Has Wall Street taken over Bitcoin? | Interview with Ben Hunt

It's not an effort to ban bitcoin. No, it's an effort to reshape bitcoin in a way that can be sold to you morning, noon and night.

Institutional adoption. This is what many bitcoiners have been anticipating for years. The involvement of big banks, investment funds and tech companies has propelled Bitcoin to new highs. However, this may have come at a price to many. The institutionalization of Bitcoin is threatening some of its fundamental features. Permissionless access and censorship resistance.

What we are seeing is the Facebookization of Bitcoin and it becomes absolutely controlled and in service to Wall street and government.

Are Bitcoin's original values under threat? How is traditional finance co opting the flagship cryptocurrency? And what can everyday hodlers do to prevent it? To find out, join our latest interview with Ben Hunt, founder of Second Foundation Partners and the lead author of Epsilon Theory. In a piece titled In Praise of Bitcoin, you said that what made bitcoin special in the first place is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall street and Washington. Can you explain what makes bitcoin special to you and how Wall street and Washington are threatening this idea?

What I always found so inspiring, frankly about bitcoin is the identity that it inspires in the people who are engaged with it. And by identity I mean an identity of autonomy, independence. I mean an identity of entrepreneurialism and maybe most importantly for me, an identity of resistance to the traditional Wall street, the traditional role of government in really impinging on entrepreneurialism in that sense of autonomy. Those are the things that I admire about bitcoin. The goal of Wall street, by which I mean the status quo institutionalization of money, has always been to co opt, I'll call it threats, but I really mean to co opt anything that can make more money for Wall Street. That's what I think is going on. It's not an effort to ban bitcoin. No, it's an effort to reshape bitcoin in a way that can be sold to you morning, noon and night in a way that can be transparent to government as opposed to some method of preserving your personal autonomy and independence.

I just want to make sure that the audience understand when you talk about resistance, you talk about the fundamental properties of bitcoin, such as censorship, resistance. So the freedom of individuals to send to each other this bitcoin, despite any overarching control, and also the privacy.

Those are the qualities that I find so elegant. Right and this is what gets back to this notion of solving a problem of distributed trust within the field of money. I think that the Bitcoin solution is frankly brilliant. And it is that brilliance that I think we are losing in the way Bitcoin has been transferred into a censorship, acceptance and anonymity or identity revealing security as opposed to the original, the OG notion of what Bitcoin.

Okay, and by these false and constructed narratives that you mean the store value and the hedge against inflation narratives that make Bitcoin so popular these days. So why do you define these narratives false and constructed?

Well, the narrative of Bitcoin as a store of value is not necessarily false, but it's to me rather meaningless. I mean, any security is going to be a store of value, right? Any common stock in a company that's a store of value. Land is a store of value, obviously. Gold is a store of value. Dogecoin is a store of value. To say something is a store of value. That doesn't make anything special, but it's the way in which that is communicated that, oh, Bitcoin is a wonderful store of value. Let me tell you why. That's the constructed element of the narrative that I think in many cases is, if not false, at least very misleading. But that is the narrative which serves the interest of those who would use Bitcoin not for its censorship resistant identity and privacy preserving elements, but would transform it into something that allows them to capitalize on the flow of assets, of flow of money through this version, this constructed version of Bitcoin. That's what I've got a problem with.

So to me, Bitcoin's strength lies in its network effect. And it is undeniable that institutions are playing a major role in bringing Bitcoin to the mainstream, thus strengthening its network effect. So if Bitcoin remained a small and obscure thing, how could it realize the goals of financial freedom you advocate for?

I am very hesitant to ascribe a lot of value to what you describe as the network effects of Bitcoin in this regard because so long as those network effects are driven by Wall street, so long as those network effects are driven by quote, unquote, institutional adoption, so long as those network effects are driven by or within the what use U.S. treasury Department says is okay to engage those network effects, I think we lose so much of what to me at least, gave Bitcoin its interest and vitality in the first place. You put money into a Bitcoin related private fund, there's no more revolution, there's no more resistance. Associated with that. Right. It's impossible. It becomes, the meaning of it is totally lost. The censorship, resistance, the identity preservation, it's gone, right? It's gone. It's a different thing. And does that become more popular? Absolutely it becomes more popular. What we are seeing is the Facebookization of bitcoin where it becomes much more popular, where it becomes much more mainstream and it becomes absolutely controlled and in service to Wall street and government. It's co opted. That's what happens to bitcoin. It turns into Facebook.

Are you saying that bitcoin has already lost debt or that it risks to lose those properties? A lot of people are still buying the true bitcoin, the decentralized bitcoin. Right. So is it a threat that we should be aware of or it's something that you already see today?

So what I'm describing is exactly what happened around the securitization and the co option of gold, which was the narrative around a store of value back in the day. And I'm old enough to remember, as they say. And by this I mean it's like 2003, it's not that long ago when State street launched its GLD ETF and within a couple of days there was a billion dollars in that etf. And it's amazing how everything around gold changed after that. And what I mean is that there were no more conversations about gold as a notion of identity, of active, you know, resistance and entrepreneurialism and autonomy of mind. It those who kept on with that, you know, they become cranks, they become gold bugs, right? They're marginalized. They've been absolutely marginalized over the last 20 years. And I see exactly the same thing with bitcoin where those people who have that notion of identity are increasingly marginalized. To your question directly, has it been lost? Is it too late? No, but relying on the fact that the majority of bitcoins ever mined will be in the hands of hodlers who will not engage with Wall Street. That doesn't prevent Wall street from creating securitized and rehypothecated versions of bitcoin that over time swamp that OG bitcoin Hodler community.

And actually that leads me to my next question, which is this idea of this perverted version of Bitcoin that you talk about. You think that the institutional involvement and increasing regulation will eventually lead to the popularization of bitcoin with trademark symbol on it, A sort of permissioned, securitized version of bitcoin. So what concrete regulatory moves would bring us to this scenario?

It happens In a couple of different ways. Right? It happens in terms of what treasury gives permission to Wall street to launch in terms of their securitized versions of Bitcoin. Basically securities that reference the price of Bitcoin and don't actually have an ownership of Bitcoin themselves. Similarly, it has. Even if you are owning Bitcoin itself, it's the government regulations, the treasury regulations around the Bank Secrecy act and FBAR which are your filings on a foreign bank holding. The goal here again is not to ban Bitcoin. The goal here is to see your Bitcoin holdings. If you are an American citizen, an American institution, American trust, if you're any entity in the legal sense of the word that is American, you are now under the requirements to report your convertible cryptocurrency holdings wherever you have them, anywhere in the world. You are a money transmitter and subject to the Bank Secrecy Act. Per this law, you now have to report on your clients and their activities. Even if the money, even if the crypto is coming into or leaving for a self hosted wallet, there is still, and this is what gives me some hope right now, there seems to be an equilibrium in the regulatory environment that at least allows for individuals, not money transmitters, not institution, but at least allows for individuals to maintain their own wallet. That's what I think we should be seeking to preserve and that's what I think we should be seeking to encourage Bitcoin because that is conducive to those values that I price so highly in Bitcoin.

Right. But now I would like to discuss a little bit more the relationship between those two foes that we identify as Washington and Wall Street. In your arguments it looks like those three two elements are allies. But during the crypto Wars in the 90s, large businesses took the side of privacy advocates in opposing governments attempts to undermine strong encryption. They did it because regulations were against their financial interests. So don't you think that even today there is a strong financial incentive for corporations and institutions to keep Bitcoin free from excessive regulations as long as the free market values Bitcoins. Censorship, resistance and privacy focused featured don't you think that there will always be business lobbying in their favor?

Here's where we're going to disagree pretty strongly. So I believe exactly the opposite of what you said. The opposition to crypto controls of the 90s was largely driven by that. That was going to mean less money for everyone from telecom companies to software companies. It lost them flow. It limited their opportunities to sell. The role of regulation is again not banning something that's not what Washington is doing. They're not trying to ban it. They are trying to co opt it and reveal it. They're painting it day glow orange so they can see it wherever it goes. That makes money for Wall Street. It allows for Wall street to create securities products. It's the productization of Bitcoin that makes money for Wall Street.

Don't you think that if there was this over regulation of bitcoin then the price of Bitcoin itself would collapse and that would play against the interests of those institutions. And that is why they will never lobby for such a heavy regulation.

Wall street doesn't care what the price is. What Wall street cares about is what can I get for assets under management? What can I get in terms of order volume going through my systems? That's where the real money is. If that becomes so dominant that the authenticity of Bitcoin is lost, that it's just gold, it's another store of value, it's another inflation hedge. Yes, that is damaging for the price of Bitcoin. That's a very long term thing though. But it's exactly what happened. That's what happened. That's why MySpace became Facebook. There'll be a company in the future that undoes Facebook. That's what happens with network effects as they become co opted by Wall street and government.

That's interesting. Who knows, maybe Bitcoin will have to go through this over regulation phase then. Who knows, maybe we will get over it and it will become again this free censorship resistant cypherpunk idea that you so much cherish. But now I would like to get to the final question to wrap things up. So in the final part of your article you said that little can be done on a policy level to prevent this over regulation from happening. So why do you think so? And if not on the policy level, what can be done in order to prevent this dystopic future to happen?

I think that the institutional incentives and the wheels are in motion here such that I hope we've reached an equilibrium point with the private wallets that don't come into contact with the money transmitter we can leave well enough alone. That's my hope. But what I think we can actively do is shine a light. Shine a light frankly on the differences between this dayglo orange painted version of Bitcoin that Treasury and Wall street sells us versus the self hosted, I'll call it true Bitcoin. But more importantly in terms of signaling to others that you get it. You get that there's a difference between what you are sold by Wall street as Bitcoin and what bitcoin can actually mean for your identity and your community. That's what I would like to get out there. That's what I think any, any of us. And here I will say us, any of us can do.

So basically helping preserving this narrative of resistance, autonomy, independence, entrepreneurship, not letting the other narratives to take over too much, just keeping a balance. Boom.

You got it. You got it.

Awesome. That was a great chat, Ben. Thanks a lot for coming to our show.

My pleasure.