Crypto Advocacy Panel

This is the Crypto Advocacy & Education Summit, which we're hosting to go along with the Ethereum Foundation's $500,000 donation to the Gitcoin Round 12 matching round for the ‘Crypto Advocacy’ track. Gitcoin does these ‘quadratic matching’ rounds 4 times a year, where many entities donate large sums of funds, and the community rallies and donates to many causes and projects across the crypto space. The ‘matching rounds’ are exponentially matched towards the grants that received the most numbers of individual humans who donated to them. The EF has specifically allocated 500k to go towards effects that advocate for crypto in our government offices. Bankless and Gitcoin are hosting a 2-panel ’summit’ livestream in order to drum up excitement and donations for the various organizations that help advocate for crypto! ✨ GITCOIN GRANTS ✨ https://gitcoin.co/grants/explorer/ --- Panel #1: Why does crypto advocacy and education matter? Kristin Smith | Blockchain Association https://twitter.com/KMSmithDC?s=20 Brian Quintenz | Former CFTC Chair https://twitter.com/BrianQuintenz?s=20 Tomicah Tillemann | a16z https://twitter.com/TomicahTD?s=20 --- Panel #2: How do crypto stakeholders support crypto advocacy + education? Sarah Roth-Gaudette | Fight for the Future https://twitter.com/gaudette75?s=20 Jerry Brito | Coin Center https://twitter.com/jerrybrito?s=20 Jake Chervinsky | Blockchain Association https://twitter.com/jchervinsky?s=20 ------ 📣 METMASK | YOUR HARDWARE WALLET'S BEST FRIEND https://bankless.cc/metamask-shows ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​ https://bankless.cc/go-gemini%E2%80%8B 💧LIDO | DECENTRALIZED STAKING https://bankless.cc/Lido 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:19David Hoffman?

  All right, welcome everyone to the Crypto Advocacy Dual Panel. We are super excited to launch off this Gitcoin Round 12 with a brand-new round for crypto advocacy. And I'm joined here by Scott Moore from Gitcoin and Connor Spelcy from the Dow Research Collective. And we are talking all about advocacy for crypto with our regulator bodies, our lobbyists, our governmental agencies, and also, like I said, kicking off this brand-new round for Gitcoin Grants. And I believe everyone knows about Gitcoin Grants, but for those that don't, I'll throw it over to Scott to talk about what Gitcoin is, why we're doing this, and what is new in Gitcoin Round 12.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, David. So Gitcoin Grants is one of many experiments that Gitcoin is running around digital public goods. The goal of Gitcoin Grants in particular is to leverage this tool called quadratic funding to find ways to basically get the community to signal their preferences for various types of public goods within Web3. So the idea is essentially that you have a pool of matching funds, in this case donated generously by the Ethereum Foundation and others, and you have a series of individual donations during the round, which happens for two weeks, starting today. And that round will basically, your donations will be deciding where that matching pool goes. So the idea is essentially to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, leverage the community's sort of support for these initiatives to help us decide in the future what other public goods we should see in the world.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And the reason this is so important is that, like, you know, historically, we've relied on a lot of different mechanisms for funding public goods at a local, kind of like, national level. It's very hard to figure out ways to fund these things at a global level. Now that we have global networks, we can sort of find better ways to hopefully do that.

• 2:03David Hoffman?

  We are also joined with Connor Spelcy of the Dow Research Collective. Connor has been a key member in moving this regulatory conversation forward and has also been a key member in organizing this particular panel. So Connor, thank you for helping move the needle forward. Can you also just talk about why now? Crypto seems to be really up in the front of the regulatory conversation. So why is this conversation so important? And what are we trying to do here on today's panel?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  The thing in part why now is because we're lucky enough to get a little more interested in advocacy. We've certainly been working at this kind of stuff for a long time with the Blockchain Association. I think it's about three and a half years old at this stage, but luckily or unluckily in some ways for us, the infrastructure bill happened and when that fight happened, drew a ton of attention on crypto Twitter, got a lot of people mobilized and helped them to understand that we're going to have to work with regulators and policymakers if we want to really make this an ecosystem that allows for the kind of innovation that we want to see in the States and really around the world.

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so to kick this dual panel off, we will have our first panel, which will be moderated by myself. We're bringing on Kristin Smith from the Blockchain Association, also Brian Quintenz, former CFTC Chair, who we've also had on the Bankless Podcast, and also Tamika Tillman. Sorry, Kristen, I'm going to mute your video because we're not actually coming on yet, but we will get there soon. And so that will be my first panel. And that is all about really the basics of lobbying. Why does lobbying exist as a thing? It's not going to be unique to crypto. Many industries have started lobbying before crypto. And so we need to learn about what have other industries learned about the lobbying efforts? And what can we apply to the world of crypto?

• 3:45David Hoffman?

  And what do we have to lose if we don't do this? And then Connor will be taking over for panel two. Connor, do you want to intro your panel and your guests as well?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for panel two, we're going to have Jerry Brito, I think everyone knows and loves from Coin Center. Same deal, Jake Trivinsky, formerly of Compound and now the Blockchain Association luckily, joined very recently and an amazing addition to that team. And then Sarah Roth-Godek from Fight for the Future. And I think a lot of people know Fight for the Future from the infrastructure bill battle, all that they did to help folks get in touch with their senators. They helped on a number of other fronts. And so we're going to hear more about specifically how they did it. Because to your point, there's a lot of associations that people in crypto and people not in crypto have about lobbying. But in many ways, it's a critical part of the legislative process in the States. And I know that our panelists and your panelists speak very effectively to that. But what we're going to be hearing from them is what they do on the ground, how this actually works.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Because so many of us who aren't in DC and who aren't in capitals around the world don't understand what the rulemaking process is, but it's going to be really critical for the success of the industry.

• 4:49David Hoffman?

  And while the listeners are listening to these panelists into these conversations, I ask them that they go check out Gitcoin Round 12, the crypto advocacy panel for Gitcoin. There is a link right in the YouTube description. There are a number of crypto advocacy efforts that you can donate towards, and these donations will be matched by this 800,000 matching pool donated by the Ethereum Foundation and a number of other efforts. Connor, excuse me, Scott, can you give us a little bit more color of who's in the crypto advocacy round? And just a little bit of the dynamics about like, where should people consider donating their money to?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's actually $900,000 as of about two hours ago, so we're almost at the million-dollar mark, which is the most we have ever had for a single pool. So we actually had $1 million in total for the matching pool last time. Now we won individual round, which, of which there are many in the current sort of like two week period, is actually a million dollars as well. So that's a pretty amazing, just like, side note. But in terms of who's actually in the round, it's a lot of organizations that I think people know on the one hand. So CoinCentry, Blockchain Association, folks that have been doing this and are very much embedded in the space. But to your point, David, I think there's also a lot of organizations that people don't really have an understanding of, such as Fight for the Future, and such as, for example, Freedom of the Press Foundation, who have been doing a lot of work in this area and

• 6:10Speaker 01

  really fighting for rights around these sorts of initiatives for the last several years. And so I think that it's a kind of interesting group to experiment and explore this space with, because we're going to get to see sort of how people interact, both with traditional crypto advocacy organizations, and then also with a broader pool of like, groups that historically have been sort of on the, from the Web3, like, kind of the core perspective, fringes of the conversation, but now can be more central. I can also definitely take a quick moment to screen share and like, walk through some of the grantees that are up there. Let me just find that here, just to make sure that I have the right setup, ready to go.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  But the major piece of the round that I think is actually really important is that every donation that's made ends up donating, giving a signal to the matching funding donors, who are really, you know, the largest organizations that are part of this round at the moment. Maybe I'll pass it back to you, David, and then, you know, as we get this up and running here, once I actually get my screen share going, we can continue on from there.

• 7:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think everyone who is listening, everyone in crypto should, the topic of crypto lobbying is, lobbying is a topic as old as time. As long as there's been governments, there's been lobbying. But crypto is very, very unique in that we are an industry about money. Crypto is about inherently about money, and so is lobbying. And that combination has never really been seen before. First, we have this industry that needs to have lobbying advocacy efforts, but it's also got its own money systems behind it. And so while lobbying is as old as time, we've yet to see a lobbying industry that has the combination of being about money and also is full of an industry of really, really passionate people.

• 8:02David Hoffman?

  I do expect a crypto have, the crypto industry has one of, probably going to be one of the largest single-issue voting industries that's out there. And that industry is also about money. And so lobbying is nothing new, but lobbying with like the amount of just energy that crypto has with the money that crypto has behind it is going to be something, I think, that's going to be really, really powerful. But I don't want listeners to think that this is just going to build itself. Like this, this isn't just going to magically unfold in the way that Bitcoin has, where it just works. We are actually going to have to try. We're actually going to have to put efforts and boots on the ground. And so that is what some of the lobbying efforts is going to have to do here this week with Bitcoin Round 12.

• 8:44David Hoffman?

  Scott, are you ready to show us some of the crypto advocacy efforts that people can fund with Bitcoin?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Can you see my screen okay right now?

• 8:54David Hoffman?

  Yes, yeah, we can.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Perfect. So I would just note, by the way, this is the first round that we're doing this. We want this to be the first of many. Right now, we have approximately, I think it's 10 or so grantees, including Electronic Frontier Foundation, Open Privacy, Civics Unplugged, which is actually a new entrant to the Web3 space at large, but it's been doing a lot of work in terms of grassroots Gen Z sort of advocacy for technology. The Pacific Northwest Rural Broadband Alliance, excuse me, Freeman the Press Foundation, the Caribbean Blockchain Association, Reboot, which has been doing a lot of work, kind of having this. Technical optimist balance between, you know, what we're talking about in the regulatory space and what we're talking about with again, like kind of the new generation of folks coming in and like experiencing this technology for the first time.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Fight for the future who are, um, I can't, you know, say enough good things about just as an organization that's been, um, maybe underrepresented, uh, in their work in a space for a long time. Coincensor, which I think people are very familiar with, and I'm a huge fan of personally, similar with the blockchain association. And then the tour project, which has been doing a lot of just, you know, technical work in terms of how we actually progress this technology for, uh, the last 10 plus years. So, um, it's a really great starting group. If you think there should be other organizations in this round and have not, you know, had a chance to reach out, please do. Um, not Scott or on Twitter or anywhere else. Just let me know and I can try and add them to the round if they pass the sort of checks and balances of the committee that's approving them for this particular pool. Um, and yeah, David, I'll pass it back to you.

• 10:24David Hoffman?

  Yes, we are about to get into our first panel, but, uh, before we do, you can go ahead and put away your checkbooks, but you can open up your meta mask and your ledger and open up Gitcoin round 12. Again, there is a link in the YouTube descriptions. Uh, if, if I had a visual counter of, you know, a number of donations on the screen, I totally would put it there, but we are not that tech enabled yet. Uh, but, uh, again, like this, this, uh, event is all about, uh, channeling money into efforts that fund and for advocating for crypto, advocating for our industries. And again, there are, there are monies behind our, our industry. And so when we can pay people to advocate for them, the monies become more valuable. So at the end of the day, the money gets returned back to you guys.

• 11:07David Hoffman?

  Uh, Scott, Connor, thank you so much for joining me on this intro. Connor, we will be seeing you later for the second panel of the day. And Scott, we will be seeing you again at the close of this whole entire event. Thank you for joining me. Uh, so I'm going to ask you guys to turn your cameras on. I'm going to ask our panelists to turn their cameras, oh, excuse me, you guys turn your cameras off. Panelists, please come and turn your cameras on so we can get the first panel on the road. We are joined by Brian Quintenz, the first one to turn on his camera. Uh, you guys might remember him from our bankless podcast that we did with him. The other panelists. are probably frustrated because I turned their cameras off and they need permission to turn it on. So there is that and there is that. We are also joined by Kristin Smith from the Blockchain Association and Tomica Tillman from A16Z.

• 11:53David Hoffman?

  I just introduced all three of you, but I also want to give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves, a little bit of your backgrounds. And we will go in the order that cameras turned on. So Brian, if you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do, what you have done and what you are doing now with regards to crypto, I would greatly appreciate it.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Thanks, David. It's great to be with you. Really appreciate the invitation to join this incredible event through Gitcoin and the E F's contribution to advocacy efforts for crypto. I'm Brian Quintenz. I was a former CFTC Commissioner from 2017 through just this last August of 2021. Before that, I was in the financial markets, working at an investment firm and forming my own investment firm. In particular, focusing on investing in the banking sector during the middle financial crisis, which was a fascinating experience. And prior to that, I was working on Capitol Hill as a policy aide for a member of Congress from 2001 through 2007.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  In particular, Deborah Price, Congresswoman from Ohio, who was at that point the fourth ranking member in the House of Representatives.

• 12:58David Hoffman?

  Fantastic, Brian. Kristen, let's turn to you. Kristen of the Blockchain Association, which is one of the Gitcoin grants that you just recently saw on the screen. So perhaps consider donating there. Kristen, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and what you are doing in this space.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I am Kristin Smith and the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, which is a trade association that's been around doing advocacy on behalf of the crypto industry for almost three and a half years now, as Connor said. Connor helped bring all this together back at that time. And my background is I've been in Washington DC for almost 20 years. I worked as a congressional staffer, you know, for two members of the Senate, one member of the House, and then since then have been working as a registered lobbyist and continue to be registered as a lobbyist in addition to the work of managing the trade association. So I know what it's like to be on both sides. I was up on Capitol Hill before a group of members of Congress this morning.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  And it's really been wonderful to see the crypto community and the crypto industry grow in this space. I still think we have a way to go, a ways to go before we can actually. Stop playing defense and start playing offense, but excited to have this conversation today. And really excited about the growing interest in the crypto community in being a part of the policymaking process here in Washington.

• 14:21David Hoffman?

  Defense versus offense, I really like that. We're going to come back to that as a topic later. Last but not least, Tamika of A16Z, you want to give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are, your background and what you are doing in the world of regulatory crypto advocacy?

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely. A pleasure to be with you and thanks for all the great work that you, David and your colleagues are engaged in around this conversation. I am Global Head of Policy at Andreessen Horowitz for the crypto team. I came to this space after a wild and circuitous journey many years ago in my youthful days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I was involved in a bunch of senate and congressional campaigns. And then while I was finishing up my PhD, I went to work for a little known Delaware senator named Joe Biden, ran a big chunk of the world for him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years, and then got a request to go over to the State Department from Hillary Clinton to be her speechwriter, did that job

• 15:18Speaker 03

  for a while and then led a team for her and Secretary Kerry that operated a little bit like DARPA for the State Department and built out projects at the intersection of innovation and advocacy all over the world. I then went to an organization called New America, which is kind of a think tank, part technology accelerator, led a lot of projects with governments all over the world and in the US, using distributed technology and decentralized systems to solve big problems that they care about and did a lot of policy work in that capacity as well. And then joined A16Z this summer.

• 15:55David Hoffman?

  Oh, congratulations on joining A16Z. I think I recognize a few of the names that you listed, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton. I think, I think we listeners might know who those people are. And so guys, thank you again for coming and joining us on this panel. You guys have spanned, spanned a very wide sphere of different areas of the world of regulation and advocacy. And so I think the different perspectives that you guys All bring to the table are going to be supremely useful. But as we all know, crypto people tend to be a little bit anti-political, anti-government and it's kind of in crypto's nature. But there's also a decent amount of crypto people who understand that this fight is about them no matter what. One of my favorite phrases is that you might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.

• 16:40David Hoffman?

  Kristen, I want to start with you, since so many people in the crypto industry might need some just education about this effort. Why do we lobby? Why do industries lobby? What do they have to gain and what do they have to lose? What are the very basics of this question?

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I mean, listen, governments create and enact laws, they enact regulations that impact the the industry. And, you know, we've seen over the past several years, many enforcement actions when different companies may or may not, you know, have been out of compliance. And so they're very real world consequences to the rules of the road. I think it's particularly important for the crypto ecosystem and the crypto industry to engage with policymakers. Because what we are building in this community is really complex and just fundamentally different than anything anyone has seen before. And what we've seen is the, the, if you look at kind of the crisis points over the past couple of years,

• 17:39Speaker 04

  like this infrastructure bill that was very poorly crafted, or the midnight rulemaking that Secretary Mnuchin was trying to push through last year. A lot of it was just driven by policymakers that just fundamentally didn't understand the basics of the technology or had misconceptions about the uses of it. And so getting in and doing the education, it takes time because these people are very busy. They have a lot on their plates, but having conversations over and over, putting faces to an industry, being a resource when new topics come up and engaging in the process really is going to lead to better policy outcomes.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  And I think as much as many of us would like to pretend that that stuff doesn't matter, it does, and there are real world consequences. And so if we want to have a seat at the table, we got to show up at the table.

• 18:31David Hoffman?

  Brian, with your time at the CFTC, I'm curious to know if you were the subject, the object of lobbying efforts at the CFTC, or if the CFTC is at large. And do you have any color to add about successful lobbying efforts versus unsuccessful lobbying efforts? And again, why people lobby at all in the first place?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, the derivatives markets are highly complex. Some of the corners of the derivatives markets are very bespoke. The trading methods, execution methods, reporting obligations, paperwork requirements, you know, all of the regulatory suite can have different impacts on different business models, on different intermediaries, on different end users and different risk managers. And so, you know, I don't necessarily think of lobbying, you know, as a negative term. I view it as just a form of education as a policymaker to try to understand what people in the real world are dealing with

• 19:34Speaker 03

  and how my potential decisions could impact them and how prior decisions, you know, are affecting them or could be changed to have a beneficial or a more negative outcome. And, you know, you think about the derivatives markets as a whole. I mean, the CFTC oversees, you know, $400 to $500 trillion in notional value of derivative instruments. And those are futures contracts on energy products, on precious metals, on agricultural goods, on interest rates and financial products. And then there are swaps on credit and equities. You know, all aspects of the economy are touched by the derivatives markets

• 20:19Speaker 03

  and are touched to some extent by CFTC regulations. And, you know, people in these roles and in the role I was in and policymakers on Capitol Hill, they're very busy. You know, they have to make a lot of decisions about a lot of different topics. And it's very hard to get educated on all of them. And so, you know, I view lobbying as an educational effort. Sometimes it's from a specific interest perspective and sometimes it's from a broader perspective. But all in all, it's about someone communicating to someone else their experience and what they know and what they think, you know, a right outcome could be.

• 20:57David Hoffman?

  Tamiko, with your experiences at A16Z, what has it been like to work on just the education and policy and lobbying effort? Is it easy? Do politicians want to understand? What's that like?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Well, let me answer the question with a story. And this will sound, at best, tangentially related at first, but I promise you, I'm getting there. A few years ago, I took my kids to Yellowstone. And when we went to Yellowstone, due to some questionable decisions by their parents, my kids had not spent time in a big national park in the West previously. And all they really knew is that there were bears and there were these scary thermal features. And they hadn't heard that much about it beyond the fact that it was scary and a little bit dangerous. And we got there and very early on encountered some amazing forest rangers that sat my kids down, told them what they needed to know, and got them to a point where this amazing ecosystem that had previously been kind of terrifying to them,

• 21:58Speaker 03

  all of a sudden opened up and became really exciting and something that they cared about and wanted to protect and wanted to experience. And our work with policymakers is kind of similar to that. You have a lot of folks who, for lack of a better analogy, have been stuck in the city for a long time. They've heard that there's this ecosystem out there, but all they really know about it is that there are occasional bear attacks. And our job is to take them into this incredible, vibrant, dynamic new universe, help them to experience it, help them to understand why it's valuable, and ultimately to become champions and defenders of that ecosystem in the way that all of us are champions and defenders for the ecosystem. So that's the mission.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  And fortunately, we're finding that a lot of policymakers are open to this. They understand that the status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. They are tired of living in a web 2 world where their information and their personal data is manipulated and used against them on a daily basis and used against everyone. They're looking for an alternative. And we have a pretty good story to tell in that regard.

• 23:07David Hoffman?

  Well, I'm a big fan of stories and I think that story definitely exemplifies what hopefully this progression looks like. Hopefully, we can convince regulators of all the good merits about crypto while also as an industry, allowing regulators to regulate out the bad sides of crypto, which we all know do exist. So I actually want to go again in reverse order, just because. So again, Tamiko with you. The way that I view lobbying, the lobbying industry, at least with regards to specific industries, is the lobbying industry is an industry within an industry, right? So we have the crypto industry and then we have the crypto lobbyists, which are its own industry, but inside of the larger umbrella of crypto.

• 23:48David Hoffman?

  And this smaller part, the lobbying side, it has its own story of maturation, development, progress, I'm guessing. Where would you say we are as a crypto industry? Where are we on the spectrum of maturation of our lobbying efforts? Are we getting good yet? Or do we still have a lot of improvement? Where are we in the grand spectrum of development?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Well, the short answer is we're not where we need to be, but I think we're moving quickly in the right direction. We've had a lot of great work by Kristin and others who have been trying to encourage the industry to move toward more cohesion and coherence in the interactions that we're having with policymakers. But it's important for all of us to understand at the outset that we've been pretty delinquent as a community in engaging a lot of the constituencies that we should have been talking to over the last decade. And by virtue of that, there's a pretty big gap in understanding and a pretty high degree of suspicion when it comes to working with the community. So we need to

• 24:53Speaker 03

  own that. We need to do everything we can to get over that. And we also, I think, need to recognize why we haven't been more effective to date. There's been a lot of fragmentation in the engagement that has occurred with policymakers. To the extent we have disagreements and lively debates within the community, that's great. But when we go up and talk Talk with policymakers, for the most part, they're not very interested in that. And so we need to do a better job of having a high degree of coherence and cohesion in the messages that we're bringing to policymakers. I think we're also seeing a very quick maturation process in the aftermath of the infrastructure bill this summer.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  That was really an inflection point, both for policymakers and for the industry as a whole. And you know, there's an old saying in Washington, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And I think that finally, we're seeing a lot of key actors within the crypto community, the Web three ecosystem, recognize that fact and start to come together to shape policy in a constructive manner going forward.

• 26:05David Hoffman?

  Brian, how would you rate the crypto industry, our skills at lobbying? And where are we in our development of our lobbying efforts as an industry?

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I think from a technical perspective and an expertise perspective, it's very good. I think, you know, the the the youthfulness of the sector as a whole means that there isn't yet the focus by the entire community and the industry that these efforts are are are critical to the success of the space.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  You know, you look at kind of what I would normally deal with in my prior role at the CFTC, large financial institutions, trade associations that have been around for decades, that have, you know, dedicated professional staff.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Like, you know, Kristen is now, you know, developing and others are developing.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  You know, they're used to having a process by which they can come together and try to speak with one voice. And I think to to Mike's point. You know, it's natural for any, any person, any institution, or any specific sector to have different perspectives on what may be the, the most positive or the correct, you know, policy outcome to something. It's easier when there's a negative, you know, against which to fight that everyone doesn't like. And so, you know, there's, there's, there's none, you know, it's understandable that there are differences of opinion. But, you know, in my prior role, and I think in many members of Congress's mind, and from what I saw on

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Capitol Hill, there's also, you know, a desire to, to hear a consensus opinion, you know, what, what does the industry think as opposed to what does one individual voice think? And I think that's where we are all, you know, trying to work together to develop, you know, speaking with one voice or coordinating on some of those messages or those potential policy outcomes.

• 28:08David Hoffman?

  Kristin, as somebody who is right in the middle of this fight, right at the heart, what would you say are crypto's strengths when it comes to advocacy and lobbying? And what should we, what strengths should we really lean into? And what weaknesses do we really need to plug the holes of before we can really have effective lobbying?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the strengths are not even necessarily the industry itself, but the ecosystem surrounding it. What happened with infrastructure that Fight for the Future was like hugely involved in, in making happen is we got 41,000 phone calls into United States Senate like that. It happened over a course of five days. Other industries would die for that kind of engagement and that kind of mobilization. And that wasn't because we'd had this, you know, big grassroots strategy. No, it was literally because this is a really communicative industry that knows how to get into forums on Reddit, get into, you know, crypto Twitter, like people communicate and they can mobilize really quickly. So

• 29:09Speaker 04

  that is a strength. Again, that's not necessarily an industry strength per se, but like the entire ecosystem of developers and participants that are out there. I think where we are on the the things we need to work on um you know I are are coming into play um. Coordination, I agree, has been an issue in the past, but that is, I think, starting to shift. I mean, I think if we look just within like the membership of the Blockchain Association, for example. Last year at this time, we had about twenty five member companies. This year, we have sixty five member companies. So we have more people coming together up to try to work out the arguments on the on the front end before going to government. Um, but then there's also just been a lack of resources.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  And um, just to kind of throw out a couple of rough numbers. You know, I like to tell people I'm super upfront about the finances of the Blockchain Association. In twenty twenty, last year, our budget was about two million dollars. By comparison, the Valve Manufacturers Association of America spent more money than that in twenty twenty, right? And you know, they don't have the complexity of the issues that we have. It's pretty easy to explain what a valve is. Um, if you compare that to other sort of established mature trade associations. The American Bankers Association spends about two hundred million dollars a year on their trade association. Um, kind of more maybe what I would think where we should be trade associations like um.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Um, you know, like the Entertainment Software Association um or the Modern Markets Initiative. Those fall somewhere between like twenty and forty million dollars a year of operating budget for those associations. So this year's been wonderful. The Blockchain Association were closer to about ten million dollars now. So we're on our way to being a mature organization. But you know, you need boots on the ground to do multiple functions, right? So it just so you know, sort of how a trade association is structured, which is, again, I should back up. Trade associations are just one piece of the puzzle, right? You need to have individual companies. You need to have advocates that are not related to industry. Um, but in terms of trade associations, we are very focused on federal public policy.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  So we have a wonderful policy team led by Jake Chervinsky, who's going to be. Up here next that they develop the positions and we work with all of our industry members to figure out where we want to be. And then we have a government relations team that and consultants that work with the government relations team that have the, you know, relationships with government that can take the positions that the policy team have and go push those out. But you need other things too, right? You need basic operating expenses. You need a communications department. You need to, deal with member services and bring new members in and all of this, you know, it doesn't pay for itself. And when you don't have money going to, those types of really it's people at the end of the day, right? Because it's a very, politics is like a very,

• 32:11Speaker 04

  personal thing. It's a lot of face to face. It's a lot of one-on-one conversations. And so, unfortunately, we can't reinvent the lobbying playbook like we're reinventing, you know, the internet, and financial services playbook. But we can use those tools and if we get money into place, you know, then then we can be effective. And again, go from being like I mentioned before, defensive to being offensive. But all of those coming together, there's a lot of companies hiring, a lot of seasoned professionals from Washington that are, you know, being put on the broader payroll. And so I'm the most optimistic I've ever been about the, our chances of getting good policy in Washington.

• 32:54David Hoffman?

  And that, Kristen, is exactly why we are doing this, this live stream, this panel with a Gitcoin advocacy round. The more money that we can funnel into these organizations that are fighting the fight for us, the more resources they have to expand. And, I'm going to try and say this at least three more times. Crypto, the industry is about the recreation of money. Therefore, our lobbyists should have a lot of money behind them. There's a lot at stake here. And if we are an industry about money, we should be able to fund these things. And so, again, go to the Gitcoin round 12 advocacy page and see which of these grants that you want to donate towards. Kristen, I'm going to start this next question once again with you. There, Tamika was talking about how a lot of these.

• 33:39David Hoffman?

  A lot of these regulators, they do understand crypto and once they are shown the light, they do seem to hopefully accept it. But not all regulators are like that. One name that comes to mind is Elizabeth Warren. She seems to really have an anti-crypto bias. So what does it take to actually gain the trust of our regulators? Because when lobbying efforts come knocking on the door and say, hey, you should, you know, you should give our industry an olive branch and let's do us a favor. As a regulator, they're probably like, well, like, what are your real motivations here? So is it hard to establish trust with regulators? And what strategies have we tried that we know work in order to actually establish trust with these people?

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, there's a couple of different factors that I think that go into it. First is, and this would help us across the board, having more everyday people using crypto in beneficial ways is going to be our best weapon, right? If you look at Uber, Uber was successful because people were using Uber. As we get more and more applications being built on top of crypto networks and everyday people's lives are improved, it will be more obvious because when you start to get into, you know, proof of work, proof of stake, what are all these, you know, you'll lose people, right? Like what members of Congress know is like what's useful? And what are their voters and their constituents utilizing and caring about? I think that's, that's the biggest thing.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  So everyone out there building, please keep building and do it fast because that will be most helpful. But, you know, there's a couple of other pieces that I think are important. One, just having relationships where you can have a dialogue are important. And part of that is done, you know, via direct lobbying. Some of it is just from lifelong friendships policymakers have had with people. A big component is political giving and, you know, participating in fundraisers and letting people know that there is, you know, kind of a little upside, you know, if they start to engage in this space. So building out the relationships is important. And then sort of the third is messaging. And different members of Congress or different regulators respond to different messaging, right? Regulators care very

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Very much about the mission of their agency and so it's figuring out how to work within that framework. Policymakers have a wide range of of issues that they care about and I think this is actually

• 36:02Speaker 04

  something that's challenging. We have so many different messages out there that resonate with different types of lawmakers in particular that it's hard to just package it all up into one thing that hits and that lands with all of these, you know, different, different policymakers, but you have some that will care about financial inclusion. You will have others that care about fighting big tech. You will have some that are worried about competitiveness with China, others that are trying to figure out how to create more jobs and spur innovation here at home. And so there's a lot of different messages that are out there and and that's one of the reasons why that, you know, one-on-one communication is so important is because we can tailor

• 36:46Speaker 04

  our messages to the interests of that lawmaker. And so I do think there are some overarching themes that everybody cares about, but there are some that are specific and and that, you know, can be used to turn someone from a skeptic into a champion, or at the very least, neutralize them. That's that's helpful to.

• 37:08David Hoffman?

  At the end of the day, getting some of the people out of the way is is half the fight.

• 37:14David Hoffman?

  Tamika, with your experiences at A16Z, has it been difficult to gain trust of the regulators?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Well, I think there are two sides of that. You know, I, like a lot of folks who have come into the space, have pretty long relationships with a lot of the individuals that we are engaging and those are pretty trusted relationships and so they I I believe them. If they tell me something, they're going to believe me if if I tell them something. So at an individual level, we're building on a pretty firm foundation. I will say there is longstanding skepticism of the industry and the ecosystem. And that's something we need to work on. I think there hasn't been enough engagement to to Kristen's excellent point. Policymakers need to see the technology being used to solve problems that they care about. That's not happening enough right now.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  We need to do more when it comes to issues like financial inclusion. We need to do more to reach populations and constituencies that the policymakers are trying to represent. And that's something that we need to take on as an ecosystem and frankly, make some investments to support those types of efforts going forward. As we do that, we will find it easier and easier to establish trust with the broad range of actors that we need to be engaging if we want to see policy evolve in an effective direction going forward. This is a very surmountable challenge. To Kristin's point, we are in a much, much better position to do this than just about any

• 38:51Speaker 03

  new innovative technology in the last 50 years. Because this is a technology that at its core is based on communities. And political leaders and policymakers serve communities if they're doing their jobs right. So we are uniquely positioned to deliver and deliver some really good outcomes. But we need to do a better job of demonstrating how these tools can be used to address challenges that policymakers are focused on.

• 39:22David Hoffman?

  Brian, and since you're on the receiving ends of things, what strategies have you seen lobbying efforts work when it comes to gaining trust and respectfully infiltrating the minds of the regulators?

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks. So I guess when I was in my prior role, and I think, you know, Tamika's spot on. A lot of this, you know, if you're thinking about this as an educational initiative, you still want to trust the person that's, you know, providing you that education. And so having a trusted relationship with a counterpart who's coming in to, you know, discuss these issues, policy issues, is critically important. And, you know, that's one thing to kind of pick up on as advocacy. You know, in this space expands as there are more boots on the ground. There is the opportunity to have more messengers that can be those trusted intermediaries

• 40:17Speaker 03

  for different members or different regulators so that the message is received. What you don't want to have happen is have the right message and the wrong messenger. You know, there are some members that will listen to some segments and won't listen to others on both sides of the aisle. And, you know, as as more boots are on the ground, I think we have an opportunity to bring the right messengers with the message. You know, to those members to have more better results. So, you know, i- in in my world, you know, it was it was it was broad in terms of the, you know, the spectrum of the economy upon which it touched, but it was also narrow in terms of the

• 40:57Speaker 03

  number of people within kind of the financial system and the financial sector or in the end user community that knew enough of the details and could translate those into policy terms and engage, you know, with regulators and someone like me that has a markets background, but not a legal background and not a extraordinarily highly technical derivatives background. That I could, you know, that I could trust and get an honest assessment around the implications of different policy outcomes and different policy solutions. Whether or not something was working, whether or not something, you know, could be improved upon. And at the end of the day, it was up to me to try to verify that if I thought I needed to

• 41:37Speaker 03

  to get a diverse array of opinions to see whether or not there were other others to consider and then make my own judgment. You know, according to my philosophical, you know, beliefs and the data that I had at hand along with those those arguments and and that's something we just have to we have to be aware of too, that sometimes, you know, philosophical perspectives play as big of a role, you know, in in in advocacy and the results of this as anything else. Sometimes you just can't commit someone that, you know, they should move off of a typewriter.

• 42:12David Hoffman?

  Kristin, earlier in the show, you talked about going on the offensive rather than just being a defensive industry. Does the line, "The best defense is a good offense," apply to regulation as well? And what does having a good offense actually look like and mean when it comes to lobbying efforts?

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think, you know, I sort of divide our advocacy efforts into two buckets. We have just the basic education, right? It's making sure people understand the trends in the industry, what's going on, how it works, so that they can make informed policy decisions. But where we really want to be is coming up with ideas and figuring out what changes we need and going and advocating for those changes. The problem that we have had that's gotten in the way of both just our education work and going out and proactively pushing things is we'll have these crises come up where someone in government starts moving and we have to drop everything that we're working

• 43:12Speaker 04

  on and turn and give our attention to that. So, you know, it happened last year with Mnuchin's rulemaking. You know, we were starting a climate initiative and all these other things, and then it's like, "All right, team, drop your pencils." Like, we're all focused on this problem right now because, again, there's not enough of us that can do all of the different things that are out there. I mean, thankfully, that's finally changed, and we're getting a lot of wonderful experts in this space. But, you know, there are, if you look at, you know, the securities umbrella, there's multiple issues under there. Tax, again, multiple tax issues. There's climate around Bitcoin mining, there's that issue. There's AML KYC, there's stable coins.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Any single one of these could have a team of people that are dedicated and focused on that, right? You need somebody to come up with the materials, you need someone to think through the policy positions and work with the lawyers to examine the existing laws. And then you need to do an education campaign. And it's actually not even just education of policymakers, it's education of coalition allies in Washington, right? Other groups that might be interested in this. It's educating All of the new lobbyists that are being hired to work on this that don't actually know anything about crypto. You know, there's just so many pieces that that need to be be done and you can have that for each individual issue. And so I think the more funds that come in, I mean, we are, we are spending

• 44:38Speaker 04

  mo- a a a significant amount of our time at the blockchain association right now, just trying to play the role of coordinator. Because what's great is a lot of people are getting hired. But what's not great is if all of those same people go and talk to Tom Emmer. Tom Emmer is great. He knows our stuff. He's going to be a champion for life. He's a congressman from Minnesota who was very early, um, you know, in the crypto space. But like, we've got him. We need to go to an office of somebody who doesn't know anything about this and start to educate them and and get them up to speed. And we can do that, but it requires a lot of coordination. Um, the good news is, I think what we found out during like the infrastructure fight um this summer is we're actually pretty good at coordinating across the industry.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  Um, and it's not just companies within the blockchain association. You know, we were on calls with Coinbase and with Square and we were all in common Google Docs and we're on Signal chats. And, you know, there's a lot of, um, because we're such, you know, used to communicating, used to being, working remotely. I'm telling you, other industries don't have that. They do not understand the speed at which we can make decisions and think. And and that that's an advantage that we have, um, but we just need to make sure as we bring more people into the space that we're doing it in a way that's value added and not just duplicating or complicating that efforts that that are already in place.

• 46:00David Hoffman?

  Kristin, I'm hearing you say the word education a number of times. Is education really the common denominator for this whole effort? Is it just education all the way down? Is that really what moves the needle the most?

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Um, education is definitely helpful. Um, you know, to be, you know, maybe unpopular. Political giving is a super powerful tool. Um, if members of Congress know that, hey, if I do something positive for the crypto industry, the crypto industry is going to do something positive for me. I E. Host a fundraiser. I mean, that honestly is super helpful. Um, you know, I've seen a lot more of that going on in in the past couple of months, which which I think is great. Um, but listen, at the end of the day, if you're dealing with members of Congress, now, again, they they're a little bit different than the regulators. But members of Congress and the most You know, the core, the thing that keeps them up at night is, am I going to get reelected? How do you get reelected?

• 46:57Speaker 04

  You get votes. How do you get votes? You do things that your constituents care about and you raise a bunch of money to tell them all the good things so that, you know, they can get reelected. So, um, listen, this goes back to if we can get a bunch of people using this and loving it and being huge fans of the space and finding ways to reach them and get them politically active, you know, the policymakers will follow. Um, it's, it's, uh, that's, that's the best way to do it. But, but education is big, um, especially when preventing, you know, sort of these, um, policies that have unintended consequences. It's, it's, um, you know, very complicated space to try to get up to speed on quickly. I think as all of us know, I mean, I'm still learning things every day and could spend all day long reading about all the cool, cool stuff happening in this space.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  So, um, yeah, we got boiling it down and making it easy to understand is, um, um, is, is a process, but it's a process that we can do. And, and I think we'll eventually, you know, kind of start to close that education gap. It's happened a little bit, but we've got, I think, a long way to go.

• 47:59David Hoffman?

  Well, panelists, I want to thank you guys for carving out time in your very busy schedules to come on the show and help educate about advocacy. And so I want to wrap up with this one last question for, for each of you. Uh, we are coming to a close on 2021, which was definitely the year that the crypto industry woke up to the fact that we actually do have to participate in politics and in governmental discourse. So looking into 2022, what are some reasonable, some, some lofty but reasonable wins that you want to see from the crypto industry by the end of 2022? What, what should we really be focusing our attention on? Uh, and so we can really get some nice W's under the belt. Tamika, I'll, I'll start with you.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  I think we should approach the 2022 elections as the Web3 midterm. I think politicians on both sides of the aisle need to recognize that the margin of victory in virtually every tight race in the country will be determined by voters that care a lot about this issue. And that those that are committed to building a better internet, those that are committed to building a better financial system that works for more people are going to get a lot of support. And those that are on the wrong side of those issues are going to face unhappy voters at the ballot box. I think that's going to take some work to get us there, but I'm cautiously optimistic we can make it happen.

• 49:20David Hoffman?

  2022 as the Web3 election year. I think that is a meme that I'm going to try and get me and Ryan to just meme into existence. So thank you for that one, Tamika. Brian, I want to turn to you. What wins does the crypto industry really need to get achieved in 2022?

• 49:36Speaker 03

  I think building off of Tamika's comment, you know, there's so much in crypto for everyone. And as we see, and through my work with Tamika at A16Z, as we see policymakers from across the political spectrum get educated, you know, they turn from skeptics to supporters. I think we are going to see, and I would love to see, you know, bipartisan pieces of legislation be introduced that show the breadth of support, the diversity of support that crypto can have politically. I think that's going to be a big wake up call

• 50:19Speaker 03

  for a lot of folks that view this, you know, through one particular lens, either philosophically or economically.

• 50:26David Hoffman?

  And Kristin, what are you looking for wins? What wins are you looking for at the Blockchain Association in 2022? And how can the industry help you?

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I think what we need to do this year is build the machine to steal Fred Ursim's phrase. He talks about building a political machine. We need to build the machine that can allow us to go on the offensive. And I think the pieces are coming together. But if you know, you're running a company and that valuation is a billion dollars or more, you should have a team of people in Washington that are coordinating with all of those other companies. You know, we're just now starting to see these large companies bring in internal teams, hire a head of policy or a head of government relations. You know, up until a couple of months ago, there really wasn't a whole lot of that happening in DC. So we need more of those people coming in.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  So I think if we can, I mean, my personal goal is let's build the apparatus. And then we've got the winning arguments. We've got, you know, the playbook that we need to run. We just haven't had enough of an army to go do that. So if we can build the army this year, then then I think that's going to T us up for success. But I agree with Tamika too. If we can have this become a campaign issue in 2022, that is also going to be a game changer.

• 51:43David Hoffman?

  Well, bankless listeners can look forward to that just being injected into their ears over and over and over again. Brian, Kristen and Tamika, thank you so much for coming on for this first of two panels for this Gitcoin Round 12 Crypto Advocacy Summit. Thank you for your time and again, thank you for your efforts with actually advocating for our industry and just bringing awareness to all the good that crypto can bring to the world.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Thanks, David.

• 52:09David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, that concludes our first panel of today's live stream. If the first panelist guest wants to go ahead and either leave the Zoom or put their cameras on mute so we can bring in panelist number, panel number two. Connor, I'm going to welcome you back on to the stage so you can introduce our panelists. We have Jake Chervinsky, Sarah Goddett and Jerry Brito, who I'm bringing into Zoom right now. They might feel a little bit thrown into the weeds, but before I give the reins over to you, Connor, you want to introduce what is happening next in our second panel of the day? And also introduce who is going to be on the panel with you?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yes, thank you, David, and thanks for all the previous panelists who contributed there. That was an amazing conversation. So for our panel right now, we are going to have a discussion with Sarah, with Jake, and with Jerry about the scene in DC, helping to demystify what's happening, getting a sense of trends politically, what we're seeing, kind of get, in some ways, you know, I don't want to say the insider view, but the view that the average person in crypto, the average crypto stakeholder doesn't get every day. So, yeah, we can jump into it from there.

• 53:19David Hoffman?

  All right, with that, with the panelists, the next panel come on the show. And while they do that, I just want to remind people to pull out, not your checkbooks, but instead your ledger or your MetaMask, and go to Gitcoin and peruse all of the various different grants that you can donate to. One of them is the Blockchain Association, of which we just, we just had, we are now actually also having Jake on as well. So Connor, I will hand it off to you for panel number two.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Thank you, David. We need one of those kind of old-school rotary phones, like we need a phone bank behind you with just people, you know, answering the lines. That's next, that's step two, that's summit number two.

• 53:57David Hoffman?

  Absolutely.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  But thank you. So let's get into it. I'm going to start by briefly introducing everyone and then just having them introduce themselves. Sarah is the Executive Director at Fight for the Future, Jerry is the Executive Director at Coin Center, and Jake is at the Blockchain Association, doing a ton of good work, I think head of policy is the title, but I'm sure that you wear many hats there. So maybe we could start by everyone introducing their themselves and their organization. And this is a three-parter, themselves, their organization, and what your focus is on crypto advocacy. So let's start with those who turn their camera on first. I'm going to go Sarah, Jerry, and then Jake.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  Sure, yeah, I can jump in. Hello, folks. Thanks, Connor and David, for organizing this panel today. Very, very honored to be here with Jake and Jerry in particular. So, yeah, I'm Executive Director of Fight for the Future. We were founded in 2011, so just approaching our 10-year anniversary. Our mission is to fight for technology to be a force for liberation and empowerment, rather than exploitation and oppression. So we see decentralized peer-to-peer software, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects, having real potential to create alternatives to big tech monopolies, in particular, their abusive practices.

• 55:15Speaker 05

  Going back, though, we were one of the organizers of the first Bitcoin Black Friday. We were one of the first nonprofits to accept crypto donations. We've long been enthusiastic about the potential of the technology. More recently, we helped supporters file nearly 4,000 comments, I think, to FinCEN and the Treasury to oppose the proposed surveillance of crypto transactions. In this past August, when the infrastructure bill contained, as I'm sure has already been discussed, deeply misguided provisions around cryptocurrency that would threaten the software developers trying to create alternatives to big tech and would also harmful surveillance, also would create harmful surveillance requirements for the artists and creators. We helped direct a huge backlash in the form of over 40,000 calls, tweets that reached over 20 million people,

• 55:59Speaker 05

  and that resulted in lawmakers making an attempt last minute to fix the provision with an amendment that failed due to the obscure Senate rules, despite the bipartisan support. So now, in addition to supporting the legislation that's been introduced to fix most of the bad provisions in the bill, we're scaling up our work. I'm sure we can talk more about this, but our biggest priority at the moment is to build a broader community of human rights organizations who will fight with us. And that's off to a pretty good start.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Great, thanks, Jerry.

• 56:29Speaker 06

  Great. Well, thank you very much, Connor and Alden, for having us here. So I'm Jerry Brito. I'm Executive Director of Coin Center, and Coin Center is an independent nonprofit based in DC focused on public policy issues that affect cryptocurrencies and open permissionless blockchain networks, so things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like. We've been around for just about seven years, a little bit over seven years now. And we exist because these open networks, very much like the internet, are unowned public goods. And so as a result of that, there's a bit of a collection problem. You've got trade associations like Jakes, with which we work closely, that look after the interest of companies in this space.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  But who looks out after the interest of the networks as networks and the rights of individuals and developers to build the networks and connect and assemble as networks and to use the networks and do so freely and privately? And so that's what we exist to do. And we do that basically in three ways. Education, public policy research, and advocacy. Education is where we spend a lot of our time and it's focused on making sure the policymakers understand what the stuff is and how it works. So just plain English, just the facts, information. So much of what can go wrong with regulation policymaking is not out of malice but out of ignorance. And so we want to make sure that if they want to pick up the phone and call Bitcoin, pick up

• 57:57Speaker 06

  the phone, you know, and call a decentralized network, they can't. Hopefully they can call us and we can give them just the facts about it. As we have these conversations though, inevitably we get questions we don't have the answers to, oftentimes because these are questions of law where the technology has outpaced the law and there's a gap and policymakers are probably going to want to fill those gaps. And so that's where we engage in the second thing that we do, which is public policy research where we identify gaps, identify alternative ways one might fill those gaps, and we make a recommendation. And the criteria that we use for what we recommend is we want to help regulators meet their ends, whether that's consumer protection, investor protection, anti-money laundering,

• 58:41Speaker 06

  whatever it may be, while preserving as much as possible the freedom to innovate and avoiding unintended consequences and certainly respecting constitutional rights. And the last thing we do is advocacy, right? So we lobby for our preferred solutions. And again, we're not a trade association. We don't represent anybody. We don't have members who are basically just self-appointed champions for this technology. And folks who support us do so without any influence over what we say and do, and we hope that they like what that is and then following here they can support us again if they like it.

• 59:20Speaker 06

  So that's what we are. A lot of our work is, you know, in contrast to Sarah's work, which is very activist-focused, which is awesome and we partner with them and love the work that they do. We're very much behind the scenes, working with policymakers sort of elbow to elbow, hey, how do we get the right policies in place to make sure it benefits everybody? Sometimes that goes off the rails and we have to get into a fight, which is where we've worked with Sarah and worked with Jake publicly. But oftentimes it's very much behind the scenes kind of work.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jerry, and thanks for making that distinction, too, because I think that's a question we get a lot is, what are organizations actually doing and why do we need more than one? And we certainly do need more than one. And one thing I didn't mention at the top is that all these organizations, Fight for the Future, Coin Center, and Blockchain Association are, of course, in Gitcoin round 12. So they're organizations that you can donate to, and your donations will be matched through that very generous matching pool. With that, let's go to Jake.

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, thank you, and first let me apologize for my dog, who I think is barking at a delivery that's coming right now. So I'm sorry for that. I'm sure that'll stop in a second, but I'm Jake Chervinsky. I am head of policy for the Blockchain Association. We are the premier trade association in Washington DC. We have a membership now of about 65 members consisting of the largest and most successful US crypto companies, ranging from exchanges to custodians to software development companies focused on DeFi, to NFT projects and everything in between. I think Jerry actually did a really phenomenal job of describing sort of the difference between Coin Center

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  and independent nonprofit think tank and the Blockchain Association and industry trade group. Our job is to represent the interests of the industry to policymakers. And I think by extension, the interests of the community of customers and users who are also, you know, using these decentralized networks. In terms of what we're focused on, and I also think Jerry sort of nailed the three main categories. We're engaged in all the same types of efforts around education, policy development, and advocacy. I think I would add a fourth, which is we may also get involved in litigation. I think one thing we haven't mentioned so far is oftentimes we educate policymakers and regulators.

• 1:01:51Speaker 06

  We come up with policy initiatives and solutions that we think are both good policy for the industry, for the users, and also for governments. And sometimes we just can't reach an agreement among all the stakeholders. And when that happens, we sometimes have to vindicate our rights in court. So those listening may know me from my prior role as general counsel of Compound Labs, DeFi developer that originally created the Compound Protocol. I am a lawyer and I think in addition to being head of policy, I may find myself as head of litigation at some points.

• 1:02:27Speaker 06

  In terms of just what we're focused on now, you know, I think there's sort of two buckets in terms of how we think about our efforts in DC and also in the States. I think part of what we do is very reactive. We are hearing from policymakers who have ideas about what they think should happen with the industry or with regulation or legislation. And we are reacting to those those ideas either through education or advocacy. The other bucket is the proactive bucket, right? Us sort of figuring out what do we think good policy would look like? And I think that flows from an understanding that financial market regulations were not designed with a decentralized financial system in mind.

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  And that that, you know, applies whether we're talking about decentralized money in the form of Bitcoin or decentralized protocols for other types of interactions in DeFi or other non-financial use cases of blockchains like NFTs or social tokens or anything of that nature. And so what we really have to do, and I think something that requires more focus moving forward is coming up with what that public policy framework should look like. And then advocating for an amendment to the current laws so that we can we can move forward here in the US. So I'll I'll leave it there because I'm sure we have a lot more to cover. Thanks.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  All exciting stuff. And maybe even so now that we are more familiar with all your organizations to take a step back, maybe starting with Jerry here. I'd love to go high level on the perception of crypto among policymakers and regulators today, kind of trends you're seeing, issues that are important to them. You know, whether they're actually important to them or not, I think it was great in the first panel. And I believe, and Tameka maybe too flagged that a huge part of this, and Kristen, everyone, is education, of course. And it seems like, you know, at times we're, we're far ahead with certain members, members of Congress and senators and others. Certain individuals are not there yet on the education front.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  So with that, would love to get kind of a high level view of what you're seeing in DC.

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, so um. I think something that is sometimes a challenge for those of us in this line of work. But at the same time, pretty beautiful about our system is that it's not a monolith, right? The federal governments, certainly, you know, you take all the governments in the US, they're, they're not one thing. And so you can't say that there's one view from DC about crypto. So, you know, you've got the Congress, you've got the executive branch, and you've got the courts. And within the executive branch, you've got dozens of agencies that each probably have some say related to crypto.

• 1:05:22Speaker 06

  And each of these, within each of these, you have a multiplicity of views. So there isn't one, I would say. So, you know, the way I would describe it is that within the agencies that are most implicated by crypto and are going to be doing, you know, that have already regulated or will be regulating. They tend to have pretty expert staff focused on crypto. And in general, it depends from agency to agency. But I would say that they have a very good understanding of cryptocurrency. I think they find it, typically they find it fascinating and there's enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. At the same time, they see the challenges that it poses for their missions.

• 1:06:08Speaker 06

  But you can have good conversations with people who are expert at those agencies.

• 1:06:14Speaker 06

  And it depends, it goes from agency to agency, right? So, so it's a little different. In Congress, I think what you have is a small minority of members who have strong views about cryptocurrency. Either strongly positive or strongly negative. And then a long tail of members who, you know, don't really have a view or have sort of a layperson's view where they've read about it, formed some inclination one way or the other. But aren't, don't really have a strong view. And that's to be expected because. You know, crypto is the world to us, but it's just one of thousands of issues that members of Congress face. And so they can't be expected to have a strong, you know, a well-formed opinion about every issue that they have for them.

• 1:06:59Speaker 06

  And so part of the challenge for us there is educating folks as much as we can, but with the understanding that we're never going to get every member of Congress fully as immersed into crypto as we all are. It's, I'm doing some triage and making sure that the folks who are most negatively disposed, making sure that we have good counterbalance to those folks. So anyhow, I guess what I would say that, you know, there's no one perspective on crypto

• 1:07:38Speaker 06

  from DC, but if I could just sum it up in general, look, there is a lot of rhetoric that comes out of DC because talk is cheap and that tends to be negatives. So often what you read in the press is a lot of the folks who are not positively inclined towards crypto saying things that is negative rhetoric. But if you look at the actions that the federal government has taken to date, look, there's some stuff that I find pretty objectionable, starting with the infrastructure bill, tax

• 1:08:14Speaker 06

  reporting provisions that just passed, including to just generally tax policy, some of what the SEC has done. But aside from that, in general, I would say that the US has gotten it right on crypto regulation, right? Certainly, Vincent at Treasury has, CFTC, I think, has, I think, in the main, even the SEC has, and Jake and I might disagree on the margin. So I would say it's not monolithic and separate the rhetoric from what's actually happened. And so I'd say it's, I'm very optimistic about, you know, the future of crypto, use of the regulation.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  And I, of course, we brought up the infrastructure bill already. I feel like that's very critical to the conversation about the history of crypto regulation. And Jake, I mean, I know that you were all very integral in that process in B C. Jake, could you give us a little bit of context around that and where we're at today in that fight?

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  I know it's a big question. I know it's, I know that can be an hour long response, but.

• 1:09:25Speaker 03

  Yes, and actually, I think Jerry had to record two podcasts just to cover the story of the infrastructure bill. So we'll try to keep it a little shorter than that. Um, long story short, uh, the infrastructure bill was a promise of President Biden's campaign to, you know, build roads and bridges and bring other bipartisan efforts forward. And the only reason that crypto got tied up in this was in order to pay for all of the spending required by the infrastructure bill, Congress had to come up with pay for provisions that would raise as much money as the bill would would create in new spending. And crypto was a target of, of that effort.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  There was a set of provisions that were designed, which were not shared with industry, or I think any of the stakeholders on our side until about a week before the infrastructure bill became public, that was alleged to raise about $28 billion. I can't remember the exact figure in new tax revenue. And in short, there were basically three major elements of these new tax provisions. First, the bill expanded the definition of a broker, which is the category of market participants or actors who are required to do tax reporting. In other words, they have to file reports with the IRS

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  about transactions that they were a part of, that they conducted on behalf of their customers. The infrastructure bill expanded the definition of a broker to capture all sorts of participants in crypto that don't have access to the information they would need to do that kind of reporting. And, you know, non-intermediaries that ordinarily would never be subject to requirements like. Um. Second, it created a definition for the term digital asset, which was wildly overbroad. It essentially captured every type of asset that moves around on a blockchain, whether it is monetary in nature or otherwise, meaning

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  in theory, there could be a reporting required for almost any type of transaction that happened on a public blockchain. And third, the infamous uh section sixty fifty I provision, the cash transaction reporting requirement, which basically said that individuals and businesses who conduct transactions in trade or business must file reports for any transaction worth more than ten thousand dollars. So the example that that I know Jerry has been giving for this is, let's imagine you go to an antique store and you want to buy an antique desk and it costs eleven thousand dollars. If you buy that with Bitcoin or a stablecoin or some other digital asset,

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  well, now the antique dealer has to file a report uh to the IRS about that transaction. So I mean, for a lot of reasons we can get into, but maybe to keep it a little bit shorter, we won't. Uh. These provisions just don't make any sense. They don't match up with the nature of the technology that we are working with. And they don't match up with the position that crypto market participants have in relation to these types of transactions, right? Miners who add blocks to a blockchain are very different from securities brokerages or banks uh or other brokers that are typically required to do this type of reporting. Um. We worked very, very hard to try to fix this language in August. Uh. Unfortunately, we did not succeed

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  uh in sort of an odd turn of events where it seemed like all of the senators agreed that there should be an amendment to these provisions. But because one senator couldn't get a different, totally unrelated amendment that he wanted, he decided if he couldn't get what he wanted, no one could get what they wanted. And as a result, the infrastructure bill was passed and signed by a president. President Biden with those original provisions included. So we're now working very hard with the Treasury Department to try to mold the implementation of those tax provisions in a way that will make sense for the industry. And that's where I'll leave it for now.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jake. I know that's a hard thing to summarize. And Sarah, anyone I talked to about the infrastructure bill and kind of what went on from an advocacy perspective brings up Fight for the Future and the critical role you played. And yet I don't know that very many people in crypto candidly are as familiar with your organization, or at least as they would be with Coin Center or the Blockchain Association. So I'd love to hear from your side of the story as to, I know you've been doing things for a while at Fight for the Future related to blockchain, but how how the infrastructure bill fight played out for you and the way in which you were interacting with these other organizations that we've been talking about. And to the extent you're interacting with regulators and others too.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Thinking about this a bit, I mean, the timing was terrible in terms of just the amount of notice we all had, but good in in the way that we had already been working some on, you know, specifically the FinCEN rules and the proposed FADAF rules and and had been, you know, working some with Coin Center and Blockchain Association. And so we were already in pretty regular communication about, you know, what what might be coming next. And we tested some different messages with our audiences and built sort of small audience of our own around these issues as well. You know, for us being able to take on financial surveillance was just, you know, that that particular piece around the FinCEN rules was was just, you know,

• 1:15:04Speaker 05

  we've been long focused on privacy and anti-surveillance, government surveillance, but also corporate surveillance is as, you know, as technology evolves. But so when this, you know, this provision was added and we were, you know, alerted by folks at the Blockchain Association, it, you know, it was pretty easy for us to jump in. And it was also pretty easy for us to just to to be able to quickly be able to say that. You know, that no policy that impacts the future of the Internet, you know, should be tacked on to some must piece, must pass piece of legislation like, like the infrastructure bill as, as Jake set up as, you know, Biden's, President Biden fulfilling his, his campaign

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  promises, you know, they have to be carefully debated and considered. It's not the first time that we have fought a rider, you know, or last minute in addition to, to a bill that would affect, would affect the future of the Internet. And so, you know, whether people understand the issues or not, they can surely understand that that's just, you know, bad policymaking. So right out of the gates, that was fairly easy for, easy message for us to, to spread like this, this makes no sense. It needs to be fixed. And then we were able to move quickly. We, we, you know, have a lot of customized tools that can easily connect a supporter to their member of Congress or automatically submit letters through their members, common submissions on their websites. And we use, use these

• 1:16:30Speaker 05

  tools all the time. So they're, they're battle tested. You know, we specialize in sort of building quick campaign sites and tools that make the experience of, or the goal is to make the experience of taking, of taking action and doing activism easy. So we were able to, you know, deploy one of these, these tools in just a few hours. And, you know, we're able to, to switch it from a focus on cinema, Senator Sinema and, and mention as chief negotiators to, okay, this is really moving forward. So we need to turn the switch and facilitate calls to all of our senators and we need to, you know, quickly focus on Senator Wyden's amendment because that, that had been thankfully introduced. And so, you know, we, we are in a kind of ideologically small organization so that we can, you know,

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  we're, we're 12, 12 staff people. And so we, we, you know, are able to move quickly. And we really, you know, we live for these sort of big, big viral moments. We may talk a little bit more about sort of. You know, how the needle shifts on, on, on issues like technology and, and, and the internet. But, you know, the, these are the moments where we can have the biggest possible impact. So as a small team, we're, you know, we, we are good at dropping everything else and sort of working around the clock to take, to take full advantage. And, you know, the outpouring of, of support from the community was massive, you know, with the help of, of Coin Center and, you know, and folks like Jake, who were to sort of spread the word on Twitter.

• 1:17:59Speaker 05

  It, you know, spread incredibly quickly and we were able to sort of channel a lot of the energy in, in, you know, around the issue towards Congress. And, and like I said at the outset, you know, over 40,000 calls, very short period of time. You know, when, when the offices closed for the week, weekend, we changed the site to add everybody's Twitter handles. And so folks were, you know, tweeting and, and I think over 20, 20 million, you know, sort of, uh, folks were able to see one of these tweets. And so it really spread very quickly and, and that was awesome. So, you know, we, while we, while we lost over the obscure Senate rules and, and the Senator from Alabama, it, you know,

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  it felt like a pretty big victory for the community, you know, overall.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  And, and this is something that we certainly hear a lot in the context of the infrastructure bill was the limited notice that anyone in the industry had. And so when we think about the next, you know, fights in, uh, in DC and elsewhere, in, or actually let's focus in DC, like what are, what are some of the things that the community should be aware of right now that might be the next infrastructure bill fight that they can start working, working towards today, given that we had a little bit more time. And I'm going to put this one to Jerry first.

• 1:19:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's interesting. I think part of the reason why this became so focal is because it had to be a public fight because we got no notice, right? Because this was done out of regular order. And the same is true for the Finson fight that Sarah mentioned that happened in December, January of, you know, earlier this year, one year ago, I should say, right? And the thing is, when things are done through regular order, that is, through an agency, it is done through rulemaking, or in Congress, a bill is, a draft bill is discussed, then introduced, and hearings are done. When things are done through regular order, you know, that's, when I say that we work behind the scenes, that's what I mean.

• 1:20:06Speaker 06

  I mean that we, you know, when an agency is thinking about some regulation or some guidance, we'll talk to them before there's a draft that's put out. And we'll have conversations and back and forth, and they'll, you know, we'll point out things, "Hey, did you think about this?" And they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, you're right. We didn't think about this." And that way, we can improve things. Then it's put out for public comments, or introduced as a bill, and then we get to, and the whole, all the public gets to offer comments, and the agency has to take comment and consider that. And in that way, things are improved. And so by the time we get through this whole process, usually, we get a good result. But once in a while, for political reasons, you will have folks at an agency, like Secretary Mnuchin last year at Treasury, or this year, Mr.

• 1:20:51Speaker 06

  Portman with the infrastructure bill, rammed something through, where it's got to get done this week. And so it surprises everybody. They give it to us fully baked, we've had no input into it, it's the first time we see it. And so we can't have this back, this conversation, quote unquote, behind the scenes, where it's this nice conversation. We have to have a public fight, right? And we need to, at that point, get everybody involved, because what, at that point, the thing that they will understand is mass, this approval of what's being put out there. And so when you ask me, "What's the next thing?", I don't know. Because usually, when this happens, it's a complete surprise to us.

• 1:21:37Speaker 06

  That said, the kind of things that I would expect are, I would say there are a couple of buckets. One is, you know, at this moment, we've got very good, especially because we were able to push back and defeat Secretary Mnuchin's self-hosted wallet rules, proposed self-hosted wallet rules a year ago. The rules around anti-money laundering today are perfectly reasonable. And I was very happy to see very recently Secretary Yellen say that, you know, she's happy with the rules that we have in place now. But at any moment, there

• 1:22:18Speaker 06

  can be some black swan event, some gas pipeline that gets ransomware, that will cause something at a very high political level. Maybe the president say, do something about this now. And I don't care, I don't want to hear anything else, right? And so, something like that could trigger something related to self-hosting cryptocurrency. So I worry about that. And then the other thing is related to DeFi. It's no secret that there are investigations at the SEC related to DeFi. Those could result in enforcement actions. If they do,

• 1:22:59Speaker 06

  it's going to be very interesting to see, under what theory of law will those enforcement actions help? Certainly one that I hope won't come, but might, and one we have to be ready to engage in, is if they make a case that publishing code is in some way a violation of the securities law. Okay? And so I worry about that. So those are two things that I'm sort of on the lookout for right now.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Jake, and Jake, I mean, we hear like, there is a decent amount of FUD in the space. I mean, even as relates to like, the next thing that's gonna come, talk of enforcement actions, etc. That's what we hear about the community over and over again. And a lot of people want to do something about it. They want to try to find a way to operate a business where they don't feel insecure about what they're doing. They want to be compliant. They want to be on side, but they just don't know how to be. And they're not people who've necessarily lobbied or advocated for anything in their life. And you do a really good job of, I think, explaining for everyone what the meaning of some of the tea leaves in DC are.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  What do you say when that average stakeholder, be they, you know, an operator, a founder, a lawyer, whatever, comes to you or tweets at you and asks about how they can participate in the process?

• 1:24:27Speaker 03

  It's a tough question, and I think especially in the context of enforcement actions, you know, unlike policy, where I completely agree with Jerry, that, you know, this should be done well in advance. Stakeholders should be brought in. It should be discussed. It should be thoughtful. You know, people should be brought into into the conversation early and often. The public should be able to weigh in. Enforcement is exactly the opposite. Enforcement by design should be kept confidential. And the reason for that is because the mere fact of an investigation could suggest that there has been some wrongdoing. But of course, here in the US, we have the presumption of innocence. Typically, that applies in the criminal context, but it's

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  true equally in the civil context. We should assume that companies have not violated the law until and unless there is a finding that they have. And so, the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the other enforcement agencies in DC and around the country in the States, the rules are that these enforcement actions should and must be conducted confidentially, just because the mere implication that there has been a violation can do more damage to the company than the violation itself, if indeed there is one. So it's really very hard for the public to get involved in any meaningful way on the enforcement side. I think, you know, specific to crypto, um, a lot of the enforcement that folks are concerned

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  may come, I think stems from a misunderstanding on the part of of many enforcement lawyers and other policymakers about how the technology works. So just as an example, you hear Chair Gensler often talking about DeFi protocols without understanding the difference between a decentralized set of smart contracts that run on a public blockchain autonomously and in a self-executing fashion as compared to a centralized institution that is offering some proprietary financial service that happens to use digital assets or blockchain technology in some way. And so I think really the best that the public can do is to get involved in these advocacy and education efforts, right, to try to spread the word,

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  to try to get people to understand both how the technology works and also why they're interested in it. You know, I think going back to an earlier point, um, the reason that often the rhetoric in DC around crypto is so negative is because policymakers think that it's an easy target to score political points. And so it's not so much that they've fought through, you know, the policy or the issue or the reasoning behind the negative statement that they're going to make to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or some other media outlet that's giving them an opportunity to communicate with the public and get their name in print. Rather, it's just because they think that there's very little cost to attacking the industry. And I think what's changing now is policymakers

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  are starting to understand their constituents care very deeply about this technology and about having access to the next generation of financial tools and also non-financial tools. And so I think the more the public speaks up about that, uh, the more they can influence sort of how uh, how policy is going to work out in the end.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  And Sarah, this one for you, taking it back to previous battles the internet community has had.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  In DC, thinking about things like potentially um, the anti-SOBA campaigns, net neutrality. Uh, I'm sure a number of smaller campaigns that were run, I know Fight for the Future has been involved in some of them. Um, what um, in, I mean, part of the reason I ask this question is that I think it's important that people in the community understand that this sort of campaign lobbying at times, et cetera, has happened several times as it relates to, you know, new innovations and crypto is no exception to that. What lessons would you draw from those uh, those campaigns? And how would you explain their importance to where we are now with those technologies?

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  I might have a visitor just, you know, at the exact right, right moment. Um, yeah, I was thinking of this as Jake was, was talking as well because um, yeah, because

• 1:28:49Speaker 05

  because it is, um, you know, it, it's acceptable, it, it feels acceptable for, for, um, you know, for folks in Congress to use the kind of rhetoric that they're using right now. Because, um, although they are hearing more and more from their, their constituents and the infrastructure bill was a big breakthrough there. But, um, yeah, you know, I think the, I think it's so important that we do have the, the inside game. And the work that um, Coin Center is doing is so, is so critical for that. We need to, there needs to be the behind the scenes work there. You know, I always feel hopeful when I hear Jerry talk about how there are really, you know, um, smart folks who are educating themselves in the agencies and elsewhere.

• 1:29:33Speaker 05

  And I'm sure there's, there are more and more every day in, in, um, you know, amongst the, the staffers in, in Congress too, but that we, you know.

• 1:29:43Speaker 05

  If there's one thing I've learned from 25 plus years of doing political strategy and activism, it's that when you're up against especially deeply entrenched powerful interests, there's no way to just win with the facts and the persuasive arguments. We need both. The folks in DC will listen and learn what they need to learn if we can successfully shift the focus off of some of the worst narratives for crypto outside of DC and begin to build more of a broad base of support. The folks in DC didn't really understand the internet or tech or net neutrality at the beginning, and frankly, they didn't care enough about getting more and more people aligned through broadband access. But when we were able to frame the issue for the public as one of the cable companies

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  getting control of the internet, turning it from the beautiful open mess that it was into cable TV, we started to see a difference in how folks were responding. When we were able to get these messages to every corner of the web through the big viral moments on the internet, the inflection points that we have, things like the infrastructure bill, and partnering with companies who had a stake in the outcome that could direct their users to take action, organizing subreddit mods and all the things that we have done over the years, we can channel a lot of that outrage into political action. We need the inside game, but we also really need the outside work to help to shift the narrative over time and to get the folks in DC to pay attention.

• 1:31:10Speaker 05

  So it's about those critical inflection points, making the most of them, and really channeling a lot of that energy into action at those big moments. And we've seen it time and time again. So we are optimistic that we can do it again.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Amazing. Well, thank you so much, everyone. And maybe we'll end it off with last question, an optimistic question and a quick response. But...

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  Thinking about, you know, if you're you're waking up in the morning, whatever, you go immediately on Twitter, of course, because we all do. And then you see a tweet about a new red regulation, a new policy, a new occurrence on the crypto regulatory front. And it it makes you as happy as possible. It's the best possible thing for you to see. What is that thing? And maybe I'll start with with Jake. I'll go Jerry and then I'll go Sarah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll give you a real life example, which is Secretary Yellen's statements recently about the FATF guidance. So, you know, for quite a long time before, and then especially during this fight we had with Secretary Mnuchin last December. I've always thought that the anti-money laundering laws are the biggest threat to a decentralized financial system. They are the way that a government that wants to stop this technology in its tracks has the most leverage to do so. And especially with how the FATF draft guidance looked in March of this year, which basically was

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  designating almost every actor in crypto as a virtual asset service provider, subject to know your customer regulations. That really sort of scared a lot of us. And to see Secretary Yellen come out and say, we're standing by our own guidance from May of 2019, which accurately captured how anti-money laundering laws apply to the sector. I think that was frankly, the best thing that we could have asked for to end this year. I would love to see something similar next year from Chair Gensler or from the SEC, giving us some clarity on how they interpret the Howey test and its application to digital assets. I think that would be the next thing that would make me extremely happy. I am much less optimistic about actually seeing that. But yeah, that's that's my answer.

• 1:33:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I'll say that, you know, that was a question for the record Senator Toomey asked Secretary Yellen, and I'm sure Secretary Yellen didn't actually write that answer herself. Folks who developed that answer is these smart people at Treasury who get crypto, right? And and who are developing that policy. And so this is why I'm so. Optimistic that if we can get people really understanding the stuff and understanding where all of our interests are aligned, we're going to get more of those. And so if I could wake up tomorrow and see a tweet that would make me happy, it would come also from Treasury, but in this case from the IRS, Office of Tax Policy, just with new guidance that makes sense.

• 1:34:15Speaker 06

  The guidance that they put out in 2019 makes very, very little sense. It conflates an airdrop with a fork. I mean, really not good. And so I think that's the area that needs most improvements. And so that's where I would love to see, you know, better guidance.

• 1:34:39Speaker 05

  Well, I'd start by, you know, seeing what Jerry and Jake have tweeted that morning. But, but, um, in a kind of totally, totally different. But I think the thing that would make me most happy would be to see AOC tweet something about, something positive about decentralized tech. Or retweet our Deputy Director Evan Greer's tweet about, about the importance of crypto to marginalized communities fighting repressive governments. And we think that's possible. But I think that would, you know, we're fiercely nonpartisan, but we do work with a lot of these offices on a lot of different issues. And so we, you know, we did for the infrastructure bill and we will, going forward, continue to do outreach to them to try to break, break through there.

• 1:35:21Speaker 05

  But I think that would help to shift the political landscape. I think folks in, you know, like Elizabeth, Senator Warren would have, would sort of have to reckon with that part of the party. I think we could, you know, we could give, we could kind of give them a way to fit it into their, their worldview that I think would make sense. I think with the midterms coming up and I think with, you know, clearly all the, all that's coming out about younger people, you know, adopting crypto and, and more and more people of color. Like I think the, the big D Democrats are gonna, you know, they're gonna see that this is important for them to get educated around and to, and to sort of see beyond some of

• 1:36:04Speaker 05

  the, you know, worst of the narratives out there and to see how, you know, it could potentially be revolutionary.

• 1:36:12Speaker 05

  That would make me happy.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. All those things would make me happy. So fingers crossed for 2022. But thank you all very much for taking the time to help us out. As I think all our listeners know by now, each of these organizations Coin Center Fight for the Future and Blockchain Association are a Gitcoin round 12 as advocacy groups that need your support. So thanks, everyone. I think we'll now add David and Scott back into the room and you guys can feel free to just chill and turn off your videos. We'll do a little debrief, but thanks so much.

• 1:36:48Speaker 05

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  David, I think you're muted.

• 1:37:00David Hoffman?

  Sorry, I have like 13 mute buttons. Welcome Scott and myself back to the panelists. Connor, thank you for leading that second panel. Scott, I want to ask you, what were your thoughts on the last two panels that we just had on the show? Anything you want to add?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely amazing. Yeah, I liked a few particular points that like kind of I noted down, actually, the one that I think was particularly important even very early on was just like the Yellowstone analogy, because I really do think this is almost like a new landscape, like a physical landscape that people are navigating, you know, in the metaverse, I suppose, as people call it. That to me feels like, you know, there are these pitfalls, there are these risks, but like it's a very exciting space that we need to like help people navigate. Once people understand that space, they can be much more comfortable with it and they can really actually enjoy what's there. So that to me feels like a really powerful first piece. And then with the infrastructure bill, I thought what was super interesting was like a lot of these conversations about, or actually even just at the very end of the last panel, like

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  conflating an airdrop with like a fork, for example, like that sort of thing is just like wild and it's, that's to me, the education that we really need to figure out. It's like, how do you ensure that someone understands the terms that they're using in the context of these, you know, regulations? And so like the proof of state, proof of work concept in the regulatory wording of the infrastructure bill is another one that really stands out. But overall, yeah, I thought the conversations were awesome, like everyone involved, just like is doing fantastic work and I hope that, you know, we can really get a lot of support from them in this round.

• 1:38:31David Hoffman?

  I definitely think the stories that people tell to really frame listeners' heads are really, really useful. And the story that I want to put in listeners' heads at the time is that our industry is rooted before crypto, it was rooted in cryptography. And this industry really began before Bitcoin. It started with the genesis of public-private key cryptography. And if you follow the story of the cypherpunks, the guys that really pioneered cryptography into the public domain, they fought this fight too. This is not the first time crypto has gone to bat with regulators. This is the first time cryptocurrency has, but not cryptography. And so this is not the first time we are doing this. We're just doing it in a little bit of a

• 1:39:13David Hoffman?

  different shape. But let it be known, when the cryptographers went toe-to-toe with bad regulation, the cryptographers won. However, there is a lot more at stake here. Like I said in the beginning, and in my panel, and I'll say it again now, the crypto industry is inherently about money. And that is what we are calling the listeners and the viewers to do here today. Again, there is a link in the YouTube description, there is a link in the podcast show notes for you to go and check out the crypto advocacy funds for Gitcoin Round 12. This is becoming more and more important every single day. Because we have the power to mint and create money in the world of cryptocurrency, we should be able to direct that money towards the people

• 1:39:54David Hoffman?

  that are advocating for positive, informed, and educated regulation that is happening in Washington DC and abroad. Connor, I want to hear your thoughts about your panel and the event at large. Anything you want to add to the six fantastic panelists that we've had on the show today?

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so appreciative that they all joined us because I learned a lot from each of them. But I would say that a thing that's really critical too is our support of advocacy today is really important so that they can continue doing the great work that they're doing. But something that some Mike, well, actually a lot of Mike, Kristen, Sarah, all brought up was around the need to also do so many other things, right? Like engaging with certain communities that crypto has not engaged with. So far, helping policymakers and regulators understand that this is something, this is an issue that affects their constituents and affects a diverse range of people. It's not just, you know, a singular kind of org group that participates in crypto.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  And like Sarah said, like seeing AOC tweet about it and appreciate the value that it could have for financial inclusion, for privacy, for like digital inclusion. That would be an amazing feat. So today we're helping to contribute to those advocacy groups, but also appreciating that there are so many other branches and so many other approaches to this campaign, like advocacy and lobbying is one, building is another, which Kristin mentioned. But there are also other sorts of grassroots campaigns. We've heard a lot about like a crypto, a crypto NRA equivalent that Ryan Selkis has mentioned. We've heard about different types of organizations, different research and advocacy orgs.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  And I think that we should keep in mind that when you're thinking about what you can do to contribute to this space, you can contribute in a lot of dynamic ways and so stay alive to them.

• 1:41:50David Hoffman?

  So I want to leave the viewers and the listeners with one last set of questions from us three here. So I'll ask it to you guys first. What makes you optimistic that crypto can achieve the regulatory goals that we need to achieve in order to promote our industry? Scott, let's start with you.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that we've learned from previous technological revolutions is that it's very difficult to stop technology. I think the idea that you can just, you know, pause the internet or pause, you know, cryptocurrency is unfortunately for a lot of people that might want to, like not really true. And so the only alternative is really to engage actively with it and figure out what do you want this world to look like? And how can this be something that's like, you know, actually beneficial for the, you know, communities that you serve? And ultimately that to me is the place that we're missing right now is that conversation about what does this look like? You know, within the context of your local communities, within the context of your state or within your like country. That to me is the big piece that.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  You know, if we get people on the right track, we can sort of like, you know, start to get people to sign off on that vision. Um, and I think that, you know, the real power of cryptocurrency, uh, you mentioned money, that's one piece of it. But I really think it's about the ability to like, have a kind of control over your destiny when it comes to the platforms being used. The way that you, you know, use the internet at large and, and it actually goes back to web one, the semantic web vision that Tim Burton originally put forward. Was based on this idea that we had like complete access. And it was only in web two that, you know, that started being co-opted by like the Facebook like, which was like the only, you know, the residual part of the uh, semantic web that we already had in web two. So that like, you know, to me, I'm very optimistic, obviously, about the technology.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Feels like a very natural evolution of what the web was meant to be at the beginning. And it feels like if we kind of help educate people about that, we can really, you know, make it meaningful for the communities people are serving.

• 1:43:49Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm optimistic about the fact that there are so many great groups who are just spending their entire day working on this problem and helping to educate policymakers and regulators. And we heard that over again and again and again, right? But that's the first stage and we appreciate that crypto is getting more champions because we all know that once you learn about its potential and you go down that rabbit hole, it's really hard to pull yourself out or to stop appreciating all of its value. So I'm optimistic and I'm also, you know, relatively confident that we'll, we will just get more and more champions as their staffers begin to get educated and help to educate those policymakers and regulators who are making some of these critical decisions.

• 1:44:29David Hoffman?

  I think what makes me optimistic is that, uh, just like what you said, Scott, um, standing in the way of technology generally doesn't work and I think it's even more and more clear. People that bet against crypto tend to get absolutely wrecked by crypto. Uh, crypto has a fantastic way of humbling people that, that oppose it. At the end of the day, however, uh, while that does give me some sort of faith that, you know, the crypto will emerge on the other side of these regulatory hurdles, uh, alive and successful, it does matter whether These regulatory hurdles help shape crypto positively or help give it or actually put up walls and give it friction. I do believe no matter what crypto will manifest in its maximally successful form, no matter what.

• 1:45:13David Hoffman?

  But it is really, really important if does that happen in the year 2050? Or does that happen in the year 2025? And those the 25 years of difference between those two, you know, results can have meaningful impacts upon many, many people's lives and have significant downstream consequences as to, you know, just how good crypto can actually positively impact the world. So while I am optimistic, I still want to, you know, enter this regulatory hurdle, thinking that everything can go wrong. Because, you know, things can go wrong and they can cost things, can they can cost our industry dearly in the short term and can actually lead to muted

• 1:45:57David Hoffman?

  positive benefits from the crypto industry over the long term. So the window of opportunity that we have to direct crypto for good is here right now, and we don't really know how big it is. So we should assume that's really, really short. Scott, Connor, thank you so much for helping me organize this event. You guys have really championed this event and all I did was help show up with the zoom and the live stream. So thank you so much for organizing this event. Any last words before we want to wrap this thing up?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  I'll just say thank you. I mean, this has been amazing. I think that if you want to get involved, I have to say it, you know, go to get coin grants, get coin, get coin.co slash grants. And give a few dollars to the organizations that you care about. Ultimately, this fight is, you know, dependent on you.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, plus plus one to all that. And, and thank you, David, and thank you to Bankless actually as well, because I feel like you guys spend a lot of time highlighting these issues and interviewing regulators and lawyers and others that the crypto community has not necessarily always traditionally been interested in. So more of that.

• 1:47:05David Hoffman?

  Cheers guys. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Thank you for Gitcoin and for the DAO Research Initiative for helping organize this event. And of course, thank you for our fantastic six, not sponsors, panelists that came and showed up on today's panel. Again, there is a link in the YouTube description. There is a link in the podcast show notes. If you just donate $1, that dollar can be matched by up to $10, $50, sometimes $100 of matching funds from the Gitcoin matching pool. This is how quadratic funding works. Your single donation is not only a donation of money, but also a vote of where you think other people's money should go. So

• 1:47:46David Hoffman?

  your beliefs have outsized impacts as to the resulting funds that get directed towards all these advocacy events. So as you are wrapping up this podcast, the next thing that should be happening is you going on to gitcoin.co, go towards the crypto matching fund page, open up your MetaMask, open up your Ledger, close your checkbooks, because this is a bankless funding initiative, and get these crypto advocacy events funded. Thank you everyone for tuning in to this crypto advocacy panel. Cheers.

• 1:48:17David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where

• 1:49:00David Hoffman?

  we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.