One Vote From Clarity

Thank you for everyone who has rejoined an apologies for this additional technical issue. We are waiting for John Sarsen to join us again. Well, Dan's back and Lindsay's here as well. So why don't we get started or continue? Actually, Lindsay was starting to answer a question. So let's resume there. Yeah. Right. Great. So I'll circle back to the question was around the. Around the chances of the vote of the votes of the Clary Act to pass on September 15th. And maybe I'll add a follow up question asking if this is indeed the final step required for the Clary Act to be fully. And to become a law or to be fully enacted. Yeah, yes, both great questions. So to touch on the first question around how confident we feel on passage occurring on September 15th at 215 p.m. During the scheduled initial procedural vote. I think that at the Washington Association. As I had mentioned before, we spent a lot of the past month during this recess engaging with staff and with senators themselves to talk about the bill and reiterate the importance. I think Dan brought up a great point, which is last week. And so the primary holdups has been kind of this tension between the Clary Act and law enforcement groups. We've seen some groups express concern about certain aspects of the bill. And in response, we saw an entirely new section added to the bill to expand resources and training for law enforcement when it comes to. And I think, one of the final groups that had held out was the National Sheriff's Association, a lot of members on the Hill. Really, you know, obviously value their opinion value, the opinion of law enforcement. And so that letter last week saying that they shifted their stance from a stance of staunch opposition to neutrality. They said something in the letter along the lines of, we need to get this framework in place because it's better than the current status quo. We viewed that as a very positive step forward. And then this week, we will be re-engaging with a lot of Senate offices as staff are coming back from the August recess. We would continue to push. We still feel very optimistic. And on the other steps to get this bill to become law. So the vote on Tuesday is an initial procedural vote. So it is not the final vote that will happen. It allows for the bill to be considered and for debate to happen. And then there will be another vote on the Senate floor. And depending on the process with amendments, there might be several. But basically the vote on the 17 is, it can be seen as a vote to open up, debate and consideration on the bill. I think obviously if you get to the 60 vote threshold that's needed, that tends to vote well for the full passage on the floor. But then, let's say the bill gets through the Senate. We have this initial procedural vote. We make it through debate amendments. It receives the votes that it needs on the Senate floor. It does have to go back to the House. Because the version of the bill that the House passed last July is very different than the bill that is being considered in the Senate. So it must go back to the House before going to the President's desk. Although we've seen leaders in the House, such as Chairman French Hill, who leads a financial services committee over on the House side, say that their consideration of the bill will be swift. So I do think once the real final hurdle is getting it through the Senate floor, it will briefly then go back to the House before it lands on the President's desk. So this is not the final vote on the clarity act. But I think it is viewed as, and rightly so, as a gating vote because without the necessary votes for this procedural vote, we cannot proceed. And I also think if we're able to attend, or if we're able to attain the necessary votes, then it votes well for the full passage, a few days later. So I will pause there. And Dan, if there's anything I miss, please feel free to hop in. Lindsay, can I ask a follow-up question on that? Of course. So you mentioned that there's support from outside organizations now, or no objections from the Sheriff Association, right? And there were some or significant number of Democrat votes in the House, as we get closer to midterms. How much of, how do you see politics weighing into this? Because obviously the support is everywhere on the Republican sides. Are the Democrats going to be less and less inclined, as it's time sort of passes by to support this? Let's say things don't go as fast as hoped for. Yeah, it's definitely that's, first of all, that's a great question. It's definitely something that we are all thinking about here, inherently as you approach elections, things become more political. And taking a vote so close to an election, or in a lame duck period, kind of carries a different set of political considerations. And obviously we've seen this industry be closely tied to our current administration, which then becomes a talking point for the opposite party. One thing that keeps me optimistic, that I think we can avoid this falling apart due to political considerations. I think two things. One, we've continued to try to message that this bill versus the status quo, where consumers are not protected. There's no rules for people building the US law enforcement. They don't have these additional resources that are in the bill. And so regardless of what you may think about the president, if you're in the opposing party objectively voting no on this bill as a vote against consumer protections, I think the second piece of this is we know that some sort of ethics deal will be a component of this bill. There was an initial draft of the ethics provision included in the draft they came out about a month ago, Senator Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, Senator Tillis, or a Republican from North Carolina, then worked together to come up with another version of it that they felt was stronger and would more satisfy the needs of senators who are voting on this. They said that to the White House back at the end of July. And I feel pretty confident saying that some form of an ethics deal will be included in the bill, which I think also helps alleviate some of the political concerns. It allows Democrats and others to have the talking point. We're possibly in the bill that directly addresses some of the activity that's been going on with this administration. So I think between the comparison to the status quo and the added ethics language that will be, and we still don't know what exactly it will look like, but it will be there in some form likely ahead of the vote next Tuesday. I think that helps solve some of the political issues. That's probably the next. We'll continue to hear about. Yeah, because in my view, that's probably the main crux of this whole issue. And it's not so much sort of necessarily partisan. Like we can't support a proposal that's the majority of the other parties for, but more than what you call the ties to the administration. Like it's, I think, ethics is probably what it comes down to. Because if you're on the democratic side, I mean, the argument that you're making of something is better than nothing, right? It's a strong one from a consumer protection perspective. And also, there's no anti-regulation anti-crypto votes out there in these districts, right? So the only sort of remaining argument, I think, on the other side is like, well, we're sort of enabling the administration to sort of do what they've been doing in this space. Yeah, I think that's totally right. And that's a great point, too, that there's not really an anti-crypto voter out there. And I do think there are other issues that are obviously cropping up and gaining traction during this election cycle, like data centers, for example. And so to me, I think there's been less attention on crypto, which is honestly probably a good thing ahead of this vote on the 15th. But again, I think we've been pushing people to use clarity for America.com to send letters, to directly to their senators explaining, as one of 67 million Americans who hold crypto, this bill is important to me for X, Y, and Z reason. And I think, to date, I think there's been over 4,000 letters sent, and they really do make a difference, because there are people that vote because based on crypto, and to your point, you don't see a lot of people voting, because they don't want any crypto regulation in place. And I think that is the same for the banks. One area that we haven't touched on yet, but that's kind of flared up, is this debater on stablecoin rewards. And we've seen both the big banks and community banks raise issue with the bill. I mean, again, I'd use the same argument if this bill doesn't pass, then there's no restrictions whatsoever on stablecoin rewards. But also, there's not like a pro bank voter. And so I think it's just setting those expectations and reminding people, but yeah, I was watching a football game last night, and there was an ad from the community bakers on talking about how we need to amend the clarity act. So they are not giving up. And that's another group that we're very conscious of as we're continuing to push in this last week. Got it. And you sort of stepped over it, but you are enabling this letter of sending campaign, right? So we've called our community members to participate on that. But if you haven't yet and you're a US citizen, please go to what's your URL, Lindsay? It's on our website, actually. We have put it on the hero section of our website. You can click and go directly to the campaign from there. But Lindsay, please send the letter to your senators. So please do that. Yes, clarity for America.com. Thank you. All right. So then before we go into the content of the bill, last question, Dan, what do you make of the formal federal prosecutor, Marjorie, stating that the clarity act is dead according to lawmakers and staffers in Washington? The late headline, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So the viewer, listeners who don't know, he did a podcast interview recently with actually one of our friends, Rebecca Radeguz on our board as with Cheeto. And he apinded that, as you said, he blatantly just said, clarity is dead. I personally disagree. I mean, he says that he's spoken with people on Capitol Hill. Well, so we are teams of them up there tirelessly, and we're hearing the opposite. So I put more weight on what Senator Cynthia Lumas has said rather than his conversations around town. Lumas has been clear that missing this window pushes market structure back possibly as far as 2030. So we cannot let that happen. People are actually running the vote count. Do not talk that way about the bill. So again, they don't think it's dead. We don't think it's dead. He's close with Pritzker up there in Illinois, who's obviously very anti-crypto. So I'm not sure what the connection there is with this whole position, but that's not my opinion. And I don't think it's the industry's opinion. Great to hear that. We love your optimism and we're with you on that one. So let's go to the content. So if it passes, what's basically changes for someone who is building? Maybe Michael, you want to take that? Sure. And then we... As somebody who's been building in this space for a long time, a lot actually changes. So the Angus Management Market Structure and we were talking here about just details around regulation and regulators. And none of that has really existed as a builder in this space for the past 10 plus years. You've had to guess and sort of hope across your fingers that you were doing things the way that regulators looking at things after the fact might consider what you've done to be appropriate or not. So...