congress or the next Congress. It's only a matter of time now. I want to ask you about other critical areas that are still unaddressed from a legislation perspective. So we mentioned that the FIT 21 clarity between the SEC, what are commodities, what are securities, that sort of thing. You've also mentioned stable coins. I know we're making progress there. That seems to be like a chunk of legislation that we can do, almost like the first generation. I'm kind of glad you call these products because that's sort of things is, you know, products, these bills are products for the American people, let's hope. So what's the next generation of products after this? It feels like we're still missing some clarity with respect to DeFi.

• 29:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  The regulators want to treat all decentralized finance as if there's like intermediaries in between. So it feels like we need something there. Privacy has been an issue as well. I mean, do Americans have the ability to transfer something on a public blockchain in encrypted fashion or not? There are some other things that we really need to tie off as well. What's kind of after in the next generation of legislation you feel like we need to put forward?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  So smart that you phrased it like that. These are the initial steps. First of all, nationwide privacy law, I think is very important. We've passed that out of our committee. It is something that's percolating on both sides of the Capitol. This would be preemptive of state laws, create a national privacy standard, have some rights to data ownership, which I think is very, very important. You don't really have a digital future if you don't own your own data. I would mandate the use of APIs. There's not consensus for that, but these are the kinds of things that are in these building blocks. Stable coins and the regulatory framework. You don't go to the next steps in blockchain development if you don't do the basic fundamentals.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  And that's what I think these bills are. They are the fundamental building blocks of a digital blockchain related future. What's next? We have in the FIT 21 bill calling for a study on decentralized finance, how it would work, what are the pitfalls, what are issues, how does federal policy have to change to facilitate it, what are issues around it? And so we've already done one hearing on decentralized finance and we'll be doing some more on that.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  On NFTs and sort of non-securities, non-commodity tokenized owned assets, the bill's silent on that. So I can see some future hearings on that as well. It connects right back to data ownership, right back to privacy, right back to the use of a blockchain. And the third category, I would say, would be just expanding blockchain generally in an analog context.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  So that would be like tokenizing an existing security, tokenizing another asset class like art. We started off the top of the show talking a little bit about, you know, illiquid securities or thinly traded situations. That's really true out in a number of asset categories that could be made much more transparent and effective on a blockchain from an auction point of view, documentation point of view, payment. So we're going to look at that. And there's a lot of experimentation with that in the markets right now. People aren't talking about it, but I can assure you, wherever

• 32:11Speaker 02

  there is a high agency call situation with lots of stops in the people process chart, people want to disrupt that through the use of a blockchain operating system. I find that exciting. I think everybody benefits. Compliance officers benefit, consumers benefit, businesses benefit. So you'll see us continue this development beyond these foundational.

• 32:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's great to hear. And at some level, just like the internet, you're part of Congress's job is to know when to act and to know when to just let innovation flourish and let the experiments take hold. I want to ask you another question. This is somewhat of a nuanced question, but it's something that's been on our minds in crypto recently, which is, you know, over the past couple of years, we've had kind of like an operation choke point against crypto banks working with, with, with projects. We've had overreach by regulatory. Regulators like Gary Gensler. Overall, it's been sort of an administrative state type of attack, I would say, on crypto that just like hasn't felt very good, hasn't felt welcome for crypto entrepreneurs in the United States. We recently had a Supreme Court decision overturning Chevron deference, which is very interesting.

• 33:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we've done entire episodes on this, but the the short version of it is this is a rein and a check on the power of the regulatory administrative state and the regulators kind of imposing their will. But this power essentially gets gets transferred back to to Congress. And it's now on Congress to make sure they put the proper legislation in place to kind of fill in the gaps where necessary. And I guess my question, I'm kind of like, I would love to ask this of everyone who works on behalf of the American people in Congress, but but since you're the representative in front of us today is, is Congress equipped to do this well? And are you going to make, how can you make sure you do this well? And how can you avoid a failure mode of other regulators kind of like working or even lobbyists

• 34:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  outside sort of working with Congress and crafting bills in their favor? Just how's your overall assessment of how Congress can put together legislation for something that is new and innovative like crypto? Because now, this is really what, like in the wake of Chevron deference being overturned, this is really what we need Congress to do.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Well, you've got a live action observation of this in place right now, watching the last three and a half years of Chairman Gensler's SEC. He's creating rules by enforcement. He's telling people, just come in and register the 40 Act and the 33 Act and the 34 Act. They're all welcoming to you. Please come forward. Meet with my world-class team and we'll take good care of you.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Of course, nonsense. And then he's interpreted the Howey test, which is a famous 1940s securities case that outlines what are the, I'd say distinguishing characteristics of something that is a investment contractor, is clearly an investment. We've legislated that in Fit 21 and a whole process around it. In fact, giving authority to the commission to play a major role. That's how Chevron should work.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  You don't just get to make up the rules and assume that they have the full faith and credit and responsibility and authority of Congress without a congressional direction. And so in Congress, fit 21 is precisely what we want to see Congress do, which is take a troubled area where the agency tends to want to write its own rules that are not in keeping with the core statute of the SEC, and we are going to direct them in the right direction. That's what Congress should be doing. We've allowed the administrative state under both Democrats and Republicans to creep up into every oozing crack and hole in the

• 36:03Speaker 02

  roof of the American economic system for five decades. With period of victory, the Carter deregulations in the 70s, the Reagan deregulations in the 80s, although the Chevron case itself is a 1984 case, the famous justice of the Supreme Court Scalia, Anton Scalia, said it was the worst decision he'd been a part of and spent the rest of his life regretting it. So we need to go to work in Congress in each of our areas of jurisdiction and reassert congressional direction and control. It will not be easy to do, but it's absolutely doable. And I actually think what we're doing right now with the commission and with the CFTC

• 36:47Speaker 02

  around crypto and digital assets is a prime example, a good working example of it.

• 36:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Representative Hill, thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for your work in Congress on behalf of the American people and representing crypto. I have a final question for you as we close this out. So 2024 crypto is actually, seems like it's become an election issue. We've got President Trump coming out and saying he's going to be the crypto president. He's actually going to a Bitcoin conference later this month, and I'm sure the security on that will be extra tight. Also, we talked about J.D. Vance, the vice president nominee who's being crypto friendly. We haven't yet seen crypto come up in a debate, but perhaps it will. Let's forecast to the elections. What are the, what's the impact of the elections going to be on crypto?

• 37:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that, you know, America's position, the US government's position on crypto. Of course, we don't know what the outcome is going to be. Congress could swing in one direction or another. The White House could swing in one direction or another. But with some of these eventualities, what do you kind of predict about the impact of the elections for crypto-related issues?

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, we've spent four or five years educating members of Congress, the staffs in Congress, policymakers around Washington DC on the importance of blockchain, how crypto or tokenized payments can work, and the benefits to the economy. Pro-innovation, pro-economic growth, pro-capital coming to, back to America, pro-bringing innovation here, letting us set the standard on what a good payment-stable coin is backed by the US dollar. Let us set the standard on what a regulatory framework looks like. Not do buy, come on. Oh, that's my Joe Biden imitation. Come on, man. You know, this is ridiculous. We should be leading here.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  And I think we've gotten that message through to both Democrats and Republicans. So I'm optimistic. No matter who wins the presidency or how the House and Senate work out, I think crypto will move forward because of the education that we've delivered in Congress and that the whole ecosystem across the nation has helped deliver by describing the benefits, the use cases for an operational blockchain to benefit consumers and business, benefit compliance officers, benefit anti-fraud folks, anti-money laundering people. So I think we've really done a good job. I'm optimistic about that. I think President Trump, this would be one of the first bills we could get to his desk if he's elected president to sign into law

• 39:22Speaker 02

  if we don't finish our work this year. And I definitely think that a Trump- Vance presidency would lean more favorably towards the work we're doing. But clearly, in the Biden administration, we've talked about it now for a few minutes. They're not fully on the same page, even if they set up the work and have been constructive on the framework, on stablecoins. It's not been done with a lot of coordination or enthusiasm from all aspects of the administration. So let's keep the faith. Let's know that good days are ahead and that this is a real bright spot. And let's make sure we think about blockchain

• 40:07Speaker 02

  like we thought about the internet in the 90s. Let's let it flourish. And we can regulate and tax people with what they do on it, not block them from trying. And that's why I'm so convinced we're in the right direction.

• 40:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, as a child of the 90s, I say we should bring back the 90s with respect to America's posture on the internet to crypto and lead the world once again. So Representative Hill, thank you so much for being with us. I will say to Bankless listeners, of course, you should get involved politically. All right. And if you want to get involved and want to see where various political candidates stand on crypto, you can go to the Stand with Crypto website. We'll include a link in the show notes. I will end with this. Of course, none of this has been financial advice, not even political advice. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But this is the frontier. It's not for everyone. We're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

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