Congressman Tom Emmer Tackles the War on Crypto

Representative Tom Emmer is a U. S. Representative for Minnesota, and is the serving House Majority Whip as of this year, making him one of the highest-ranking members of the U. S. House of Representatives. He has been an outspoken advocate of crypto and has rung the alarm bells as to what seems to be the politically-driven debanking of crypto in the United States of America. ------ 📣 Infura | New SDK for NFT APIs For Devs https://bankless.cc/Infura ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://www.bankless.com/dashboard ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap 👻 PHANTOM | FRIENDLY MULTICHAIN WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist 🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask 🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 5:35 Function of the House Whip 7:06 Crypto’s Priorities 8:42 Does the U. S. Hate Crypto? 12:30 Operation Choke Point 2.0 16:00 What Do We Do? 21:01 Economic Report & Partisanship 31:46 Are We Close to Common Ground? 36:46 Crypto’s Role in the 2024 Election 39:37 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Representative Tom Emmer https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1636008298481680384 https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1633970248549269511 ------ 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, is there a war on crypto? That is the question that we pose today. We have House Majority Whip Congressman Tom Emmer to weigh in on that question. A few things to look out for in this episode. Number one, we ask Representative Emmer if the US has declared a war on crypto. You'll see how he responds. Number two, we talk about Operation Choke Point 2.0. Is this an effort to choke out crypto in the United States? Number three, we talk about this issue. Is it bipartisan? Is it democratic? Is it Republican? Who is supporting crypto in Congress? Number four, we talk about the ability for the United States legislature to pass common sense legislation. Can we actually do that as a country?

• 0:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  And number five, we talk about how crypto issues factor into the 2024 elections and what we, as Bankless listeners, can do to support those efforts. Unfortunately, David was unable to make this conversation. He had some internet issues, so it's just myself and the representative today. But a few disclaimers before we get into this episode, because I can hear some of you saying, "Oh, no, Bankless has just got political. They're having a politician on the podcast. What's going on?" I want to say this at the outset. Bankless is not a political podcast that divides on red-blue party lines. We have no political affinity to any party in the United States or any other country. What we do care about is the values of crypto, values like decentralization, autonomy, and

• 1:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  power to the people that underlie this revolutionary technology. And so, to the extent that those values are political, we get political, but we don't divide on party lines. We'll continue to give voice to these crypto-native values, no matter what political party they come from. So that means we're open to conversations spanning the aisle from Senator Cynthia Lummis and Ted Cruz. They're welcome here. So is AOC and Elizabeth Warren. We want to have the conversation with everyone. For my own part, I see value for both the right and the left in crypto and supporting both progressive and conservative values. This conversation is important to have. Guys, we're going to get right into the episode with Representative Emmer. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible.

• 2:10Ryan Sean Adams?

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• 5:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, we are excited about our next guest. Representative Tom Emmer is a US Representative in Minnesota and is serving as the House Majority Whip as of this year. That makes him one of the highest ranking members of the US House of Representatives. He's also been an outspoken advocate of crypto. He's rung the alarm bell several times on what seems to be maybe a politically driven de-banking of crypto in the United States of America. Representative Emmer, welcome back to Bankless. It's great to have you on again.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Great to be with you, Ryan.

• 5:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, we don't... I think some Bankless listeners might not know what the function of a whip actually is. Representative Emmer, like, not to take us back to civics basics, but maybe start with that. So, what do you do as a whip? What does the role actually entail?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  So, the Speaker is in charge of everything in the House, and in fact, in charge of the Capitol grounds. I mean, literally everything. The Majority Leader is the one that builds a calendar, right? That person works with committee chairs. Not only does the Majority Leader's office build a legislative calendar for the year, but then they actually build a calendar of what is ready to come to the floor. But the beauty of it is, we're number three, the whip, or, well, it is the whip, the Majority Whip. And our job, the beauty of it right now, is we only have 222 members. It takes 218 to pass things. So, literally, guys, everything has to come through the Whip's office.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  When the Majority Leader is building out a calendar, they need to come to us to make sure that they've got the votes that are necessary, that all the problems have been solved, if there are any. Or questions and that they can get it across the floor and that's our job to make sure that these things, once they hit the floor, they actually get the votes they need to come off the floor. And that we've had now close to 160 votes since the, since this Congress started. And I'm sure that it won't be unblemished all the way through, but we haven't lost a vote yet.

• 7:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Representative Emmer, it sounds like the whip is, someone has more responsibility in terms of, you know, setting the agenda for Congress. I'm curious, how high up is crypto on the agenda in, in, you know, March of 2023?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  It is at the top of mind, as you and some of your audience probably know, if you've paid attention to what I've been doing, but it's also one of Patrick McHenry's top issues. So it makes it easier for me because there are members of the committee, French Hill from Arkansas has been made subcommittee chair of the new digital asset subcommittee. And by the way, that should tell you what kind of a priority it is because for the first time ever, the financial services committee created an actual digital assets subcommittee to start addressing with these issues. And frankly, from my perspective, it's long overdue. But there are other priorities. So people out there understand this is about

• 8:03Speaker 02

  making sure the economy is once again growing the way it should, which by the way, I believe crypto is a big part of. It's about safety and security, both here at home, you know, domestic crime has to be brought under control. And then around the globe, you've got a lot of, a lot of flare ups going on in the world today that can present global issues. And then obviously we've got some issues with our, both borders, but primarily our southern border and the fentanyl crisis. But crypto, when it comes to the economic issues, I believe it's towards the top of the list. But again, that's, that's me.

• 8:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Congressman Emmer, as we get into the material and the subjects today, I got to start with this question because I think a lot of American citizens and companies located in the United States are feeling like the United States government is disconnected from our community and from our industry. And the question has been raised, is there a war on crypto in the United States? I wouldn't have previously said those words, but it feels like this year crypto has increasingly been under attack in various ways that I'm sure we'll explore. Does the US hate crypto, Representative Emmer? What's going on here? Can you help us make sense of this?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that's a much broader question. If you're talking about US citizens who believe in the right to self-determine, who believe in liberty and the fact that their government's supposed to work for them, we love it, right? We love Web 3, the ownership economy, the idea that we can do business directly with one another and we don't have to have intermediaries. Not that we'll never need them, but we get to choose them, right? When you talk about the US, Brian, what I would define that as is the centralized bankers and government. Those are the ones, let's just go back to 2008 when they messed up this economy the

• 10:00Speaker 02

  last time because their poor monetary policy led us to a place where a lot of people suffered, a lot of people were hurt. That's when you have the Satoshi white paper that shows up. That's when the Bitcoin experience begins. And I believe a lot of these central bankers, both here and around the globe, but let's just focus on the US. Some of our biggest central bankers, not just the Fed, but some in the private sector, were looking at people that were doing this Bitcoin thing. And I guarantee you, Ryan, they were going, oh, look at those kids. Isn't that cute? Playing with their virtual money. You know, it's like a video game that they're doing. And then it goes on for about two, three, four years.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  They go, oh, this thing's actually picking up steam. There might be something here. And so then they tried to kill it, in my opinion. Their goal was to try and stop it. They couldn't. So guess what? The last few years, they've been trying to swallow it up. This is the discussion about CBDCs. This is now the discussion about Fed Now. I mean, their whole thing was, let's get you people and your audience, let's get you on board with central banking in the digital age, which is nothing more than a surveillance tool for government. But guess what? There are too many of us that say no. There are too many of us that are going to stand in the way. So I look at what's happened in just the past few weeks.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  There definitely, a lot of people talk about, is there a choke point 2.0 trying to de-bank crypto? Well, you've got to tell me, is this a coincidence that we lost Silvergate, Silicon Valley and Signature all within a matter of days, a couple of weeks? I don't think there is any coincidence, gentlemen. The closure of crypto and tech-friendly banks like Silvergate, Signature and Silicon Valley have left the crypto industry largely unbanked. And I think the attitude of our government regulators right now, I think the attitude of our cabinet members, whether it's the Treasury, whether it's the Fed,

• 12:09Speaker 02

  whether it's the SEC, CFTC, is all taking a negative aspect or view of what we're trying to do. And as a result, I think they're risking sending the innovation we've been trying to protect right here in this country right across the ocean.

• 12:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Representative Emmer, you're painting a picture here in something that we've talked about on Bankless a number of times, this idea of an Operation Choke Point 2.0. But you're also painting this picture of not just a choking off of crypto, but actually a co-opting of crypto as well. Or maybe the digital aspects of crypto, not the ethos aspects of freedom and autonomy and self-sovereignty. I want to ask you about this Operation Choke Point, though, a little bit more. So on March 15th, you tweeted out that you sent a letter to the FDIC Chairman Grunberg. Regarding reports that the FDIC is weaponizing recent instability in the banking sector to purge

• 13:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  legal crypto activity from the United States. And we've got the letter, we'll include it in a link in the show notes. What are you concerned about here? So is this, is this about the choking off of maybe a Silvergate, maybe a Signature Bank? What are you writing to the head of the FDIC about this? What are your stated concerns?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Well, we've seen statements from individuals across the industry, including former House Financial Services Chair, Barnik Frank, the co-author, by the way, of the Dodd-Frank Act, highlighting the targeted nature of the regulatory efforts of this administration to single out financial institutions, and I believe to send a message to get people to move away from crypto. I mean, there are double standards when it comes to whether financial institutions can custody crypto, not using it to leverage against it or anything, but just to custody. And there's different messages coming out of the Fed, coming out of the SEC. The SEC has been very aggressive. And by the way, two sources, you might have seen this because I mentioned it in an interview

• 14:14Speaker 02

  last week, two sources told Reuters that, quote, "Any buyer of Signature must agree to give up all the crypto business in the bank." Think about that for a second, Ryan. If that's not government putting its heavy hand on the scale and doing it in a way that to the detriment of crypto or people that are, you know, interested in crypto, I don't know what is. And then you talked about Marty Greenberg, Chair Greenberg. The FDIC press release said that Signature's crypto depositors would not become deposits of the bank that purchases.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Right, so we know that right after I went on this news program and talked about Reuters outing the FDIC, we know they went back and denied that that was said. But then the chair comes out and says, look, anybody who buys this bank, crypto deposits aren't going to be part of your purchase. And then it can't be coincidence that the Fed is launching its own payment network that's literally designed to settle payments in seconds the same year that financial regulators have weaponized their authority to quash the major banks that service the crypto industry. We don't need the federal government competing with the private sector. That's exactly

• 15:38Speaker 02

  what they're doing. And in this case, they're trying to corner the market when it comes to banking and financial services to cut out, again, freedom-loving people who want to self-determine and make their own decisions without having to pay the vig to the man who in this case would be your central government and the central banks, banking system that it's creating.

• 16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Tom, if in fact, this is happening in crypto, if there is a coordinated effort to choke crypto banking in the United States, what do we do about that? Is this illegal? How do we rein this in? I think a lot of people listening to Bankless just kind of throw up their hands and they just don't know what to do about it. What like, I mean, I know many companies are talking about startups, entrepreneurs are talking about actually relocating out of the United States. It is it is no longer a, you know, it doesn't feel like a country that actually wants to have crypto companies and crypto innovations. They're talking about relocating. For the average everyday citizen

• 16:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  that lives in the US, like, we don't even know what to do about this. We don't even know what the mechanisms to push back. Is it the court system? Can Congress do something? How do we get transparency for regulators that might be stepping outside of the bounds here?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  It's a great question, Ryan. So first off, remember, elections have consequences. And I'm not here to say that the Trump administration was great when it came to crypto, but it was markedly better. And they weren't even favorable, right? Some of their cabinet members. This administration has an all-out assault. And I would argue it's because the modern monetary theorists, you know, yesterday's Keynesians, who now occupy the White House and are Elizabeth Warren acolytes, they have this theory with modern monetary theory that a country that controls its own fiat currency can print and spend as much money as it wants, which is frankly, false. I mean, you can't defy the laws of gravity. You can't defy the laws of common sense.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  You can't make that work where you print and spend ad nauseam and expect that it's not going to come back to haunt you. But that's their theory? And guess what flies directly in the face of their theory? Crypto. People that have decentralized financial networks that are not beholden to the federal government that understand what good monetary policy is and don't want to continue to participate in a system that frankly is flawed and is corrupt right now. That's the issue. So, two things. One, good news is, we still do have elections in this country. The next one's coming up in 2024. I would tell everybody who's on this podcast, it's not about being a Republican, a Democrat, or something else. It's about being an American.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It's about being a citizen who's interested. Crypto is a non-partisan thing. It's not about your political leanings, but it is about right and wrong. And what these central bankers and what our central government is doing right now, and these little militant lieutenants under the senator from Massachusetts, who I'm not going to keep naming, they are the army that you're fighting. And you do it first at the ballot box. You do it with awareness. You share this information with anybody and everybody that is favorable to the perspective that you're looking at, that I look at. And then, yes, if you are a going concern, and I would argue that it's not just startups and entrepreneurs.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  I would argue that there are existing operations that deal in the digital assets, space crypto at all, that are looking to move. They're looking to move to places where they will be treated fairly, where they know the rules of the road. And I'm not saying this is where they're going to go, but the risk that the United States has, and remember, the folks in Great Britain, they thought they were never going to be, you know, sunsetted. And then they were. After World War II, the United States financial markets became the envy of the world. Well, guess what? This is the next iteration. Crypto digital assets is the next iteration of the greatest financial markets ever.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  And you can either choose to have them in this country or they're going to leave. And maybe, maybe London's got a chance to take that back. Lastly, if you are a going concern, the courts are an option. I don't know if you've noticed, but Gary Gensler, who I believe is one of the best examples of a bad faith regulator. This guy's been choosing to blindly spray the crypto community with enforcement actions, yet he keeps missing the true bad actors. He goes after all the good people in the space and the bad actors like FTX come up after the fact and it turns out they might have been trying to work a sweetheart deal with them. But look, there are some lawsuits that have been started and it doesn't look like things

• 20:38Speaker 02

  are shaping up in the courts to be, to be going too well for Mr. Gensler. SEC lawyers, you might know, were stumbling over questions made by judges in both the grayscale GBTC case and the Voyager Binance US deal. It looks like the future of crypto could be decided. Future of crypto in our country could be decided by our judicial system.

• 21:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  That, that always takes, you know, more time. And I want to ask you in a little bit, Representative Emmer, if there's some legislation coming down the pike that can save us. But let's kind of camp on this because, you know, Bankless, of course, is a nonpartisan podcast. And I would say previously crypto, crypto has been sort of a, a nonpartisan issue or maybe a bipartisan issue, but it seems to have more recently almost splintered. And I want to say, this is just my observation, on the back of 2022 especially, it does seem like Republicans have come out much stronger in favor of crypto friendly policy. Meanwhile, we have like, you know, Liz Warren, the Biden administration also published an economic report.

• 21:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  I read that economic report, 90 pages of it were basically. FUD is an industry term we use.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  A term of ours.

• 21:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right, exactly. Fear, uncertainty and doubt about crypto and very little, no mention of the innovation and the promise and saying the things that you were just saying about the future of the financial system, the banking system, sort of an internet centric approach and possibly successor to the United States from a financial epicenter perspective if the US doesn't get aligned with where this technology is going.

• 22:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Has there been some increased partisanship? From what you're saying, which is incredible to hear, you guys are coming out very, very strongly. And of course you are a Republican. How does this divide among, you know, you know, red and blue sort of divides? Has there been increasing divide? Because I've always seen crypto to have wins for both sides of the aisle and certainly for all Americans. What are you seeing?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Well, let's, before I hit the, what is a nonpartisan issue in my mind and your, your good question, let's go back to that economic report for a second because if you read that economic report, you get to the very end and you gotta be asking yourself, you know, I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night. What, what, what is wrong with this report? You go through the whole thing saying crypto, saying this whole industry is a fraud, is a scam, it offers no value, it's all play money, et cetera. And then you get to the very end and say, the future of our finance in this country is going to be fed now in the CBDC.

• 23:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Wait a second. You just told me that none of this makes sense, but your idea, your government idea, which is a surveillance tool when it comes to the CBDC is, is the answer. By the way, in FedNow, oh, yippee. I think FedNow will probably work about as well as the post office. All right. You will not have real time clearing. And if you do, you gotta worry about everybody who's watching that transaction and scraping data out of that transaction on behalf of your government. That's supposed to be working for you. On the partisan issue, I don't think we've lost the high ground on a nonpartisan approach to crypto. I think what you're seeing is you're

• 24:03Speaker 02

  seeing some serious realignment, a political party torture, wrenching, going back and forth. You literally have a Democrat Party, and this isn't to offend any Democrats who are on this, that has morphed into three or four different perspectives, right? All the way from Marxism and socialism back to the typical moderate Democrat who wants to argue about the size and scope of government versus an individual's right to self-determine and where the line goes. The Republican Party has always had its issues with a party purity, right? Constitutional purity,

• 24:47Speaker 02

  and I'm better than you, and I'm more, and then the religious right that factors into it. So we have all these, if you will, melting pot of these different political persuasions. But the problem we have is the country's only two teams, right? For political purposes, it's Democrats and it's Republicans. And right now, there's a Democrat in the White House that his, the people that wear his jersey, and I know some people who are on this podcast listening are going to go, when are people going to rise above that? I get it. I get it. But you've got some good Democrats. I'm going to tell you right now, and by the way, their political persuasion probably leans even farther left than I would care

• 25:32Speaker 02

  to acknowledge. But it's not about their political leanings, just like it's not about Tom Emmer's political leanings. This is an area of finance that literally defines our freedom. It has up till now, if you look at the first 240-some years of this country, it's about the finance, but really about the last 70, 85 years of experience. It's about the ability for Americans to be mobile, right? To climb the ladder of prosperity. By the way, to fall off the top of that mountain and climb back up. But it's been all done with a paper currency and gold, etc. Well, we just got the new version. This is digital gold, right? This is a, this is the same concepts.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  It's for value. People are going to assign it value and use it as a medium of exchange. And this new area is all about people being able to get capital, to expend capital, to grow new ideas, to improve their lifestyle. I got news for you. That's not a Republican or Democrat thing. That's an American thing. And whether it's Richie Torres, whether it's Darren Soto, who I do a bunch of different bills with, whether it's Ro Khanna, right? I mean, you've got Democrats on the other side that are pro-digital. I think you gotta be a little patient with them, and I'm not here to defend them. But I think you gotta be a little patient with them

• 27:00Speaker 02

  because maybe they are measuring their words because they happen to be under a Democrat administration that they disagree with. But just because you don't see them, you know, being a rabble-rouser and attacking and throwing bombs at their own administration doesn't mean these people are literally working hard under the radar, trying to move the people in the White House to do the right thing. Quite frankly, this is what frustrates me with Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren, if she truly believed in the American value of self-determination, if she truly believed in individuals' right to make their own decisions, which she claims, she would champion crypto.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  She would champion digital assets. Instead, it's very clear to me that she's nothing more than a big, central bank, power-hungry leader who sees her power essentially being diluted and taken away by this decentralization of our financial system and our financial transactions, Ryan. She's desperately, along with the establishment, the institution, she is desperately clinging to hold on to that central banking thing because that's where their power is.

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• 30:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know, Representative Emmer, that some of the rhetoric coming from the side being sort of pro-regulation, anti-big-bank. You know, what's interesting is there are a lot of wins for crypto in that side of the argument. I mean, auditable, transparent code that is on the internet.

• 31:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  You have the transparency offered by the SEC and CFTC that's baked into the code, and that is all available on-chain. And you talk about disrupting the banks and giving all Americans access. That's what this technology really does, yeah. So it does seem like there is an acid test going on. This is sort of what we said. Every country is going to have an acid test to see whether they really believe in the values that they say and they purport to believe in. But let me ask you this. I think most listeners that are listening to this episode, what you talked about is exactly what they want from our legislators, is we just want a common sense. Who cares about red team, blue team? We just want a common sense approach to this innovation. Why can't we treat it like the internet in the 1990s,

• 32:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  where both teams kind of rallied around this and said, this is a technology that is going to change the world and can be good for the United States? We had the birth of massive economic prosperity in the United States as a result of that technology. Are we close to any legislation, any common sense legislation coming out of Congress on any issue, whether it's stablecoins, whether it's something else? How do we get there?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Well, interesting. And by the way, as you're talking, Ryan, I'm thinking about the fact that... Yes, we had the internet. I, yes, it exploded during what some economists have referred to the economic boom period, the largest growth of economic growth the world's ever experienced. It was like 25 years from the end of the 80s until the turn of the century. Bottom, bottom line is, we've got the same opportunity here. The difference, we've got $32 trillion in debt in this country. We've got to figure out how to balance our budget and then guess what? You want crypto and everything associated with it to grow here, to innovate and grow here,

• 33:14Speaker 02

  because that will grow the economic pie for everyone. Republicans, Democrats, that's the only way, I'm going to tell you right now, my belief is, that's the only way that you can deal with the $32 trillion in debt. The, the only other way would be to declare the country bankrupt and go into reorganization and tell people that they're going to take haircuts for debts and we're going to pay this back, we're going to prioritize that. You, this is a company, this, the United States of America, that has not been managed well. Crypto is a big part of the answer, I believe, in how you grow it. But the, the, the appetite for legislation on the House side is huge. On the Senate side, I'm hearing it's not.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  I'm hearing that people, Sherrod Brown, others, are really putting up roadblocks and perhaps that's because they're too close to Liz Warren, right? I, I don't know the answer to that question, but this, in fact, just came up within the last week. That while there's an appetite in the House to perhaps talk about stable coins again, there is definitely going to be a move to pass markup and pass the, the federal ban on central bank digital currencies. Patrick McHenry told me that he thought that was a no-brainer. We've got bills like the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act,

• 34:32Speaker 02

  which confirms that blockchain entities that never custody consumer funds are not money transmitters. And it may sound very simple to some of your listeners, but the thing you have to understand is this affects miners, this affects all software developers in every state.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Requires a money transmitter license. It's just another obstacle that's unnecessary and frankly not related to the work that's being done. We've got the Securities Clarity Act, which I think I've offered now three congresses in a row that provides a framework for the SEC and token issuers to easily determine when a token is offered as part of a securities contract, and by the way, when it's not. The biggest issue, and I can go through all of the stuff we've put in, but I've been talking about this for almost seven years now. The biggest issue is, we have to figure out how to define currency, how to define commodity, and how to define security. That's not going

• 35:31Speaker 02

  to be perfect, but Congress needs to put those guardrails in place, those frameworks in place, and we need to do it quickly because we're losing out on this innovation by not, you know, entrepreneurs want three things, right? They want clarity, they want consistency, and they want certainty. They want three things, and Congress has an obligation to provide it. I'm telling you, the House has an appetite to do this. I think McHenry told me this will be coming. I believe, and I'm kind of waving at Lizzie back here because she's on the staff level, always talking to his staff, but my understanding is after we come back from the Easter break, that there's going to be more movement in the House Financial

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Services Committee, barring more surprises from the central banks, right, from the central banking system. God forbid, hopefully that's stabilized, but assuming we are on a normal track, Ryan, look for more of that come April and May.

• 36:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we are counting on our legislative branch of Representative Emmer. It feels like other jurisdictions are even getting ahead. Europe has gotten their stuff together with the MICA legislation, so now America is in a place where it catches up. So we're counting on you guys. Let me, let me close with this question of Representative Emmer. So I don't think crypto has ever been a major election issue in sort of a presidential election, but in the next, you know, year or so, we're going to have another one of those. Do you think crypto will have a role to play in the 2024 election cycle? And if yes, how do we get our voices heard?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I think you guys, you guys are going to determine whether you play a role, right? You can either complain about all the ridiculous things that are happening, or you can stand up and do something about it. The way you do that, and this is for everybody who's listening, one, find a candidate. City, state, you know, local is where I'm going, federal. I think the federal is probably going to be the most important, although your states are all starting to get into this area as well. Second, don't volunteer. So find a candidate that you like, support them financially, help them get their stuff out, volunteer. You know, they used to tell us when I went to church,

• 37:54Speaker 02

  time, talent, and treasure, right? Give them your time. If you've got a special talent, you guys build websites, that sort of thing. You know how to do direct advertising, all the rest, and your treasure. The other thing that I don't want any of you to miss, because we need more of you, run for office. Go in, put your name on a ballot. You want to make it an issue, make it an issue. The issue that most people are concerned about in this country right now is the economy and their future. Yes, they're worried about their safety and their community. They're worried about the, you know, potential conflicts with China. They're worried about Ukraine. They're worried about all kinds of things around the globe. But first and foremost, it starts with their perception of our economic future, and it's bleak.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  The brightest light in that economic future, in my mind, is you guys. And we need to make it clear. And maybe you can change some minds. I don't think you're going to change hearts. I had someone that's very senior in our federal government tell me the other day that I think of crypto as WOMP. And then he went through this thing where, you know, it's, I don't, I don't believe in it, etc. And he finished the statement by saying, and you know, we've had gold for, you know, thousands of years, but that, we've all agreed that that's whatever it is. Well. Okay, that's WOMP, right? I mean, this is that we're talking about virtual gold and you guys are gonna have

• 39:20Speaker 02

  to drag, you're gonna have to drag the, uh, the older generation that is putting roadblocks up in front of you. You're gonna have to drag them across the finish line for their own good and for the good of our future here in the United States of America. So time, treasure, talent, and don't be afraid to run for office.

• 39:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, there you go, Representative Emmer. It's been a pleasure. Please keep fighting in DC for these issues. They're very important for us too, and we'll do our part with the time, talent, and treasure as well. Especially, I hope that you heard Emmer's statement to you, like, we got a lot of younger listeners here that I think needed to hear that today. So I appreciate you and I appreciate the time you're putting forward on these issues.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  I appreciate you guys. Bankless is great. You gotta get the message out every day. You guys are doing it. Thank you.

• 40:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome. Uh, risks and disclaimers, guys. Gotta let you know, none of this has been financial advice. It wasn't even political advice, at least I don't think so. Uh, crypto is risky, but so is the existing banking system. You could lose what you put in. We are headed west, though. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.