November 12, 2024 • 15 mins
Since Donald Trump’s reelection, Bitcoin has surged to its highest value ever, surpassing $89k per coin on Tuesday. It’s a trend playing out across cryptocurrency, an industry that could benefit from deregulation under President Trump.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s stacy-marie ishmael and David Gura break down whether the recent “melt up” in crypto prices is part another of boom-bust cycle or if the US’s first crypto-friendly president is likely to usher in a new era in digital assets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This week bitcoin hit an all time high. You know
what is at a record?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
No bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh? I heard?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Every time I look at croyp Go on the Bloomberg terminal,
I just see a sea of green.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I think the scientific term is a melt up, which
is to say, if there is a record that can
be broken, the prices are beating the records.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Stacey Marie Schmael oversees Bloomberg's coverage of crypto and she
says Bitcoin and other crypto assets have been on a tear.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We've also seen as in some things that are called
old coins, i e. Alternatives that are not Bitcoin, with
names like Dogecoin, Solana, and even the second largest crypto Ethereum.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So what explains the so called melt up? Stacy Marie
says the twenty twenty four election, even beyond Donald Trump's win,
has meant not just good things for crypto prices, but
also for the crypto industry more broadly. And it wasn't
by accident. Companies and trade groups spent more than one
hundred and thirty million dollars on crypto friendly candidates the
(01:07):
cycle and Stacey Marie says that paid off.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
They mostly want right. This was one of the highest
ROI bets that the digital asset industry has placed, and
they've had some very big successes.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
It's a turning point for how much influence the crypto
industry has in Washington.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Various folks, including Brian Armstrong, the CU of Coinbase, have
made it clear that this was not their last election. Right.
They're going to be around for the foreseeable future, and
they intend to continue to play a significant rule in
trying to shape whatever the future holds for the industry.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I'm David Gurra, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show. Bitcoin prices are surging,
but we've seen this before. What may be different this
time around? And is the US presidential election ushering in
a new era in crypto Crypto prices started to climb
(02:12):
in the run up to the US presidential election, but
they really took off when it became clear who won.
I asked Bloomberg Stacey Marie Ishmael, what's driving these gains?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
There are a few different ways aunds to that question.
I would say one there is a bit of narrative,
which is nothing can stop us now we have the
crypto friendliest president that has ever been in the US,
or at least president elect. We have the promise from
said president elect that he will fire crypto's biggest enemy
(02:43):
or who's perceived as crypto's biggest enemy. Do you know
Gary Gensler, who's the current chair of the U S
Securities and Exchange Commission. We have a number of people
in Congress or recently elected into Congress who have been
perceived as much crypto friendlier than people in other positions.
You know, Bernie Moreno in Ohio who defeated Shared Brown
(03:05):
is himself a blockchain and crypto entrepreneur that's like a
big get or perceived as a big get.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Stacy Marie's public perception of the market is in a
very different place from where it was four years ago
when Joe Biden was elected.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It was really around the time that coinbase went public,
that ftx started gaining traction that you know, non fungible
tokens remember board apes, you know, started to become popular
with various celebrities, which to be clear, was a very like,
very clever influence campaign that was you know, a lot
(03:39):
of bought and paid for marketing, but that so called
cryptos super Bowl, when you had ads for coinbase, et cetera.
Was both like the first time that a lot of
people who had never before encountered bitcoin in the wild
did so, and also kind of the top of that particular.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Cycle, crypto hit record highs and then then came the fall.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
In the months after that, you had FTX filing for bankruptcy,
Like just around two years ago, you had you know,
not long after Binance being fined four billion dollars by
the Department of Justice, you had multiple people going to jail.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Ftx's bankruptcy happened as the Biden administration was taking a
more aggressive tack toward crypto, and those prosecutions exemplified a
harder line from law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So I think that the Biden administration was in some
ways reacting to this this hype, this froth, this enthusiasm,
and a lot of the criticism that they received initially
was that they had taken too long to start regulating
this market, and that's where this kind of phrase regulation
(04:48):
by enforcement started to become popular in crypto. They were like, well,
what you should have done is given us legislation that
we can follow, but instead you're like, you all are
breaking rules and here's what's going to happen as a consequence.
But I wouldn't say that the other narrative that the
Biden administration was overwhelmingly hostile to crypto was necessarily true either,
(05:08):
because you know that administration, the Biden White House was
the one that said to every single major federal agency, hey,
study this thing, figure it out. What's going on. We
want to understand this.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
A big moment for crypto was in January when the
SEC approved spot bitcoin ETFs regulators had rejected applications from
asset managers for those exchange traded funds before, so this
wasn't something that happened overnight, and Stacy Marie says that
decision laid the groundwork for what we're seeing today.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
One thing I would note about the SEC approval it
was that the statement that accompanied it was the most
like grudging Here you go, I guess, but we're only
giving you this because the courts told us we have
to type thing, which I think is very reflective of
a couple of views that Gensler and others have expressed
over time, which is their perception is that these are
(06:02):
high risk, highly volatile assets. That should really only be
part of portfolios run by people who have either a
tremendous amount of experience or an extremely high ability to
recover from everything going to zero.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Stacy Marie says that the SEC's decision, grudging as it was,
to allow spot bitcoin ETFs, democratized crypto even more. It
made bitcoin appealing to people and institutions managing more conservative portfolios.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You're starting to see different pension funds saying, hey, maybe
it would be good if we have you know, a
little bit of exposure to this high beta, high risk
part of the market. Yes, the risk of downturns are great,
but so is the upside if we can play that correctly.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And there's a belief that under President Trump, the SEC
may approve more investment products tied to other cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You are starting to see people advocating for you know,
ETFs attached to other, even less well established tokens like Solano,
which is much newer. You're starting to see people say, well, Okay,
maybe I don't want to buy an ETF, but is
there another way for me to get exposure? And the
(07:16):
answer is yes, absolutely. There are various publicly traded companies
that are say bitcoin miners. There is Coinbase, but there
is also this supposed software services firm called MicroStrategy, which
really is a bitcoin hedge fund in just in terms
of the fact that it has such an enormous amounts
of bitcoin on its balance sheet and is therefore perceived
(07:36):
as another way to get exposure to this asset class.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The President elect says he wants to make crypto even
more mainstream, and one way he's proposed doing that is
through a regulatory overhaul. On day one, I will fire
Gary Gensler and appoint a new sect. A crypto friendly
candidate is heading to the White House. What's he likely
(08:00):
to do to support crypto when he gets there? Are
we on the cusp of a paradigm shift, whereas the
narrative getting ahead of the facts. That's next. With Bitcoin's
price up more than ninety percent year to date and
crypto price is setting new records after Donald Trump's reelection,
(08:24):
I asked Bloomberg Stacy Marie Ishmael if those gains are
being fueled by vibes or something more concrete.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I do think that in crypto, so much of this
is tied up in like people's belief and optimism vibes.
It's an extremely vibes based asset class. And four years
ago there were fewer positive fundamentals than there are now,
but the vibes were just as strong, if you know,
(08:51):
I don't think they were stronger, but they were at
least just as strong.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And Donald Trump's reelection is feeding those vibes, which is
a little surprising because of what he said about crypto
in the past. So the bet here is that Donald
Trump is going to be supportive of digital assets, including cryptocurrency.
He's going to embrace it more. I'm old enough to
remember when he called it a scam. Yes, how much
(09:14):
has his outlook on crypto evolved in just a few years.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
What I would say is that Donald Trump's original view
of crypto was this is a scam and this is
a threat to the US dollar. But we've seen explicit
changes in at least his approach to monetizing crypto over time.
So you know, both Donald Trump and Millennia and Trump
have issued their own non fungible tokens. Trump at least
(09:42):
has disclosed making several millions of dollars on selling those
NFTs to fans and admirers. He has supported at least
a name a project run largely by his sons called
World Liberty Financial. Still unclear exactly what that's going to
turn out to be, but it is. You know, it's
got all of the trappings of what's called the decentralized
(10:04):
financial product. There's a token associated with it. They've had
multiple spaces on x There's a lot of people who
have some experience in digital assets who are.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Working tweets about it, he posts about it, he truths it.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You know, it's part of Trump Inc. At this point.
And then you have the fact, as anybody in crypto
will tell you, that the crypto constituency became a really
meaningful source of donations and fundraising during the electoral campaign.
And so, you know, he famously appeared at the Big
Bitcoin Conference in Nashville this year. That's where he said,
(10:39):
you know, he wants to make the US the crypto
capital of the world.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
What has he promised to do aside from being supportive
of it. I know he's raised the spectrum of a
strategic bitcoin reserve reserver stockpile. What concrete things has he
presented as crypto related initiatives he would support?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Gunna fire Guary Gensler going to make it easier for
bit coin miners, and that if you don't know are
you know, think of them like really really big powerful
computers solving problems all day long. And when you have
really big powerful computers, what do you need energy? And
so a big part of his promise to like, you know,
(11:15):
the bitcoin mining industry is we are going to give
you lots of cheap energy and you're not gonna have
to worry about those pesky environmentalists saying things like why
are you polluting my water or whatever that might be,
which is a very powerful message to people who in
some cases, you know, left the US because they thought
that energy prices were too high or they couldn't get
(11:37):
around certain environmental regulations. And then, as you mentioned, you
have this strategic bitcoin reserve, which right now not particularly
well fleshed out. But the idea is that the US
would have, much like it has you know, oil reserves
or wheat or vaccines, would have a stockpile of bitcoin
(11:58):
that it could decide to deploy strategically if ever it
were called upon to do so. So, Like, what does
it mean in practice to be crypto friendly? Does that
mean come January, any existing or outstanding lawsuits filed by
the SEC or other agencies would go away. Does it
mean that Congress will be much more in favor of
(12:22):
passing certain types of legislation that do provide the phrase
the crypto industry likes to use regulatory clarity about what
is and is not a security, Who will regulate it,
how will they regulate it? Does it mean that banks
will have less onerous capital requirements on things to do
with digital assets? I mean, there's a slew of different
ways that you could foreseeably have a so called crypto
(12:45):
friendly administration, but we have none of those details because
none of the people who will make those decisions are
yet in place.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So it's about how the regulatory landscape stands to change,
but also what the attitude toward crypto is in Congress.
What does it mean for the crypto industry to have
more friends in Congress? What does that lead to or
what would they like to see that lead to.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Crypto has a notoriously short attention span, and I think
in previous years there was this idea of we gave
you money, it's two days later. Why has nothing happened yet?
And what I think has to evolve and is evolving,
and this you know campaign cycle has shown is you
now have more people on the crypto end with a
(13:25):
more sophisticated understanding of how business gets done in DC
and how long a game you have to be playing
and what you have to be you know, advocating for
in addition to the things that you might want immediately
and where those concessions have to be. And we're certainly
going to see that in the hiring, right. I suspect
that one of the areas of you know, job listing
(13:46):
profusion will be in people who know how to negotiate
with law makers and their staffs.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You have lived through crypto booms and busts before these
many cycles. Does this one feel different to you in
any way?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I think it's certainly the first one in which you
have a government that's not like El Salvador that is
specifically saying this is going to be a part of
our policy in one way or another. Right Like this
is the first major sorry to be emerging markets, but
(14:23):
this is like the first major sovereign test of what
does it mean to have you know, kind of an
administration come in partly on the back of saying digital
assets are something that we're going to take really seriously,
and not just digital assets in the form of like
a central bank back digital currency or stable coins, Like
(14:44):
we're really going to go, you know, true believer and
talk about bitcoin a lot, and like they're looking at
this from a very different set of levels, not from
like retail adoption, but like a systemic change to how
the US government does business in a very broad way,
and that will have consequences whatever happens.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
This episode was produced by David Fox and Alex Sagura,
who also mixed it. Adriana Tapia fact checked it. Our
senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
They both edited this episode. Our executive producer is Nicole
Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If
(15:28):
you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review
The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps
people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This week bitcoin hit an all time high. You know
what is at a record?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
No bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh? I heard?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Every time I look at croyp Go on the Bloomberg terminal,
I just see a sea of green.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I think the scientific term is a melt up, which
is to say, if there is a record that can
be broken, the prices are beating the records.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Stacey Marie Schmael oversees Bloomberg's coverage of crypto and she
says Bitcoin and other crypto assets have been on a tear.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We've also seen as in some things that are called
old coins, i e. Alternatives that are not Bitcoin, with
names like Dogecoin, Solana, and even the second largest crypto Ethereum.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So what explains the so called melt up? Stacy Marie
says the twenty twenty four election, even beyond Donald Trump's win,
has meant not just good things for crypto prices, but
also for the crypto industry more broadly. And it wasn't
by accident. Companies and trade groups spent more than one
hundred and thirty million dollars on crypto friendly candidates the
(01:07):
cycle and Stacey Marie says that paid off.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
They mostly want right. This was one of the highest
ROI bets that the digital asset industry has placed, and
they've had some very big successes.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
It's a turning point for how much influence the crypto
industry has in Washington.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Various folks, including Brian Armstrong, the CU of Coinbase, have
made it clear that this was not their last election. Right.
They're going to be around for the foreseeable future, and
they intend to continue to play a significant rule in
trying to shape whatever the future holds for the industry.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I'm David Gurra, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show. Bitcoin prices are surging,
but we've seen this before. What may be different this
time around? And is the US presidential election ushering in
a new era in crypto Crypto prices started to climb
(02:12):
in the run up to the US presidential election, but
they really took off when it became clear who won.
I asked Bloomberg Stacey Marie Ishmael, what's driving these gains?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
There are a few different ways aunds to that question.
I would say one there is a bit of narrative,
which is nothing can stop us now we have the
crypto friendliest president that has ever been in the US,
or at least president elect. We have the promise from
said president elect that he will fire crypto's biggest enemy
(02:43):
or who's perceived as crypto's biggest enemy. Do you know
Gary Gensler, who's the current chair of the U S
Securities and Exchange Commission. We have a number of people
in Congress or recently elected into Congress who have been
perceived as much crypto friendlier than people in other positions.
You know, Bernie Moreno in Ohio who defeated Shared Brown
(03:05):
is himself a blockchain and crypto entrepreneur that's like a
big get or perceived as a big get.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Stacy Marie's public perception of the market is in a
very different place from where it was four years ago
when Joe Biden was elected.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It was really around the time that coinbase went public,
that ftx started gaining traction that you know, non fungible
tokens remember board apes, you know, started to become popular
with various celebrities, which to be clear, was a very like,
very clever influence campaign that was you know, a lot
(03:39):
of bought and paid for marketing, but that so called
cryptos super Bowl, when you had ads for coinbase, et cetera.
Was both like the first time that a lot of
people who had never before encountered bitcoin in the wild
did so, and also kind of the top of that particular.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Cycle, crypto hit record highs and then then came the fall.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
In the months after that, you had FTX filing for bankruptcy,
Like just around two years ago, you had you know,
not long after Binance being fined four billion dollars by
the Department of Justice, you had multiple people going to jail.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Ftx's bankruptcy happened as the Biden administration was taking a
more aggressive tack toward crypto, and those prosecutions exemplified a
harder line from law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So I think that the Biden administration was in some
ways reacting to this this hype, this froth, this enthusiasm,
and a lot of the criticism that they received initially
was that they had taken too long to start regulating
this market, and that's where this kind of phrase regulation
(04:48):
by enforcement started to become popular in crypto. They were like, well,
what you should have done is given us legislation that
we can follow, but instead you're like, you all are
breaking rules and here's what's going to happen as a consequence.
But I wouldn't say that the other narrative that the
Biden administration was overwhelmingly hostile to crypto was necessarily true either,
(05:08):
because you know that administration, the Biden White House was
the one that said to every single major federal agency, hey,
study this thing, figure it out. What's going on. We
want to understand this.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
A big moment for crypto was in January when the
SEC approved spot bitcoin ETFs regulators had rejected applications from
asset managers for those exchange traded funds before, so this
wasn't something that happened overnight, and Stacy Marie says that
decision laid the groundwork for what we're seeing today.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
One thing I would note about the SEC approval it
was that the statement that accompanied it was the most
like grudging Here you go, I guess, but we're only
giving you this because the courts told us we have
to type thing, which I think is very reflective of
a couple of views that Gensler and others have expressed
over time, which is their perception is that these are
(06:02):
high risk, highly volatile assets. That should really only be
part of portfolios run by people who have either a
tremendous amount of experience or an extremely high ability to
recover from everything going to zero.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Stacy Marie says that the SEC's decision, grudging as it was,
to allow spot bitcoin ETFs, democratized crypto even more. It
made bitcoin appealing to people and institutions managing more conservative portfolios.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You're starting to see different pension funds saying, hey, maybe
it would be good if we have you know, a
little bit of exposure to this high beta, high risk
part of the market. Yes, the risk of downturns are great,
but so is the upside if we can play that correctly.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And there's a belief that under President Trump, the SEC
may approve more investment products tied to other cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You are starting to see people advocating for you know,
ETFs attached to other, even less well established tokens like Solano,
which is much newer. You're starting to see people say, well, Okay,
maybe I don't want to buy an ETF, but is
there another way for me to get exposure? And the
(07:16):
answer is yes, absolutely. There are various publicly traded companies
that are say bitcoin miners. There is Coinbase, but there
is also this supposed software services firm called MicroStrategy, which
really is a bitcoin hedge fund in just in terms
of the fact that it has such an enormous amounts
of bitcoin on its balance sheet and is therefore perceived
(07:36):
as another way to get exposure to this asset class.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The President elect says he wants to make crypto even
more mainstream, and one way he's proposed doing that is
through a regulatory overhaul. On day one, I will fire
Gary Gensler and appoint a new sect. A crypto friendly
candidate is heading to the White House. What's he likely
(08:00):
to do to support crypto when he gets there? Are
we on the cusp of a paradigm shift, whereas the
narrative getting ahead of the facts. That's next. With Bitcoin's
price up more than ninety percent year to date and
crypto price is setting new records after Donald Trump's reelection,
(08:24):
I asked Bloomberg Stacy Marie Ishmael if those gains are
being fueled by vibes or something more concrete.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I do think that in crypto, so much of this
is tied up in like people's belief and optimism vibes.
It's an extremely vibes based asset class. And four years
ago there were fewer positive fundamentals than there are now,
but the vibes were just as strong, if you know,
(08:51):
I don't think they were stronger, but they were at
least just as strong.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And Donald Trump's reelection is feeding those vibes, which is
a little surprising because of what he said about crypto
in the past. So the bet here is that Donald
Trump is going to be supportive of digital assets, including cryptocurrency.
He's going to embrace it more. I'm old enough to
remember when he called it a scam. Yes, how much
(09:14):
has his outlook on crypto evolved in just a few years.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
What I would say is that Donald Trump's original view
of crypto was this is a scam and this is
a threat to the US dollar. But we've seen explicit
changes in at least his approach to monetizing crypto over time.
So you know, both Donald Trump and Millennia and Trump
have issued their own non fungible tokens. Trump at least
(09:42):
has disclosed making several millions of dollars on selling those
NFTs to fans and admirers. He has supported at least
a name a project run largely by his sons called
World Liberty Financial. Still unclear exactly what that's going to
turn out to be, but it is. You know, it's
got all of the trappings of what's called the decentralized
(10:04):
financial product. There's a token associated with it. They've had
multiple spaces on x There's a lot of people who
have some experience in digital assets who are.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Working tweets about it, he posts about it, he truths it.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You know, it's part of Trump Inc. At this point.
And then you have the fact, as anybody in crypto
will tell you, that the crypto constituency became a really
meaningful source of donations and fundraising during the electoral campaign.
And so, you know, he famously appeared at the Big
Bitcoin Conference in Nashville this year. That's where he said,
(10:39):
you know, he wants to make the US the crypto
capital of the world.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
What has he promised to do aside from being supportive
of it. I know he's raised the spectrum of a
strategic bitcoin reserve reserver stockpile. What concrete things has he
presented as crypto related initiatives he would support?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Gunna fire Guary Gensler going to make it easier for
bit coin miners, and that if you don't know are
you know, think of them like really really big powerful
computers solving problems all day long. And when you have
really big powerful computers, what do you need energy? And
so a big part of his promise to like, you know,
(11:15):
the bitcoin mining industry is we are going to give
you lots of cheap energy and you're not gonna have
to worry about those pesky environmentalists saying things like why
are you polluting my water or whatever that might be,
which is a very powerful message to people who in
some cases, you know, left the US because they thought
that energy prices were too high or they couldn't get
(11:37):
around certain environmental regulations. And then, as you mentioned, you
have this strategic bitcoin reserve, which right now not particularly
well fleshed out. But the idea is that the US
would have, much like it has you know, oil reserves
or wheat or vaccines, would have a stockpile of bitcoin
(11:58):
that it could decide to deploy strategically if ever it
were called upon to do so. So, Like, what does
it mean in practice to be crypto friendly? Does that
mean come January, any existing or outstanding lawsuits filed by
the SEC or other agencies would go away. Does it
mean that Congress will be much more in favor of
(12:22):
passing certain types of legislation that do provide the phrase
the crypto industry likes to use regulatory clarity about what
is and is not a security, Who will regulate it,
how will they regulate it? Does it mean that banks
will have less onerous capital requirements on things to do
with digital assets? I mean, there's a slew of different
ways that you could foreseeably have a so called crypto
(12:45):
friendly administration, but we have none of those details because
none of the people who will make those decisions are
yet in place.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So it's about how the regulatory landscape stands to change,
but also what the attitude toward crypto is in Congress.
What does it mean for the crypto industry to have
more friends in Congress? What does that lead to or
what would they like to see that lead to.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Crypto has a notoriously short attention span, and I think
in previous years there was this idea of we gave
you money, it's two days later. Why has nothing happened yet?
And what I think has to evolve and is evolving,
and this you know campaign cycle has shown is you
now have more people on the crypto end with a
(13:25):
more sophisticated understanding of how business gets done in DC
and how long a game you have to be playing
and what you have to be you know, advocating for
in addition to the things that you might want immediately
and where those concessions have to be. And we're certainly
going to see that in the hiring, right. I suspect
that one of the areas of you know, job listing
(13:46):
profusion will be in people who know how to negotiate
with law makers and their staffs.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You have lived through crypto booms and busts before these
many cycles. Does this one feel different to you in
any way?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I think it's certainly the first one in which you
have a government that's not like El Salvador that is
specifically saying this is going to be a part of
our policy in one way or another. Right Like this
is the first major sorry to be emerging markets, but
(14:23):
this is like the first major sovereign test of what
does it mean to have you know, kind of an
administration come in partly on the back of saying digital
assets are something that we're going to take really seriously,
and not just digital assets in the form of like
a central bank back digital currency or stable coins, Like
(14:44):
we're really going to go, you know, true believer and
talk about bitcoin a lot, and like they're looking at
this from a very different set of levels, not from
like retail adoption, but like a systemic change to how
the US government does business in a very broad way,
and that will have consequences whatever happens.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
This episode was produced by David Fox and Alex Sagura,
who also mixed it. Adriana Tapia fact checked it. Our
senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
They both edited this episode. Our executive producer is Nicole
Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If
(15:28):
you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review
The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps
people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
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