Why It Matters That Crypto Is Not Purely for Degens Anymore: DEX in the City

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For a long time, crypto sort of operated under the assumption that the world would eventually adapt to us, right? That scale and adoption would force regulators to accommodate crypto. What's really interesting about this environment is crypto's at the table. Tradfi is at the table. Trad is not trying to kill this bill. In fact, a lot of trady industries are supporting the bill. There is something really amazing about the fact that like Dems have engaged and they continue to engage. Hi all and welcome to Decks in the City where the wallets are cold and the takes are hot. The holiday edition. For those listeners who aren't watching, I'm wearing a tiny Santa hat. Jesse, first web 3 prosecutor turned web 3 protector at Rivet Capital. Hi everyone and happy holidays. Is wearing a very festive red bow. As V just said, she looks like she's ready to perform in the Nutcracker. And then we have V from the SEC to web 3. Happy holidays everyone. So, blame Amazon. My head piece did not arrive in time, but I put up some little Christmas trees in the back. So, this was all D's idea and blame Amazon. I had to like dig this out of my some drawer. Yeah. And I'm the only one here wearing a DY Santa hat, which I will happily rock for the duration of this podcast. So before we get going, remember we're lawyers, but we're not your lawyers. Nothing you hear on Dex in the City is legal or financial advice, and it doesn't create an attorney client relationship. And for the fine print, as always, check unchainedcrypto.com. I'm also wearing a very festive sweatshirt, by the way. It's a bunch of lights that are all tangled and then underneath in the text it says it's fine. I'm fine. This is fine. Which pretty much tracks our conversation today about crypto. Absolutely. It sums up everyone's lives in December and the state of crypto. The lights are tangled, but we are going to be fine. Okay. So, that's actually the perfect way to kick off kick off. Yes.

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So, a lot of people saw a viral article that was written I believe last week. The title was crypto is dead. It was by Douggee Duca over at Figment Capital. And this article has already been discussed a lot. Unchained did a a great episode with Mr. Duca on these topics. We're not going to spend a lot of time on the article, but I'll summarize it very quickly. I would say that the way that I understood his messaging is that we're now at a point where kind of the cryptonative technology and ethos as a self-contained world is dying. And we've talked about this a lot on the pod where we're at this kind of critical point where the trads and the crypto markets are converging. And what does that mean? It means that really certain things are disappearing. the industry as a self-contained pocket is disappearing. Cryptonative apps become kind of a tiny fringe and the label as he puts in his word becomes baggage.

And the way that I think about this is it's very similar to a lot of people don't recall I mean I don't even recall this but when stocks used to be quote unquote internet stocks you know at the advent of the internet there was actually a category of internet stocks. I believe it was internet stocks. Someone might call me out on this. they might have been technology stocks or something like this. Obviously, that label fell away and ultimately they were just stocks. You know, there's no subsect of the equity market of tech. So, the future prediction is that the same is going to happen to crypto. There's not going to be kind of crypto stocks or crypto exchanges or crypto trading. And we're already seeing that with a lot of companies, Coinbase, Robin Hood, several other good examples effectively trying to be the place for absolutely everything, you know, for equities, for tokenized equities, for crypto assets, for securities, commodities, all the licensing, prediction markets.

And what does that mean? It means that lines of what is crypto become blurred as part of the broader conversation of this convergence. So I really like this article because I think it was thoughtprovoking. I also thought his point about there are certain things that should remain like what deserves to survive. Permissionless access, global liquidity and 247 markets. We're already seeing that outside of crypto. There's been a lot of news around NASDAQ's move to 27 24/7 markets and whether that's actually a good idea, composability and selective user ownership. I would go a little bit farther and I think what deserves to survive is also the individual's right and control over their data. Um, hot on our heels of the privacy conversation. But look, like this raises a couple questions that I want Jesse and V to chime in on. First, what is pretty relevant is is this actually even a new thought or a new concept. Yes, Jesse from there.

Jesse: Just like with everything, crypto is learning the lessons of prior tech or prior parts of the financial market. And you know, shout out to Rivet. About a year or two ago, we wrote about how fintech is dead. And the thesis behind that was essentially that like fintech has been incorporated into the rest of the financial system. And that's really what happening with crypto. And that was like a real positive as you saw names like New Bank and Revolute and Robin Hood. Obviously, that's now, you know, part of the crypto conversation like really growing and becoming important places for people to access money.

And I think that crypto can also be compared to sort of what happened with the internet. I mean, we might not all remember it really well, but like there was a time of like true technol libertarianism, which was the belief that like the network could root around governments entirely. I remember like early on reading John Perry Barlo, who you know started EFF, like thinking about how governments would have no authority in cyerspace. And what does that sound like to everybody here? It sounds a lot like how people thought crypto would be forever. And that belief really powered early internet. It powered how people talked about regulation and it actually worked obviously until the internet became part of economic infrastructure.

And that's really what happens when technology stops being just a subculture and becomes part of something real and bigger. And this sort of idea of what should be regulated and how sort of speaks to what we all work on which is like what does crypto want to be? Does it want to continue to be a small subculture that, you know, doesn't have to follow rules, doesn't have to interact with the government? I mean, I think what we've been seeing through the conversations, through how people talk about regulators and legislation and wanting this market structure bill that I know we're going to talk about is that we want to be part of the regulatory conversation. So, you really can't have it both ways. is what a lot of people are realizing.

Katherine: And just to chime in here because before we get to V, John Perry Barlo, and in case anyone needs some serious nerd alpha to spit at their holiday cocktail parties, he was basically an internet cyber libertarian activist pioneer. And he was a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, which was is a big nonprofit digital rights group. And it was founded to promote internet civil liberties. And I actually love that you brought him up, Jesse, because I feel like I'm constantly, as an advocate for crypto, particularly in the legal and policy context, looking at at the internet, looking back at the internet, the growth of the internet, the policy environment.

The one difficulty that I always note, however, is that you forget, and obviously we were, frankly, children. We're not that old. We were children or not alive when a lot of this was happening in the internet context. I mean, we're not that old. We're actually quite young. We're just old in crypto. Okay, I just want to put that out there. Uh but look, like there was a lot of uh a welcome to the internet. There was a positive environment in Congress where they wanted to make it a growth environment for the internet. And that is one of the reasons why there was this very important piece of legislation passed that effectively protects internet providers like Facebook and it exempts them from liability tied to wrongdoing on Facebook. We should probably have an episode to talk about that. Yep. Yes. Yes. Section 230.

There's a lot of constitutional kurfuffle over section 230. That's my new favorite word, by the way. It's so good. Um anyway, so that environment was different. However, that being said, it's always informative to look back at this kind of evolution visa v the internet or other, you know, emerging technologies to see if we can take any lessons from that. V, can you jump in here on your thoughts around um all of this and and the article and where we are at this point?

V: Yeah, I really love like the history that you guys brought up because I think not just like the rise of the internet, but the way that we approached it from a regulatory perspective has always kind of informed how we think about like crypto regulation. and it's sort of always been in the background, but there are like so many good guests we could have on to talk about that like you know people that worked on th like were in those fights and are in crypto today. Um I think like there's so much we can learn from that. Um but so I like there have been so many takes on this article. I think it has like 6,000 likes on X by now. What I haven't really seen is like a a take from a policy perspective, right? So, like if what he's saying is true, and I'll I'll just start out by saying that I do largely agree with a lot of it. If what he is saying is true, like should that change our approach to crypto policy and how? Right.

So, I want to talk about that a little bit, but um I so I'll I'll start by saying I do agree with his like argument that something has shifted. I think we've all sort of felt it. Um, and I think that's why it struck such a nerve is because a lot of us have been feeling that this year, but like haven't really articulated it. At least I haven't. Um, but you know, I was thinking back and like, you know, when I started to really see signs of this was I was on the board of one of the crypto trade associations earlier this year and we started seeing a real uptick in the number of member applications from from companies that weren't pure crypto, right? They were either like a hybrid or sometimes just straightfire or fintech. Um, and it sort of caused us to revisit our founding principles and like what we wanted our membership to look like as a crypto trade association.

And and looking back, I think this sort of foreshadowed like everything that was going to come this year. And then like just now in my own job, and I'm sure you guys can speak to this too, in my own job, I feel the shift really concretely, right? So at Veta, we build vault infrastructure which is just programmable smart contracts that let people access DeFi while we kind of extract away the complexity and handle all of the risk management and optimize the returns. So like for the first year of our company's life, our conversations were almost entirely with cryptonative teams and protocols. But now we talk daily with institutional and fintech partners who honestly like even a year ago I do not think they would have touched DeFi with a 10-ft pole.

Um and and also they're not asking for like closed permissioned lending pools, right? They're asking how to offer their customers access to actual decentralized open permissionless protocols like a like unis swap, right? So from a policy perspective, I think that kind of inverts like the crypto policy playbook a little bit. Like I think you know for as long as I've been in crypto and of course like so many people who have been working really hard on this stuff for like years even before any of us joined um I think for a long time crypto sort of operated under the assumption that the world would eventually adapt to us right that scale and adoption would force regulators to accommodate crypto basically the Uber model right grow fast enough become popular enough and the rules will kind of be forced to bend to you but I think what's happening ing now with crypto is kind of the opposite, which is as this technology integrates more into payments and fintech and financial markets, crypto itself is starting to adapt to the real world.

Um, and I I want to stop and say like I want to be clear about something which is I don't think the shift is driven primarily by regulatory fear. Like I think there's this myth that safeguards and risk management and compliance only show up because founders are scared of regulators. And I hear that sometimes, right? We all hear it from like other lawyers we work with. Um but I think in reality it doesn't it doesn't match my own experience or the experience of a lot of other DeFi GCs that I talk to, right? I think in reality these things show up because founders actually want to grow like they want adoption. um and and they understand that to scale users have to feel safe and they have to trust the systems that they're interacting with, right? And sure, like working with regulated institutions does force certain conversations, but I think more broadly as crypto starts touching everyday users, I do sort of think the sense of responsibility changes and it should, right? We're not we're not in the purely like DGEN area era of crypto anymore where it's like everything's caveat mTor. Um and I I mean I personally think that's a good thing, but I'm sure you guys have thoughts on this too.

Katherine: Caveat mour means buyer beware. Like you come, you deal with it and that's really just to step in with the legal translation. It's actually a great term. I I think you're spot on be and the only point I'll make is I feel like we're at this point where there's three categories of market participants. There's crypto natives like the DGEN population. There's Tradfi that's experimenting with crypto because pretty much every TRDI entity at this point I feel safe in saying they're either doing something in crypto, they're doing something in crypto underground or they're experimenting or researching some facet of crypto. Like that's we're we're now at that point. If they aren't then I'm like what are you doing like on some facet of the technology to create cost efficiency for their customers. And then the middle are these cryptonative hybrids. And the cryptonative hybrids are growing faster than anything else. Like I would never would have called ri Robin Hood a cryptonative hybrid, you know, years ago, but now I would put them squarely in that camp. Meaning sometimes you have crypto entities that have branched out more into tradi. But more increasingly we're seeing tradi that's kind of gone allin on crypto. Black rockck is another example. You know, they mentioned a week or two ago that their singest most profitable product line is the Bitcoin ETFs. I mean, just think about this. This is Black Rockck. Okay. It's shocking how far we've come and how profitable this industry is for traditional market players. That's why we're seeing this convergence. Jesse, you're going to say something.

Jesse: I just want to like add to what you both said and something that V commented on really rang true to me because we all existed in a crypto sphere where everyone really feared regulators and they pretty much were like regulators are going to come in and they're going to force us to use KYC and they're going to impose BSA on us which just doesn't work and I don't know what to do with that and like we just need to fight against it at all cost. But what we're realizing as this like network um of incentives has changed is that like KYC doesn't have to be some top- down movement where the state is coming in and like storming the castle but rather it's been inching in sideways and largely through that middle group you identified KK where when founders realize that they can't scale they can't partner they can't touch as much real money quote unquote as they want to without it that's sort of where we're seeing KYC or the like tools surrounding KYC. That's just sort of a shorthand like inch in here.

And so we don't even need to wait for these laws to come in to have all these projects begin to think about how do I incorporate some sort of checks and risk management whether it be KYC, whether it be some sort of cyber security check. I mean we I I have been engaging with a comp the company chain analysis since I was at the DOJ and it first started right and at the beginning it was a tool that the government only used and then at a certain point all these projects at the very least were at least incorporating chain analysis TRM something you know to say that they had like that check at least for sanctioned addresses etc and that was like the baseline for so long but that had that was inched in not because government said you have to, but because that was sort of what was required for either users or investors at the time. And so those kinds of tools, like for better or for worse, like I'm not making a comment on good or bad. Um, but for better or for worse, they're going to become essential parts of the stack.

Now, they're still going to remain a part of the sector, just like there's a part of the internet, like the dark web that doesn't have sort of the same rules and standards. We're going to have a part of the sector that remains as is, but it's increasingly seeming likely that that's not going to be the majority of it.

Katherine: And like before we progress and my translation moment, just to refresh, especially with our new listeners, KYC, know your client. These are the procedures that every regulated financial institution including money service business centralized exchange MSB have to adhere to like they have to do KYC know your client processes to determine who their clients are and these processes are heavily manual which is the difficulty and they have to do this because of the BSA the bank secrecy act and I'm sure we'll have an episode on that and elicit finally on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. So I like I feel Yeah. I feel like we're kind of going through like an identity crisis a little bit, right? So like I I think for me what that means is like we can't keep operating like a permanent opposition party. Like I think that posture made a lot of sense when like our very existence was threatened for, you know, like four years or whatever.

But I I don't think it makes sense so much any more when crypto is just, you know, like Jesse said, starting to touch like real economic activity, starting to touch just like everyday like normie users, right? Because I think the reality is um you know, the the moment you start to touch payment rails, you're probably going to have to do KYC somewhere. Um, if you're dealing with institutional counterparties, you're going to need some sort of guard rails. And if you touch things like custody or credit or real world assets or securities, right? Like the whole everyone stays anonymous forever just doesn't that doesn't work anymore. And so like that's not to say, you know, like does the BSA need reform? Yes, absolutely. Um are DeFi risks genuinely different and do they need like tailored approaches? Of course. And should parts of the stack remain open and permissionless? In my view, yes. Right. I I personally believe that the blockchain layer and decentralized DeFi protocol should remain neutral and open and permissionless. Um and then KK, right? Like are there technologies like ZK that can help reconcile a lot of these conflicts? Yes, absolutely. Right. And I'm sure like you have a lot to say on that.

But I do think that like we sort of need to move on, move beyond the just like crypto purist um, position and and start to like consider a lot of these things seriously and consider them not in the context of like are we betraying like crypto ideology or our core values or we like selling out or whatever, right? I think this is actually something that we should celebrate. Like I don't think we should see it as a loss. I I think we should see it as look this technology is actually proving to be really useful and the fact that like it's becoming mainstream is actually a marker of our success. So that's how I would like urge people to think about it this this transition period. I love that optimism. And I also love like look what's interesting here. I'll just say this. The three of us I believe are technically elder millennials. So, elder millennials, which I hate that term, are 1980 to 1986 birth years. I'm not going to tell you how old we are, but you know, we may or may not we may or may not be in that window. Okay? And what I like to think, and I may have used this in a job interview, is that elder millennials, we are at a critical advocacy leadership point in time because elder millennials are the few like a very narrow point of the universe where we remember life without cell phones and the internet. Like I remember the EO or or like AI, right? like any but we also know and understand like the groundbreaking technology that the kids use. Okay. So being able to branch those two worlds it's absolutely essential in policy right now because we need to be able to speak to the builders to the brilliant 25-year-old Dgens but we can also speak 75year-old legislator and I am fluent in both and that is actually unique. We need more people to be able to understand how these two sectors of both the financial markets and the policy world speak and that's what makes us effective general counsels and advocates.

So on that point, I think it's really important and this feeds really well into our next topic is the state of crypto market structure because there is definitely a thought that the last remaining barrier to the full embrace of crypto from the trati perspective is legislation is full clarity which would theoretically come with the clarity act, the crypto market structure bill. And I want V to give us an update with where we are because we did see some news last week on Thursday, David Saxs said that the markup for the Clarity Act, which this is the landmark crypto market structure bill is confirmed for January. So before I hand it over to Bill V, I just want to Bill to talk about the bill V to talk about the bill. I just want to refresh that how a bill becomes a law. There's amazing cartoon that we can put in the show notes, but the bill is introduced. It's referred to a committee. The committee has hearings. So, this is when experts testify and information is gathered and the policy environment and crypto, you know, makes its voice heard. There's a markup session as part of the committee hearings. And this is actually a key point because this is when the bill is revised and this is when, you know, so kind of this is when crypto has the real chance to to be heard. I you know obviously there's a multitude of opportunities to educate legislators as they go through this process but the markup session is really important. Then the committee votes after the markup session and then the bill goes to the floor either the house or the senate. So that's where we are in markup in January and it's really important that we progress while we still have kind of the momentum and the support behind getting this bill done. V, tell us more. Where are we? What are we going to see in the new year?

V: Yeah, so I so much moved last week. Like I think the the headline is that Senator Cynthia Lumis, like the the real crypto OG in the Senate, she's retiring next year. Um, and I think that matters more than people might realize. Like I think it's creating real urgency, especially from her side, to get a market structure bill done while she's still in office. Um, like we need to land this, right? like by next year. So on the Democratic side of Senate banking, I think it's worth emphasizing that the 12 Democrats are not a monolith. Like they each have their own priorities and internal dynamics. Um but I do think many of them defer heavily to Senator Mark Warner particularly on DeFi and elicit finance and intelligence related concerns and you know those issues remain like really big sticking points, right? I think another interesting thing to look out for is um Senator Ggo has been I think relatively quiet so far, but I think he could end up playing a really important like mediator or statesmanlike role similar to what he did during Genius once things start to really move. Um and then I think I saw an article come out saying that there's growing tension around Senator Gillibrand who's been involved in crypto market structure efforts for a long time.

Um so all this is is to say like even among Democrats who are engaged there's not I don't think one unified like dem position that you can even negotiate with. And then substantively um one of the big issues is still DeFi, right? The committee has been really tight- lipped about the latest draft. Um I think a lot of us saw that some industry participants were allowed to view it last week but like only in the room, no copies, no photos. Um, and even Democratic staff reportedly had really little time to review the language before last week's meeting. Um, only two Democratic senators attended that meeting. And I think that might just reflect like timing rather than the lack of interest or or engagement. And I think one thing that was really interesting about some of the recent meetings was that TRDFI was in the room, right? We had not just uh a number of crypto industry participants but also SIFMA and the financial services forum and a few tradey banks right so I'm hearing that there there will remain a defi exemption in the bill but it's going to be extremely narrow right so like control will be really tightly defined or defined tightly um the BRCA language is included which is good but there's just large brackets of the DeFi exemption um part that are still bracketed And I think this will it'll likely be one of the most contested areas as negotiations continue. Um and I think both industry and the SIFMAs of the world are already pushing back. Um on elicit finance, the language of the latest bill I believe largely tracks clarity. So no big surprises there. Um but this you know of course remains like a really big priority for Warner and Democrats that are aligned with him.

So I think K said in terms of timing like I think you know we've been hearing that there will be a markup for like months now and it keeps getting pushed. So the latest is that it's going to happen mid January but again that could easily slip right Democrats I think are signaling that they may not feel ready. Um, I think some of them may have felt or maybe feeling a little burned after Genius where they felt really rushed to vote it out of committee. Um, and they voted for it expecting that there would be changes from the Republicans in the final bill. Um, and then they saw like totally new text appear once it got to the floor. So, I wonder if that experience is making them a little bit more cautious this time around with market structure. Um, and I I think if they're not comfortable by by mid January when the markup might happen, um, this could turn into a more partisan markup than leadership would like. And then I think the final factor is you can't ignore the White House. They are really determined to get this done. So, they're applying a lot of pressure behind the scenes to move it forward. Um, I mean I one thing I'm interested to see is whether Democrats are going to kind of be fine waiting. Um, most of them are not up for reelection next year, right? And so there may be less political urgency on their side, which potentially gives them more leverage than people assume to wait and push for the changes that like they want to see in the bill, especially if the midterms start to look more favorable for the Democrats like especially on the House in the House. That's kind of what I'm looking for. Big variable.

Katherine: Jesse, before you jump in, I just want to define SIFMA is the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. So they're really it's a it's a major US trade group. It's really the voice of the nation's securities industry. You know, they represent broker dealers, asset managers, investment banks, and V's point is absolutely there. What's really interesting about this environment is crypto's at the table. Tradfi is at the table. Trad is not trying to kill this bill. In fact, a lot of Tradfi industries are supporting the bill. Now there are certain points like there are rumors that Terry Duffy who is the CEO of CME um who the nickname for him is the sixth commissioner because CME is extremely powerful in the commodities markets. You know there's rumors that CME and other major stakeholders have had a very big voice on for example the D5 provisions that may not be um beloved by crypto. Of course, they're going to have differing opinions, which also raises complications when you have tradi and crypto at the same trade table. Um, but you know, having CIFMA there and vocally participating in discussions in this bill, it it it's good actually. It means that there's more of an impetus from the street in moving legislation forward. And then the last thing I'll also note is look, we we are now at a point where the House has a version of the bill, the Senate has a version of the bill. So my biggest hope and all of our hope in in seeing progress at this bill is that this markup process in January hopefully merges the House passed clarity act with elements from the Senate's discussion drafts and we get to a point where there's a consensus because that is a huge impediment at this point in time and if we don't get to that point if the versions remain too far apart then that is the death nail for this bill. Jesse chime in.

Jesse: I just want to pretend to be Katherine for a second. BRCA as well for definition blockchain regulatory certainty act. It's about like protecting developers and non-custodial um blockchain developers in particular. But I guess one thing I'll say because you know this is our last episode of the year and I want to be positive going into the new year but like there is something really amazing about the fact that like Dems have engaged and they continue to engage and they've been pretty clear from the start about the fact that they have three issues that need to be addressed and those continue to be the issues and I think they're refining them a little bit and like Republicans are helping here and there but it's elicit finance which we talked read all the time and I know no one else wants to hear me talk about that more ethics and token classification which essentially like don't be able to classify a token as a nonsecurity even though it acts as security and a bunch of other stuff related to that. But the ethics part, I just don't think we've touched on enough here because I really think that is going to get in the way here if we're not careful. Because essentially what the Democrats have been saying and some Republicans have been agreeing on is that public officials shouldn't be able to abuse their offices to enrich themselves with crypto, right? The same concept that should apply to traditional markets. We've obviously talked before on this show how the ethics rules associated with, you know, trading in Congress and with other uh political positions isn't um like that isn't fully defined. It could probably be changed, but like why add to those and instead let's start fresh with crypto and make sure that public officials can't enrich themselves. And it really speaks to how important it is that the crypto industry and the political movement associated with the crypto industry understands that like a lot of times we are in an echo chamber and we need to make sure that like the people outside this echo chamber respect our industry as much as we respect it and also that they don't just see it as corrupt. And I know that we're going to talk more about that with some of the New York Times stuff that's been coming out, but like there is a huge contingency that still thinks that crypto is just about breaking the law. And until you find those people and talk to them, you don't realize how prolific that narrative is. And so that starts from the bottom, but it also starts from the top. And so how we regulate it and think about it is going to be really important to making sure that this narrative associated with crypto is dead but we should call it like crypto is beard be becoming part of the larger economic system is going to have to be maintained throughout 100%.

Katherine: And the other thing that we have to account for is there's still a number of Democratic politicians that like to use the anti-crypto narrative as a persuasive campaigning technique. And to be fair, I want to give him credit for a second because look, I'm on the board of the Illinois Blockchain Association. And we really advocated very hard to kill an Illinois bit licenseesque regime called DACPA. That's the acronym of the law. Because what we saw in the original text was overregulation. And we were also very alarmed by the language of the text. It would capture like tiny builders and regulate them like centralized exchange. And we're not anti-regulation. We just didn't think this was the right move. So, we worked collaboratively with Illinois to get the bill to a more manageable, reasonable state because it was clear that we weren't going to be able to kill it. And then the governor of Illinois upon signing the bill tweeted something about how he was like cracking down on crypto fraud and some reference to crypto bros in Washington, which by the way makes me incensed because obviously the three of us do not appreciate the crypto bro narrative. as I say this as a serious general counsel wearing a tiny Santa hat on my head but you know we're serious people and we're women and we're in crypto girls can't pull off this head gear that we're rocking today exactly okay but so there is a democratic narrative of kind of like stamp out crypto fraud bad crypto and that means that we have more work to do in educating all legislators regulators and or republicans and Democrats about how this works and how this technology can frankly improve the lives of everyday Americans and constituents. And there are obviously a multitude of use cases there.

So, look, like this is actually a natural next step to our next segment. Uh there were a couple big news items last week that came out of the CFTC. One, Mike Celig was confirmed as CFTC chair, which is actually fantastic news on a number of fronts. One, we have a CFTC chair. That's just great. There was a lot of drama surrounded Bri surrounding Brian Quintenza's nomination. We won't get into it today, but Mike Celig, I believe all three of us know Mike. I worked with Mike when he he was actually one of my outside counsel when he was at Wilky Far. He's really smart. He worked very closely with Neil who's now the GC of or CLO of uh Poly Market. Really, really great team. He knows crypto. He spent the past couple years as general counsel of the SEC task force. I don't I don't really know anyone who has anything bad to say about Mike, especially his intellectual horsepower. So, fantastic. We have a leader in place. Okay. And he was in the private sector. He went to the SEC. He went to the CFTC. Pretty typical. We also saw Caroline Fam who was burned out kind of a long time. The one remaining CFTC commissioner who was as we talked about in a previous episode on a tear of progress and you know advice and role making and and work in the CFTC. She announced or the news broke that she is leaving to become chief legal officer of Moonpay. So big news all around. And we also hope to see more SEC commissioners, CFTC commissioners confirmed hopefully as soon as March or at least progress there. But what we are seeing and a lot of people don't understand this is a revolving door. Private sector, government, private sector, government, private sector, government. And I think all three of us are familiar with this. You know, Jesse from the Department of Justice perspective, V from the SEC perspective, me, I was a partner in private practice for many years in white collar defense. And I will say the vast majority of my ex partners at King and Spalding were ex senior level government officials, either federal prosecutors, SEC enforcement, and there was huge value there because they had the mentality and the view. they had sat at the other side of the table and they had the relationships if I'm being cynical. So I see this revolving door as kind of a natural value evolution. Government gives