Speaker 1: Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. You're home
for cryptocurrency news and interviews. I'm your host, Tony Edward.
On your way in. Please let that subscribe button as
well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below.
If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify
or Apple, please be sure to follow and leave a
five star rating. All right, folks, we got to start
with the Claritiac because time is running out, but we
continue to see more folks are endorsing this bill. Here
today we had the former CEO of UK's second largest bank,
which is Barclay's. He called on all of Wall Street
to support the Claritiac. He says, I think we are
very close to passing it. We are working towards a
successful Claritiac, and he talked about how the bill would
unlock innovation, which would be very very good. So majority
of Wall Streets on board is just Jamie Diamond and
some of these banks, you know, the smaller ones, the
credit unions and community banks are the only ones that
are fighting it with regards to stable coin yield. But
mken about it. They all want even Jamie Diamond and JB.
Morgan for the bill to pass where they get that
legislative clarity and they can start building more. They are
already piloting and testing the waters a bit, but they
can't go full production and you know, pushing it out
to the masses yet because they need that regulatory clarity.
The only thing, as we've talked about, is the stable coin, Yeald,
which they're trying to get it more on, even though
they did get a compromise in the Senate Banking Committee.
But I don't think that's going to be a major issue.
I actually interviewed Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber today.
I'll be publishing that interview tomorrow morning. We talked about it.
He doesn't anticipate that the banks are going to get
more and that they're going to be able to put
up any more roadblocks because they already got a compromise. However,
the ethics issue is the big one, and Elizabeth Warren
is on the attack. I mean she's putting out a
lot of propaganda her and her cronies. Here, Anthony Scaramucci said,
the following Senator and Gego have worked out a very
strong bipartisan ethics provision. If the President of the United
States ultimately signs off, which I think you will. Who
will stand in the way of clarity. If the Democrats
or the gops who are in the pocket of the
bank lobby stand in the way, they will regret it.
In November. Now I've been talking about this, Crypto is
ready to deploy the war chest. So if it's Democrats
or Republicans who stand in the way, they're going to
feel it in the elections. And remember what happened in
twenty twenty four. Now, I know it's a little bit
different because people are not just voting towards Crypto, They're
voting for the economy and much more everything that's going on.
But still this money is going to be used in
many different ways, and it did not work well for
the folks who are anti Crypto, especially the Democrats, back
in twenty twenty four. But if they want to follow
Elizabeth Warren off the cliff again, just like they did
in twenty twenty four, go ahead. They're going to get
their butts handed to them come the elections once again.
So you know, as Anthony Scaramucci highlighted here, that updated
draft is sitting in the White House. So President Trump
and his administration are reviewing it, and our hope is
that he can sign off on it and the compromise,
and come Monday they can say, hey, this bill is
ready to go. It can get voted on next week. Now.
In my interview with Cody Carbone today, he did say,
we don't have enough time for this to go to
the House. So even if we get it out of
the Senate, folks, that will be a major win. So
there are quite a few hurdles within the Senate, so
hopefully they can fast track it. But if we get
the major votes in the Senate, that will be very good.
And he said potentially the House can vote on it
in September when they come back and get it done quickly.
And I don't anticipate the House is going to be
a big deal because remember they passed the version of
this in the House last year, right with over ten
Democrats supporting it. So time is of the s here,
and let's hope the Senate can make some progress next week.
Let's hope the President signs off on this ethics compromise
and we can get it done. Because Warren and many
of her cronies are fighting really, really hard, and I
love that Senator Cynthia Lummis is taking the gloves off.
She started calling out Elizabeth Warren on X. Here's what
she nicknamed her, Big Bank Beth and Tiger. She says,
Big Bank Beth hates President Trump so much that she'd
rather have no rules of the road for the digital
acid industry, leaving consumers vulnerable and law enforcement empty handed,
then take the win for consumers. So this is the
same strategy they use when she was in power under
Biden with Gary Ginster, no rules, no guidance, just let
it all burn, right, crash and burn. That's why you
had FTX happen, Celsius and much more if the SEC
was actually putting ford guidance working with the other agencies. Remember,
Against was always saying, oh, the rules are already there,
read already to do anything and blah blah blah. Right,
but he could have done it, but he didn't want to.
He was under Elizabeth Warren's marching orders. So same thing,
Warren's don't let this happen. Let's let the industry continue
to crash and burn, right. And then she's trying to say, oh,
Trump is going to profit off of it, which is
ridiculous because You're putting legislation in place to protect consumers,
and it includes ethics to stop any sitting president or
elected official from doing these things. So Elizabeth Warren is
such a hypocrite. And actually Lummis calls it out. She says,
let's get the facts straight here. Number one, she claims,
talking about Elizabeth Warren, the blind trust is a shell game.
It's not by law, and she names the law a
trustee is barred from disclosing trust holdings back to the official.
That's not a loophole, it's literally what makes a blind
trust blind. Read the law for yourself. Below. Number two,
she claims the Trump meme coin proves that president could
create new coins, but the Trump main coin was launched
when President Trump was a private citizen. The ethics ban
applies to conduct while serving. You can't retroactively ban something
that happened before the law or the presidency existed. That's
how the law in the Soviet Union work, not America.
So again, the glove's coming off here. She's really calling
out Elizabeth Warren. Number three, she acts like Trump's adult
children running roy Liberty Financial is some unpresidented dodge. It's
not federal ethics law has never imputed financial interests from
adult independent children, only spouse's and minor children. That's not
new to this bill. It's how conflict of interest law
was worked for decades. The facts speak for themselves, don't
fall for Lizz's lies. So, yeah, we've been talking about it.
Elizabeth Warren completely lying, trying to make it all about Trump,
when in fact the legislation would help curb any of
that concerns that she has. But she's just lying, right,
because it's just a political attack and trying to sway
people for the midterms. Now. A Lummis also went on
CNBC and called out the banks. She says, JP Morgan
and the big banks are trying to kill the Claritiac
because they simply cannot compete. Here's a quote. They view
it as competition that will hurt their ability to sustain deposits.
I disagree. They should embrace digital assets. Bitcoin will be
the financial system of the future and a new financial landscape.
They are about to go extinct. Wow. Now again, I
mentioned earlier there was already a compromise on the stable
coin yield that was done in the Senate Banking Committee,
which was partially broken by a Democrat Senator Angela also Brooks.
So the banks are just full of it, right. They
just they got a cookie and now they're asking for
a glass of milk. They just want to keep pestering
and trying to get as much as they can because
they want to keep those big bonuses. They don't want
to compete. Now, if you remember, I believe about a
couple months ago, I reported that the National Sheriffs Association
they were really coming out against the CLARITIAC, and they
were the only law enforcement agency to do that, because
since then we've seen about five to six others, such
as the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Fraternal Order
of the Police, and many others. Right just yesterday we
talked about the Major Cities Chiefs Association all endorsing the CLARITIAC. Well,
the major county sheriffs recently had went neutral. They said, okay,
we're not against it. We believe we can work something
out here. Now they're completely you know, doing a one
to eighty thing. No, we don't endorse it. This is
a threat to public safety, all kinds of nonsense. So
from the beginning, I said, somebody's pulling the strings here.
There's some connection to either Elizabeth Warren or the banks,
which one could argue is the same thing, because Elizabeth
Warren works for the banks. So somebody's pulling the string
here for them to come out and say that, because
that's such an asinine statement when the industry is not
regulated at all, and you're trying to say this is
not a good bill, and it's like, wait, would you
have rather nothing or something? So these guys are not
making sense. But again, a lot of the public they
don't know these things, right. I don't expect the average
Joe and Jane walking down the street to know this,
but they may catch a headline, a tweet, you know
something that Elizabeth Warren says on video which is a
flat out line, But they wouldn't know better, right, So
that's the game here. So Patrick Wit, executive director of
Crypto at the White House, says, it's not clear why
the National Sheriffs Association is so radically out of step
with the broader law enforcement community. So this is very,
very weird. Again, you have the majority of these law
enforcement agencies saying, yeah, let's get this done right, and
no bill is perfect, but you got to start somewhere,
and you can iterate and add things over time. So
someone is pulling the strings there. This smells fishy. And
again they had went from again to neutral. Now they
went back to against. So again the timing with what
Elizabeth Warren is doing and much more. You know, it
kind of makes sense, all right, folks. Moving ahead, Circle,
the issuer of the US d C stable coin, has
been officially granted a trust charter by the New York
Department of Financial Services. So huge win for them, So
lets them offer a fiduciary and custody services under New
York banking law. Big win for Circle as the largest
US the stable coin issuer in the United States. We
know Tether is the largest stable coin company in the world,
but Circle is the largest here in the United States.
Obviously they're public now and they continue to expand and
do some incredible things. So this is again why Jamie
Diamond is shaken in his boots, because he's going to
lose market share because these native crypto firms are getting
bank charters and licenses. And of course Jamie doesn't want
to compete, want to keep He wants to keep those
big bonuses right and give you the Breadcromb zero point
zero one percent interest while they pocket the majority of
the interest they earn parking your funds at the FED.
So huge news here for Circle folks. Quick word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by Fortax. Guys, Let's
be honest. The crypto market has been moving sideways.
Speaker 1: For a while now.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are just sitting on their coins
waiting for the next big move. But while you're waiting,
your crypto is just sitting in your wallet doing absolutely nothing.
That's why I want to mention one of my longtime partners, Fortax.
Instead of just letting your assets sit idle, you can
put supported cryptocurrencies into fortestx liquidity pools and earn daily
rewards while still keeping the flexibility to withdraw whenever you want.
One of the reasons I've continued working with them is
because they keep delivering. The team is public, they've successfully
completed Cyberscope team verification, KYC, past independent security audits, and
the platform has been building consistently for years. They focus
on long term growth, transparency and security rather than hype.
In a market like this, it makes far more sense
to have your crypto working for you instead of letting
it sit idle in your wallet. I've worked with fortest
x for a long time and if you're planning to
hold your crypto anyway, I genuinely think it's one of
the smartest ways to put those assets to work. And folks,
I know security is very important to all of us
as we hold our crypto assets and they are fully
audited by certic and they are sec registered and much
more so, you got to check out fortax. Go to
fordesx dot fi slash x slash thinking crypto link will
be in the description.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, some not so good news I have
to report, and this one really sucks because it's a
hack of self custody. So I don't know how many
of you who watch or listen to this podcast use
cold Card. I've personally never heard of them. Honestly, I've
used Treasure, I've used a l as far as hardware wallets,
I currently use Treasure, and I really feel bad for
the people who got their money stolen. So are apparently
forty million dollars worth of bitcoin was stolen after five
hundred cold card hardware wallets were hacked. So this is
not good. And the folks at Galaxy Research are saying
it could grow up to seventy million dollars. So it
was specifically around bitcoin. The firm said nearly twelve hundred
addresses were drained of more than one thousand bitcoin worth
seventy million dollars in transaction. It linked to a vulnerability
affecting cold card hardware wallets, so guys be careful out there. Again,
I've never heard of cold card, and maybe I missed
it somehow, but I know the larger hardware wallet companies
were Ledger and Treasure, which you know, are big companies,
well known, have more resources, larger teams, and they do
you know, ongoing security updates. And look, I can't say
that any hardware device is one hundred percent full proof,
but at least you want to go with companies that
are well known. Again, they have public disclosure, public accountability
and all these things. But this really sucks. And look,
I can imagine the trad five folks. They're going to
come out and say, come with us, come via our
et apps and our products. We have the proper custodians,
we have the proper security, we have insurance, and you know,
I've often stated that the majority of the mainstream people
will go that direction because seed phrase management and these
things are very difficult for them. It's it's very intimidating. Now,
crypto obviously gives the ability for you to be your
own bank and to own your private keys, and I
personally do that. But I would count myself as someone
who's tech savvy, who has gone through the ups and downs,
who is living in breathing technology and cryptos. So I'm
up to date with all the things like a potentially happen,
and I know how to move my funds, and I
have multiple layers of securities and these things. While you
know an average person who's like, Okay, I'm gonna use
this hardware wallop, put my stuff away, put my keys
here and there, and they may you know, leave it
and forget about it and then all of a sudden
their funds are gone. You know, you know, that could
be really bad. But this is where we're kind of
in the dial up phase of DeFi and self custody.
We have to get to that broadband phase and where
the user experience is more easier, and maybe AI can
be leveraged to help monitor all these things and to
add an extra security layer. You know, there's been talks
of different crypto companies doing vaults, splitting up the private keys,
so even if one key is compromising, they can't the
hacker can't move the funds without the other two. I
think that's probably a model that's gonna work better over
time versus you individually controlling the private keys. I don't know. Again,
I control my private keys one hundred percent and that
has worked for me. And again I use Treasure, I've
used Ledger, large companies who have been doing this for
a long time. So just be careful out there, folks,
especially with a smaller firm, a smaller wallet firm. I'm
not trying to say that they can't be good and
it's not possibility for them to protect your funds. It's
just they may be more at risk because they may
not have all the resources and then know how and
things like that. And this really sucks. But I think
Tradfi is going to come in and use this as
an opportunity. But with that said, the other firms like
bit key, Ledger, Treasure, Jade, and other bigcorn hardware wallllets
reported they were unaffected by this vulnerability. So just something
you should be aware of, folks. Okay, final news item,
unit Swap launches Earn with Morpho to let users earn
yield on idle crypto assets. So this is great. Obviously,
the sponsor of this podcasts, fortess x, is offering the
same thing, and I'm a user of fortest x and
they're SEC regulated and they're audited as well. So Uniswap,
which is a decentralized exchange, has teamed up with Morpho
to launch Earn, a new lending product that lets users
earn yield on idle crypto assets directly within the uniswap app.
The product uses three Gauntlet curated Morpho vaults and allows
users to deposit and withdraw instantly while keeping full custody
of their assets uniswap set. So this is really great
and the ability to put your assets to work and
earn yield is huge. That is one of the strategies
I use in the bear market. So I'll take my
proof of steak tokens, of course, lock more of them
up to earn the passive yel eat Solana or others
as well. And then there's some stable coin yield programs
that I'll you know, put more money towards, and you know,
while the prices of the assets themselves are going down
in a bear market, not excluding staple coins. Of course,
you know, you can still earn those passive rewards and
grow that your portfolio holdings around those assets. You can
even cash it out if you want. I personally don't
cash it out. I just let us sit there because
I'm you know, looking to make as much as I
can in the next bull market. So these are things
you want to explore. Obviously, do your research. Obviously, make
sure it's a trusted platform. You know, for example, I
do use some exchanges for the staple coin yield stuff
like coin base and uphold, and those are obviously very
well known. They have insurance and all these things in place.
So you want to do your research, you know, before
you lock up your tokens. And maybe you just put
some of your tokens, not all. So let's say you
want to stake some eth right. You may have some
eth in long term, and you keep that in a
hardware walling and you put a little bit on the exchanges,
lock it up for staking. So that's earning, and if
anything ever happens, you're not losing all your eth right,
just just as an example, So something to think about, folks,
that's the news. Let me know what you think. Leave
your thoughts and comments below, hit the thumbsup button subscribe
if you haven't as yet. Once again, tomorrow morning, I'll
be publishing my interview with Cody Carbone, the latest Clarityact
timeline that guys you need to know about. I think
you really want to watch it because it's a realistic
timeline and it's actually probably gonna be a little bit
disappointing for some of you, but overall, it's not the
end of the world. It's still things that are gonna
happen in twenty twenty six, but time is running out.
But anyway, you guys are going to get all the
details tomorrow, so make sure you're subscribing. A notification bell
turned on. Be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter.
It's on Substack. Check out my book on Amazon. It's
available in paperback in digital. Grab a copy. And if
you want to expand your knowledge around crypto, check out
my course at mycryptocurse dot com. All the links will
be in the description. Folks, thank you so much for
tuning in. I appreciate you all, and I'll talk to
you all later.