Crypto Power, Political Pressure, and Real-World Risk

Hi all and welcome to Decks in the City, where the wallets are cold and the takes are hot.

First we have Jesse, Web 3 prosecutor turned web 3 protector at Rivet Capital.

Hi everyone. I'm so glad you're back. It was so much pressure to sit in your seat. [laughter] I hope you missed my what did you say? Flowing red locks. Yes. [laughter] Everyone can use a red head in the in the midday in the middle of the week every day. Yeah.

And next we have V from the SEC to web 3. Hey everyone. Jesse, you did great left for your [laughter] and I'm your host uh KK Katherine KKB. Fluent in Tradfi and conversing in deep tech over at Starkware.

Before we get going, remember we're lawyers, but we're not your lawyers. Nothing you hear on decks in the city is legal or financial advice, and it doesn't create an attorney client relationship. For the fine print, as always, check unchainedcrypto.com.

We have a jamp-packed pod today. Lots of very newsy topics. Starting off hot with the CFTC, the new committee and also some words we've heard from Chair Celick.

But before we get into the meat, we want to take a minute to thank our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Adaptive Security, the first cyber security company backed by Open AI. As AI makes deep fakes and synthetic identities easier than ever, Adaptive helps companies test and strengthen their defenses. Learn more at adaptive security.com.

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And we're back. So, let's kick things off with some exciting news. So very recently the CFTC announced their innovation council and what is interesting is this is actually formerly the technology advisory committee.

It is not uncommon for the CFTC or other regulators to have external advisory committees. You know the CFTC has had ones like the market risk advisory committee, the global markets advisory committee etc.

So what they did is they took the technology advisory committee and they changed it up and they have announced 35 new members of this committee. Most of these members are CEOs and I think we have some thoughts about this committee good and bad.

So the idea behind this is that the committee is providing recommendations relating to the impact and implications of technological change on financial markets and the US economy.

So I want to kick this off by saying that I love this theoretically right that regulators should be sourcing thoughts and intel and industry specific intel from the private sector from their constituents. It it is meant well and these committees are important and can be useful.

I have a couple problems with this committee. Can first it is all CEOs. So good and bad. I think CEOs occupy a very specific role a strategic role in a company.

But when you talk about regulatory policy or interaction with regulators oftentimes it should really be the policy people or the lawyers or the product leads kind of providing this direct feedback. And I'm also extremely skeptical that you're ever going to get 35 CEOs in a room together and accomplish anything productive whatoever.

I mean at one point that is very notable is the first White House meeting on clarity that really made any progress. They didn't invite the CEOs. They invited the policy people because everyone needed to get their hands dirty.

The second point I'll make and it is interesting because I think V Jesse and I all observed this immediately upon the release of the announcement and others either did not or or chose not to comment on it is that three out of 35 of these individuals are women.

So I know that in 2026 we're not allowed to talk about representation anymore. [laughter] It's fine we're allowed to talk about whatever we feel. Come on. I mean, it's 2026 and I'm the biggest believer of if you can see it, you can be it.

Every time I've had a notable speaking engagement, I put my 5-year-old daughter in front of the screen and make her watch me. In part because I want her to be proud of her working mom, but I also want her to understand and internalize as a little girl that women should have a voice and should have a voice in important regulatory strategy.

And I'm sure you put your son in front of it too because it's important that when we talk about building this great future of finance that the future of finance doesn't look exactly like the past because we're trying to build something better and more inclusive where everybody can have access to finance.

Everyone can have access to equal financial instruments and we use this narrative of like that crypto is for everybody and we want to make it accessible to everybody. And some of the best people I know in crypto are strong, powerful women building in the space.

Absolutely. So many that could have been on, you know, this advisory committee. And I'm just I'm honestly shocked. Not just that it's so few, but that there really hasn't been any conversation about why there are so few. I just know that we can do better.

And this goes to my point of some people will say where there's well there's not enough female CEOs. Well, why should this be CEOs in the first place? Like CEOs have every right and privilege to send their deputy to designate their representative on this committee.

Maybe a representative of the entity that is best suited to engage with regulators, for example. And so there's females at every single one of these companies, I'll just note. And so you can have a cross-section of market participants that reflect the ecosystem.

And we spend so much time fighting against this whole crypto bro crypto bro perception. And then we see this and obviously this is not just a committee of crypto. There are entities represented that are not crypto but everyone has noted that we're looking at a very wide you know uh kind of emerging technology cryptofocused council.

So it's a bunch of crypto bros which is problematic. I guess so disappointing.

I have a question about that. KK. Um, you had talked early on about the purpose of the committee being not just crypto but you know the entire financial system and there are not just a lot of men but a lot of representatives from crypto companies.

And so is the committee supposed to be about incorporating crypto into the markets or is it supposed to be much broader? And it's sort of an interesting question because right now as we think through clarity and the debates and the different coalitions of crypto verse traditional finance and banking verse stable coin providers, you know, it um is it just further entrenching those coalitions?

Like how do we think about the distinction here?

Well, it's a great question because look, chair Celig specifically said that this committee's work is, you know, hopefully helping this CFTC future proof its markets and, you know, develop clear real rules of the road.

So, you need innovation, you need emerging tech, of course, it's going to be crypto, emerging tech oriented. And the other interesting thing is the vast majority of the representatives on the committee are from entities.

There are a few academics but I think pretty much all of the entities or the majority of the entities I should say that are not crypto are engaged or touching or invested or experimenting in crypto. So almost no one is immune from this asset class.

Like if you're looking at CME and and SIBO and OC obviously they're they're touching crypto to some degree. I think the the question that you rais is a good one.

How do you come up with the cross-section like of any type of committee? You go straight to your major constituents like the CMEs of the world. No committee would ever not have CME in this room.

But you also have kind of the young and hungry entities like I noticed that we have uh the CEO of Rthera which is a new um and a new prediction market for example started by Tom Chippus.

It's really hard to figure out who's going to be most beneficial in taking that private sector intel that you only understand as a market participant and guiding Mike Celig as the standalone chair to ensure that the CFTC is best accommodating for kind of this emerging technology.

do these committ I think goofy yeah I so one observation I had was like I didn't feel like there was that much defi representation on the committee so that's the first thing and then going back to your guys's comments about like the composition of it um to me it feels like just based on who it consists of that it's probably going to be or like maybe was intended to be more symbolic than actually like substantive right so I don't know what you guys think about I was gonna of it and whether these committees generally make a difference for all the reasons that we talked about, but I wonder if we have to take into consideration the fact that there's like one commissioner right now of the CFTC. Is that right?

And so does this advisory committee matter more than normal because there aren't other brains to sort of bounce ideas off of?

It's a great point and you know it is interesting. Prior to very recently, it was completely unprecedented to only have one commissioner. Now, it is obviously legally permissible to have one commissioner.

There's nothing in the Commodity Exchange Act that says you need more than one. However, it was obviously not the intent. In part evidenced by the fact that when commissioners are appointed, they're commissioner they're appointed to stagger terms by design.

So, they'll never have a situation where there's one. So, you know, Chair Celig can effectively do anything he needs to do. and wants to do. But if I were a commissioner, I would want other commissioners [laughter] to work together and to debate and to provide those different perspectives.

I don't think that this committee is going to replace that back and forth, that balance that you see with a full suite of commissioners. I think that obviously, again, the intent behind creating a resource for cutting edge innovation in the derivatives and commodity markets, that's a good goal, right? We all support that.

But really, if you look at the names on this list, it's like I don't know like how much time does Don Wilson really have to sit and work through the CEA? Like I I just I don't think he has that much time. Maybe he has more free time than I anticipated.

So to me, practically, I I'm dubious that they're really going to, you know, get meaningful work and perspective from this committee.

Yeah. That's why I think it is meant to be just more symbolic and will probably end up being that way. Yeah. Yeah.

So, on that note, I I want to switch gears because this is not a CFTC podcast. I promise. As much of a CFTC nerd as I am today. There's just a lot of stuff happening from the CFTC.

So, the other thing happened is Chair Mike Celig who really kind of sailed through the confirmation process published kind of a spicy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday using and I'm forgetting the specific language but he said something about the CFTC would no longer stand idle and watch the states kind of infringe on their jurisdiction referring to prediction markets and made a video.

Yeah. Yeah. And then he did a video today which weirdly gave me PTSD from Chair Gensler's office hours videos in like so this was fascinating to me and then I just noticed like literally minutes ago he released a statement going after I believe Chris Christie or saying uh uh yeah Chris Christie is leading a campaign to ban American prediction markets in states across the country. We're simply not going to allow that to happen.

So this is really like Oh no, he responded to him like last week also. Like they they've kind of been going ahead. So So this is guns blazing. Okay. Politician Chris Christie is involved there. [laughter] When you thought of him, I missed that. Okay.

So I need to obviously bone up on Chris Christiey's involvement here. I have not heard of that name in a while. But look, like there's a lot of things happening here and we are going to dig in more on prediction markets generally in a future episode for sure.

But for now, I'll just say I conceptually agree with Chair Celig. I do believe that prediction markets should be appropriately in the purview of CFTC jurisdiction and the most dangerous prediction markets are actually the offshore unregulated prediction markets.

I also believe that this litigation environment where the states are suing the prediction markets and the prediction markets are suing the states and and it's just I I'm honestly losing track of how many active suits there are. It's something like 10.

It's constant. Obviously, this is going to end up in the Supreme Court's kind of lane. Um, but this does raise some interesting questions as to why Chair Celig is being so aggressive on this front, particularly after his commentary during his confirmation hearings where he said he hadn't made up his mind on this or that he would like defer to the courts and now they're like actively inserting themselves right into these state court cases.

It's just where did states rights go in this conversation? I mean, the AI bill came out saying states can't regulate AI. Now, the CFT should not be involved in prediction markets even if it touches sports betting, although it's not sports betting.

And it's just an interesting narrative and direction that all the agencies are sort of moving to like states don't get to decide what happens within their borders. And that's a much larger constitutional federalism question that um it seems like it's becoming pretty clear from this current administration which direction they're going in.

And that is going to create strange bedfellows. It already is, as you can see, particularly in the AI debate, where a lot of states, whether they're red or blue, really want to assert their ability to control what happens in their borders because that is sort of the default for under our constitution that states should be regulating unless it says otherwise, right?

So I think that this is leading to a huge constitutional debate which is is that where we really want prediction markets to be stuck in this interim until we figure out what the Supreme Court decides or whether preeemption like applies here and does it app even have a path to clarity right now. Small C clarity. Yep. Yep.

And I was having an interesting back and forth with Adam Cochran on Twitter who I really respect. And it's funny, there's like a very small group of people within crypto that really understand commodities. It is a very small group of people.

So I would say PSA be very dubious of of the information you're getting off crypto Twitter when you're talking about commodities. It's just most people don't understand it. It's very complicated.

But Adam made a great point. He noted that 90% of the issues prediction markets are facing is that they have no idea how to actually communicate the story and concept of event contracts in a way that captures their history and helps users understand the value.

And I like that point. He responded to my tweet actually with a fun history fact. You know, that's my mo that there historically have been prediction markets for hundreds of years. And there were prediction markets or or prediction markets, I should say, political betting markets that were open openly operated on Wall Street in a very significant scale like hundreds of millions of dollars in today's dollars betting on presidential elections.

And this was perfectly acceptable. the the landscape changed when actually the the world's thinking on gambling evolved in a in a negative sense. Now this brings us to kind of the crux of this issue is is this gambling or is this a product that should be regulated by the commodities exchange act?

In this case I believe it is it's it's a binary option a swap which neatly falls under the CA. But I also understand how reasonable minds can differ and that goes to these points of who should decide that. Should it be the chair or should it be the courts?

Well, I mean, I can tell you one thing. It's going to be the Supreme Court. Like, I think there's no doubt that this issue will eventually end up there. And I think it will probably happen sooner than most people think.

Like I saw someone saying it'll be like three years at least and by that time like the markets will have basically like run away with all of this. I don't think that's true. Right. Appellet courts can take up issues that they they know are like in the public interest and and are a priority.

They can take them up sooner and you could have like a notable circuit split or whatever. You can have circumstances that would take that would allow the Supreme Court to take this up a lot sooner than people think.

So, I think this might be settled. I mean I don't think it'll be settled like this term, but like maybe as soon as next year. It's just too important of an issue.

How many Supreme Court justices have been on a prediction market or how many will have been by the time they have to decide that's very important. I don't know. Maybe a lot of them. There's got to be a contract on like Poly Market or Kelshi about how the Supreme Court is going to [laughter] for sure.

There's probably most I I was a little freaked out because I have a cousin chat with like all of my cousins, most of which who are younger than me because I'm the second oldest and they they really don't talk about crypto ever. Like a couple of my like boy cousins have been trading crypto a little bit. But the other day they were all talking about prediction markets and I got a little freaked out. I was like, um, please be careful.

Well, because the ads and stuff are like all over Tik Tok and everywhere, right? Yeah. Directly appealing to like that demographic. Yeah. And it's and and hey, this may be part of the future of finance. So, it's something we need to understand.

Okay. So, on that note, we are going to take a quick break and go hear from our sponsors yet again. And when we come back, we are going to talk about some spicy criminal stuff. Frankly, Sam Bank Breakman Freed is trying again. What does that mean? And crypto, ransom, and real world risk. We'll be back in a minute.

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Okay. And we're back. So, obviously there's always something going on with crypto crime. We always like to remind people that most of crypto is not for crime and is not involved in bad things and is not bad at guys as evidenced from the three of us. But our our favorite favorite and by favorite I mean least favorite crypto villain Sam Begman Freed SPF just filed a new motion seeking a retrial in federal court.

Go away SPF v tell us more about this.

Okay, so first off, I really wish that like we wouldn't have to think about this for another 25 years, which was the length of his sentence. But alas, um SPF is back in the news. So 2 years after being convicted and sentenced, right, for fraud relating to the FDX collapse, he has filed what's called a rule 33 motion seeking a new trial.

He claims that there is new evidence uh and he alleges that witnesses were pressured by prosecutors. So from prison, I don't know if he's doing it like himself or through other people. He's been [laughter] Okay. Well, he's been actively posting on X trying to like reframe the narrative. claiming that FTX wasn't insolvent, alleging government misconduct, and tying his case into just like a lot of the broader like political stuff that's been happening.

So like just to take a step back, I think there's kind of three things going on here. One is like what is going on with the legal posture, like what does this all mean? There's the political stuff, right, which I just mentioned. And then there's like the narrative that he's trying to put forth, right?

So, from a legal standpoint, um, asking for a new trial is nothing surprising, right? Almost every high-profile federal defendant does this. Um, you preserve issues to raise in your motions. You test the jury instructions. All of that is like par for the course.

But federal judges do not grant new trials lightly. Like, this almost never happens. The burden is really, really high. you need to prove that there was a material reversible error. Um, not just like I was misunderstood or the political environment has changed or something like that, right?

And like what I think is really funny, I I didn't read his rule 33 motion. I've seen summaries of it. Um, what I think is funny is that this trial from from my perspective actually seemed like unusually straightforward. Like a pretty straightforward case of fraud.

Um, the jury instructions were clear. There was like overwhelming documentary evidence. Like I I worked at the SEC on really complex financial fraud cases like where it would literally take us years to investigate and unwind complicated accounting maneuvers and emails and financial records. This fraud was not that like it actually wasn't that interesting. It was literally some stuff in a few Excel spreadsheets by someone like in a hoodie, right?

So which is also by the way why I don't understand how the lawyers made like a gabillion dollars in fees from this. But that's another issue. Um, but anyway, all I'm saying is I don't have high hopes for this motion. Um, and then as for the pardon, right, obviously there's like a big political aspect to this. It's not like all legal.

Um, you know, we all know presidents can pardon federal crimes, not state crimes, but federal crimes. And the president has done this. He has pardoned folks in crypto like CZ, um, like Arthur Hayes, like Ross Albrich. Am I missing anyone? Um, I mean those are SPF posted a sheet of a list of all the people pardoned and wrote his name at the bottom and posted. Oh my gosh. Okay, so those were some like high-profile crypto examples, right?

But historically, um, largecale retail financial fraud is like doesn't tend to be a very strong pardon candidate, especially when you're talking about like customer funds that were stolen and and misused. Uh, and especially like when in this situation, I mean, from my point of view, I think I can safely say this would be like universally unpopular within the crypto community, like maybe one of the one things that might unite us these days. So, I really don't see like what the president would be getting out of this. Anyway, that's my take on pardon. Do you guys have anything to add?

Agreed. The only thing I'll add is that look, like there are some parameters or limitations to pardon. like pardon can't uh extend impeachment for example, [laughter] future crimes, civil matters. So, as a reminder, even if SBF were to be pardoned, which I agree would be horrendous, um he would still be on the hook civily.

And like it's it's like I like to remind people, um even though the the glove doesn't fit, you need to quit. Certain criminal actors have been uh not convicted, they're still on the hook civily. Um, so in this case there's still civil implications even if you were civily as much. Yeah.

And and there have also been historically extremely controversial pardons like Richard Nixon, Mark Rich, like Patty Hurst, all kinds of interesting pardons from Democratic and Republican uh presidents. This would probably be one of the more controversial or at least from Krypto's perspective.

My only take that I'm going to add here is go away SPF. I never want to hear your name again. You inflicted so much collateral damage on this industry. You put us back from the legislative and policy front so far. You weaponized the Democrats. I'm going to get off my soap box in a minute, but it makes me furious that we still have to talk about this sociopath. I don't think I don't.

Um, and there are political pardons all the time. And I'm not even just in crypto like that politics don't ever drive pardons. It's just that there does not seem to be any push politically to have this except from SPF or whomever tweeting.

And just to add to your, you know, 33 motion, like granted, like it is purposely a very brutal, hail mary legal standard because we need to ensure that people get fair trials, but if they get a fair trial, then they shouldn't be allowed to reopen over and over again. There's a lot of other methods for doing that.

And there is something interesting about the prosay. I think we defined it a moment ago, but essentially he's not using a lawyer to file this motion. And that could mean he doesn't have the money to pay for it or it could mean no none of his lawyers that he spent a gazillion dollars on or whatever number you used be really [laughter] like he's willing to do this ethically. So there's something interesting there as well. Um that I'm sure we'll find out about because he will tweet about it. Oh god.

So FYI, inmates are not permitted to tweet from prison. Uh, as Jesse and I both know, some inmates are allowed limited access to the internet. Um, it was actually a Bureau of Prisons like pilot program for a while, but most of the time when you see inmates tweeting, they're actually having someone tweet on the outside. You know, they're sending coms through their lawyer, their friends, or Russ for example, his wife was sending his tweets.

There are a lot of phones in prison though, so we don't really know. Like the number of secret cell phones, not so secret in a prison are pretty [clears throat] expensive. So to your point about like okay like let's get you know let's be honest like a lot of pardons are political in nature. What I what I'm concerned about here is that I don't even get what like the political justification for this would be, right?

Like there's this I think there is this growing narrative that crypto enforcement like under the previous administration was too aggressive or it was too politicized, right? And then like you have pressure right now from Democrats arguing that there hasn't been enough accountability, right? and they're like criticizing the SEC for dropping all of these enforcement actions um ever since like the leadership change.

So, what I'm worried about is that SBF is becoming sort of a proxy for that fight and we have to be really careful not to confuse those two debates, right? One debate is how should we regulate crypto? Like what was wrong with the approach like of the last four years, right? How do we regulate decentralized systems? And then the other is about is it illegal to steal customer money and lie about what you're doing with it. Right? Those those are not the same conversation.

So let's be clear that like even if you agree with the polit the narrative that like crypto enforcement was politicized that is not what this trial was about. And so we need to be really careful not to let SPF like try to push that narrative.

V was V, you rais a great point because as we all know or as anyone who saw this, Chair Atkins recently testified and the Democrats hit him really hard. He was asked a lot about corruption. You know, there was definitely an insinuation or an allegation that the SEC dismissal of cases was linked to effectively corruption and political influence inappropriately.

And I think, you know, we all believe that a lot of these dismissals were not that. you know, the SEC dismissed these cases because they never should have been brought in the first place. Um, regulators should not pursue an enforcement action where the law is clearly gray. Uh, but regulators should definitely have brought all the cases and all the things against SPF and he should stay in prison involving fraud. Yeah. Yeah.

I just hate how little nuance there is in like any of these conversations cuz like the corruption thing to me is like a perfect example. like SEC dismissing cases that should not have been brought. That is not corruption. That's assessing legal theory, right?

And there are sub substantive allegations about corruption in the administration and certain tokens and like that is a corruption conversation that maybe the Dem should bring up. But conflating it with what Atkins is doing at the SEC just it minimizes the entire corruption argument. It makes crypto on its, you know, become on the defensive about things it shouldn't have to be defensive about. And it further entrenches these coalitions.

And maybe that's my big takeaway for this week of we are just further going into our holes, hiding under blankets with people who agree with us rather than engaging like we should to develop this tech. Yep.

TLDDR. Call your mom. Call your friends in Tradfi. Call your friends who work in manufacturing. Get out of your crypto bubble. touch grass and talk to the normies, talk to the civilians.

Okay, so on that note, uh not to be a buzzkill with our topic three, but there's also been some crazy normie stuff going on with crypto. So, I'll just tell you anecdotally, I am on a text message chat with 25 other suburban Chicago bombs. Okay? It's my mom chat. Most of the time it's like trading recommendations for your electrician or a tutor or something like that.

So my chat for the first time ever was blowing up the other day about crypto. Why? Because every mom in America is following the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie with baited breath. And for those crypto people who aren't aware of this, Savannah Guthrie, a very prominent news anchor, her elderly mother was kidnapped. It's actually beyond belief devastating. I don't think anyone can contemplate how horrifying and sad this is. And she has been missing for weeks now.

Well, Crypto unfortunately has entered the chat because the kidnappers have left, I believe, now two ransom notes uh requesting payments in, of course, Bitcoin. And it's also created some additional press. Again, back to the same old, oh, bad guys using crypto because only bad guys use crypto. And we haven't heard enough of the narrative describing that these Bitcoin P payments would of course be traceable on chain, but we all know that. We'll get to that later.

So, Jesse, tell us more about the Guthrie kidnapping and how this relates to some other data we've seen about crypto crime. Where is the freaking nuance in any of this?

But I think it's really important to talk about this topic because crypto crime is leaving just being on the blockchain and it's entering the real world more and more and it's interesting that the Nancy Guthrie, you know, Savannah Guthri's mom is the one that sort of has brought it back into the purview. Although there are people who go missing all the time. Um, but essentially you gave a good overview on how it connects to crypto.

You can find out a lot of details about it. It's a devastating story. Nancy Guthrie, 84 years old, taken from her bed in Tucson. She has a pacemaker. I mean, her being away from a comfortable place and medical uh care is just freaking horrible. The ransom note demanded Bitcoin. And then people who are sort of fake sending ransom notes demanding different Bitcoin is now also popping up. It's just not a good showing for humanity. Not really have anything to do with crypto. Just not a good showing for humanity.

The point I think is really special for this pod to talk about is that Guthrie is not even close to an outlier because last year there were over 70 physical attacks on crypto holders and that's just people who reported it. Think about all those who were scared, who had to hand it over, who had secret ransom notes. That's a 75% increase year-over-year.

One of them is the Ledger co-founder I'm sure many of you all heard about in France had his finger cut off for a seed phrase. There's been a Why are so many of them in France, by the way? Like, does anyone It's out of control. Yeah. What's going on? Um, I have theories, but I don't want to fully speculate, but let them th we want to hear your Did you two high schoolers high schoolers last week in Arizona broke into a house, dressed