Crypto Needs Both Democrat & Republican Support To Survive in the US with Sheila Warren

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it's trustless. So this is a great feature that can give you peace of mind where you don't have to worry about if you lose your private keys and much more so. If you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and with me today's Sheila Warren, who's the CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation. Sheila.

American population. One in five Americans, one in five voting Americans who more specifically actually do hold crypto, So on some levels not surprising, but I do think the sort of rapid ascension of the topic is very surprising to a lot of people, for sure.

this election cycle so far. But then I think, would the industry have done this if there wasn't they count on the other side of the spectrum, Elizabeth Warren and the anti crypto army coming against the industry so strongly and unlawfully in certain ways that we almost had to do this.

maybe maybe not. I mean, but there's no question that that was a catalyst for this engagement and the sense that a lot lives and dies on who is in these offices. It does matter. It matters to not just business, I would argue even more importantly, it matters to consumers. It matters to those who seek to use products and services. And to me, look, I think we should frame this up in the following way, and this is how I

talk about it, which is Crypto's not going anywhere. There was a moment I think in twenty two which understandably the United States, there was this sense, you know, Tara Luna FTX like drama after drama, right, there was this sense, oh, if we ignore that, it will go away. And all those of us in industry knew that was ridiculous. But if you were looking at this as a third party, that's a we have to acknowledge there's some credibility to that.

Everywhere else is running. We know this, right, You've had rules and regulations that specify and have clarity everywhere else in the world for a long time now, but not here in that state. So that's the question where is it going to thrive, not whether it's going to thrive, And that to me is in part of political question.

issue and we're almost like forced to take sides. But you know, given the different events that have been taking place, Rocanna's roundtable, the Crypto for Harris town hall last week, do you see us making progress from your point of view that this can be a non partisan issue.

a couple of years now. So the idea that there's I think we be very careful and I think there's this tendency, especially in social media places like that, that allowed Nuance to talk about this as if it's a party level issue.

but I believe it because it seems very true. There are going to be more independent crypto voters than either side, I actually think, because that's vary in line with the philosophy that underlies crypto. It is a general matter, right, and those independents are obviously disproportionately going to be swing

voters to a large extent. Right, So the question becomes there's an outsized power that the crypto voting block, if you want to call it, that, the sort of single issue crypto kind of person is going to have an election. That's this razor thin than in other kinds of text. But the idea that this is strictly for Republicans, that there are no that's just all complete nonsense. Now you make a really good point, which is we are in a very partisan moment. How we got here? You asked

some good questions. I don't know. It's chicken and egg, right, who knows. But the point is we are in a hyper political moment where a neutral, non partisan technology, let's be real, it's a technology. Okay, it's not there's a political bias built into this thing. It's a neutral technology

has become hyper politicized. And my goal, and I think this should be the goal of everybody who cares about the industry, is to take that off the table, to make being against crypto as silly as being against you know, microwaves or whatever. It just makes no sense. So we have to get to that place. Otherwise we're subject to the vagaries of every election cycle every two years. Congress can turn over every two years. So what's going to happen.

We're going to make progress, We're going to beat it back, We're never going to get there. It has to be the case that we're almost politically agnostic. No matter who wins in an election, Crypto is going to be fine.

short sighted view. But that's where the fight is located right now, because it is not obvious what's going to happen here in the United States.

When you look at you look at the banks, you look at big tech, you look at pharma, you look at agriculture, you look at unions, you look at everybody. They are very thoughtful about what levers they pull, where they put their alliances, where they put their funding, you know, et cetera. And it's not a good look for the industry to be over aligned with one party over another. You have to be in a place where you're giving

credit where credit's due. You're you're a truth teller, right, You're saying, these are folks who've been on side these are ones you haven't. But the work, the hard work, is to get to a place where everyone's educated, everyone understands, everyone is you know, is on side, and everyone gets why this is a critical issue for American economic and national security and for American consumers. And you can't do that if you're thinking about this as a revenge move.

regulations through. Now, you were on that live stream. Tell us about your take on that movement and what were some of the takeaways.

I think you could argue a had a bit of a segment where, you know, Chuck Schumer, Senator Schumer was gracious enough to acknowledge the engagement there with me and then Senator stabanaw came on, Wiley Nickel, Congressman Nicol came on, Senator Jillibrand came on, these are people who really do understand this technology and have since twenty two and have put a lot of effort into understanding it and understanding challenges and problems and opportunities and all of that thing.

But they take it seriously. And I think that was I think the message. And so for me, you know, I felt, I felt I agreed to speak at it early on because frankly, I was a bit tired of the rhetorical postures some of the industry as somebody who is who thinks purple, who funds purple, who does a lot of purple things. It was very important to me

to kind of calibrate that. And I also, frankly wanted to give some credit to some of the unsung of folks who had taken the time to really understand this technology, who are democrats who have new Democrats. So I think that look coming off of Trump at Bitcoin Nashville, whereas I've said in many places, that was like an unbelievably it was a phenomenal wish list of everything we want right.

It was like boom boom boom boom, boom boom. That's amazing, and the goal should be to get the other presidential candidate to be similarly like minded, maybe slightly different nuanced, because the language you use as a Republican are Democratic a little different, but the concepts really should be the same. And I think that for me, the Crypto for Harris town hall event was a smashing success from the standpoint of demonstrating that up and down the ticket on the

Democratic side, there is support for crypto. There's no bucking the party trend or none of that. Like I mean, I don't think it gets stronger than the majority leader at current order of the Senate, Chuck Schumer's in office for a really long time, extraordinarily thoughtful and powerful person in Congress, coming out as on fire as he did talking about how crucial this is, so in my mind, you know, I don't know what the goals of the organizers were. I can't really speak to that, Like that's

a different question. But for me, that was the point to say, this already has purplish tone, and the job really needs to be to drive into that so that no matter what the outcome of the congressional elections are or the presidential we are well situated as an industry, we're well situated as a consumer base, you know, as innovators, so that we don't have to immediately assume that if one side wins, we all have to leave the country, right,

That is not and that's the work. And look, I get a lot of crap for that, and that's okay. People to understand the job. They just don't get it. And it's not my problem, but they're wrong, you know, because this has to be the work.

easier work. This is the hard right, I'm saying.

like American voters to side elections, they just do. And I go back all the time at this moment in twenty two October ish, we were sitting in a room's like forty or fifty crypto policy people and someone said, well, you know, when when the Congress goes completely red, then blah, blah blah blah. And I put my hand up and I was like, well, why do we assume Congress is going to go both houses are going to go red? Whatever I mean, people like the pitying looks I got, like, oh,

you poor child. Like of course, I was like, I don't assume anything until it's done. I don't assume anything until it's done. I was right, Thank goodness, we'd been putting in that effort with Democrats because you had a democratically led Senate, right, like, thank goodness, we've been kind of like trying to get there so we could we could at least get some constructive conversations moving and going

during that time. So, like I say, I think American voter side elections, we know it's going to be razor thin margins in many crucial races, including the presidential I would not have said that under Biden, quite frankly, but with a Harris Trump matchup, it's going to be razor thin and we don't know. So assuming or crossing fingers or blithely wishing into existence one outcome and not doing anything to prepare for the other outcome is silly, and it is short sighted, and it is also not my job.

So here we are now.

been treated and under that administration. At the end of the day. You've got to put the responsibility where it lies. Right, we can all look at Gary Gensler as the architect of it. At the end of the day, that Biden's boss, right, So that's kind of how that works, and so I think, what kind of his boss? It's more nuanced, but he got he's the reason he's in the role, right, So I think you look at it that way, and I

think it was eye opening. I really think that hearing that those personal narratives from people who have really tried to and these are everybody in that room with somebody you know, who tried to be compliant, who wanted to build in America, who wanted to build, who wants to be regulated, who wants to be legitimate, all of those things, right. There was not a single exception to that in that room. It's a very earnest group. And hearing the frustration firsthand,

I think was really powerful. And so tons of credit to Congressman Rocanna, you know, his team, for pulling that together, to Anita Done, for listening, for really engaging I think with that group. Now, of course, then you had the flip right where now you've got a new campaign, a new candidate, and.

have you done? What is there to show for all of this? Like we've been coming in for so long, We've said all these things, where's the outcome?

engaging there. Maybe it's a waste of time. You still do the work, but I don't know that you have the same optimism for an outcome or hope. But with this campaign, it's a different candidate, and every candidate shapes their own campaign, They shape their own policy, shape their own advisors. There is every reason to believe that there is a possibility of a change or a shakeup if that administration is the administration that winds up being in office.

And the work again is until the very last minute to push as hard as we can to make sure that if she wins, the outcome there is as good for us as it can possibly be, even if that outcome is not as good as the outcome for industry under Trump. That's not the comparison point. The point is you have to get it to be as good as it can be. And if you just give up and write off one party, what are you doing that is

you're basically seating everything to the enemies of crypto. You're just saying, you know what, we're not even going to try go ahead, Like that's crazy. So, like I say, even though my expectation is not you're going to get a mash up, You're not going to get like an absolute match in terms of what the Harris campaign, whether a Harris administration would do, and a trumpetration would do.

But that's not the work. The work is to move the needle as much as you can because we have the candidates we have, and we have to do the work to bring them along on the learning curve. Because again, I mean, you and I agree on thisas before. I firmly believe that anybody, we've all witnessed so many of those eye opening moments when someone really clicks into why this matters, and you don't go backwards, you never go the other way. So it may take more work with

some than others. That just means you have to work harder.

Gaza and Israel. I think that is a much more pressing issue for this campaign for a billion different reasons. She was a foreign policy vice president. I do think that's more sticky to her than Frankly, any economic policy. She was not an economic policy vice president. Allegations that everything Biden did is her just silly. But on foreign policy, you know, she was. She did a lot of foreign policy, and so I do think that's a very pressing issue

for this campaign. So I think that's the timing. When is she going to do that, I don't really know, but I would be very surprised to see language that's more specific than something like what Brian said, which actually that happened a lot faster than I thought it would. I knew they were going to get there, I just didn't know. I didn't think it be that fast. I was kind of angling that it would be post convention,

probably Labor Day ASH was the earliest. So this is a huge acceleration and what I even I thought would happen here. I think it's a testament to how many how much time they put in meetings they've had, et cetera. But like I say, that is a crucial pressing issue for her campaign for the party, you know, for a

million different reasons. I don't have to articulate because we all know, and until that is sort of I don't want to say wrangle that sounds terrible, but until until there's something clearer I think there, I don't know that this is frankly where her head should be, to be blunt right, Like I think we'd want the president, any future president United States, I would think would be having to think about our foreign policy positioning at at this

crucial time when you've got you know, leaving us. We all know it. When it comes to blockchain technology and crypto China, Russia, and arts create all of this is happening in the world. That is really, really, really important stuff because only the president can do that, whereas you can have cabinet secretaries and others that set policy for other kinds of things that are domestic. That to me

is a really important question. So, like I say, I don't know when any of that happens, but the sequencing there is what I am sort of expecting, and I'd be surprised to see it be any different personally.

I think that's unlikely, but it's more likely as you get a bill in the Senate and then you have to do it's called reconciliation where you look at the two of them and all. That the biggest challenge here, and I will tell you bluntly, in my opinion, we have the language. It's mashed up in different places. You know, it's not all in one tidy package. But in these various places, we do have the language, and we have to kind of frankenstein it a bit together. It's just

kind of how this works, sausage making. It's not pretty. The question is calendar and time. Do we have the time on the calendar? Do we have the floor days to go through the process is required to turn a

bill into a law? Open question. I don't know. I know that we were very close in July to getting that bill into committee and out of committee, and a lot of us wanted to see that, even though I think there were things we wanted to tweak along the way to see progress like that being made there, I believe three weeks in September where that can happen, and then you're closed to gangs. It's campaign season. Then you're in lame duck. So is it going to happen? I

have no idea. The September weeks are going to be crucial if the Senate can get something together. I think there is a very good reason to believe that a lame duck you'd get something through. If the Senate can't, then I don't know where we're going to be. So again, this is hyper politicized now, which is unfortunate because I do think if you think about this writ large, there is a danger that we make politics the enemy of policy.

And we have a champion in the House and Patrick McHenry that we have just we're so lucky to have someone that understands this that well and is such an astute politician at the time. We're very lucky and he deserves a ton of credit, as is his team and Gt. Thompson and the AG side in the House. You've got again these like very strong leaders who are committed. So

the House is ready to go. And Patrick McHenry after Chuck's Chuck Schumer's statements, I think he tweeted I found out from his office as well, you know, just that he's ready to have a conversation he'd love to talk to the Senate about about this getting this done. So you have a Republican leader who's publicly saying he wants to get it done, but you have a Republican party that is kind of like, well, we'd almost rather kick

the can until after the elections. So it's not unusual for policy and politics to clash sometimes, but we are right in the middle of that, and in my view, that is not a good place for us to be because we're not looking for tweaks. We're not looking for minor things. We're looking for big things that land the plane so that builders can build the United States. And that is critically important. It's critically critically important for so many reasons. Right, So if we miss it, here's the thing,

how long a people going to wait? How long are they gonna wait?

the industry goes there's that's not a thing. We're thriving regardless. The question again is where. And I don't want to see the United States missed out on yet another technological innovation because we can't land the basics of a regulatory scheme that is ludicrous and we have got to fix it. The future of the country, in my opinion, is at stick. I don't over traumatize this, but if crypto leaves, if blockchain technology starts to leave and get bill elsewhere, I

think that is potentially a massive national security issue. I'm speaking very bluntly. I think it is an economic security issue. I think it is a dollar dominance issue. I think all of these things are very, very very real, and that's what's at stake. So it's not it can't again going back to the Purple whatever it is, it has to be the case that we are we have some buffer against the vagaries of the political system in the

election process and that no matter what, we're okay. And I will tell you I feel very comforted that you had someone like Chuck Schumer come out and say what he said, and that you had someone like Brian Nelson come out and say that, because I feel like, Okay, now, if Harris wins, I don't have to be concerned that we're going to fight another four years of what we did. I have a lot less concern there than I did a week ago. And to me, that's progress. I don't

know why people can't see that. Some people can't see that. Seems really obvious to me that this is a good thing. But again I think people, you know, read into things whatever they want to, and that's their progative.

and people are fighting the policy fight. They again, they are distinct, but they're sometimes really tightly wound, and during a presidential election season is the moment they're tightly wound, but they unwind pretty quickly. And it's important to kind of know that there are people watching all of those different but also the legal side, by the way different. I didn't even mention that, like all these court cases that are being found crucially important work. So all of

this is marching in the same direction. And if all we're quibbling about is the tactics, I think we're doing okay.