Ryan Selkis on the Existential Struggle for Crypto in the U.S.

I mean, the worst case is the status quo. Ripple has spent over $100 million on lawsuits. Grayscale spent 2 years, God knows how much money, on their lawsuit. Coinbase and Kraken, relentless defense and offense that I'm sure has racked up tens of millions, if not getting close to the 9-figure mark. There are only so many companies that can do that, and eventually people need to realize that the state has unlimited resources and unlimited funds to pursue people regardless of how egregious their misbehavior is. Look at the debt box case in— I think it was the SEC branch in Utah. They dissolved that office because it was so corrupt. That office doesn't exist anymore. And now what I said is true. I want that to happen to the other 11 branches. And that's going to be my goal for the rest of the year is to, you know, slowly disassemble every single one of them.

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All right, everyone. Welcome back to Empire. Highly anticipated episode. Uh, we booted Santi for this one. We've got my co-founder Mike joining, and then we've got, uh, bad man, Mr. Two Bit Idiot, founder of Messari, also, uh, a friend and a colleague and also a competitor, uh, Ryan Selkis. So Selkis, welcome to the show, man.

We contain multitudes, you know.

Yes, exactly. So, um, look, man, this should be a, this should be a good conversation. There's a, there's a lot of things we got to cover. I think the first thing to cover is we're recording this Friday morning, and I say that because things just happen so quickly and this will go out on Tuesday and so much can change. But the debate just happened last night. Would love to get your thoughts on not only the debate, but specifically what comes next.

Sure. I just put a brief voice note out on Twitter before this episode just so it's fresh and people have that. And I'll try to be consistent with what I just said about 30 minutes ago on Twitter. I think Look, everybody that watched last night saw what happened. It was— I don't think that there's anyone that is feeling good this morning about Joe Biden's presidency, whether they're friend or foe. Um, and there was 3 big takeaways for me last night. One, I felt pretty vindicated, uh, for all of the things that I've been saying and, and doing, even if it looks crazy in the moment. All of the tactics and all the things that I've been doing online as part of my, you know, persona that is constantly evolving behind this Two Bit Idiot, you know, moniker. It's, it's been for a reason, and there's been a method to the madness. And I've, I've told my team that, I've told my investors that, and customers if they've asked, and basically anyone until I'm blue in the face. Because when they talk to me, or when you guys talk to me on the phone or in person or through a format like this, people understand how sober and rational I am about all this. But, um, My, my rhetoric has been building to a crescendo because I don't think that we have a president right now. There's no one at the controls, and everybody saw that last night. So what, what I think would be the best outcome for the good of the country is for, uh, getting into point, you know, 2. I think they need to exercise the 25th Amendment. Like, we are in that territory right now. That's not hyperbole. Everybody saw with their own two eyes how out of it Joe Biden is. And I think that that's probably the realization that the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment are going to come to in the next couple of weeks, because they don't have good options going into the convention in 6 weeks. Um, it would destroy their whole moniker of, oh, we're the party of democracy, and the Republicans are going to try to steal the election or end democracy, or this, that, or the other thing. It would destroy all of their credibility if they actively forced an anointment of a new candidate at the convention versus either— I don't think that they'll actually get into the 25th Amendment because I think that they will threaten Biden, if you don't resign gracefully, we will exercise the 25th Amendment and take the nuclear codes from you because you are not mentally capable and, and, and, you know, at the same level that you were maybe when you got elected 4 years ago. So what that's going to do is that's going to lead to a President Harris, which I think would be a great thing for the country just as American to just stop the insanity, um, and the charade that, you know, Joe Biden is actually at the helm when he's not. Um, I don't particularly like her. I don't like her policies. But, um, number 3, what it would do is it would give, uh, this party that is going to lose, uh, in a landslide right now— not just the White House but the Senate in a landslide— it would at least give them the opportunity to, uh, tack to the center and like hard pivot from some of the Biden policies because you can get this blank slate moment for a very short window of where Harris could come in and, you know, maybe she's going to be friendlier towards crypto and, and maybe she's going to soften her rhetorical approach and she'll cut, she'll cut heads at the right agencies. And, you know, maybe they'll call Gensler and have him fall on his sword with a wink and a nudge that, hey, if you just fall on your sword now, you'll be rewarded if we get reelected for doing that kind of dirty work. Now, there's a number of ways politically that they could play this, and that is, I think, the least bad option for them. Unfortunately, I think that Harris is so unpopular and unlikable that they're probably going to get trounced anyway, but they're kind of out of options and they've kind of made their bed at this point. So if I were to zoom out, I'd say it's probably going to be, you know, um, it'll probably be something like a Harris Newsom ticket, um, but it really should be something more like Harris Dean Phillips because the entire, you know, Democratic establishment owes him an apology for smearing him and, and maligning him for having the audacity to say what no one else in the party had the courage to say, which is We cannot run Joe Biden for a second term because he is already deteriorating at a rapid rate. Um, and, uh, look, you know, I, I think people will look at the tone of, of my tweets and rhetoric on, uh, like, look, I don't dislike Joe Biden. I think he should have run in 2016, to be honest with you. I voted for him in 2020. I now regret that, but I voted for him in 2020. But I don't feel bad piling on here because this is the most powerful man in the world. And I think that there is an element of humiliation that's important at this time, because if we just gloss over the fact that there is an entire apparatus that has lied to the American people for at least 6 months about his mental acuity, whether it's the media, his administration, all the other congressmen that have his back, the entire party leadership, Everything. It's all been lies. It was exposed last night. They have been structurally lying to people about this man's mental fitness. And so I think it is important to see the memes, the dunks, the aggression all aired out in public. I think it's a good outlet for people, and I think that humiliation is not really about dunking on an old man who's going senile. It is about sending a message to everyone that has been involved in this farce that no one's going to forget in November. And my position on this is, I think, somewhat consistent with the position that I have on crypto, which is I don't consider myself a partisan. I just said I voted for Biden. People want to paint me out to be this MAGA extremist. I can get into why I think there's literally nothing that that would, uh, that would make me not vote for President Trump at this point. But, um, I think the fact of the matter is that we need a hard partisan victory this year, and then we can get back to non-partisanship in crypto, or bipartisanship, you know, more generally speaking, politically. Um, and the way that this is going to manifest itself is 2028, right? I mean, we're talking about a transitional president no matter who wins, right? Well, I guess if it's Harris, then she could run for two terms. It's another reason for it to be Harris instead of Biden. Um, but I think, um, we're going to see generation change in 2028. We're going to see a hell of a lot of evolution, uh, in Congress. We're going to see the, the entire power rankings and, and, and, you know, leadership apparatus in Congress turn over in the next few years. And so at this point in time, it's important to send a message If you're just talking about like crypto single-issue voters, it's also important, I think, to send a message at the White House and the Senate level that Americans aren't stupid and there needs to be some, some political retribution for the farce that we've just witnessed. Um, because otherwise I, I, I truly do think that this country is in trouble. Um, now whether that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm saying like, oh, anyone that votes for Biden or Harris or whatever is, is, you know, evil or stupid or anything like that. But what it does mean is, you know, we should not be letting the most powerful office in the world off the hook just because his wife and the establishment around him propped him up like Weekend at Bernie's style for the last 6 months. Like, I'm sorry, but we all, we all saw what happened last night.

Yeah. All right, let me pull it, let me pull it. Actually, let me pull the conversation out from just Biden versus Trump for a second because I think we will get into that later in the conversation, but I almost just— is like, Mike and I have known you for 7 years at this point, and I think I—

I was never this crazy, right?

I never— you've always been a little bit crazy, honestly.

But, but founder crazy, not founder crazy.

So I'd love to just hear the, like, the development and the evolution of, like, Selkis from, like, yeah, crypto founder into someone who realizes and has, like, thinks and believes right now that like politics is the main thing that you should be spending your effort on. Maybe I got that right, but would love to just hear like the evolution of— and like when did you realize that politics was like the thing that you needed to focus on?

I've had like 6 moments where I've had that. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. But it's happened like 6 times in the last few years. So first of all, I would actually argue that like one of the reasons I got into crypto in the first place was political. Um, but it was political in the sense that it was an opt-out. And you look at the runaway spending that we had, and this is way back in 2012, 2013 when I first was learning about Bitcoin. But you look at the runaway spending that we have, you look at the increasing partisanship and the gridlock in Congress and the dysfunction of Washington, D.C. And a lot of libertarians and, um, folks that care about exit and just like building a better future versus arguing about it end up gravitating into tech. So like my version of gravitating to tech was obviously, you know, Bitcoin and crypto. Um, but that was enough for me for the first 8 years that I was in the industry, in the first several years at Messari.

Were you—

did you vote Democrat? Like if you look at like how you voted in like 2008 or 2012 or '16?

Honestly, I, I don't, I, I don't remember my, you know, uh, it's funny, like Vivek actually got like tripped up on this, or, you know, he got targeted for this during the debates where he's like, either he said something like, I don't remember, I did vote this way, or I didn't, I don't even think I voted in some of these elections. Like, that's me. I think that's a lot of people that are just of the mindset that this whole system is rigged and broken. And I am not going to opt out because I'm not, I'm not doing my civic duty, but I'm going to opt out because I'm going to build something better, which I think is very different. So to be honest with you, I can't remember. I think I like, I think, oh wait, if I did vote, it was probably McCain. Um, in 2012, it was, I didn't like Romney. I think I voted, I voted for Ron Paul just as a protest vote. In 2016, it was either Rand Paul or my grandfather that I wrote in, or like, honestly, like it was another, like, um, and you got to remember, like the states I've lived in. My vote legitimately never has mattered.

You're from New York?

Yeah. So like either— well, went to school in Boston and worked in Boston for a while. So I was either in Boston, New York, New Jersey when I hopped over for, you know, for a minute. I don't even know if I was in New Jersey for one of the presidential elections. But, um, and then, um, and then Maryland now. So, uh, none of those states are gonna get impacted by my vote. I think it's safe to say, right? So, um, but that's not to say that I didn't take it seriously. And so, but I think in the last election, I was literally one of those voters that was like eeny meeny miny moe at the ballot box. And, and I just, I, um, I've been telling people, I, in 2020, it was not clear to me whether Trump was the chemo or the cancer. And this year, it is so blindingly obvious that he's the chemo and we need another round. And I think a lot of other people are kind of coming to that same conclusion, which is what you're seeing reflected in the polls and a lot of the swing voter polls. But so in terms of like my crypto political moment, just going back to your question, it was around the infrastructure bill in 2021. And quick kind of run back through history, the infrastructure bill that was passed in the first year of the Biden administration was this kind of must-pass, like, signature bill that they wanted to get out. It was very expensive. It was a stimulant to the economy, and it had a lot of the kind of wish list items for Democrats that they wanted to kind of get out the door. And basically, in the aftermath of COVID like investing in our infrastructure. In these types of bills, you have to pay for them. right? And one of— they're called pay-fors. So one of the pay-fors that was added at the 11th hour to the bill was a crypto tax provision. And basically, the Congressional Budget Office reviewed it, and I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like if we improve tax compliance, the CBO score, as they call it, was going to be something like $28 billion if we just improve collections and kind of tax compliance from the crypto.

This was the one that expanded the definition of the broker and then also said that, okay, now the brokers have to report the transactions.

Well, there was two things. That was 50i or something like that. And then there was a— so there was the— there was that, right, um, where, you know, you basically have to do all this reporting, which was a disaster. And that was— that was caught, you know, actually slightly afterwards of this other larger saga. But the larger one was, um, you had this, um, reporting requirement for tax purposes where essentially the definition was so broad that it it was going to make compliance impossible unless it captured all of DeFi. And so there was this big uproar in Congress where they were getting just an enormous number of calls. It really kind of put the crypto issue, I think, on the map for Congress because of how ferocious the response was from the industry. And, and, you know, at the end of the day, because of the way that the bill had already kind of got through its, its process in the Senate, The only way to stop it would have been through a unanimous vote to approve an amendment or amended language for, you know, that specific provision. And Senator Shelby, um, there's a trend here. I think he was, you know, 80-something-year-old senator that was in his, um, last year in office, um, was basically the lone dissenter and, um, and objected to the amendment. So it didn't pass. It didn't actually get pushed in. And he had very close ties to the banking lobby. And if you look at like his donor records, you know, he's, he's had, you know, very, very close ties with, um, with big banks in the banking lobby. So, you know, that pissed a bunch of us off and, and, you know, certainly didn't smell good at the very least. But, you know, whatever the case was, we got screwed. Um, despite a lot of other senators stepping up and supporting. So yeah, they ended up doing something called a colloquy, which is, you know, it wasn't actually amended, but they, they made this explanation from the floor that here's what we meant, just in case they ever go back and look at the record. Whatever. The moral of the story was this doesn't happen in well-organized industries that have well-organized political machines. So the next month at Mainnet was kind of— I think it was the first time that everybody had gotten together from the policy side around one table. So I had basically invited the top 20 folks that were, you know, at Coinbase and Kraken and a16z and Paradigm and, you know, all, all these firms. And it was kind of like the event at the event. And we got everybody around the same table. And then basically the question was like, okay, what are we going to do about this so it doesn't happen again? So again, like part of it's I am paying attention and politically inclined, but part of it was also like right place, right timing that our conference had just happened to fall right in the aftermath of that bill that we got everybody together. And then basically it was pencils down, I'd say, more or less for the next year. For me personally, you know, obviously a lot of folks were getting organized in the industry. And then we fast forward a year and we basically do the same thing 2022. But instead of having a roundtable meeting, I basically organized a dinner, took everybody that was at that initial meeting out to dinner. And it was supposed to be just kind of the celebratory, like, look at how far we've come. Thank you for everything that you're doing. Instead of like an organized little mini conference, it was just supposed to be, you know, thanks for everything and cheers and mazel tov and we'll go our separate ways. And it was at that dinner that a couple of folks flagged that FTX was basically trying to ram through a really counterproductive bill through Congress. And they were essentially just flying solo, spraying money all over DC, doing this like really aggressive charm offensive. And they were running with the football with essentially no other input from anyone else in the industry. So like regulatory capture 101.

Yeah. And was Sam at that dinner? Like, could you flag that to Sam?

No, but again, the timing is crazy because that actually happened days after we closed our Series B. And Messari counts as, you know, among our investors, pretty much all of the major Western regulated exchanges. And I had apprehensions about Sam, but Amy Wu had just taken over from Lightspeed.

Um, Right.

Uh, had just taken over FTX Ventures and I like Amy a lot. And so, you know, I, I, I talked to her and we included FTX Ventures, uh, in, uh, in the round and, you know, very kind of small slug in the overall Series B, um, right alongside kind of, you know, all the other kind of, uh, Western entities like Coinbase and Kraken and, uh, blockchain.com and, uh, and Gemini and the like. So, um, I, I walked out of the dinner and they were, they were the only notable absence and they had actually turned down the dinner invitation. They're like the only ones that turned down the dinner invitation because, you know, everybody kind of knew this is, first of all, it's a free dinner. Second of all, it's like you're getting like a curated list of like the political power brokers, not just like a bunch of, you know, schlepps, because I very tightly, you know, kind of curated the list. And, but they were notable absence. And so that, you know, basically kind of set off a firestorm. There was kind of this moment during the dinner where, you know, Kristen Smith kind of dropped the bomb and then all hell broke loose in terms of the conversation. And after a few minutes, people got up from the table and everybody was having these side conversations. It was pretty wild. But what we did after that is I, on the train the next day coming back from mainnet, I sent an email to Sam and Mark Wiegen, who was his head of policy. And again, this was like 3 days after the round closed. And I said, hey guys, we have a problem. I, I spent a lot of time getting up to speed on what I think is like your strategy for, you know, engaging in D.C. and getting a bill passed this year. And obviously, we just closed the round. We have to talk because I'm pretty sure I'm going to be like very publicly against you on this. And I just want to make sure that I'm not like misreading anything. So like, can we hop on a call? And so we hopped on a couple of calls. And I think, you know, the first time that I spoke with Sam, I think his first, you know, his first reaction was basically like, who the fuck is this guy? Like, not who does he think he is, but literally just like, who is this guy? Why am I talking to him about policy? I've never heard his name. I've never, you know, seen this, that, or the other thing. And it was, it was basically the three of us, Weijin, me, and Sam. And, um, and I think it took Sam maybe like 10 minutes to, to realize that I, I knew what I was talking about and I was pretty deep, um, in, uh, in the policy circles, even if I wasn't very hands-on kind of down, down in, uh, in DC. So we ended up talking for about 90 minutes, almost 2 hours, um, and he was trying to basically convince me like, you know, can you like just stand down or can we work together on this? And at one point at the end, and I remember this because Weijun was on, um, and he said something to the effect of, you know, let's just say hypothetically speaking that I'm wrong which I don't think I am, but hypothetically speaking, there is a significant amount of money that I would be willing to spend to anyone that is negatively impacted that has my back. And then I end up being wrong or I like cripple the industry. So it was like, it was essentially the, like the most thinly veiled, like, if you just have my back on this, like I will take care of you. Right. No matter what happens.

We call that a bribe.

It was a fucking bribe. It was 100%. A bribe. And I— the reason I couldn't believe it is because Weijun was on the call too. And, you know, he was just— I saw his facial expression. He was just kind of like, uh, I don't know about that. And then, you know, then we go pencils down, and I called, you know, a bunch of folks that were at the dinner, and I said, um, I think this is going to be a problem, but we should try to do a follow-up with Sam and his team in DC just so everybody can get on the same page. Because I told them I don't want us making complete asses of ourselves in DC because the one thing that Sam had done was get a ton of momentum, a ton of momentum because of how much money he was spending. He was meeting with Pelosi. He was meeting with Maxine Waters who blew him a kiss at the hearing, right? Like he was meeting, he was meeting with everybody because of how much money he was spending. And because he said he was going to spend a billion dollars on the presidential campaign because he was an effective altruist. So, long story short, we end up getting a very similar group together that had just met for dinner and then had, I think, a productive conversation in DC. This meeting that was later covered in the Washington Post because someone leaked it. It wasn't me because I didn't want to be involved in any of that shit anymore. But again, getting roped back into it. Yeah, exactly. Um, uh, and then Sam kind of showed up for 20 minutes for like a drive-by and comes in all sloppy like he normally was and basically just lectured to a group of like policy professionals like how things work and, uh, and what he was going to do and why. And essentially like in the most patronizing way possible. And, um, he kind of famously like came in and then came out because he had to go to another Hill meeting, I guess, in his sloppy stained cargo shorts. And, and on the way out, he, he like looks over his shoulder and he goes, I just want to thank you all for being so fucking constructive. And it was like, it was like, it was like the little, it was like the little pat on the head at the very end.

Nice job, kids.

Yeah. And I was like, this guy just needs to— we need to take him out. Not physically, but like, this guy just needs to be taken out at the knees. And, um, and so, you know, basically over the course of the next couple months that happened inevitably. But, you know, um, word got back to CZ that, that Sam was running his mouth and basically maligning Binance and throwing them under the bus and, and basically having all these meetings. And most, most of them, or many of them I'm sure, essentially saying, you know, negative things about, uh, CZ and Binance.

And he was tweeting about it publicly. Also at the same time.

Well, yeah, but before he was tweeting about it publicly, he was saying it in private. And those backroom, like, you know, conversations got back to CZ. I know that they got back to CZ, and I'll leave it at that. And I think that, you know, CZ had been a backer and business partner of Sam's in the early days of FTX. And my interpretation of what happened and kind of what led to the unraveling was CZ wanted to give him a haircut, not a decapitation, when he said he was going to basically sell the FTT tokens. I don't think anyone knew just how egregious the fraud was, myself included. I thought Sam was sketchy. I didn't trust him from day one. That was confirmed when he tried to bribe me, and that was confirmed with all of his erratic behavior kind of after the fact. But I don't think anyone realized how egregious the fraud was. And then ultimately, you know, as soon as it became obvious, then it was like, okay, this is going to be 18 months of hell. And we were going to have 3 problems. One was going to be the immediate fraud impact and headline risk. Two is going to be the credit crisis and not understanding exactly when and where the daisy chain would end. And then, um, and then the third was going to be the political blowback, which was going to be a little bit longer in the tooth, but, but just as, if not more painful than the first 2. And, um, and so that's kind of the the stamp through year end of 2022. But the one silver lining was we killed the Stabenow-Bosman bill. So that was good.

So because do you think that I mean, even so, going back to the start of this, the infrastructure bill that kicked all this off, I could be wrong, but my memory of it wasn't that it was a super partisan issue back then. And then all that and then all the SBF stuff happened. And obviously SBF was— he was an effective altruist and he donated more. I think he was the second largest donor in the 2020 political election. And he was obviously super you know, he preferred to donate to Democrats. Was that the original schism? Like, did he actually sort of impact the course of history here by donating mostly to Democrats? Then they sort of had to publicly walk all that back. Was, was that the beginning of the sort of politicization of the industry, or do you think it was always just destined for that to happen?

I think the most charitable explanation for the Democrats' behavior, um, which isn't really that charitable because I think it kind of speaks to incompetence or, or, you know, uh, not a whole high degree of intelligence if, if they just would overcorrect to this extreme to take it out an entire industry. But I think the most charitable explanation is probably some version of that, which is we trusted these guys, really when it was just one guy, right? And they screwed us. And everything that we thought about the industry actually is true because we have the sample size of one and it blew up in all of our faces. So I think there was an element of retribution. There was an element of just like the pure politics of it. You can't immediately turn around after a fraud that size and then, um, and then say, oh, no worries, let's work with the good guys. Uh, it was just going to be too, too hot to touch politically. And, um, and so, you know, basically, you know, a couple things. One, I'd say credit where it's due for the other folks that, um, politically stuck their necks out for us even when it was unpopular, particularly on the right, but also with a couple of exceptions on the left. Um, you know, Tom Emmer Lummis, uh, you know, kind of come to mind as, as two of the, uh, two of the heroes, uh, that we didn't deserve at the time, but we needed. Um, and then, but I think you also had some folks like, you know, Senator Gillibrand and, um, Richie Torres, um, that, uh, that I think have been pretty good on this consistently, even in the aftermath of, of, of FTX. Um, but, you know, basically, and I, and we'll get to modern times, you know, pretty quickly, but I just want to be comprehensive here. Um, so early 2023, um, Brian Armstrong, uh, hosted a small dinner in New York. And I can talk about that because I love Brian, but he posted a picture of fucking 8 white guys at dinner for a dinner.

I remember this picture.

And the worst, the worst part about it was on International Women's Day, but the worst part of it wasn't that it was on International Women's Day. It was that the dinner did not happen on that day. And for some reason he chose that day to post the picture.

Tough.

I was like, bro, you're killing us, man.

Somewhere there's a head of comms who just said, why do you make my life so tough?

Oh my God. I love Brian, but I was just like, come on, man. Come on. But anyway, so he had hosted this dinner with a handful of us and people can pull up the picture for specifically who was there. But essentially it was, how do we emerge from the wreckage stronger? Politically and basically how do we reengage politically. And, um, and so a couple of weeks later, I sent the document around, uh, called Project Leonidas, which was essentially like a, uh, a battle plan for raising $100 million split across several different entities. So this would cover the trade associations, um, 501s, which basically work on things like education and advocacy. Um, and then an actual super PAC and, you know, aligned PACs with, with some of the trade associations and without getting too deep into how all these things work, because I don't want you know, people's eyes to glaze over for them to just skip over the episode. Um, basically the super PAC is the bazooka that you want for actual elections, and you want that just as a deterrent as much as you want it as an offensive weapon, right? The, the best nukes are the ones that aren't fired. So having that arsenal, just having the, the actual cash on hand in that, um in that super PAC would be a signal to the DC community that we were very serious about what came next.

And is that what started the, the Fair Shake?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Um, so, and, and I had known, um, and, and I think a few folks had known Mike because he actually, um, he's— he and his partner worked in the midterms very effectively with like $13 million and won a ton of races at the, at the House level. And a couple of the Senate level where they were supportive, but they were basically, you know, helping educate candidates and then, you know, back the right horses bipartisan in the primaries. The problem was half of their initial 13 came from Sam. So, so the Fair Shake guys, you know, it was called something different before it was Fair Shake, but the Fair Shake guys were essentially cold product because the affiliation, even though they had themselves been very effective at what they set out to do. And, um, and so, you know, there's a few of us that had worked with them and said, forget the baggage with Sam, they're going to rename it, but they're going to run a different strategy at scale. And these are still like killer operators that we should continue to work with. And, um, it took a little while, but sure enough, December of last year, so 6 months ago, they announced that they had raised $78, um, in, in Fairshake. And now of course it's, uh, it's up to $160 because they've got to $160 now. And this is, I think it's the largest, is that these are are crypto companies like this? Yeah, this is all public record. The lion's shares come from, from Ripple, Coinbase, and Andreessen. I think the Winklevoss twins have put in some. Sorry, put in $5,000. So we got our name. We got our name on the press release.

Oh, baby.

What I don't think people realize, it's now the third biggest. It's now the third biggest PAC, right?

And it's the largest independent.

Yeah. There's the Biden Victory Fund, the Trump Save America something or another. And then it's Fair Shake, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So what's your impression on how important the crypto issue is on— as like a presidential election issue? I was actually a little bummed. I'm not gonna— I watched the debate last night. I was bummed for a couple reasons. But like, I was bummed to see that crypto didn't come up at all, really, during the debate. So how much do you get it? Because you— every once in a while, you'll see these studies that 100 million Americans own crypto, own crypto, right? But how big of an issue do you think it it really is.

There's two parts to that answer. One is just the math behind it. I think, um, if there's 100 million crypto users, you know, there's going to be a power law distribution in terms of how people would rank order this as an issue. Because if you have $100 in Coinbase, that's not going to swing your vote. If you have $10,000 in Coinbase, it might swing your vote. If you have your livelihood and your team and your family relying on the success of this industry You are going to be a zealot for whoever's for you versus who's against you. Um, and I think the problem that the Democrats made was thinking that that was a small number when it wasn't, um, for two reasons. One, economically speaking, right, guys like us, um, that do well and have responsibilities and families and teams that rely on the success of the— and, and, and, uh and continued growth of this industry. And then two is philosophical and all the way back to my initial point. I think that they underestimated how many young people, particularly in tech, they activated that were never really politically engaged in the past because they were just very happy, myself included, to opt out of the bullshit. Right. So they basically started a fight with a small army of people that just wanted to be left alone. And they didn't stop. And so at some point, if you have this like group of wildlings, uh, or whatever, whatever the— who's north of the wall?

So I think Marvin, it's the one, it's the wildling.

Yeah, yeah, he compared me to like the red-bearded general, which I took very— I took as like the highest compliment.

I think that's a compliment.

I think it's badass. Yeah, right. So like, okay, so, okay, so I'm like the red-bearded like crazy general of the Wildlings. Do you want to piss that entire army off when they were just minding their own business north of the Wall? That's what they did. So I think, um, activating that denominator in the way that they did is not something that they—

and you're saying that's what they did? I feel like the turning point there was, uh, the Liz Warren anti-crypto army tweet, right? And then we are the crypto army.

That will go down as one the worst campaign ads of all time. Yeah.

Yep.

Right. And so this actually gets me to point number 2, which is, okay, that's one thing, but how did this get to the level of presidential politics? And that's when we get into 2024 and all my crazy tweets.

Maybe take us into, um, the last, like, what, 50 days, I'd call it, like Mar-a-Lago, because you've been tweeting about politics. I think someone—

let me, let me start, let me start at the beginning of the year. I'll give basically the time period up to Mar-a-Lago real quickly and them, and then we'll, we'll talk much more extensively about the last 50 days. So again, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. I told my team I'm going to fine myself $1,000 every time I tweet about politics in 2024, um, after Fair Shake had loaded the money cannon, right? I was like, my job is done. I helped these guys. We got, we got the game plan in order. I don't need credit. I don't care if I— I didn't write the big checks, but whatever happened, it happened, and I'm, I don't have to worry about this stuff anymore because I truly thought that this election was going to be existential for us based on how hostile the Democrats were and how hostile the Biden administration can continue to be, mostly at the behest of Liz Warren. And then the Iowa primary happened and Vivek comes in fourth. He immediately turns around and endorses Trump. And then at his endorsement speech in New Hampshire, suddenly they talk about how horrible central bank digital currencies are. And I had worked with Vivek, and you guys know that I had hosted him at Mainnet, and we did a fireside chat. I hosted a fundraiser for him. When I heard that, like, that was basically a dog whistle for me because I worked with him and a few others worked with him, or at least sanity check some of the things that he had in his platform for crypto over the summer. And we knew that that was the most plain vanilla wedge into the broader crypto issue, was like, do you want a central bank digital currency with constant surveillance or not? Super easy to understand, very like politically tight message, like get the government the hell out of our lives. We don't need more weapons for the, you know, panopticon, uh, to activate against its citizens. And so when I heard that, it was, it was an immediate call out that this was actually, you know, we had someone that was going to be directly in the president's ear about this particular issue. So I basically spent the next few months, um, trying to figure out exactly where the Overton window was to support, you know, uh, President Trump. Because, uh, I, uh, I obviously supported Vivek. I was very vocal about supporting Vivek because he— his policies were basically very similar policies to Trump's, but with a fresh start and a younger kind of messenger. So when he turned around and endorsed and they basically got together, it was, you know, kind of a green light for me to start figuring out what could I say publicly that would not blow up in my face and have the team, you know, uh, or customers start to react. And so, you know, you can literally, um, if for anyone that was paying attention at the time, you could see a progression. up through March, let's call it, of like increasingly partisan kind of red meat tweets. And the reason for that is I was trying to find a way into that camp to just tell, help explain like what is fact versus fiction here. And we're not all crazy. Like some of us are very supportive of Republican-leaning candidates or conservative candidates or libertarians, you know, by design. But we need you to know that we're not just all like crazy libertarian zealots that are like, screw the government, there's no role for regulation, like this out of the other thing, which I think was an impression that they had from the prior administration because we were just significantly less sophisticated as an industry at the time. And sure enough, I ended up getting a couple of different avenues into the camp. And then one person, another entrepreneur in the industry, this guy Valentin, had tickets to the Mar-a-Lago event because he bought a bunch of the Trump trading cards, these NFTs. And he said, look, I got a VIP ticket. I can't use it because I have this preexisting commitment for family reasons. I insist that you take it because I know that on the off chance you're able to meet him or someone close to the campaign, it will be better. It will be better time spent than anything that I could do or, you know, anyone else that I know could do. So I was actually on the fence about going. I was like, I don't know. It's like, it seems like like, you know, a lot of, a lot of time and energy, you know, to maybe have like 30 seconds with like a policy person that I could probably get through in like, you know, through other means. But I, he just, he was adamant about it and insisted. And so, you know, I went and at the event itself, Trump was, he got there about an hour late and because he was at a campaign event in Michigan. Rally in Michigan for another endorsement that he had made. And the VIP event that I thought was going to be like 20 or 30 people was 100. And so everybody was kind of roped off and he just did an hour of Q&A. So I was like, all right, there's not going to be any direct engagement. But I did get one question in, which is, can we donate crypto to the Trump campaign? And he basically looked at his finance guy. He said, I think so, right? We can. I don't know, we'll check on that. Should we? And then he goes like this, should we? And the crowd is like, yeah. And then he's like, all right, we'll make it happen. And he like points to his guys like, let's get on that. So I sat back and I said, okay, I'm not going to meet him, whatever. At least we got that right. We got that win. Like, I know when he says jump, people say how high in his camp because he's, he's the CEO, he's an executive. So he moves a little bit differently and has that kind of brand and aura. But the only reason I stayed for dinner, because I was actually going to leave after that, because then it was just kind of into the big banquet hall. The only reason I stayed is because Danny Nelson from CoinDesk knew that I was down there and I said, don't dox me. I only talked to my VPs and my board that I was even going down here, but I'm not ready to be public about anything yet. I'm just, you know, learning and trying to talk to a couple of people from the campaign. Don't write my name in whatever story you're going to write here. And in return, I will sit next to you at dinner and we can have like an on background or off the record conversation. So again, that's the only reason I'm even at the dinner instead of taking off early. And the next thing I know, you know, I hear my name called and I'm essentially cold called on stage. And I thought, you know, someone must have slipped my name and Mihailo's name to him as a couple of the more prominent entrepreneurs that were there. Because remember, this was like a fan based event for the NFTs, not like a big organized kind of crypto fundraiser. And so I went up there, I thought maybe he just wants a photo op or handshake or whatever. And then all of a sudden he turns, he says, why don't you guys say a few words? And then I did the minute and shook his hand and got a couple of pretty gangster looking pictures. Whoever captured that picture of me shaking his hand deserves like some Pulitzer Prize for photography because that picture like has moved mountains for us when it comes to like the subsequent votes or, you know, basically after the Mar-a-Lago event. But I'll pause there.

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May 8th.

You want to get into— I think in the last 50 days, like everything is kind of spiraled. And I would say there's Mar-a-Lago in one week. There's Mar-a-Lago and then there was a Blockworks op op-ed actually as well. And I'd love to hear just like from your point of view. I mean, like, I remember, so I had dinner with them. There was a PleaserDAO dinner and it was like a Friday night and I'm sitting across from Rob Leschner and he's like, sees this tweet go out and he's like, what is this op-ed? And Mike and I don't see Blockworks articles until they literally are live on the site. Like we're not, because I deal with sponsorships and sales and we're not allowed in the Slack channels. And so we see this op-ed go out. I was like, well, I don't know. Read it later, wake up Saturday morning like 70, 70 texts, 70 DMs, whatever. And basically a tweet from you saying, I will assassinate these guys.

So I don't think I used that exact word, but it was, it was something very close to that, which was like a flavor of like Omar's coming, right?

So tell me about, tell me about that week.

Wait, actually, before we, before we even get into that, Selkis, do you want to guess how many people viewed that article? Because I've talked to a lot of people since that. They're like, oh, that was amazing. Blah, blah, blah. Like, you want to guess how many people—

and they're like, you're just doing it for the traffic. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure it's not a lot. Yeah, it's probably like, what, 10,000, 15,000?

2,000. 2,000. Nobody clicked the article.

Nobody read the article.

We actually added up all the impressions. There was like— that whole thing ended up getting 2 million impressions on Twitter. So the ratio of like reading to the outrage was like 0.001%.

Many, many, many such cases. So, okay. So, but I'll actually take a step back. Remember, like I flew out, I went to your guys' conference, bought a ticket, you know, game recognized game. I heard it was a good conference and it was. And Mike, I'm sure you and Jono caught up about it, but Jono and I had a couple beers, you know, one of the nights there. And basically, you know, I had heard that there were a couple of folks that were essentially in my mind, you know, piggybacking off a lot of the risks and kind of policy work that, you know, I've done and kind of using it against Messari commercially, right? It's like, oh, do you really want to be affiliated with Selkis? He's, you know, a little bit spicy for, you know, suit and tie tradfi crowd. And I told, you know, Janno and I, you know, kind of cleared the air. And I didn't think it was— I didn't think it was you guys after that conversation. But that was, I think, the context.

I was definitely not. Yeah.

No, no, Mike, you're totally off the hook. This is just between me and Jana at this point. So, but as I was like, all right, I was like, okay, we're good. And, you know, we've had this kind of longstanding relationship where, you know, we worked with you guys in the early days on the podcast and, you know, I've appreciated and, you know, been pretty impressed with how quickly you guys have risen just as entrepreneurs in your own right. But That happened like a couple weeks before the Mar-a-Lago event and then the op-ed. And so the op-ed drops, and I didn't even see it that night. Um, I, you know, got a couple texts and I kind of woke up in, in the middle of the night, um, just to, um, you know, like check on one of my kids who, you know, had to get up and go to the bathroom or something. I don't know, I don't know why I was up in like the middle of the night, but 2 AM I see a couple of texts and people say like, you got to see this article. And I, yeah, like you could, you could direct a movie and, and you can picture the scene of me sitting there quietly staring at the wall in the dark. Like, you know, like Robert, Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, just, just, just ready to go on a rampage. And the reason was It wasn't an op-ed, guys. You know this. This was an editorial. There's a difference. And I'm not saying that it was you guys that were responsible, but, um, I went back and I looked, and this is the only op-ed that you guys have ever produced that has two authors, and one of them is an editor. So this is an editorial. Um, and, and, and so my, my issue was that this was, um, there is a big difference for those that don't know media. You guys do, but for those that don't know media, like op-eds can come from anywhere. Often they're external. Sometimes they're internal if you have a dedicated writer like Molly. But the fact that this was both, it felt like a hit piece. And only a fool. I was like, is that like a play on words? Are they being cute? Because like the two-bit idiot thing. But then more importantly, like if you go and you look at the links, I'm the only person that's linked to, right? Um, and my, my kind of, you know, onstage, uh, endorsement or support or whatever you want to call of Trump was, was the only thing that was linked to in the article. So it was clearly directed at me, never mentioned me, my name, and that's fine. And, um, I, I don't honestly, I don't know why, because I actually wrote a full thread and like a full strategy and game plan for, you know, quite honestly, like disassembling Blockworks, uh, at, at the time that, that was going to be my response because I especially after the conversation that Jono and I had had in London, I was like, this has gone too far. We have competitors that are operating in bad faith trying to hurt my team. So now I'm going to respond in kind. And honestly, you know, you guys have known me for a long time. I don't know why I put the shotgun down, but I was just like, you know what, no more own goals, no more fighting. Try to resolve this. I was, I was on with Jono a few times over the weekend, just, you know, kind of trying to give him my advice on how to handle all the fallout. And it ended up being a nothing burger for me because it was something like 5 or 10 to 1 people supporting me versus supporting you guys. So, you know, I didn't think it was necessary to pile on. And I also think in hindsight, this maybe it was not intended to do this, but I do think that that article, the unintended but very positive consequence of it was it was I would say friendly fire from a crypto outlet versus a big media outlet, right? So you said 2,000 views, and like, that's kind of like a running joke. I'm not surprised. And I was actually very happy that it came from someone like Blockworks versus a bigger publication because it essentially laid out all the arguments that you would expect to see in like a mainstream hit piece, which is all these guys care about is money, there's no values here, it's just white rich tech bro, like, will sell out everybody, doesn't care about trans rights or women's rights or democracy. I mean, like, it had all of the greatest hits in that article. I don't think it was a very well-reasoned or argued op-ed, but the fact that it was written I think stimulated a conversation, which is almost undeniable that it had a positive impact because it, if nothing else, forced me to think about how I was going to address every single possible political issue, even as an operating CEO, right? So even taking on the most like incendiary social issues or things that people would levy as an attack on Trump. I don't agree with Republicans on, on everything. And I think if you do, you're, you're, you're not a Republican, you're a cultist. But I don't— but I knew that those were coming and people will inevitably project whatever they want to on someone that supports President Trump, regardless of how inaccurate it is. I'm a libertarian. I actually think that Vivek's framing of like libertarian nationalists is probably more in line with my view of the world. Um, but, um, the, the number of issues and the type of issues that I think were addressed in the op-ed were things that I kind of prepared for and leaned into over the course of the next 6 weeks.

I've got I've got a question, which is, alright, so here's the— here's something where I'm— I know you have really strong opinions on this. So I'd love you to lay out like the steelman case for this. But here's something that I've struggled with as well. Zooming out of the current political moment and zeitgeist, operating on a 10, 20, 100-year type horizon, do new industries like crypto have to get politicized? And this is something that I've been— because the, the, the case that I've heard you make that, to be honest, I'm coming much more around to is the fact that like, hey, the Democrats have been punching us in the face for 4 years. How much of this, you know, abuse do you need to take to just see the light, right? And what's happening? On the other hand, you know, politics in America is horrible right now, right? I mean, even like, it's very contentious. And I am conscious of the fact that crypto still does have this like, white tech bro obsessed with money, speculative sort of sort of vibe. And so how much do you think new industries like crypto should be aiming to be apolitical and just, hey, we're a technology, we're a new industry where you can do stuff, which that argument has always resonated with me. I would say that that's definitely the camp that I would have been in, you know, before the last couple of months versus having to side with, you know, one side or the other.

Well, the good news for me personally is I don't give a shit about identity politics. So I don't care if I'm like a white straight male with kids. I actually think that's an advantage in some respects because you know you're going to get all the heat and all the smoke from all these identity, you know, politics arguments. Um, so I think that's number one. I, you know, I made this, uh, point on stage with, uh, with Marvin Amori, um, at, at Uniswap. He debated me at Consensus and, um, Yeah. And this was basically the premise of the debate, which is this year was very tight prompt for the debate. It was this year, should crypto be partisan? And my argument, which I'll make again here, is and was the White House and the Senate needs to swing and we essentially need to take political scalps. And his was, that's a really bad strategy long term because we want this to be nonpartisan. People should vote their conscience and not feel like they have to betray their other political ideals just for a point in time, you know, a bit of political retribution. And I think there's merit to both sides, but the, the example that I gave to help people understand that I do think that there should be nonpartisan at scale, but I, I basically made the comparison to like a cheating spouse. And you know, you don't need to blow up your marriage necessarily, but if you just immediately take back the cheating spouse at the precise moment that you have caught them with their pants down, you are not to be taken seriously. It's just, there's such a profound lack of self-respect to be in that situation and say, oh, it's okay, come on back, same day. And that's essentially, I think, what the, what the, uh, Democratic operatives in the crypto policy sphere are saying when they say we can't make this political this year. I agree with you. Next year, the year after that, come on home, right? Like, we should be engaging with everybody and focusing on education and resolving these disagreements through the political process, um, with the next Congress. But this year, it's pencils down. Anyone that was against us, there is a timestamp for when you were against us, and we're coming for everybody that we possibly can. We won't necessarily be able to come for Liz Warren because That seat might be untouchable, although John Deaton is going to give her a very good run for her money, and I'm going to, I'm going to support him in doing it. Um, but we're going to swing at least 5 or 6 Senate seats, and I think the goal is to get the president, um, the White House shifted. Because if Biden is reelected or Harris is reelected or whoever it is on the Dem side, we're fucked because the financial regulators are not going to change, and Liz Warren will still have outright control over the financial regulatory apparatus.

Well, so what living through this has made me think is if you actually look at other organizations, like industries in the US, you actually see it's a little bit of a mixed bag about how political they are. Like Silicon Valley is a really great example of that. That was also— the internet was some crazy new thing. Remember, there were all these wars against encryption back in the day, and there were a couple of really critical pieces of legislation that I think if they hadn't got passed in the right way, the US, you know, internet and technology industry wouldn't be what it is today. And so maybe that's part of the reason why Silicon Valley aligned itself with one political party where they were currying favor. You can— like, there's examples of that on the right, right? Like the NRA and the gun industry in the US is like much more right-leaning. But then there are also examples of, you know, you kind of mentioned the banking lobby or the telecom lobby. Those seem pretty neutral to me. And I guess I'm curious, you know, from someone who's thought about this quite deeply and is, you know, a very thoughtful guy, I mean, are there reasons why some of these, some of these sort of industry groups tend to become more political? Are there some, uh, is there some reason why some industries are better suited to be neutral? Like, what, what do you think about that in the long run?

I, I think it's probably a mixed bag. I think the answer is more complex than, than just, you know, a black or white issue of like some industries are prone to be politicized, others are not. Um, I think it's a little bit more complex than that, but I do think that, um, most technologies should be apolitical, uh, or nonpartisan. Um, however, we might want that to be true. I don't necessarily know that it's true because I've made the point that I think that not all of them, but I think that there is a sizable percentage of the Democratic conference, um, you know, people that literally identify as Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders or AOC or, you know, folks like that that believe that the centralizing force of government is a net positive and that government can be a solution when it comes to wealth redistribution and kind of enforcing certain policies and this, that, and the other thing. And I've made the point that I think the values that kind of underpin crypto are actually very similar to American constitutional values, right? Code of speech, First Amendment. Second Amendment. This is defense tech for, you know, against, you know, folks that might want to seize your wealth, or it could be defense tech against, you know, runaway AI. That's kind of like the Second Amendment. Fourth Amendment, right to privacy. Like everything with Tornado Cash and any, you know, pseudonymous nature of crypto or fully anonymous nature of crypto, like that's kind of enshrined in the code. Fifth Amendment, due process, self-executing code. Tenth Amendment, decentralization of power. I don't think that there's a— I think there's a large percentage an uncomfortably large percentage if you're a Democrat, but I think there's a large percentage of the Democratic conference that would not ratify the Bill of Rights today with those 5 amendments without changes. And that's a philosophical divide I think that's hard to bridge. And, and people might disagree with me about that, but I think the onus is on them to prove it, because if they did think about these issues the same way, I actually think that their approach towards crypto would reflect that, and it doesn't today. So, you know, at points in time like that, yes, there might be an impasse, um, and, um, and, and that's when you fight the political fight and the electoral fight, not just the policy fight, right? So there's a difference between the electoral politics and the policy politics. Policy politics is basically like the operations, how everything gets done, but political, you know, electoral-focused politics is who makes these decisions and who is involved in the operations, right? It's the hiring and firing process to the operations. And you guys know as founders, just like I do, like, it matters just as much who you have at your company and what the culture is at that company as what you're actually doing. Because if you, if you fuck up the people, you're done. And, and so that's why I think it's, it, it sounds very nice and most people don't like fighting, I personally, I don't like fighting either, but I don't— I, again, I am someone that just wants to be left the fuck alone. And, uh, as an American and someone that's actually studied like the Constitution and, and thought about going to law school and has always been politically inclined, I look at this issue through that lens philosophically, and I just basically come to the conclusion that like, well, yeah, if you're gonna, if you're gonna just run rampant over a technology that I think is, is is constitutionally protected, then, you know, we're going to have a fight. Just leave me alone and follow the Constitution. We don't have any problems. And I think that's where the difference of opinion and approach really comes down to. And, oh, and by the way, I just should say my and our team's approach, like, um, I off camera, I had mentioned like the castling maneuver, right? So in chess, my version of castling, without getting into too many of the forward-looking details, which I'm really excited to kind of share later this summer, but my version of castling is, you know, For those who are not familiar with chess, it's the one move where you basically get to move 3 times. You basically get to move the king 2 spaces versus 1, and you get to move the rook and basically swap out the rook and put it into like an offensive position. So this is really kind of nifty move that was, you know, not in the original game, but it was actually invented, you know, much later. And it, it's, it's kind of like a core part of the game of chess as you're thinking about strategy and actually like advancing, you know, your pieces forward. And, um, my version of castling is internationally nothing changes. We are doing the same, like, suit and tie, proactive engagement, very subdued, um, approach to all these international regulators and all these international companies for two reasons. One, their laws are different. They don't have the U.S. Constitution. And two, their technocrats are better than ours. So, you know, my version of that is I have essentially focused all of my personal effort on the US because I think this is where the fight is, and the rest of my team is doing a great job on the international front. So that is probably a nuance that's lost on some people, but there's a reason that I try to make myself, uh, scarce, uh, globally, aside from the fact that I have 4 kids and it just saves me a lot of travel and headache. But the, um, but, you know, and, and our team has things under control, but like, I basically only go when I'm invited to go places internationally because I understand that people might, might, you know, find my, my approach in the U.S. jarring, but there's a reason that it's jarring in the U.S. because you're allowed to be brass knuckled in this country. Yeah.

I'd love for you to help me. Um, I was having this conversation with a, with a friend the other day who's very, very, very dem, like has always been a Democrat, will, will be a Democrat no matter what. And I was trying to, uh, he was asking me like why. Why the Democrats are so bad for crypto. And it starts with— so it's not really Biden, it's that Biden puts in place these people to run things like the SEC, like Gary Gensler. He said, why was— why is Gary Gensler so bad? Like, well, he's basically a puppet for Elizabeth Warren. He's like, okay, well, why is Elizabeth Warren so bad? What motivates her to be so bad? And that's where I actually got a little bit hung up. And I'd love for you to help me understand, like, why is— like, what, what is motivating the Democrats here to be so— and really, what is motivating Elizabeth Warren to be so anti-crypto here?

I actually had this, this same thing happen to me. I was describing— I was trying to describe this to my, my physical therapist. Actually, I've been talking about this way too much. Shut up, dude. Uh, but I was trying to describe to her, I was like, yeah, there's this whole dynamic between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats are really bad for crypto. And she was like, well, why is that? And about 30 seconds into my explanation, I just realized I was sounding like a conspiracy theorist to this person who like doesn't give a shit about the industry and know anything about this. And I was just like, well, they've been attacking us. And I was like, that sounds just kind of crazy if you have no context. But so help us, I would actually love a script from your perspective.

Well, yeah, I mean, a couple of things. If you want to do something evil, wrap it in something boring. And I think the evil is a philosophical divide between me and, and I think a lot of, uh, right-of-center folks or libertarian-leaning kind of civil liberties-oriented Democrats and Elizabeth Warren, which is, um, she and others— going back to the Democratic Socialist point— they, they do believe in the power of government and, and government redistribution and influence, um, being a positive force, uh, for good in society. And I think the evidence is so clearly, um, in my mind against them, right? You just look at history and, and the force of good that capitalism has, has been in the scourge of communism. And, and, you know, basically everything that, uh, communism touches dies, everything capitalism touches thrives. Um, and so it really is a fundamental divide in across that lens. And you have someone in Liz Warren whose entire career is based on financial oversight and control and influence of banks and major financial entities. Crypto is a threat to that stranglehold that she currently has. And it started when she ran the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was basically formed and she was the first head of under Obama. And then it's evolved since as part of her mandate in the Senate, or what she perceives as her mandate in the Senate. To influence every single financial regulator. And she actually came into office, and I think more or less explicitly said this in early interviews, something to the effect of, I'm not running for Senate and I'm not going to sit in my seat at the Senate to pass bills. I don't care about bills. She cares about shifting the Overton window to the left, number one. And number two, she cares about personnel because she's actually very smart. And people underestimate her at their own peril because they look at the number of bills that she's passed and they say, ah, well, you know, she's just kind of like the crazy lady from, you know, from Massachusetts. Well, yeah, but she's doing 3 things. One, she's shifting the Overton window left. Two, she's running interference for some of her less progressive colleagues. She can take the outlandish position on the extreme and then they can still kind of move pretty far left safely without being branded in the same way that that, that she would be. And she can do that because she's safe in Massachusetts. And third, she has a stranglehold right now because her endorsement really mattered in 2020. And in exchange for her endorsement in 2020, Biden, whose background was in foreign policy, um, even when he was selected as, as, um, as Obama's VP, he did not have the financial and like economic powerhouse team behind him early on in that campaign in 2020. So when Warren came in and stabbed Bernie Sanders in the back, it was in return for this devil's bargain where I'm going to have influence on who the staffers are on the financial policy side. So it does sound like a conspiracy. It does sound like a conspiracy, but sometimes conspiracies are literal conspiracies and you're not crazy, but you just need to be able to like soberly look at the situation, put two and two together and be able to articulate it. And for anyone that wants to read Uh, Massari's annual report, my, uh, my thesis, um, there's a 30-page section and, you know, a couple of chapters specifically on this dynamic of how Warren's influence extends not only to the White House but then back down to the House. Because House leaders that are progressive, or, you know, folks like Maxine Waters, will literally get calls from the White House and the financial regulators that are putting pressure on her when it comes to what, what bills, you know, should or should not be supported, or what language should or should not be included. And those calls are coming from people that Warren helped place or like came from her, from her circle. So, you know, again, uh, if you're trying to explain it in 30 seconds, very difficult. That's why, you know, I think this format is helpful because you— people will see my tweets, 280 characters at a time. And I don't blame some people for saying like, did Selkis have a nervous breakdown? Or, you know, is he like out of his mind? Or is he just like thrown over the chessboard? Or what's going on? But, um, if you, if you understand like the logic and the how clear-eyed I am about everything that's happening politically under the hood, then you can start to talk tactics. And from a tactics and like, you know, information warfare standpoint, you know, look, you guys know that I'm not short on ego, but I think that the last 6 weeks in hindsight will be an information warfare fucking masterclass, um, in terms of what I was able to do under enormous stress, obviously. But I think what I was able to do over the last 6 weeks, um, across a few different axes.

You know what I think is, is just really, uh, you know, to give you a lot of credit where it's due, is I do feel like there were a lot of industry participants that were just accepting a much worse outcome for crypto in the US, sort of implicitly, slowly, over time. And you run a business that's— you live in the US, and I would guess most of Asari's business is probably US-based. Blockworks is in the same bucket. I can't tell you how different the landscape is here. You know, today than it was 2 years ago. And that's, that's not just regular market cycles. Like, it's, it's, it's a night and day difference going international, being in Europe or Asia versus the US today. That's conference attendees. That's interest. That is, you know, the You know, some of our investors actually mentioned— there was a lightbulb moment for me about 6 months ago where they mentioned they hadn't backed a US founder in over a year. I mean, that is crazy from some of the best investors in the industry. I mean, and I think you, to your credit, just elevated this to, guys, this is an existential risk. And whatever your politics are, if you want to do business, you know, for crypto in the US, you have to care about it. So I think, I think you have done a really good job of just raising the entire urgency, the kind of level of the industry.

Well, and, and by the way, I'm going to walk the walk too, because I don't know that I'm personally going to feel comfortable or safe staying in the U.S. if Biden wins reelection or Harris wins reelection.

Um, wait, say more, say more about that.

Well, I think that I'm bordering on like a politically exposed person right now. Like, you know, again, people can call me a conspiracy theorist or or, or, you know, whatever they want. But I mean, you look at the weaponization of the justice system, and, you know, if, if, if the blue team wins, I kind of think I'm a marked man. So I probably just want to get out of the country. Not that they're like literally going to send a fucking Black Hawk helicopter and take me out with, you know, lasers or anything. Um, although they might, you know, who knows. Uh, give me a few more weeks to stir a little bit more.

No, no, but I'm generally cur— I'm genuinely curious.

I think, I think there's a little Yeah, well, okay, so the, the most innocuous way that this would manifest— do you think that I, as the leader of Messari, will ever be able to have a constructive conversation with the SEC if Biden wins reelection?

No.

Yeah, it'd be pretty tough.

So like, yeah, we have built a private version of EDGAR. We should be their best friend. I have personally exposed half a dozen of the largest financial frauds in crypto history. I have personally in the last 10 years done more to protect investors, promote fair and efficient crypto markets, and promote capital formation in this emerging industry than the entire taxpayer-funded SEC. I will literally die on that hill. Anyone with two eyes that knows anything about my track record, that knows anything about Messari, knows that that is true. Hester Peirce's Safe Harbor proposal in 2018 that has been gathering dust for 6 years was written side by side with Reg S-K, which is the securities disclosures, um, norms and, and kind of guidebook, and our fledgling disclosures product in 2018 when we were just getting started. I know that because they've told me, because we worked with them on it. So that's been collecting dust for 6 years, and we've just been slowly grinding through, building the piece by piece, brick by brick, to hopefully solve this problem. And gift wrap it for whoever the first regulator, regulator is that wants to take us up on the offer. And the good news for us and the good news for me and my team is internationally, that pitch is selling really well right now because other people have their shit together. In the US, it's going to be adversarial until this bomb is out.

So what's it been like for you personally going out on such a limb here and for folks on the team? Right. Like this is a politically torn moment in the US, right? I'm sure there are some folks on your team who are like, like, hell yeah, let's go. And then I'm sure that there are some folks on the team who are like, wait a second, this goes against my personal politics. Like, what's it been like for you to really stick your neck out?

And, uh, that is— that is— that has been— the last 6 weeks has been without a doubt the most challenging, not— I think not just of my career, but honestly just personally, I think of my life. Like, the number of— every single week it's felt like on 4 or 5 different axes there's been an order of magnitude leveling up of stress and challenges and complexity. Every single week for like 6 consecutive weeks. It's felt like 4 or 5 or 6 orders of magnitude of complexity every single fucking week. And fortunately, I got to the point last week. I don't— not a breaking point or anything, but like, I think a fork in the road, which is I seriously considered resigning. From Asari, which I obviously founded 6 and a half years ago. I was very serious about it. I talked to the board. I talked to the leadership team about it. I was very close, not because I would ever quit on the team or that I don't love what we're doing or believe in what we're doing or believe in the team, but because I was concerned that this kind of fork was not going to be reconcilable with the direction that we needed to go as a company. That weighed pretty heavily on me because obviously as a founder, you know, you go from a founder-led to like an outside, you know, CEO. There's a huge culture shock. It was unclear whether it would be navigable even with the transition period. And, and I also just felt like there's unfinished business and we're cooking right now. Like, I feel great about where the product is. I feel great about where the team is. And more than anything, I would never quit something that I started because people—

did you consider it? Because your internal team was kind of like turning—

No, they've been— No, they've been— No, they've, they've been— No, the board has been super supportive. The team itself has been super supportive. Everybody has, I think, been on edge and it's been chaotic because it's felt like, you know, shrapnel and, and, you know, unpredictability for like 6 weeks again at, you know, kind of building to a crescendo. And so, you know, I think all credit to the, the, the team and, and the investors and the customers that we've had too, who have have all been universally supportive, even if privately they're like, is Silcas okay? Because like a lot of the folks that we work with as customers, they've known me for a decade, and, um, and it's been difficult to share that in a very comprehensive way, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do this pod with you guys. It's been, it's been difficult to share that in a comprehensive way that is believable, that isn't just like, okay, well then he's going to turn around and he's going to say that he wants to fight Mark Cuban, so do we believe what he said? Like to my face, or do we believe what he's actually doing, what his actions are on Twitter? And I kind of feel like we're entering a period where, you know, actions speak louder than words, but people are going to see the kind of reinvention of my online persona to reflect the direction that I'm going to take the company now that I've figured out this Castle maneuver.

Can you give a hint of what that looks like?

I think I, I think I did a little bit in terms of talking about the international versus the domestic. I mean, essentially it boils down to let's stop pretending that the SEC is an adversary and a competitor. And if you can make that leap that they're an adversary and competitor, then anything I do with respect to investigative journalism that's targeted at the SEC and helping that agency collapse in on itself, anything that we do from a product standpoint point, you know, all kind of triangulated in that direction, and you truly view the SEC as an agency that must be radically restructured and rebuilt, um, then it's, it's a little bit easier than like this half in, half out. Well, we need to win the election, but we also need to work well with the SEC. No, we will work very constructively and well with the SEC if it is restructured and if it is under Republican leadership. At this point. There is no scenario where we are not directly competitive and adversarial with an SEC led by Gary Gensler. And that allows us to still be very constructive internationally. Now, how we do that, that's what I'm going to keep close to the vest. But once people understand, like, that, that's the light bulb that turned on, everything should start to make a little bit more sense in hindsight. Like, this wasn't a bluff. Like, I think I was very close to a decision point that was, was going to be difficult. But, um, fortunately it never got all the way there because I realized why— maybe the most obvious thing to do is just call a spade a spade like I've been doing. Everybody knows this guy's corrupt. Everybody's suing him.

I—

where the hell is it?

Is this your oppo report?

This is 200— this was last year. This was last year. 200 pages of oppo on one person. Okay, this is— I'm not, I'm not bluffing here. Like, okay, wow. This is last year. This is twice as big this year as it's refreshed. So you know what? If you're going to try to kick my family effectively out of our home and force me to consider moving offshore for my political beliefs or for my industry, me and you're going to threaten my team and my livelihood and the folks that have bet on me and that have entrusted whatever period of their career they've been with Masari, I'm going to come for your fucking head. And anyone that isn't willing to say that and stand up for themselves, I'm probably going to have a disagreement with.

So, because I would love to get your interpretation of, okay, the industry has been held back for so long by bad administration, like regulators and an administration who just didn't want crypto in the US. I would love to get your— and by the way, like, obviously, we have a slightly different— like, we're not really building an EDGAR. But I— one thing that has felt like it's missing in crypto for a long time, from a data and information standpoint, is these frameworks that everyone abides by. And I do think you need some sort of rules. It sort of feels like we're, we're at the point of an industry where like, we need a little bit more structure than we, than we've had. And we haven't wanted to engage the government and the regulators, because they've been so just openly oppositional to us, I would say. But one thing that I find myself getting, you know, a little bit hopeful about is maybe if we actually had someone in office that wanted us around here, we could get a little bit more clarity on that front. So Could you actually just paint, uh, you know, a picture for listeners who are maybe here in the US and have been frustrated by the lack of solid, uh, you know, regulation or guidelines or whatever? What could this look like if, you know, we did have a Trump presidency and there were more favorable people put in charge of the SEC and whatever? Like, what's kind of like a best-case outcome for what crypto could change into?

Well, a couple things. One, I think the next Trump administration will have a crypto czar. No, it's not going to be me. I'm not gunning for a spot in the administration. And based on the strategy that I have and the things that I want to do with Messari, I actually think that we'll be more valuable as a political ally for folks that are like-minded than anything I could possibly do in government. So I can kind of have my cake and eat it too in that regard, as could some of our crypto allies. I think, you know, with respect to the, the precise rules and language, you have to remember these are going to be— there's going to be different flavors of essentially the same core information reporting problems across the globe, right? But MICA is going to have one flavor, VAR is going to have one flavor, MAS is going to have one flavor, and then eventually the U.S. will have a flavor. The U.S. was probably the most important in favor, right? That's, you know, the battlefront is here. It's the largest economy in the world. We dominate finance, we dominate tech, and we have the Constitution on our side, right? So the framework that you want to get right and is most important to get right is the one right here at home. Um, I don't think it's rocket science, uh, what would be good policy. And I think you have, um, you have senators like, uh, JD Vance and Hagerty that are starting to think about what would actually intelligent legislation look like that fully covers the exchanges, that creates rules for banking and stablecoin issuance, and that also essentially creates like a Section 230 moment for the industry that protects all of the emerging applications, right? So, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, because if we do the regulation poorly now, then thousands of assets sets and thousands of new networks might not emerge because there will just be too much red tape to get through. And by the way, this is the reason— not that I'm on this big crusade, but this is the reason that I actually give a shit about this, not just philosophically but commercially. Because you guys know this too, Messari does well if there's thousands of these assets. If the information— if, if, if the, um, uh, the maze and the ability to navigate this asset class is impossibly complex That's the greatest gift for you guys, for me, for like the handful of us. And, you know, financial information, there's like half a dozen $10 billion companies. So, you know, we said at the, at the top that, you know, we're competitors. I think that's somewhat true, but, you know, in very important respects, it doesn't fucking matter because there's going to be multiple very big companies in this sphere provided that we are able to grow and thrive as we have for the first decade of crypto's life. And that only happens if you have something analogous to like a Section 230 moment for financial assets, right? Section 230 being the, the, the internet bill— forget the name of the bill, but basically the '90s internet bill that, you know, essentially created a lot of these standards. Section 230 exempted online platforms from the specific online platforms and publishers from the specific person's speech. So you couldn't be held liable for defamation or, you know, any of the speech violations that might happen on your platform or on the open internet. You would have to target the individual. We need something very similar to that, but for financial applications and crypto applications.

So, I guess if you had, if you sat down with someone and they're like, list out the 3 to 5 things that like year one, my 100-day crypto policy, like the things I want, like for me it would probably be like, I want you guys to let people do self-custody. I want regulate— I actually do want regulation of the exchanges and like the custodians and folks like that, like the centralized players. Um, I want the proliferation of stablecoins and not a CBDC. Um, Those are like the— some of the three— those are like the three first things that would come to mind for me, not having thought about it as much as you. Like, what do you think about that?

You just nailed the 30 seconds that Trump did on crypto at the Libertarian Convention. Go back, insert that 30 seconds into this episode. You literally just hit on the exact talking points that the Trump campaign and Trump team and policy team have been engaged on and studying and trying to distill down. Down. The only one that I would— the only one that I would add is that I think Bitcoin mining is very important to protect, um, for, um, for counterintuitive reasons, being that the innovations and the development of Bitcoin mining infrastructure is actually going to be extremely helpful as we think about managing the grid with all these AI supercenters. So, you know, it's protecting, you know, uh, that infrastructure investment and making sure more of it's here at home. Because we are going— I think the folks that are building in AI are really going to be able to capitalize on that early work from the Bitcoin miners as they're thinking about managing and kind of load balancing the grid for AI supercenters too.

So let's say that's the best case. Best case is we get good stablecoin, good regulation. That's the only case.

Not negotiating. Unconditional surrender.

Great. Best case. What is worst case here?

Biden gets reelected and they just slowly strangle us. Yeah, I mean, the worst case is the status quo. Ripple has spent over $100 million on lawsuits. Grayscale spent 2 years, God knows how much money, on their lawsuit. Coinbase and Kraken, relentless defense and offense that I'm sure has racked up tens of millions, if not getting close to the 9-figure network. There are only so many companies that can do that. And eventually people need to realize that the state has unlimited resources and unlimited funds to pursue people regardless of how egregious their misbehavior is. Look at the debt box case in, um, uh, was it Utah? Or yeah, I think it was the SEC branch in Utah. They dissolved that office because it was so corrupt. That office doesn't exist anymore. And now What I said is true. I want that to happen to the other 11 branches. And that's going to be my goal for the rest of the year is to, you know, slowly disassemble every single one of them. It is uncomfortable to say this, especially if you're in a regulated industry, especially if you are yourselves regulated. And one of the things that has been to my benefit in this process is that we're a data research and information company. We're a little bit harder to attack head on. They're still going to try. I'm sure that Gary's going to try to try.

You don't have, you don't have a token.

You're not, you don't have a token. We don't move money around. Right? So they're— I'm sure that someone's going to try at this point. I've already telegraphed someone's going to try just because I'm, I'm being so like in, in your face about it. But I can say what other people think and what, and what increasingly more people are willing to say, which is the SEC under Gary Gensler is one of the most corrupt institutions in the country. Gary Gensler himself is one of the most corrupt political operatives in the country. And until he is out at the SEC, and until some of these other Liz Warren plants are out of their positions of power, it's going to be tough for us to make real progress. You know, Marty Gruenberg is stepping down from the FDIC in disgrace after all the scandals that they, uh, that, that agency has been plagued with recently. The nominee that's going to come into the FDIC is worse. She's like a direct Liz Warren acolyte, and she's younger, and she's going to be around for 5 years, and you're not going to be able to get rid of her. That's what we're up against. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the entity that is literally running a second version of what they had explicitly named Operation Chokepoint under the Obama administration. This is not conspiracy. Again, it's hiding in plain sight. Operation Chokepoint Cut off banking access to politically disfavored industries. It just so happens that crypto is under the microscope now. So if there isn't a change in control in the executive branch, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I know that's uncomfortable for people, but it doesn't matter. It just doesn't. So, you know, one, if more people come to that realization, then it will be less difficult to understand why I am banging the table and putting all the chips in the center of the table to make sure that Trump wins and the Senate goes red.

Why is it, um, we've mainly talked about Trump-Biden. Can you say why it's so important that the Senate goes red? Like, why, why are you not focused on—

because, well, because the, the Senate confirms all the political appointments, um, and Senate Banking is where Elizabeth Warren sits. So if she's in the majority, she's— even if she's not the chair, she's gonna have outsized influence on Senate Banking. Um, so the in terms of like, you know, Schoolhouse Rock, like how a bill becomes a law, there's a couple of interim steps there that are glossed over in the Schoolhouse Rock version. But, but one of the most important is that, um, these aren't bodies of like 100 senators or, you know, 400 whatever congressmen. There are hierarchies and there's power dynamics within those two chambers. And there's a great deal of deference that is given to the committees that cover certain areas, right? So you will only see certain bills introduced out of Senate Banking or House Financial Services or Senate Agriculture or House Agriculture. And so you need to look at the power rankings, not just at who's in those committees, but the power rankings and kind of who would be next in line in those committees. And, um, and Liz Warren will be moving up the leaderboards if we knock out a couple of her allies, um, uh, on banking. But at least she'll be in the Got it.

What would you say to someone listening to this who actually has no interest in crypto? Now, there probably aren't many of those people listening to Empire, but if you're sitting down with your, your cousin or something who doesn't really care about crypto but does care about the election and does care about politics— well, actually, specifically, there are probably 3 things I hear people talk about when they say no. Like, look, I'm not— there's no way I could vote for Trump. It's abortion. Uh, he's a criminal and January 6th. I'm curious how you think about the social issues and maybe those three, those three issues as well.

Well, I mean, I'm, like I said, I'm a libertarian. So I think I'm socially liberal. Last night, the debate was fascinating because, because Trump's answer on abortion, the most dangerous issue for him, he actually had a better answer than Biden did. And, and that's one of the— that was pointed out in some of the kind of post-game coverage, even on like CNN and kind of the liberal outlets, which was that's how lopsided the debate was. Um, but I think there's an important reason to that. Um, for that issue in particular, I'll tell you right now, because I've, I've sent this around to several Democratic congressmen, said, okay, if the status quo on this issue is it's all remanded to the states, right, and it's now a state's issue to resolve then would you ever propose something that instantly improves the situation for 50% of the states and the women in 50% of the states and does nothing negative to the other 25 states that are currently blue? And they know it's a trap and a trick question because it is possible to do so. They just would never introduce legislation to that effect. And It's because they want to use this as a political football. So like, I, you know, we don't have enough time for today to kind of go into the specifics here, but I have an 8-page memo on this particular issue. And again, this is part of the like creative unlock from Molly's piece, you know, quite frankly, which is this particular issue that everybody is losing their minds over. We could immediately solve 99% of the problem if there was any political will from the Democrats to actually solve it. They don't want to because it's one of the only 3 things to your point that they, they can win right now. That's how off the rails that party is. The other one is January 6th. Nancy Pelosi— there was just footage out confirming what Trump's been saying all along, which is he offered to send the National Guard there and she refused. And basically, in a film that her daughter took, said, we're responsible. Like, and this happened like a week ago or two weeks ago. Like, I— that's one of the things, one of the many things that has confirmed to me that we're living in a simulation, because like everything is breaking the wrong direction. for the Democrats right now, and they're getting exposed as liars for like some of these signature issues. And then the third one, he's a criminal. You know, going back to our friend Gary Gensler, you guys know that he was the campaign CFO for Hillary Clinton, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know that he signed the checks for the Steele dossier.

Yeah.

And you know that they ultimately settled a misdemeanor for the same type of fraud that they're now threatening to send President Trump to Rikers for. You could call me a conspiracy theorist, but I got all the receipts, man. Like, I didn't get into this and take these kind of risks personally, professionally, socially, if I didn't have every single one of the fucking receipts. And I wasn't able to clearly articulate step by step step how I've come to these conclusions. The fortunate thing for me is there's not really inner turmoil right now because I happen to think that, um, despite the rhetoric, Trump is closer to a libertarian than any, uh, political candidate that we've had in my lifetime or our lifetimes. But, um, I know that's not popular and there's a bunch of people that would disagree with me on that. I just, I happen to think it's true, and I probably agree with him on, you know, 95% of the core issues. which makes it a little bit easier for me. So I do recognize that if, you know, if you, if you are a progressive in crypto, that's going to be a much more difficult hill to climb than it would have been for me. But it's one of the reasons that I felt pretty comfortable, you know, advocating for some of these positions because I just, I already believe them. I just didn't think that I'd have to say them out loud as an operating CEO.

Yeah. And why do you think folks like maybe Reid Hoffman or Vinod this kind of the Silicon Valley elite crowd has been so vocally democratic.

It's a philosophical divide. It's a philosophical— I mean, um, I call them the real Bolsheviks of Silicon Valley. Um, there's a, there's a real socialist-capitalist divide. And the thing that pisses me off about those guys is it's all coming from people that are pulling up the ladder after themselves and using all their financial muscle, their political muscle to stifle dissent and the up-and-comers. Because I think if you took a poll in Silicon Valley of where founders and people in tech are leaning under the age of 40, you're going to see something that would alarm Reid Hoffman and Vinod and Ron Conway, which is why they're being so aggressive in stifling dissent right now and using 10-year-old cancellation playbooks that don't necessarily work anymore.

There's actually a trend in Canada, Selkis. I'm not sure. One of our new podcast hosts, post. Uh, this guy Felix Jovan is, is based out of, out of Canada, and he was saying there's this— you can actually see it. It's like Trudeau is losing in these historically extremely progressive spots.

And did you see Balaji? Uh, he had a tweet of the G7 leaders with their disapproval rates over their heads.

Yeah, I did not actually.

No, it's just brilliant. I think Trudeau is like -35, and, uh, Rishi was like -50, and Biden was like -30 or something like that. It's pretty funny. You should look at it.

All right. Yeah, it's just interesting. Like the young— this is something that no one really had on their 2024 bingo card is the youth actually moving more conservative, which is historically not—

that's, you know, I think conservative is— I think the reason that there's probably so much internal turmoil with so many people is I'll use myself as a perfect case study. I don't identify as conservative because conservative to me is a loaded word. It reminds me of all the social issues. It reminds me of like the wars, you know, like George W. Bush was a conservative. Like, I don't view myself as that. And then on the other hand, you've got all of the labels around like MAGA, MAGA, MAGA extremists, right? That's— that are being levied as attack. And you think about, you know, the protesters of January 6th. You think about the the folks that are at the rallies that are holding up the posters that are viewing Trump as like a god, right? And I respect the man, but I certainly don't view him as a god. I think there's a lot of folks, younger folks, probably the same folks that you're talking about in Canada, same people that I'm talking about in Silicon Valley, where I think Vivek, again, he came up with this moniker, at least it was the first time I'd ever heard him use it a couple of weeks ago, of like the this libertarian nationalist alliance, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I, I actually think is, is pretty profound, which kind of speaks to the heart of what you'd call like the America First movement under the Trump umbrella, but also why so many libertarians are leaning in that direction and do view Trump as more libertarian than anyone that we've had in modern memory. That's not to say he got everything right. He got a bunch of stuff wrong in his first administration. Which is why I voted for Biden. But, um, but I, I think in the second administration it's going to be pretty night and day. And he has otherworldly political instincts and understands how people have evolved the last several years. Part of his generation change, and part of it is he knows the next generation of conservatives probably look more like me and Vivek and folks like us. Than the conservatives under George W. Bush. And so whether you call it MAGA or conservatism or libertarian nationalism, whatever, libertarianism, I actually think that there's something really important there which speaks more to generation change and a lack of institutional trust than, you know, anything that would be traditionally labeled conservative. Once you get past the labels and you have a conversation, it's pretty easy. Right? It's just that very rarely do you have this amount of time to articulate it.

You know, it's, um, I actually listened to— who's the geopolitics guy that goes on, uh, I'm blanking on his name anyway, but I listened to this guy, a podcast, 4 or 5 years ago, and around the time that Trump first got elected, and he was mentioning that, you know, political parties in the US aren't stagnant. They actually change over time. If you go back to the founding of the US, you know, there's the Federalists and the— I think it was the Federalists and the Democrats. The Democrats would be the equivalent of the Republicans today, whatever it was. And he was talking about how Trump is basically— this is the beginning of the end of the modern, you know, political parties in the US. And even when I talk to my parents, they have an extremely different conception of what it means to be Republican or Democrat than what's on the ground today. And I actually was reminded last night, have you guys ever read that Naval Ravikant thing? Groups Never Admit When They're Wrong. Have you ever seen that?

No, but he's usually good about titling things well, and so I can, I can probably imagine what the thesis is.

He is. It's basically just individuals can admit that they're wrong, groups never admit that they're wrong. They prefer to just live in this reality that they were repressed. And what's much more common is a schism. And he gives this example of Protestantism in, you know, Catholics and Protestantism. It wasn't like, hey, maybe we should relax some of the stuff that we thought was really important. It you know, the body of Christ is not in the blood, and I'm gonna fight wars, you know, about that. And it just created this huge big schism. And what struck me last night at the end of that debate was—

I had—

I, I mean, it was crazy. I didn't, I didn't know what the reaction was going to be. Jason and I were talking a little bit about it before this podcast, but I think we were a little bit confused that people were so surprised about that debate. It's like, have you not been watching Biden? I actually thought he did better than I thought he was going to do. To. But, but it was crazy to see like the CNN host immediately just get on there and say, wow, that was horrible. Kind of like knife him in the back a little bit. And I feel like we're watching the debate.

You think it was an accident? Or you think this is premeditated? Moving the debate? All right.

So I, I don't know. I always—

it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like, I think it doesn't even matter. Get too spun up about that sort of thing. But I think I think the most likely scenario is that they wanted this debate early to be able to make the decision. They didn't know, they didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but they said, you know what, we're going to basically do this debate on these terms, and if he shines, great, we're good, and then we don't have another debate until September. If he doesn't clear a very low bar, which he didn't, then we're gonna have to make a change. So I think, again, it like Anytime you get more information, you can make a better decision. And so that's why, you know, any action you can take that's forward progress instead of just sitting on your hands is better. And that's why, you know, I've been going on offense because it rattles people when they're, you know, on their back heel. And then that's when people make mistakes. And that's when you can, you know, basically control the momentum, just like a sport, right? You know, fast-paced, fast tempo is usually going to, you know, kind of win you the game. I think the same is true in politics. but I want to talk about, um, just one thing you mentioned in terms of like schisms and like evolving parties. I think this is a really important point, and, um, and it's 100% true. I also think it manifests itself in a way that's not obvious at first blush because people look at RFK Jr. and they're like, well, why don't we just finally try to make this the year of the third-party candidate? And I think that's the wrong way to look at it because a much better and healthier and stronger way evolve over time is to have this kind of ping pong ball going back and forth over the net where whoever has the stronger coalition and is like more, you know, in tune with the pulse of the country at the moment, or, you know, they're the voters, you know, of state or local, wherever it is at the moment, they will ultimately win in a two-horse race. A third horse fucks it all up, right? Because it just creates like chaos, like three-body problem, right? Like, you know, it's just there's, there's too much chaos that ensues. So it's actually better to have these schisms and these slow evolutions of the political parties, whether they're called something different or, you know, whatever. But I actually have come around to this sense that like the two-party system actually does work. But what really works is when you peel off massive chunks of, um, the voter base from one party to the other. And I think that's what's going to happen this year. So like Nixon did it. It, um, 49 states. Reagan did it, 49 states. I think Trump is gonna, uh, I think he's gonna absolutely crush. I think he's gonna win 49 states. But, um, and I'll give you one reason why, and this is my next one.

49 states.

Okay, so I can, I can, I, I have one maneuver for you guys, and I'm going to make it my mission the next 30 days to use any accumulated political influence that I have to make this happen.

And I want you to maneuver in chess form, Selkis. What's our chess analogy here?

Okay, so, well, let me just— instead of— I mean, this is what I'm actually going to try to push for as best I can, and I'm basically like the, you know, retarded Jason Bourne at this point of politics. But the— so I'm not giving myself too much credit, but if at all this, what I think is a very good idea, could come to fruition, then it would be a really good thing for the country. And I think it would lead to 49 states. Let me know if you agree. RFK Jr. drops out of the race, endorses Trump, and becomes his Health and Human Services Secretary, which would give him oversight of the CDC, FDA, massive chunk of the federal budget. That's a problem in terms of how we're spending money and has historically been his sweet spot in terms of where he's taken on the administrative state and won.

So here's my, like, personal problem to give.

Well, first of all, first of all, if that happened, do you agree that that would be a game changer in terms of the numbers and the popular votes right now?

I think that it would have a huge impact on the popular vote. Yeah. My, my, my actual issue, like, you are very clear-sighted in being on the libertarian side of things. I, I have this problem where I hold two different ideas in my head at the same time. I can see the facts that you see. I see that the government comes in and messes stuff up and allocates capital inefficiently and makes poor decisions. But I also see that there's a problem with just letting things totally ride in the free market. And I actually just don't know how to reconcile these, these two things that I'm holding in my head.

I don't think— I don't— yeah, I don't think it's to destroy government. I think it's to give it the Elon treatment. It needs to be radically restructured and trimmed down by 80%, which is what But even Vivek has said that. Vivek is, again, I mean, I've gotten to know him a little bit personally and I like him and I just happen to think that we see the world in much the same way. I'm not kissing his ass or acting like a super fan. I just happen to share close to spot on political beliefs and frameworks to him, not 100%, but close. And, you know, even he has said we shouldn't eliminate the federal government, like we shouldn't eliminate, you know, every one of these federal agencies, but we can restructure most, if not all of them. And working out pretty freaking well in Argentina right now, I might add.

Yeah, I was going to say, Milei is doing pretty well.

All right.

Here's my— I guess if I had to. So here's what— here are the things that I like about this. Which is it does feel like there's a lot of things that are broken and a lot of, a lot of each, each thing it almost doesn't feel like is a, is a world-ending issue. But there are lots of— here was actually something I didn't love that Vivek said, which was he would abolish the DOE. And like, I have a girlfriend who's a teacher. Like, I actually— and if pre-crypto, all this stuff, you'd ask me if I was a single-issue voter, I would have said education. I think that's so important for people. Like, that's the key to unlock— that's just a family value that's been driven into me.

Okay, well, let me, let me, let me take that directly on. What if the funding that goes to the Department of Education was funneled back into the states and actually went into teachers' pockets so that they have—

so, so that's— I actually have been thinking that personally because I've seen how messed up it is. You know what? I've got on this tirade to you.

And basically the, the, the, the, the philosophical divide is between and the way to reconcile the way that I think you already think about things, the philosophical divide is between people that believe that certain things should happen and people that believe the government will never be the solution to ensure that those things happen. And so whether you're talking about the union leaders or the Department of Education or any centralizing bureaucratic force, generally speaking, they're useless and in the way. Not always, but just like anything else, they're use— there, there's going to be some really good operators and and a lot of really mediocre or bad ones. And the problem with government is there's never any accountability because there's never any market forces. So I agree teachers should get paid more. I agree that we need to fix the education problems, but the solution very clearly is not the Department of Education or they already would have fixed some of this stuff.

Okay. So there I'm inclined to agree with you. And here's an analogy that, uh, I would be curious if you like, you've probably seen this as a founder you know, CEO, entrepreneur, is in companies you often don't get real change until shit hits the fan because there's this really strong incentive where if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And it's kind of working. So do we really need— only when you're confronted with something that feels like an existential crisis do you say, whoa, what we're doing is not working. And basically every, you know, huge innovation at Blockworks has come from Jason Yanowitz being like, holy shit, we are up against a wall. We need to come up with a solution here. And we actually do make changes. And I think, I don't know, you know, if you would agree that basically all the positive innovation of blockchains has come from those moments. And I do wonder if there's an element that's facing the US right now. And it's a bunch of stuff. It's, I mean, stuff that wasn't even getting talked about last night. But one thing that I would love to see is people talk about food and the quality of what's going into our food, which is basically poison.

Do you like RFK's Health and Human Services under Trump?

Yeah.

So I say, baby.

Okay, so here's what I would love then, because I feel like there's a lot of like, tear it down. Okay. Okay, like, let's, let's like radically rethink how we think about all this stuff. But I want to see solutions for how to build it up to that. That would be my hope. I, and I think it's out there.

Let me, let me ask you the question. I mean, I know we, we compete on some, in some respects, but do you think that the country would be better off if Massari was fully empowered to run crypto information reporting standards or the SEC?

I mean, you guys definitely— I, I think so.

My, so my, my thesis right now is that there are dozens of Massaris out there in different pockets of different industries that could essentially run the same playbook that I want to run against the SEC to great effect and essentially show that there's market solutions that could make it easier and more palatable to fire 80% of the bureaucrats because the lion's share of the work could be done by contractors. And I can prove this, and you don't even need to trust me or Massari. You can literally prove this because this is already happening at SpaceX and what they've done replacing NASA's function. This has already happened with Anduril, Palmer Luckey's company, and most of the defense contractors. You know, the, the Pentagon is not building all their own it. Like, they're working with contractors, they're working with these big entities. And companies like Palantir and Anduril have shown that you can be an upstart and win some of that business from the government. Um, I just don't think anyone has fully operationalized this across the entire administrative state.

So you're talking about privatizing— there's probably, what, 500 government agencies, sub-agencies. You're talking about privatizing privatizing those?

Well, I'm saying let's look at what they do and what they are uniquely good at and what must be run from the government versus what could be delegated to much more efficient private market actors.

I could get on board with that. Yeah, one thing that would make that, um, again, we're wading into politics, which is like, you thought about this much, but I, I'm not pretending to sophisticated political opinions. But I would— what would make me much more comfortable with that actually is removing some of the, the money in politics. If, if you did this combination of like simultaneously trying to take some of the money out of politics and then giving over big parts of the responsibility to the private sector, I'm on board with that. That sounds like—

well, yeah, I mean, that's going to be easier said than done. I think the way that we're—

I mean, that's very tough.

Yeah, but, but I think, but I think the way that, that we're doing it, which is essentially— I think about it slightly differently in that that, you know, let's pretend for a second that you could just take the entire, like, crypto team at the SEC, to the extent that there is one, they just focus on crypto, and you say there's 1,000 people that are working on crypto, what needs to be solved? And then someone like us solves it. It's not necessarily that we're going to get taxpayer money because we already have a solution that works that doesn't net us a dime from the US government. But what we've done, if we continue to execute as I want to and as I expect we will, is we've essentially showed that you don't need those 1,000 people. Maybe you need 200. So it's less about how do you grift your way into replacing government agencies as a contractor and just like winning the book of business by, you know, stroking checks like Sam Bankman-Fried did, and instead it's you build the life raft and then you burn the boat, not the other way around.

I can get on board, guys. I've actually got another podcast that starts in 4 minutes.

So I just, I just saw Jana's facial expression when I just said that. Should be a GIF of like the exploding head emoji.

So, so because you got to understand, like my, my, I come from a political family and I interned for Ron Wyden on the Hill and my grandfather was a U.S. senator for 20 years and it was I got to— I'm— I'm— I got it. I got to process all this here. So, yeah.

Yeah.

So, because, man, this has been great. I appreciate you coming on. You're much more level-headed on a 2-hour podcast than a 280-character tweet. So I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, man.

They're all by design. They're all by design. So— but thank you. And yeah, I, I like and respect you guys. I thought for a very fleeting moment that I wanted to really come for a headshot, but I respect what you guys have built. You know, all credit to the Blockworks team. Keep up the good work. And yeah, thank you for, for, for doing a little extra time.

Feeling is mutual, man. A lot of respect.

Happy 4th.