#680: Fighting for Bitcoin Policy in Washington DC with Conner Brown

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

(00:10):
You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,
Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

(00:31):
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
Connor Brown, you got me to wear slacks and penny loafers, put on a nice sweater, button
down.
Welcome to Washington, Marty.
It's good to have you.
It's good to be here.
Here we're looks maxing.
You've got to be looks maxing.
That's a key point here in D.C.
Everyone is focused on appearance, whether you like it or not.

(00:53):
So you've got to look the part.
You've got to play the game a bit.
And you did a great job.
I gotta say the loafers look great. The socks are good. This is good. Yeah. I did go to a prep
school. So yeah, I have it deep ingrained in my, in my memory, my DNA now. Yeah. You fit right in.
Yeah. I would have never suspected, but it's been six, almost six and a half years since you were

(01:14):
last on the show. You're on episode 87 in July of 2019. I think we're 600 episodes past that now
at this point, which is crazy to think.
Yeah, it is crazy.
Freaks, I missed you.
It's been good.
It's been a long time.
It's crazy to think all these years later,
here we are, still the same people.

(01:38):
Man, the world has changed so much.
But Bitcoin's still what we're focused on.
Yeah.
I think that's important.
The price when you first came on
was $11,500, right around there.
We're currently dumping, as we speak,
to around $105,000.
people are scared. It's funny. It's funny to imagine if
ourselves then could see this and we'd be like, oh yeah,

(02:01):
we're down. It's down only over 100k now.
But I mean, thinking of how much has changed since
then, obviously we've had COVID, MicroStrategy
went on their sort of strategy of putting Bitcoin on their
corporate treasury. Bitcoin has entered the zeitgeist. It is a
a brand name in homes around the world.

(02:25):
And just last night we were talking over coffee.
Before we came over here, Donald Trump was on 60 Minutes
saying that this is a race, Bitcoin and crypto
is a race that we need to win.
And just starting there, how profound do you think that is
that we're at this point right now?
Well, it's crazy because when we had recorded the podcast

(02:46):
back in, what, 2019, he had just put out the tweet
that said something like, I don't like Bitcoin. I don't trust it. It's not nearly as good as the
dollar. And to think in just a few short years, how far he's come to say, not only is this something
that is positive, but it's something that America has to be the leader in. It would be crazy to

(03:11):
tell us that in the past and be like, oh yeah, and only just, let's say five years,
he's going to have completely shifted his view on it and is actually going to be seeing this as a
competitive aspect of staying as the world leader in technology so yeah it is it is good but i don't
think that we've necessarily won i don't think that um our i i don't think that america is quite

(03:38):
there yet and i think there's still a lot more that we can do to solidify our position and um
I think that is what we're working on every day here in D.C.
is that we are off to a great start.
We've shifted from Bitcoin being seen as sort of a nuisance by both parties.
And suddenly more and more people are understanding how important this is.

(04:02):
But there's still a lot of education that has to happen.
Well, for anybody listening who may not be aware of you, Connor,
and the work that you've been doing, particularly on the Hill,
over the last four, five years.
If there's anybody who can say
what was just said with confidence, it is you.
And I think this is a good opportunity

(04:22):
to basically let the audience know
what you've been up to,
what you were doing under Senator Lummis,
the work that was going on behind the scenes
as it pertains to the strategic Bitcoin Reserve
and the Bitcoin Act.
What have you seen, sir?
Yeah, well, freaks, I've missed you.
It's been a long time.
I have not completely left the Bitcoin scene.

(04:45):
I've just been sort of, you know, working behind the scenes a bit.
But yeah, I think to sort of go over a quick timeline of where I've been, I ended up working
for Center Lummis as her Bitcoin advisor and saw a lot firsthand of how Washington thinks

(05:06):
about Bitcoin, what the state of Bitcoin policy is.
and I guess what ultimately led me there is I was working in the private sector after a few years
after I graduated law school I worked for a few years at different corporate law firms
and I was working at a firm in New York I tried to get them interested in Bitcoin treasury companies

(05:30):
back in 2020 actually hilariously Michael Saylor had just announced his first Bitcoin acquisition
and tried to get him to pitch Bitcoin to our partnership at the law firm.
He came and spoke and they didn't take it seriously.
So, you know, that was maybe a bit too early.

(05:52):
Then I worked at another firm here in D.C. on sort of fintech and blockchain practice
and saw firsthand the attacks by the SEC on different companies.
and I was working on enforcement actions.
But ultimately, I still really cared about Bitcoin.

(06:12):
And I had been in touch with Senator Lummis' staff
for a few years,
and a spot opened up to be her Bitcoin and AI advisor.
And I was going back and forth,
but decided that at the time,
there were still a lot of attacks on Bitcoin.
This was late 23, early 24.

(06:35):
And it seemed very obvious that we needed someone to really defend Bitcoin, to bring knowledge to the hill.
And Senator Lummis was really one of the only people that was talking about this.
And I decided to go see what it was like.
And it was just the most fascinating experience of my life, truly.

(06:57):
It changed how I view myself and how important I see the political system now.
And it was just a fantastic experience.
But yeah, so that started in 24 and learned a lot through that about how the Hill works,

(07:18):
how you can take an idea and really with just a good idea, you can have incredible amounts
of change.
So, yeah, it's been a crazy past five years.
Let's dive into this. How was the sausage made?
What was your expectation going in?
How was the sausage made?
I actually didn't know what to expect going in.

(07:40):
So I'd met Senator Lummis one time in passing at just like a conference, basically.
And I had been told, you know, she's a great Bitcoiner, you've got to meet her,
and decided to take the job without really knowing what to expect.
I walk in the first day.
I'm walking through the office.

(08:01):
I'm seeing Bitcoin signs on some desks.
I'm like, okay, this is good.
This is good.
And then I noticed everyone has a copy of Gradually Then Suddenly sitting on their desk.
And there were copies of the Bitcoin standard.
And then I was like, okay, this is real.
This is the real deal.
and got to know her. And sure enough, you know, we hit it off pretty quickly because

(08:28):
she really is a Bitcoin. She really is, you know, someone who's read all the same things we've read.
She's read the same Parker Lewis books and listened to a lot of the same content. And so
I didn't know what to expect, but I came into an environment that was just the perfect place for me.
And it was also a way for me to start to educate others on the Hill about Bitcoin because our office was understanding Bitcoin, but none of the other offices, you know, they didn't really understand Bitcoin deeply.

(09:05):
So it was a great opportunity to just go around and start teaching people and spreading the good word about Bitcoin.
What's that process like?
What's it like saying, hey, we're Senator Lummis, her office, we're the Bitcoin experts.
Is it a lot of outreach or people coming to you?
What is that like?
It's very self-driven.

(09:27):
And a lot of people might not even know this.
It's sort of a black box how the legislative system works.
So to give you sort of a rough sense of it, each office has different functions.
So you have the communications team, you have the scheduling team, you have the legislative team.
And I was part of the legislative team.

(09:48):
And each office has basically, let's say, between, depending on the size of the office,
a Senate versus House office, between five to ten people, sometimes more,
that are working on legislative issues.
And each member has a staffer who's responsible for, let's say, financial services

(10:08):
or Bitcoin and digital assets.
And so my job was to reach out to all of the staffers in the other offices.
I was on the legislative team and I was responsible for reaching out and saying,
hey, you are Senator Cruz's staffer, you know, or you're Senator Blackburn's staffer.

(10:29):
Hey, let's talk about Bitcoin.
And going out and just figuring out who's interested in this and who cares about it.
And also explaining to people, you know, Bitcoin touches many policy areas in ways people don't understand or don't anticipate.
And so spreading, you know, the good word about Bitcoin and explaining here's what Bitcoin is.

(10:52):
Bitcoin 101 fundamentals, how the network works, why it's trustworthy.
You know, it's a lot of just self-motivated getting to know people and teaching them about Bitcoin.
And a lot of people are very interested, but they've heard a lot about it.
It's talked a lot about in politics, but they've never had someone who can really explain it to them in a way that makes sense to them.

(11:18):
So it's a lot of meeting people where they're at and just sort of hitting the pavement and knocking on doors.
Considering the scope of all the policy decisions that are being made in this city, not only as it pertains to Bitcoin, healthcare, energy, whatever it may be,
How hard is it to get an individual staff or to focus on something very specific like Bitcoin?

(11:39):
It depends on how you pitch it.
I mean, I found that people were actually really receptive, surprisingly receptive.
I had no clue what it was going to be like going in, how close off people would be.
But the reality is that the Hill is a very social place and everyone is wanting to get to know everyone.
and for me it was sort of like wow it's it's rare for someone to come from outside the hill

(12:04):
and that really cares about a specific policy issue and to explain why it's important so i was
surprised at how receptive people were i mean you have to be creative right so we had bitcoin pizza
day we had bitcoin and bagels we had all sorts of different you know whenever there's just some
sort of random event we could come up with that's bitcoin related we would do it but i found that

(12:27):
people were actually very receptive. And that comes down to meeting people where they're at
and explaining to them in a way that is palatable to them. But across the political spectrum,
it was not a partisan thing. And I don't think that Bitcoin is a partisan thing.
Across the aisle, you can think about what Bitcoin represents and what they care about

(12:47):
and explain how powerful a tool Bitcoin is. And I think people were actually hungry for that. It
was surprising. But yeah, it was, I think, made a lot of very positive inroads to people who
otherwise probably would not have thought about this, wouldn't have been on the radar.
Well, there's been an obvious evolution in a positive sense in terms of the posturing from

(13:09):
DC towards Bitcoin, particularly on the right, but even on the left. You've got
competitors like Ro Khanna, Richie Torres, and many others who understand that this is something
that they should care about and lean into.
What, in your observation, were some of the events or framings
of how you were pitching Bitcoin that made people wake up and say,

(13:31):
hey, this is something we need to care about, focus on?
Yeah, I think that focusing on Bitcoin, not in a partisan sense,
but just in a broad historical sense, that fundamentally this is a historical event
that we've seen play out many times in the past,
That Bitcoin, like other monetary paradigm shifts, it simply is better money.

(13:54):
It simply is better savings technology.
And just like we've seen play out, whether it be the shift from seashells and cowry beads or salt to precious metals, from silver to gold, that the uptake of Bitcoin is just another technological shift.
and that we should be thinking about how we can capitalize on that,

(14:16):
just like America was the home of the internet
and all the benefits that brought.
And talking about it in these broad historical paradigm shift ways
rather than it's on this incremental partisan issue,
going to win points or lose points.
I think that is what people are very receptive to.
And ultimately, I think the concept of Bitcoin's unique circumstances,

(14:40):
It came out of the financial crisis.
No one is happy with how the financial crisis was handled.
I don't think there's anyone that thought, you know what, they did a good job, that the
system was set up right.
I mean, you might have a different story for why it happened or how it was solved, but
no one came away from that thinking, yeah, that was a good thing that happened.
And so having Bitcoin as something that came out of that environment and that is something

(15:06):
that can be a savings tool for anyone, for the individual, for the corporation, and even for the
state, I think is something that people are very receptive to. And they just haven't thought about
Bitcoin like that. I think a lot of it is, you know, there's not even, for some people,
an understanding between Bitcoin and the long tail of crypto schemes that we seen blow up You know we seen they know and are constantly reading articles about different rug pulls or you know a lot of them knew Sam Bankman freed before FTX fell apart And so

(15:43):
delineating Bitcoin from the unsavory parts of the crypto ecosystem is also very important.
And once you peel that back, then I think that you can really explain Bitcoin in terms that is,
interesting to people.
That's been the biggest uphill battle

(16:03):
of the last three years, specifically post
the X blow up.
We've made a concerted effort at TFTC
and I think many others in the industry
to drive that demarcation.
There's Bitcoin and then there's crypto.
Going back to the scope of
what people
have to focus on here in the Hill,
it makes me wonder

(16:24):
how easy or hard
is it to make that
delineation clear and how many people are just throwing the baby out with the bathwater because
they don't understand that you shouldn't conflate FTX blow up with the Bitcoin protocol itself.
Yeah, I would say it is easier than you would expect. The people on the Hill are people that
care about policy. They care about America's future. They care about getting things right.

(16:47):
They are often there because they are interested in policy. And so you have someone who is typically
much more engaged than your average person. You know, talking to someone about Bitcoin,
that's just a random friend. They might just say, you know, I'm not really sure how much I want to
think about this. But the people on the Hill genuinely do want to think about what good policy

(17:09):
is, what the future looks like. So you have an audience that's interested, and then it just
becomes a numbers game. At the end of the day, there just aren't that many Bitcoiners on the Hill,
truly. And there are so many staff that are responsible for understanding Bitcoin policy
and understanding what the right and wrong answers are. And so it becomes a numbers game pretty

(17:34):
quickly is at the end of the day, there's only so many people you can meet with individually.
And so I think that was really the bottleneck for the daily. It was just how much time you have to
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Speaking to this lack of, for lack of a better term, Bitcoin talent on the Hill that can be

(19:43):
here to educate staffers and individual representatives and senators about this.
How much do you think that is driven by the historical aversion of the wider Bitcoin
community towards government specifically? So this is something that's very common,
I think. And I'm very sympathetic to it. You know, I've read all the cypherpunk readings that a lot

(20:07):
of us have, right? I've listened to my 10,000 hours of Bitcoin podcast. I think there is a
common thread in the Bitcoin community that is basically the state exists, but we want to
avoid it at all costs. And I'm very sympathetic to that. I think privacy is extremely important

(20:29):
that limiting the state's power over individuals, these are important considerations.
But I don't think that the solution is let's stop engaging with the state altogether.
Because at the end of the day, the state does have a monopoly on violence.
The state does have the ability to do all sorts of things to Bitcoiners here in the U.S.

(20:55):
and I think that it is on us to engage with the state and explain that Bitcoin is not adverse to
its interest but is actually an important tool that everyone should be using, that individuals
should be using. I mean this is just like the internet, right? If the state perceived the

(21:15):
internet as a threat and said you know what we're going to crack down on it, freedom of expression
in the digital age is a bad thing,
then we'd be in a very different country.
And it took smart policymakers
to recognize the value the internet had.
Well, and there was an attack on the internet, right?
Then they would have put chips in the back of the computers
and make sure we were tracking everybody,

(21:35):
but that ultimately got stomped out
and the free and open internet was able to thrive.
Exactly.
I mean, it took smart cypherpunks
to really make the case that code is free speech,
that encryption is not a weapon.
and that it is good for a free and open society to have these technologies.
And I think that we are in a similar position with Bitcoin,

(21:58):
which is we need to take the responsibility on ourselves to educate the state
and to explain why, like many technologies in America's past,
that it is on us to embrace this technology first.
It is an American technology fundamentally of private property rights,
of ownership, of freedom of expression and transaction. And that if we don't really take

(22:26):
up the mantle and educate the state, then I do worry where that could go. And I think that that
is just a testament to how powerful really working through policy can be. In 2024, in early 2024,
there was legislation that had multiple different co-sponsors about really regulating the node layer of the network.

(22:49):
There was attempts to have these reports on mining energy consumption,
which could have led to all sorts of different regulations down the line.
And we've sort of went past that paradigm, at least for now, of trying to clamp down on Bitcoin.
but I don't think it is something that we can take lightly.

(23:12):
And it's something we have to really be on guard for
because Bitcoin is going to continue to mature,
but the state is still going to be there.
It's still going to exist.
And it's important that we navigate that carefully.
It's like our good friend Bitstein said,
the only winning move is to play.

(23:33):
And I think this is something we've been having ongoing discussion
over the last three days.
We had a nice catch-up call on Saturday afternoon in preparation for this and really anchoring this back to the historical version of Bitcoiners who, I mean, Bitcoin is a sly roundabout way to take control of money out of the hands of the state.

(23:53):
It does not, but with that being said, it does not mean that the state is not going to exist.
And I think one thing that's really stuck out to me based off of our conversations since Saturday is incentive alignment and how do we make it so we educate the state, they implement the correct policy, and then you have sort of an aversion to what has existed for the last five decades, which is the state is working in an incentive framework that aligns with citizens broadly across the spectrum.

(24:27):
because their incentive is to make sure that Bitcoin succeeds too.
Totally. And this is the justification behind the SBR.
This is why a strategic Bitcoin reserve, this is one of the main reasons,
which is one of the easiest and most straightforward ways
to align the interest of Bitcoiners and the U.S. government

(24:50):
is to have the U.S. own some Bitcoin.
And that seems like a pretty straightforward way to remove or at least start to have the state on the same terms of individual Bitcoiners and see Bitcoin as a tool that individuals and states can use.

(25:13):
So that was actually part of it.
I know there's a lot of people that love to throw bombs on X and say, look, this is a number go up play or something like that.
But the reason that we put that out there, I think, was really because we saw this as an important way to avoid what happened with gold, avoid what happened with the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.

(25:40):
and sort of what we've seen in historical terms
of whenever there is a new monetary standard
and the state finds itself without enough of it,
then it just seizes what the private individuals have.
And I think that's a very, very important historical takeaway

(26:01):
is that the terms change,
but the incentives are structurally the same.
And so we need to recognize that and think about ways to align the interest of America and Bitcoin for the betterment of both Bitcoiners and Americans generally.
It is in America's interest to get there first.

(26:23):
So that was actually, I think, one of the driving reasons behind it is thinking about what it can offer the United States and what it can also do in terms of helping Bitcoiners.
Can you walk us through the history of the Bitcoin Act, the SBR?
Yeah.
What was that journey like?
Obviously, it came out of Senator Lummis' office.

(26:43):
You were working on a legislative team there,
so I'm sure you had your hands pretty immersed in that process.
What was it like up until you recently left Senator Lummis' office
to join the Bitcoin Policy Institute as the head of strategy?
We'll get to that, but let's focus on the SBR first.
Yeah, the history of the SBR.

(27:06):
such a privilege to have been sitting in the room. I always wanted to be in the room where
it happened. And sure enough, I was in the room when it happened. It was crazy.
So I guess the condensed version of the story is roughly that at the time in 2024, like I said,

(27:28):
the sentiment around Bitcoin was very reactive. From a policymaking perspective, we were trying
to think, how do we fight off proposed attacks on the Bitcoin network? And we hear, you know,
through the grapevine, essentially, that there are some new policy suggestions being made,

(27:49):
that potentially President Trump, you know, then candidate Trump was considering a strategic reserve.
and it was funny because sort of separate from that we had been talking about bitcoin in our
office and senator lummis many people don't know this was actually treasurer of wyoming and during

(28:12):
her tenure as treasurer she diversified wyoming's balance sheet so wyoming has a sovereign wealth
fund one of the only states to have one and she by diversifying the balance sheet really dramatically
improved Wyoming's financial outlook and allowed them to not even have a state income tax because

(28:32):
of good financial management. And so that was sort of an idea that we had been kicking around,
which was if Bitcoin can be this potential similar scenario for America, where Senator
Lummis saw firsthand what being smart and forward thinking and finances can do for a state

(28:55):
What does that mean at the national level?
And so she said,
Connor, can you look into this?
Can you guys think about what this would look like
to have a Fort Satoshi?
And at the same time,
we hear that President Trump
might be considering something similar.
But we weren't sure how credible that was.

(29:18):
And they were looking at it
and we knew that he was going to speak
at the Bitcoin conference.
And so, you know, what we were trying to do was think about if this is going to be a policy suggestion and we're Bitcoiners and we understand the principles that are important to the network and how to do this correctly.

(29:42):
What does good policy look like on this?
You can do it in good ways or bad ways.
We wanted to really provide a Bitcoiner forward version of what a Bitcoin reserve could look like if we were to have a parallel to Fort Knox.
So it was a wild time.
And we were super excited leading up to the conference.

(30:05):
and um we until the very moment that president trump went on stage we weren't sure if he was
going to talk about this support this um and it was just wild being backstage got escorted in by

(30:27):
Secret Service to the front row of the conference.
Me and people from my team were sitting in the audience, not sure what's going to happen.
We know that Cynthia is going to announce the bill right after.
And so we're just hoping, fingers crossed.
And sure enough, he says that America needs a national Bitcoin stockpile.

(30:51):
And we're like, oh my gosh, here it is.
The moment has arrived that we have really, hopefully, shifted from a paradigm of seeing
Bitcoin as a nuisance to seeing Bitcoin as a tool to something that is a positive for America and Americans to embrace And then right after that Senator Lummis goes and announces the bill publicly

(31:18):
And we're sitting there in the crowd.
And it was just really one of the highlights of my time in the Senate of seeing that moment
happen and then seeing the domino effect, seeing states take this up, countries around
the world start considering this.
legislation is within a few months proposed all over the world in these different legislative

(31:42):
bodies. It was crazy to see in real time the impact of just a good idea. And it was incredible
that Senator Lummis was really willing to go there and say, you know what, this is what I
you truly believe. And, uh, you know, she was okay with being the first and the only one to say,

(32:07):
this is a good idea in the beginning. Um, and then, you know, seeing how that sort of matured
over time has been really cool. It's been incredibly cool. I forget I had Cynthia on
the shows during COVID had to be 2020, 2021. And that was when she first came out publicly as,
as a Bitcoin senator and was really championing it

(32:28):
and to see how far it's come since then is,
I think people take for granted, again,
going back to the point that we're dumping to $105,000,
whether it's where price is at any given point in time
or where Bitcoin sits in the zeitgeist.
I think people get caught up in the day-to-day price movements,

(32:50):
headlines, whatever it may be,
and really forget to take a step back
can appreciate how far we've come both from a market structure liquidity profile perspective
and a policy public perception of bitcoin perspective it's changed wildly since you
were last on but you mentioned one thing you're explaining sort of the story of the sbr and it's

(33:11):
that we want to craft a bill that really respects individual rights and is a bill that bitcoiners
would be proud of. And so in your mind, what are a few of the key points that need to be executed
to make sure that the SBR is done right? Yeah, great question. It's funny because
we got a lot of pushback from people saying, is this going to give the government control of

(33:36):
Bitcoin? Is this going to, in some ways, create a bad set of incentives? And our goal really was,
let's take the lessons learned from when the government passed the Gold Reserve Act and
seized everyone's gold. You know, you had the Gold Reserve Act, you had Executive Order 6102.
What does the antithesis of that look like? What does getting it right ahead of time look like

(34:00):
so that that is never necessary? So that was really at the heart of what we were thinking
when we're drafting this of how do we set up the right set of incentives? And how do we set up the
right set of incentives for Bitcoin, the network. So, you know, obviously the first thing is we're
looking to acquire Bitcoin. And we also are very cognizant of how do we make sure that while we're

(34:27):
using Bitcoin as a tool, you know, we think it's prudent for the U.S. government to use Bitcoin as
the savings technology to prepare for the age of Bitcoin that is to come. At the same time,
we want to protect the network and ensure that that does not create a perverse set of incentives
for network development and that it doesn't allow the U.S. government to put their thumb on the scale.

(34:53):
And I've seen a lot of smart Bitcoiners, people that I've listened to on plenty of podcasts,
you know, read a bunch of their articles. They're critical of the SBR, actually.
And for various different reasons. But one that I've heard a lot is we don't want the government
involved with this. And I understand that conceptually. I understand that from a philosophical

(35:15):
point of view. But I do think that the way we drafted it, we really tried to think through
how could this create a perverse set of incentives and how do we make sure that doesn't happen?
So one example is if America is acquiring a large sum of Bitcoin, then it might not have control
over the network development, but it would be a large market participant. And we know that network

(35:40):
forks are sometimes based on how the market perceives one side of the fork or the other.
We learned from the block wars, lots of lessons to be learned there, but part of it is people can
sort of signal to the market what they believe and what they think the right fork is just by

(36:02):
selling one fork and buying the other or vice versa.
And so we wanted to set the incentives in place
so that the U.S. government does not get involved in any sort of network
discussion. So that was one of the key provisions is
we wanted to hodl all forks. Basically say
if the network does fork and there are multiple coins that come out of it

(36:26):
you can't express an opinion one way or the other. You can't
sell one and buy the other, because that would be a way to actually influence the network.
Even if they're not on GitHub or they're not actually proposing software updates,
just by expressing a preference could be significant. So we wanted to cut that off.
We also put in the bottom of it a protection for self-custody and wanted to clarify that

(36:53):
while we think it's prudent for America to acquire Bitcoin, that does not mean that you
should go and take Bitcoiners, Bitcoin. That would be the wrong way to go about this. So we wanted to
put that protection in there as well. And then we also had some transparency requirements that
I think are very important. We've seen that the gold in Fort Knox is notoriously difficult to audit.

(37:19):
The last I heard is that Elon Musk said we need to audit it. And then crickets.
It's been nine months and nothing's happened.
Don't know where that went. Someone should look into that. But yeah, so that is, that's ultimately where we landed is we wanted to put in strong protections so that the US government can be onboarded as a user, but it does not impact the network operation.

(37:46):
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And let's go further into the importance of not only doing this, but getting it right.
and we were just having coffee
and discussing the concept of Bitcoin

(39:12):
helping to manufacture the soft landing
that was a big meme in 2022, 2023, 2024
as the Fed was unwinding its accommodative policy
post-COVID and beginning to tighten
and Janet Yellen was pounding the front end
of the yield curve.
I think knowing you and knowing many other Bitcoiners

(39:35):
and how they think, it seems like the government
with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve
working together or independently, it doesn't really matter,
independent of each other,
you're not going to fix the structural issues
that exist in the monetary and financial system
depending on the same tools, policy tools specifically,

(39:58):
that got us into the problem in the first place.
I think really framing Bitcoin as a free market solution and tool that could be used to actually manufacture a soft landing over a multi-decade time horizon.
That's another thing I think we really need to hammer from the Bitcoin perspective when we're interfacing with Capitol Hill is like, hey, this isn't a quick fix solution.

(40:23):
solution, we need to begin strategically, methodically, and intentionally implementing
Bitcoin into what we do at the national level, as well as at the individual and business level.
But it's going to take some time. And so really framing Bitcoin as this tool that can be used to
set up the United States, both at the government level, the business layer, and the individual

(40:47):
layer to succeed as we continue to transition into the digital age. Yeah, I think that's where
we're at at a national level. And this has been another criticism of the concept of a Bitcoin
reserve, which is, oh, we're going to revalue our gold and we're going to use that revaluation to
acquire more Bitcoin. Is that aligned with the Bitcoin ethos of limited government, of taking

(41:11):
the power of money printing away from the state? I think fundamentally, the situation is such that
drastic times call for drastic measures, right? And every smart person that I know, that I respect
in their forecast, whether it be Lynn Alden, who's saying nothing stops this train,

(41:31):
whether it be Ray Dalio, who's saying we're at the end of a long-term debt cycle.
There's plenty of different analysts that are all saying the same thing. And it's the same thing that
I saw working on the Hill, which is we are locked into a structural set of problems that we will not
be able to diffuse using standard measures. Right now, the incentives are such that

(41:55):
given the time horizon of members, they're on short cycles. And these problems of increasing
spending are on very long time horizons that we need to think outside the box on what is a really
radical solution to this. And I think there's been lots of great modeling that shows

(42:18):
one of the only ways to diffuse this bomb, one of the only ways to truly solve this is you take
an outsized bet on an emerging paradigm, right? This is a tale that America has seen over and over
with either the Louisiana Purchase or the acquisition of California or the acquisition

(42:40):
of Alaska. And this is a time, a tale as old as time, that America is the type of country
that sees the future before it happens, recognizes resources that will be important,
and gets a huge windfall off of them. And the reality is that our finances,
our structural set of incentives have us in a bad position, a really bad position.

(43:05):
and there is not an obvious solution except for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is literally the only thing that I can think of that can diffuse this bomb.
Now, maybe artificial intelligence will have an impact unclear,
but Bitcoin is, I believe, through just the economic physics of it,

(43:29):
going to continue to out-compete other stores of value, other capital assets,
and will obsolete many other types of money.
And in that process, it will become this new global store of value.
And one way America can get out of this is by getting there first.
And so I think that that is the decision that we ultimately landed on is we can't just do nothing.

(43:58):
If we do nothing and we just hope that someone down the line is going to fix it,
then the problem is going to continue to compound.
and no one is going to actually have a solution.
And this is something that's been talked about a lot,
but I think that that's an important part of the Bitcoin conversation
is we need to do it sooner rather than later.

(44:18):
When we proposed the Bitcoin reserve, the price was, what, $50,000?
It's gotten twice as expensive in a couple of months.
So time is of the essence here.
and I think it's really
the only option we have on the table
is to recognize this and think about how we start incorporating it

(44:41):
as a release valve for a lot of the problems
and mismanagement that both sides of the aisle
this is not a partisan thing, this is mismanagement that has happened
just structurally since 1971
right yeah and it's as an american too to be incredibly encouraging especially as we approach

(45:04):
the 250th birthday of this great nation if we were to act bold think out of the box be creative
really reinvigorate that american spirit that i still truly believe lives in the the bellies of
many individual americans out there myself included let's act bold let's do it and you
mentioned ai maybe we get this productivity explosion that really helps us figure out

(45:27):
things economically, but then you're going to have some job issues that that does manifest.
You have to deal with those with money printing. But even if you believe that
AI is the Hail Mary, considering the energy part of that equation,
Bitcoin has to play a part because you're going to need to expand generation.
The AI data centers need constant consumption
of the electricity that's being produced, and you're going to need some demand

(45:51):
response there. And I believe we're beginning to see this
become recognized, actually, particularly from this administration, Chris Wright.
I think he's talked about this. FERC came out with, I believe, a bulletin a couple of weeks ago,
really leaning into demand response and loosely alluding to the fact that Bitcoin miners have a
role to play here. And I think that's just bringing this back to the debt situation.

(46:19):
Nothing stops the strain, the structural issues that exist. This is something that should invigorate
and I would hope engender a lot of optimism on the Hill.
It's like, oh, we've been talking about the social security,
the debt issue, the bailouts of the banks,
whatever it may be, my whole life.
And there really hasn't been many solutions

(46:39):
other than feigning or wanting to balance the budget which is never going to happen just due to the structural issues raise the social security retirement age limit It all been sort of dinks and dunks trying to minutely change different inputs into a function that is not working

(47:01):
And here you have this external variable that can enter the equation and really add some positive momentum towards a solution.
Yeah, I think that it will definitely be a forcing function for change.
In terms of how AI interacts with the structural fiscal problems we have, still unclear.

(47:21):
You know, the vast majority of our mandatory spending comes from payroll taxes.
You know, a lot of money that comes from Social Security is ultimately paid into by how many people are employed.
And if there is some sort of job displacement, that could actually speed up some of the timelines here.
I think there will be massive productivity gains, but hard to know how that plays into it. And if that moves the timeline up for how quickly some of these longer term ticking time bombs have to go. Does that mean that corporate real estate will be impacted more because more sort of digital workers are working?

(48:02):
does that mean less people are paying into the payroll system and that means social security
you know goes bust sooner rather than later just this year they moved up the timeline on when they
expect that social security will start to run out which got moved up by a year and it's already less
than 10 years away right so really hard to know what the impact will be i do think that bitcoin

(48:25):
will be a part of it, part of the AI revolution, however you want to frame it, which is digitally
native agents, digitally native economics is going to look to digital money. And they're obviously
going to want something that's like Bitcoin, right? They're going to want something that's
programmable, something that they can transact in freely. It's a bearer instrument. It's a bearer

(48:50):
instrument. You know, Nick Szabo talks a lot about the mental transaction cost that Bitcoin might be
programmable. We might be able to send millions of transactions per minute over the Lightning
Network. But you and I mentally, we don't have that capacity, right? Paying 10 cents for a piece
of data or something is just, it has its own mental costs that are separate from the cost of

(49:14):
the transaction. AIs do not have that problem. They can make a million transactions per second
for a million years and not think twice about it. Right. So that's a really interesting,
you know, thought to, to imagine in an economy where the mental transaction cost part of it
are no longer there. And we're going to see something like Bitcoin become a lot more

(49:35):
attractive in that scenario too. Yeah. And so shifting toward, I mean, we've been really
discussing solutions-oriented things,
but getting more granular with it
in terms of acquiring the Bitcoin.
One of the proposals that came out
of the Bitcoin Policy Institute earlier this year
was the idea of BitBonds.

(49:57):
And this is something that I think
is a good way to do it.
There are many people who say,
BitBonds won't work, why would you buy a BitBond?
We could just buy Bitcoin.
Why would you leave potential upside returns
on the table and feed the government monies
so that they can expand their debt.

(50:17):
But as we were discussing over coffee,
we're beginning to see products like a BitBond
emerge in the private sector,
particularly via MicroStrategy and its preferred offerings
that really give me the confidence
that BitBonds could be a solution
and a way to accumulate a strategic reserve
at the federal level.

(50:38):
Yeah, I think that this is something that we're going to see mature over time, certainly. But the innovation always starts in the private sector, right? And we are seeing the emergence of these digital credit instruments. We're seeing the emergence of building out what the risk curve looks like when you have Bitcoin as the driving monetary asset, and then you're layering financial products on top of that.

(51:02):
And strategy, I think, is doing a fantastic job of illustrating that once you realize Bitcoin is this monetary asset at the base of it, that you can build all of these really interesting products on top of that.
And the U.S. government is in a very similar economic position, right?

(51:22):
They have all of this credit.
They have all this debt that they have to offer to the public, right?
So they're looking for how do they keep interest rates down? How do we sell these large offerings to the public and finance our deficits? And I think that the private sector is demonstrating that by blending Bitcoin into existing instruments, you can actually create novel products that benefit both the borrower and the purchaser.

(51:56):
because ultimately you're able to offer
a better product to the market.
And I don't know exactly what the terms
of those instruments could look like,
but I think the Bitbond's proposal is one example
of saying, look, if you were to blend Bitcoin
into a standard treasury offering,

(52:18):
then you could have the purchaser
become interested by this Bitcoin upside
and they're able to offer the borrower much better terms
because they're more interested in this upside.
And so you can sort of align the interest of both the borrower
and the purchaser through Bitcoin.

(52:41):
And I think that that is an example of how the U.S. government should be thinking.
It's great that we're tweeting about Bitcoin,
tweeting about the resilience of the network,
But where we're at now is we need to think creatively about how do we align and how do we put Bitcoin into these existing tools that we have and build that into the toolbox and sort of take some of those private sector innovations and think about it at a federal level.

(53:10):
I think that is something that would be a very, very worthwhile endeavor.
It's part of what we're working on at Bitcoin Policy Institute,
is helping those in government think through how do you blend Bitcoin into your tool set.
All right, let's steel man this.
Considering the polarized nature of politics in the United States right now,

(53:32):
how practical is it to get any of this implemented, do you think?
Well, I think that goes back to the educational piece. So I guess it probably would be best to
keep going through the history of the SBR, right? Because it's a great case of showing how you can
start to build momentum for a concept. So we put it out there in 24 and there were no co-sponsors.

(53:59):
There was no house companion. There was no one that wanted to get on board with this idea.
and it was really just us saying, hey, we think this is important.
And over that period of time, Senator Lummis is talking to her colleagues.
On the staff level, I'm meeting with people, explaining Bitcoin to them,
explaining why Bitcoin is going to be this important savings technology.

(54:23):
And over the course of six, seven months, we roll around to 2025, to the new Congress.
and by just talking to people and meeting with them several times,
getting them familiar with the concept of Bitcoin and what we're proposing,
then we were able to, in just six months, reintroduce the bill in the new Congress.

(54:47):
And this time we had five additional co-sponsors, a House companion,
and the House companion had additional co-sponsors.
And so it just kind of goes to show what the impact of education can have.
So I think that where we're at now is something like the SBR politically palatable enough to happen tomorrow.

(55:13):
No, it's not there.
But I think that there's a very clear proof of concept that as Bitcoin continues to gain momentum, as institutional credibility continues to build, as people keep learning about it,
And as Bitcoiners continue to show up to D.C. and talk about it and explain how important this is for our future, for our children's future, then there is a very clear path to victory there, in my opinion.

(55:40):
Well, on that note, in your mind, what's a reasonable timeline to expect an SBR to pass?
So I think, you know, this was another sort of criticism that came about, right, which was people said, well, this is never going to happen.
It's never going to be politically palatable.
And I think that those criticisms were probably accurate.

(56:01):
It is sort of a way to plant the flag in the ground to say, look, this is where we think good policy is.
But realistically, it's not there politically.
But I do think that it is a way of getting the idea out there.
And I would hope that in 2026, we could see something like a codification of the reserve, a bill that really tries to start thinking through and mandating that the administration come up with a plan, start mapping out the game theory, start planning contingency scenarios of what do we do if China acquires 2 million Bitcoin?

(56:46):
What do we do if we're caught off guard? Right. We don't have any break glass plans right now. We don't have the right people that are coming up with strategic plans thinking about this. So my hope is that in 2026, and I think there probably is political will for this, is that we start formalizing things and that we start getting our plan together.

(57:10):
and I think that
the more Bitcoiners that come to the Hill
the more people that are interested in this
and want to work on this
the faster it'll happen
I was telling you
I came here in 2009
it was the first time I came
or second time I came for a field trip
when I was younger
2009 I was 18

(57:31):
and I hadn't been back to the Hill
until earlier this year
when you guys had the BPI event
and I've been here three times since.
Just this year, I've been here four times.
It's important.
We need to dramatically increase
the Bitcoin or density of Washington, D.C.
I think it is very, very important

(57:51):
that if we want to be on the good timeline
where Bitcoin wins and America wins,
then that's going to mean a lot of Bitcoiners
have to come to D.C. and do the rounds
and talk and educate and make the pitch
and explain how important this technology is.
I completely agree that homesteading is awesome

(58:12):
and it would be great to be on a ranch in Montana somewhere
and not have to think about any of this.
But I do think that there is a lot of merit
in actually coming and engaging.
And the stakes are too high, truly.
We've got to get this right.
And if we just completely opt out of the political system,

(58:35):
Power still exists.
And if we are not engaging with that,
then we don't want that power used
against Bitcoin or against us.
So I do think it is important to work
and understand how the system operates.
You may not care about politics,

(58:57):
but politics cares about you.
This is where we look into the camera.
It's so true.
You have to play the game, I really think,
because other people are always playing the game, right?
Well, that's the point I wanted to bring up.
It's very clear that the broader crypto industry
is certainly playing the game,
and they have significant financial backing.
And I think that hasn't really been disconcerting

(59:18):
or disheartening,
but you're outside looking into DC,
and you're seeing the crypto lobby really taking space.
And when you had the sort of crypto brief press conference,
you had to not come off as uncouth,
You have people who I don't think were putting the best foot forward for Bitcoin, but maybe they have some personal interest with the projects that they're involved with really getting the ear of this administration and many people on the Hill.

(59:49):
And it's because I think if we're being objective, the crypto industry has definitely been better at recognizing like, hey, we need to put resources and capital behind lobbying and policy discussions on the Hill where as Bitcoin until the Bitcoin Policy Institute really emerged was lacking in that department.
Yeah, I think it is a demonstration that the political system is open to people coming in and engaging with it.

(01:00:17):
and they've been able to get a lot of wins.
We got the Genius Act passed.
They're working on market structure now.
It demonstrates proof of concept, again,
that with time and resources and patience
and just willingness to engage,
that you can actually get wins for yourself,

(01:00:41):
for your industry, out of the political process,
but it takes a lot of time and effort,
and that is what we're trying to do at BPI.
And I guess that might be a natural segue
to sort of explain why I ended up leaving the Senate.
So after working in the Senate for two years,

(01:01:02):
it sort of became apparent to me
that these outside groups are very effective
at getting things done
and that as a single staffer,
there's only so much impact you can have.
because it's sort of this idealistic one guy versus the government,

(01:01:23):
one guy trying to explain Bitcoin to the entire federal government.
So that was the reason I decided to make the change
was we need a real organization, real heft.
And Bitcoin Policy Institute was the one that has been aligned
and principles-driven and sort of right from a forecasting perspective for my view.

(01:01:52):
With that in mind, you guys, from my perspective,
have really outpunched your weight class in terms of what VPI has been able to get done.
Shout out to David, Grant, Matthew Pines,
who is the position that you're sliding into, and everybody else,
Zach, both Zach, Zach Shapiro, Zach Cohen.

(01:02:13):
and many others at BPI considering how small
and it's a bit punk rock you guys have made a big impact.
But now with you,
the helm of strategy, what do we need to do from here on out? Or what does BPI need to do?
Yeah, I had the same view, which was BPI is basically the honey badger of DC. You know,

(01:02:39):
I said this, I think about this all the time, which is that Bitcoin is the superpower, right?
That we might not have the resources or the organizational size that a lot of the traditional
securities groups have or banking groups have. There's all sorts of major, major organizations
here in DC. But BPI is uniquely positioned to be this sort of underdog that does punch well above

(01:03:09):
its weight class because Bitcoin is such a powerful idea and that we know what's going to happen.
And the more you talk about it, the more you're proven right. So we have an immense amount of credibility that's gained by just explaining Bitcoin patiently and then being proven right as the tides continue to shift, as Bitcoin continues to mature, as it continues to itself punch above its weight class.

(01:03:37):
That is a superpower for BPI is that we can sort of see the future and explain it before it happens.
so ultimately the reason I decided to join was I was just really impressed I met David by
sort of accident I was looking I was trying to do an educational event for Hill staff

(01:03:57):
and I thought a good event could be let's explain Bitcoin versus CBDCs and just sort of have one
side explain Bitcoin and one side explain CBDCs and what they're trying to get at.
And David got recommended to me as someone to explain the Bitcoin side.

(01:04:18):
So don't know what to expect. I meet him and it turns out he's actually a very similar background
to mine. We were both debaters in high school and in the really crazy small world had the same
debate coach. He coached me at Wake Forest when I was in college, and then he went to Alabama and

(01:04:38):
coached David for high school. So we had this like crazy, crazy small world moment. And that became
the beginning of a great friendship. And I was consistently just impressed by how serious they
were, that they understood the stakes. They had a very similar view that Bitcoin is important,

(01:04:59):
that the ideals behind the network are so important. The promise of a free and open
monetary system is just critical. But in order to achieve that, we have to make sure that smart,
aligned policymakers have tools at their disposal. They're educated. They understand the issues.

(01:05:21):
And that was ultimately why I decided that BPI was sort of the right place to go.
They had the depth of bench and the same outlook that I think is exactly what we need in Bitcoin right now.
We're sort of going to the next phase.
We're going to the next phase.
We're going to the phase where Bitcoin really is seen as a world asset.

(01:05:45):
And it's much more serious.
We are not just a joke on the internet anymore.
We mean serious business.
And that means that we have to be prepared for serious threats and have to be able to professionalize and explain Bitcoin to the most important people in the world and explain it to them in a way that they can understand it easily.

(01:06:10):
Because, you know, everyone's very busy as well.
So you've got to be quick and concise.
But that's sort of where we landed, is that BPI is really the only organization positioned to set America up for success and guide America through the rise of Bitcoin.

(01:06:32):
Well, moving forward, what does that look like mechanically?
Yeah. Well, mechanically, this is something that we're actively trying to figure out, right? Is how can we take sort of what we've learned from working around the hill? I was on the hill for two years. How can we take those lessons and think about what are the major asymmetric moves we can make to have a big impact?

(01:07:01):
I think a huge lesson learned in just having people on the Hill.
Senator Lummis is a Bitcoiner. I was a Bitcoiner.
There's a handful of other people on the Hill that were interested in Bitcoin.
And just those handful of people were able to have
a major, I would say, paradigm-shifting win

(01:07:23):
from thinking about Bitcoin
defensively to thinking about it offensively, to seeing it as a
good for America. So with that, one of the first things that we're doing is a congressional
fellowship program. And BPI will be able to fund subject matter expert Bitcoiners to go and work

(01:07:47):
on Capitol Hill. So our first cohort will be in January. It'll be small as we're just getting
started. But it's been crazy, actually. I've just put out like a few tweets about it. And my inbox
is just flooded with super smart, talented Bitcoiners. They're working all over the country
in different jobs, working in sales or marketing or on Wall Street. Some of them are developers.

(01:08:13):
I think it's really important that we get them here on the Hill and they can help explain what
Bitcoin is, how it works, what good and bad policy looks like. We just need subject matter experts
here. So that's one thing. Another thing is it is very common for senior staff to go through more

(01:08:35):
rigorous explainers on policy. The key thing is there are committee staff that are responsible
for determining a specific policy area. And those committee staff have a lot of say
in what Congress takes up and how issues are resolved.

(01:08:55):
And so one of the other programs that we're going to be starting
is a Satoshi Scholars program.
This is basically a program that will educate senior members of committees,
senior staff on committees on the basics of Bitcoin
and basically be like an eight-week crash course
to really get people up to speed

(01:09:17):
because you can't learn Bitcoin in a 30 minute or even an hour long setting.
You really, to grok it deeply, it needs to be a multi-week session.
And we want to really provide the resources to help the staff that want to learn
but just haven't made the time for it to really make it easy and accessible for them.

(01:09:38):
You mentioned you had a flood of people reaching out after you announced it originally.
but in your mind what is the archetypal individual for this position?
The archetypal, well okay, good question.
Honestly they come in many shapes and sizes.
There's lots of different types of Bitcoiners.

(01:10:00):
There's people that are much more on the developer side.
They have spent time working on different Bitcoin related projects.
They might have even made some submissions trying to work on core or something related.
Maybe they worked on wallet software Or it could be someone who not as technical like myself I never programmed but I done my 10 hours of Bitcoin podcast like everyone else I been in the trenches on X

(01:10:29):
I've been reading what all the plebs have to say.
You can get a really good understanding of Bitcoin even without the technical side.
I think there is no one true perfect fit for this,
but there are certain things that we look for.

(01:10:49):
One of my favorite interview questions is,
can you explain the difference between what a node does
and what a Bitcoin miner does?
That's a pretty straightforward answer.
I think that probably there might be three or four people
in all of Capitol Hill that could answer that question realistically.

(01:11:12):
It's a relatively simple question.
So that's the type of thing we're looking for
Do you understand what the network does
How it operates, why it's important
And there's a lot of different people that do
You're out there
You're interested
We need you on the hill
I never thought I'd be saying stuff like this

(01:11:33):
When we were recording in my apartment in Brooklyn
Six years ago
People would have told me we'd be sitting in D.C.
At the Rumble Studios
talking about how we're going to affect
Bitcoin-related policy.
I would have said, you're nuts.
Yeah, even the concept of Bitcoin-related policy
was like, is there a Bitcoin-related policy?
I don't know.

(01:11:54):
But it is true.
If you're out there, freaks,
we need more freaks in DC.
We need more Bitcoiners here.
Please come out.
We're a great community here.
We're opening up.
There's the new PubKey.
PubKey DC is going to be opening up.
So we're going to have a Bitcoin embassy.
And I do think it's very important to get involved and, you know, to to sort of help D.C. see the beautiful orange light at the end of the tunnel.

(01:12:24):
Yeah, we've been talking a lot about how we get this right in your mind.
How how does the U.S. government get this wrong moving forward?
Like what sort of foot guns are there on the horizon that that the government could wander into?
Yeah, getting it wrong. You know, Bitcoin is inevitably going to win in my mind that just by its nature, it will continue to outcompete. How quickly that happens, the exact path it takes, hard to say. But I think just by its nature, it's simply better money. Right.

(01:13:01):
So I think that getting it wrong would look like what other jurisdictions are reading or are considering, right?
Something like an unrealized gains tax on Bitcoin or something where you are being adverse to Bitcoiners.
At the end of the day, Bitcoiners are smart.

(01:13:23):
They understand world events.
They understand where they fit into things.
They are very mobile, right?
capital flight is a major risk.
And that if you're not passing pro-Bitcoin policy,
if you're not treating Bitcoiners well,
I do think there's a risk that they just up and leave to Dubai

(01:13:43):
or somewhere else in the Middle East or a friendlier jurisdiction.
So that would be my worst case
is just that people don't appreciate
that Bitcoin is inevitable and they think that it is just something that you can sort of brush off.

(01:14:05):
And, you know, we sort of accidentally make already a bad financial situation just that much worse
as large portions of your capital base decide, you know what, we're going to just go to another jurisdiction.
That would be worst case.
I also think there is risk in trying to, you know, anything on the network side, trying to restrict, you know, mining or trying to see energy as a zero sum game.

(01:14:41):
I mean, this goes back to what you were saying about AI, right? If we don't understand Bitcoin as a buyer of last resort for energy and instead see it as a zero sum game where if the Bitcoiners are using energy, then someone else is not, then I think that's also going to be bad.
it will make our energy systems more fragile. It will prevent us from having the most cost

(01:15:04):
competitive, probably AI systems. There's a lot of secondary consequences of that too.
So, I mean, this is what we're constantly looking out for at BPI is making sure we're
passing good pro-Bitcoin policy and making the right decisions. But also it's a game of defense
too. You can't lose sight of the fact that people that are adverse to Bitcoin are trying to think

(01:15:30):
about, you know, how they want to, I don't know if they even want to harm the network, but,
you know, there could easily be something that slips in where they think they're doing something
good for, let's say, illicit finance, right? And they sort of accidentally, as collateral damage,
hurt the network. So that's something that we're thinking about too.

(01:15:53):
Yeah, I think recently there was a memo or a bulletin from the Treasury Department.
A lot of people looked at, a lot of Bitcoiners looked at, like, whoa, what is this?
I think it was based out of the crypto brief, which said we need to expand the Patriot Act to include the sixth condition that incorporates digital assets, tokens, or whatever they're being referred to these days.

(01:16:22):
and from what i can tell it was just some staffer or at treasury or somebody put out guidelines like
hey maybe this is what we should do and it was like you can't use collaborative transactions coin
joins uh if you're using multiple addresses we're going to assume you're doing something nefarious
and many things about wallet software particularly and any bitcoiner it's been in bitcoin for long

(01:16:49):
enough and actually uses it and does utxo management it's like hey these are best practices
to preserve privacy and security of your private keys over the long term you don't want to be
reusing addresses and the reason i bring this up because i think there was a pushback and
many people i've got some texts from people on the hill like don't worry we'll make sure we get
this right it's when you notice that bad policy is potentially going to get incorporated into

(01:17:13):
something, whether that's guidelines from a department in the federal government or into a
bill itself, if you speak up, I think we've seen this pretty consistently over the last few years,
the Hill will react. So true. So true. This is another question that I ask when we're interviewing
for the Congressional Fellowship. What is a UTXO? You know, it's a relatively simple concept.

(01:17:36):
A lot of people aren't quite clear on it, but I think that goes to a perfect example, right?
That as Bitcoiners, we understand UTXO management, we understand how the network operates, and
that a lot of the things that can by some people be seen as nefarious activity are actually

(01:17:56):
just proper management of block space or actually just proper management of your UTXOs.
and having people that are technically inclined
that can explain that clearly
of exactly why that is necessary,
why it is not evidence that you a criminal or that it is some reason to think this person guilty but it actually just proper hygiene for maintaining your coins and using the blockchain in a thoughtful way

(01:18:27):
That is a discussion that is just non-existent, non-existent on the Hill. And so important
that someone is getting that right because it goes to the difference between at face value,
I totally understand why someone who's concerned about illicit finance or national security, I understand why they might think, you know, using multiple addresses.

(01:18:51):
They haven't done the 10,000 hours of Bitcoin podcast.
They're not in the weeds like we are.
And so they can plausibly, you know, come up with an argument for why that's true.
And it's important that we have smart Bitcoiners that say, no, no, no, that's not what's happening there.
and you can basically refute the FUD with basic understanding of the network.

(01:19:11):
And what I found is coming through and providing that subject matter expertise,
people are extremely receptive to that.
It's just they're not getting the other side.
They're not.
And that's why it's important to engage.
It's important to be here because they're not listening to the plebs on Twitter.
I love the plebs on Twitter.

(01:19:31):
They're great.
They're important.
but at the end of the day
you have to come and speak the language
and be there in person and explain it to them
and I think there's just a lot of dividends there
To further
massage the pitch that you're giving
to Bitcoiners to come
what's good about the city? Is there good food?

(01:19:52):
Great food
Why come to DC? Why come to the city?
It seems like they're cleaning it up
It's getting very clean, it's getting very hospitable
There's great food
There will be really good food at PubKey, again, just to plug that.
But I think it's a beautiful city.
It's one of America's great cities, truly.
The architecture here, top-notch.

(01:20:14):
Great museums.
I think that we've really lost beautiful architecture,
and D.C. is one of the few places that has it.
It's very walkable.
It's got a great layout.
The metro system tonight, I mean, the quality of life-wise,
it is tough to beat.
I think that architecture is actually, this is something else, another rabbit hole I went down since we last spoke.

(01:20:40):
But I had a big architecture phase.
I think we all do once you find Bitcoin.
It's like, oh, it messed up architecture?
Yeah, fiat architecture, this is terrible, right?
So DC does not have fiat architecture for the most part.
It's got a lot of really good stuff.
and that has a real impact on your psychology
and your lived environment really impacts

(01:21:02):
how you think and how you behave.
I think you knew Chuck Maroon, Strong Town.
Yes, yes, yes.
So DC is great for that.
It's actually got very wide sidewalks.
The buildings aren't very tall
so you don't feel like they're towering over you.
Lots of sunlight.

(01:21:24):
It's overlooked.
I think you hear a lot about Austin.
You hear a lot about Miami.
D.C. sort of slept on.
Yeah, so I came from Philadelphia.
Had beautiful train experiences today.
30th Street Station in Philly.
Beautiful.
They have this incredible statue in remembrance of World War II.

(01:21:46):
Veterans who passed.
Michael the Archangel picking somebody up.
I forget if it was World War II veterans
or people built the train tracks, whatever it may be.
Beautiful, awe-inspiring building.
And then you get here at Union Station.
Similarly, statues all over the place.
Beautiful environment.
I walked here to Rumble Studio from Union Station.
Beautiful walk.

(01:22:08):
Union Station, great building.
Another one of those classically inspired,
inspired by Roman architecture.
It's inspired by some of the baths over in ancient Rome.
And just absolutely gorgeous.
and we need to look this is why we have to win okay freaks look this is why we have to win okay

(01:22:29):
because we need to go back to building beautiful things we need to go back to a sound monetary
system where we can have beautiful architecture where we have beautiful art where I you know I'm
a huge believer in all this DC is sort of sometimes I feel like when I'm walking around DC it's like
I'm walking through the ruins of like an old civilization. You know, they have these great

(01:22:53):
paintings, um, some great like pastoral landscapes of, uh, you know, a farmer like leading some
cattle through the, uh, the Roman forum. And you can see like, uh, these great arches and stuff
like poking out of the tops of the dirt. And, uh, it just has such this, such an interesting feel

(01:23:13):
of like, ah, there was once a great civilization here.
That's how I feel walking around D.C.
It's like, oh, we used to be able to do awesome stuff.
Like we used to have these great, beautiful buildings
and, you know, we need to bring that back.
Well, it's funny.
We're sort of flippantly going through this subject,
but I think it highlights something very important,

(01:23:35):
which is that there is still this disconnect
that people do not realize
that the monetary system affects all this.
And part of our job as Bitcoiners, more importantly, part of your job at BPI is to really get this message to people on the Hill and really paint a broad brush, particularly over the political spectrum.

(01:23:55):
we were talking about this over coffee like if you're if we're being objective about the state
of politics in the united states right now hyper polarized and i was telling you i was just on what
bitcoin did with american hodl eric case and a lot of the conversation was it looks like the two
paths that are predominantly being talked about the united states right now like hardcore

(01:24:17):
socialism from the left and strong man for lack of a better term fascism on the right not saying
that trump is a fash or anything but that's at least the framing that people have accepted as
the two pass and i think what we're doing with bitcoin and really highlighting like hey we
acknowledge that these problems exist for everybody across the spectrum and people on both ends of the

(01:24:41):
spectrum on the polar ends of the spectrum have very radical ways of doing this and if we can just
focus in on the money being broken having an effect across the spectrum and work on and focus on
fixing that, there is a sort of happier middle path that can appease everybody.
Yeah, it's something that concerns me a lot. I mean, right now we're in a government shutdown.

(01:25:06):
This will probably be one of the longest in history. And I think that we are still at the
early stages of what's to come, right? You know, no one can predict the future, but we do know
structurally, we have this massive looming financial problems that are on the horizon.
We know that Social Security is going to run out. We know that Medicare is going to run out.

(01:25:33):
We know we're going to have these problems. And I do think that as the fiscal picture gets less
bleak, as the sort of inequality picture gets worse, as affordability gets worse, as inflation
continues to sort of slowly eat away at people's finances,
they are increasingly turning to more radical political positions.

(01:25:57):
And I do think that Bitcoin is, like I said, the one thing that can sort of
you can you can give it to them and be like, look, we can defuse the bomb.
OK you don have to go down this path We could just adopt a new monetary standard in a very peaceful manner We can just be the first to embrace a new technology get a huge windfall off of that

(01:26:18):
position ourselves well, and hopefully we don't have to tear each other apart.
I mean, that is, maybe I'm being naive or too optimistic, but I think we have to try.
Because I don't, you know, both sides are looking at the same thing.
They're saying the system doesn't work for me. It's unaffordable. I'm getting nothing out of this. And what is for them is, you know, one side or the other going to be a more radical solution. That's where they're going to gravitate unless we do something.

(01:26:55):
So yeah, I think it ultimately is like on, uh, like I think that we are responsible in some ways of, of being able to be the same people in the room to say, look, there's a third path.
Are you optimistic?
I think you have to be, I think you have to be.

(01:27:15):
I am optimistic that there is a good chance that we like change the timeline.
Right. And, you know, any risk of fixing the timeline is better than just resigning yourselves to it's just going to get worse.

(01:27:35):
so I would say if I had thought about it before I went to the Senate I was much more pessimistic
you know I was wanting to go and learn how it worked but it seemed like this overwhelming
behemoth you know the federal government with millions of employees and all these people

(01:27:57):
I do think the white pill and all of it was you can actually have a much bigger impact than you
expect because the vast majority of people just don't know what they don't know. Maybe I'm
repeating myself, but I do think that, uh, there is a lot, like if you are self-motivated, there's

(01:28:17):
a lot of benefits to just agency going out and doing stuff and just do things. And, um,
so I don't know, maybe I'm just, I am just sort of a relentless optimist. I will say that is just
kind of in my nature is I'm not someone who gets down, but, um, I see a pretty clear path to

(01:28:38):
victory. We just have to have the resources and the people to make it happen. Yeah. That's your
call to action freaks. This has been an incredible catch up. It's been six years, but maybe that was
the perfect amount of time between the first episode in this conversation. A lot has happened.
You've got some, uh, some more stories to tell on the show, some real war stories. Yeah. We'll

(01:29:00):
catch up again in six years. How about that? I'll see you in 2031. No, but it's been long overdue.
I've listened in routinely. I haven't, I haven't tuned out, but yeah, it was just, you know,
undercover for a bit there, but you know, we want to, you know, now that I'm at BPI, much more public,

(01:29:22):
you know, want to be really talking a lot about the things we're doing and how we're seeing things
on the Hill and the executive
and what we think the opportunities are.
Well, thank you for your service.
I mean that earnestly.
Not only to this country, but as a Bitcoiner.

(01:29:43):
I think there are many Bitcoiners out there
who have sort of come to the space
since you went behind the scenes
and were completely unaware of who you were
or the impact that you were having behind the scenes.
And I just want to say I'm proud having known you for almost 10 years now, seeing what you did while you were working for Senator Wellmas and what you're doing now with BPI.

(01:30:08):
I think it's very important work and work, if I'm being honest with myself, that I thought was not worthwhile only a few years ago.
but I think I've been wholly convinced
and if you've been listening to the show
for the last three years, you know that I've had
sort of a phase shift to recognizing
that even if you don't care about
political power, it cares about you
and it's best to engage.

(01:30:29):
I think you're on the front lines of
this very important engagement, so thank you.
Well, thank you. I mean, thank you for
putting out all the content. I mean, I don't know how
many hours of your content
that I listened to and helped
charge me up as a Bitcoiner.
But no,
it's really an honor. I feel incredibly lucky. It just was sort of circumstance of how it worked

(01:30:51):
out. But I see this as a dream job. My job is to pitch Bitcoin. Really? This is a job? Really?
I could have this? So it's not like this awful, thankless work. It's really just like I get to
be a Bitcoin or full time. I get to like, I think that working for BPI is really the closest you can

(01:31:16):
get to just working for Bitcoin. Maybe, I mean, obviously like, you know, on the development side,
that is certainly working for Bitcoin, but working for the network, working for the ideals of what
it represents, making sure that the promise of what Bitcoin started as is seen through, that it's

(01:31:37):
fulfilled, that it doesn't stall out or get co-opted. I do think that working on policy is
one of the true ways that you can work for Bitcoin. So it's really an honor. Like I'm just so thankful
every day that I'm able to do it. And I was able to escape the fiat mines. You know, I was just,

(01:31:58):
I was just mining fiat for, for years on the corporate law side and just saw,
you know it was like uh uh you know i mean it wasn't it was it was fine it wasn't awful but
it wasn't deeply fulfilling you know now i have um and you probably feel the same way with with
your the stuff you put out and your content is like um it is deeply deeply satisfying knowing

(01:32:25):
that your work and energy is going towards um supporting bitcoin and supporting america you
know i think that's incredibly important so i just feel really lucky i really do um i would not want
to be doing anything else yeah and we're lucky to have you and i do feel the same way the fact that
i was able to wake up on a monday morning hop on a train and this is my job sitting here with you

(01:32:50):
talking about yeah this is great it's pretty sick not gonna lie well connor we won't wait six years
between uh this episode and the next one but okay good thank you uh thank you for your time thank
for what you're doing.
Yeah.
Well, thank you, Marty.
Let's go win.
We're going to win.
Peace and love, freaks.
We're going to win.
Thank you for listening
to this episode of TFTC.
If you've made it this far,

(01:33:11):
I imagine you got some value
out of the episode.
If so, please share it far and wide
with your friends and family.
We're looking to get the word out there.
Also, wherever you're listening,
whether that's YouTube,
Apple, Spotify,
make sure you like
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And if you can leave a rating
on the podcasting platforms.
That goes a long way.

(01:33:32):
Last but not least,
if you want to get these episodes
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(01:33:53):
subscribing via Fountain as well.
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And until next time.
Okay.
you

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