🎙 105 - Crypto in Washington | Congressman Tom Emmer

it feels like almost no one in dc is fighting for crypto right now but you are why why are you sticking your neck out for us well because i know this is the future welcome to list where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance this is how to get started how to get better and how to front run the opportunity this is ryan john adams i'm here with david hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless guys we have a fantastic episode for you today we're

talking about crypto in washington dc how we win over washington dc for crypto and we're talking with a sitting congress representative today we're gonna go through five things number one why congress doesn't actually hate crypto number two what's at stake if america gets crypto policy wrong number three the answer to all of the shadowy super regulators we see turns out it's legislation number four why the digital currency path china is taking is totally wrong for the us number five how we win

over dc as a crypto community david fantastic discussion with representative emmer today what were some of your thoughts representative emmer is definitely one of those representatives who has no problem updating how he thinks about the world as new technology comes into it and there's a a line that i've seen pro crypto versus anti-crypto representatives uh to a straddle in the the or not straddle but the pro crypto representatives tend to be really like first principles deep philosophical

thinkers and really ground their positions in some sort of you know um idea about the world that goes down to seemingly the roots uh in contrast to the anti-crypto uh regulators out there that kind of just don't really seem to have a coherent uh stream it's very surprising very yeah just like kind of taking every issue issue by issue without having some sort of core fundamental principles that guides them through that and tom emmer's definitely somebody that thinks in the big picture and is able to zoom all the

way out and place crypto in its moment in history and how the united states as a as a nation can engage with this uh new technology uh in its in its holistic fashion rather than just like what it is currently which is you know perhaps not the version of crypto that we want to see in the distant future so i definitely appreciate tom emmer for that he is uh just a well respected in congress uh for uh just advocating for crypto uh and also has a pretty optimistic outlook for how crypto will

come to be a part of the uh government uh governance conversations for the united states uh he thinks that crypto is more better received than i think um i initially thought yeah and so um this was a fantastic conversation the fact that we're getting sitting members of congress on crypto podcasts like bankless you know that couldn't have happened three to four years ago and that is happening now so that shows you kind of the growing influence representative emmer also talked about the actions that the bankless community took the crypto community took in august

that actually had a massive impact we didn't see the impact uh that it had but representative emmer talks about that if you're based in the u.s this is a muslim episode if you're not based in the u.s this is also a must listen episode because this same conversation is happening in all of your governance bodies in all of your respective countries so this is sort of a microcosm of the conversations that are going on all over the world right now fantastic episode as usual david and i will give our thoughts on the episode in the post

episode debrief which is available to you if you are a premium subscriber talk about some behind the scenes stuff it'll be a lot of fun guys we're going to get into the episode in just a minute but before we do we want to tell you about these awesome tools for going bank lists from our fantastic sponsors when you shop for plane tickets you probably use kayak expedia or google to compare ticket prices so why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto when you make your trades you want to make sure you're getting the best possible price on your trade and that's why you should be using matcha

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bridge your assets to polygon arbitram or optimism go to app.slingshot.financeto trade and use the chatbox to share your trades with others and find other tokens to ape into bankless nation we are super excited to introduce you to representative tom emmer he's a fourth term member of the house he represents minnesota serves on the house fi the house financial services committee believes that free financial access is a core human right and advocates for crypto in congress as a result of that i think we've got some shared interests some shared values to

talk about representative emmer welcome to bank list how are you doing today hey good morning ryan david great to be with you uh and love the introduction i'm looking forward to the conversation well we love what you're doing in uh congress right now for for crypto and i want to start with this question just to dive right into it it feels like almost no one in dc is fighting for crypto right now but you are why why are you sticking your neck out for us well because i know this is the future and uh you know what i i seem to believe

in this uh uh concept that our founders had that government uh exists to serve its people the people don't exist to serve their government and crypto to me i first off uh to put in context because we were joking about the fact that my uh pop culture references are probably dated before maybe even you guys were alive right well you are coming in black and white too representative emma so it's fits it's it's all part of the uh all part of

the the conspiracy but the uh when it comes down to to me i've got seven kids which uh you know the oldest is uh 31 youngest is uh 20 uh about to be 21. i these guys have kept me very well grounded despite the fact that uh i really like my childhood i like my uh formative years uh but what i learned from those uh and i should also tell you i while i spent some time out east i

actually graduated from the harvard of the northwest the university of alaska in fairbanks alaska which gave me an opportunity for a period of time to literally live in the woods in a cabin with no running water and you know outdoor plumbing and wood heat and why is that important because i guess i learned that i'm responsible for me and i don't want the government making my decisions i i i'm capable of making really good decisions i'm capable of making really bad

decisions right and i've done both but i don't need my government telling me when i got into crypto uh probably seven years ago now uh and i've told this story way too many times but we had a staffer here who's now over on the senate banking committee aussie guy uh landon zinda uh we now have lizzy that you guys have probably dealt with uh she worked directly with landon but he gave me this book uh about seven years ago called the age of cryptocurrency and i i don't know how many of my colleagues

when uh a member of their staff gives them a book they literally take it and read it and bring it back but that's what i do and i loved it it's like look this is an opportunity i i see this is where it's going you know i had done this radio show with a guy who claimed he was a libertarian in fact he's an anarchist right uh all we ever heard during the show is shut her down she's pumping mud you know we don't need this we don't need that uh at the end of the day he caused me to look at it at our society and government in more

of a holistic nature uh while we have come through uh our world's history from the stone age to the agrarian age to the industrial age and now we're in the the age of technology right uh which is uh advancing in warp speeds think about this for a second uh the stone age you were scattered the uh the agrarian age and i'm short-circuiting it obviously for the uh for the students that are out there it's more detailed than this but for a very

crude explanation you've got the agrarian age where suddenly we have cities dense populations forming on essentially waterways because you bring the produce in from the field and you deliver it by water uh that's how our city started then you have the industrial age now you've got all the labor moving into these big cities everything is centralized guess what you guys are doing we are in the era of not only technology but decentralization there is coming a day when uh you know

the family that's lived on the family farm the land grant farm whatever you want to call it they have certificates from presidents like abraham lincoln uh they will stay on the home place as they call it because everything will have smart technology they will have a 3d printer so if they need a healthcare treatment for instance and this may be bizarre to people outside of this podcast but i'm going to believe that people that listen to bankless ryan

they know this is coming uh let's say i need a new hip well guess what with the technology that we're going to have uh as long as government doesn't get in the way and allow uh different actors to uh fence out competition and protect their bottom line if government will allow this to grow you're going to be able to have that hip transplant right at home because they'll print up the parts for lack of a better description the replacement parts on a 3d printer you'll

have robotics and you can have a surgeon who is remotely conducting uh this uh hip replacement from uh somewhere else uh that's the future and when you look at crypto taking it full circle now to your question why crypto this is facilitating all of that i mean uh you you've got web 2 which requires intermediaries everything throughout history has required an intermediary uh at least uh when we talk about our traditional

banking system there there was a day when you know you'd work on my barn and i'd give you a cow right and that we just dealt direct but now we have intermediaries and we're in this uh technology phase where uh you want to get your social content out there you got to go through facebook you got to go through uh youtube you got to go through twitter there's coming a day when you don't need intermediaries it will be uh decentralized and i'm gonna tell both of you with that long

explanation that's what excites me is that takes the authority away from the middle man and it puts the power where it should have been put well where our founders put it in the first place in you and me that's why it excites me and crypto again is the is facilitating that uh that development that evolution if you will representative emma i see a uh difference in a lot of pro crypto and anti-crypto politicians where the pro crypto politicians tend to be like uh bigger big picture thinkers uh and

more uh grounded in first principles thinking where the anti-crypto politicians uh i don't really share that same type of let's like mental thinking of just zooming all the way out and trying to put this industry in perspective so i certainly appreciate your ability to see this thing from uh the the lens that it needs to be seen which is a super super wide view so i want to get into the the schism that we see growing in in dc uh because there does seem to be t

people like kind of picking sides are you pro crypto or are you anti-crypto uh and there's definitely seems to be a lot of anti-crypto people showing up in dc and so i want to just pick your brain as to why do you think that is like why does why does it feel like washington hates crypto you know i i it's i i guess i don't have the same feeling uh david uh i understand where that comes from uh but to me here inside of this uh swamp uh

i think that it's a nonpartisan issue for people who literally understand it it doesn't matter if you're a democrat or republican what i just talked about i think you have people on both sides of the aisle uh in different i used this term yesterday i said we have members all across the spectrum and i said oh that might be a freudian slip i don't think i want to use the spectrum term but we have uh we have members who uh have different uh uh understandings of crypto and it's growing so if you

feel and i again this is not limited to you because i've heard it from others uh if you feel that there's an anti-crypto uh sentiment uh and that people are picking teams let's i i don't want to go there yet because i don't think that's uh baked in i think what you really see if you put in perspective that long uh answer that i gave you earlier it really is the pro-government anti-government split i mean if you were going to talk about republican and democrat in its most pure

form and by the way this has changed through time uh each party has been on different sides of this and i think we're in the process of another evolution of uh how the republicans are going to be in terms of policy versus the dems but as i got involved a democrat would typically believe that government should provide the best solutions to our problems a republican in the truest sense of the word again in my world would say that no the individual provides the best solutions uh available

i the truth is the answer lies somewhere in between right uh at least in our history it's people working with government and i think what you've got here you've got that what you would refer to as the pro crypto people myself uh looking at this thing and saying i'm pro people i'm pro people self-determinate uh you know this this debate about the size and scope of our government versus the right of an individual to self-determine as you can tell i always default to the individual

i and you left something out earlier at least that i would add which is uh fear there are people that are afraid of things that could happen uh and i think that drives them with their policy making too if they don't understand crypto so i'm pro crypto because i see this is where the financial system is going it's completely disruptive people are going to be able to do business directly with one another for full value without having uh our government skim off the top and those type and others by the way

then there are those that and again republicans democrats that are coming our direction they just don't understand it yet david i mean i'm going to tell you a lot of these people their first real uh involvement came last august when the senate had this so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill that the treasury secretary i'm told lobbied uh senator portman from ohio to include a tax provision that would apply to minors right crypto miners bitcoin

miners etc uh well the the thing was drafted poorly it cast a net so wide that uh you don't know how it can be applied by the way the number that they came up with some genius in the the government accounting office uh it came up with a number that oh we're gonna get x amount of revenue from all these people uh that should scare everybody but this is what drove it and i i tell you that background because what happened next

is uh those interested and involved in the crypto committee rained down on washington dc like they never have in the seven years that i've been here there there were reports of uh one senate office getting 30 000 calls in one day and what that did is one you've got uh government uh policy makers uh again i don't want to get into the partisan fight but it really is this hungry government looking for revenue so they can spend more and more money and

suddenly they've seen there's money in crypto we want some of that money you know the man wants a little bit off the top to fund everything the the man wants to fund that was the first thing the second thing was oh my goodness all these people are involved i had no idea i better learn this thing i better understand it we got years of uh education in a matter of two or three months and i i think those people

haven't made up their mind yet which side of this are they on and then to conclude david yes you do have a small group uh i'm not gonna name names uh people watch them they look incredibly foolish and ignorant when they talk during hearings about things that make absolutely no sense in the crypto space uh and someday you know those will be the ones that uh people say hey remember when you said the world was flat and that columbus actually went off on this journey that uh it was gonna end badly

well welcome to the 21st century it's uh people saying that the internet will never work will never amount to anything is a is another another equivalency in you know uh sticking to their fax machines but what's really cool representative emmer is because i think what you're referring to was um it happened with the infrastructure bill and kind of the push and the outcry from the crypto community and i've actually never heard it described that way from someone inside of dc okay so here we are at bankless and we've got like an entire crypto community who is passionate some of

these people are single issue voters right and we you know we told them many in the crypto community told them call your call your representatives make your voices heard it sounds like that shook washington a bit like we don't know if some of these messages are going out into the void and like disappearing or they're actually having an effect it sounds like they're having an effect in this case which is amazing the other thing i just learned is from your perspective it's not that there are a lot of you know crypto haters in washington there are some but there is a

vast majority of representatives in congress who are undecided and it's this middle area that we can really target but i want you to maybe um i guess make the case for us a little bit more uh the national case america's case so i want to talk about two things first of all what's at stake if america gets this wrong if we screw up crypto let's talk about the cost first and then we'll switch and we'll talk about the benefits but what's at stake here well a lot of people i mean this you know

some of your listings by the way you did make a difference i so just know that the messages you guys were sending out on your podcast your peers you made a huge difference because uh lobbying which has a terrible name here in washington dc can be done through paid representatives who are very good at it i know congress is not bought off by them they are a resource teaching members what they may not understand and trying to educate them

from a certain point of view so we can make a thoughtful decision but then there's also the citizen lobbyist and what you guys did is you activated those citizen lobbyists uh like i haven't seen in seven years since i've been here so you should uh pat yourselves on the back uh everybody in the community should recognize that they made a huge difference but their work has just begun uh what is at stake well this is the part that i don't want to be partisan for me it's uh it's u.s supremacy is the leader around the world

uh on a lot of different things but if you want to strip that away if you're one of those people that has grown up uh in a different era than i did right i had coaches who yelled at me i had coaches who shamed me i you know today you you wouldn't have a coach behind a bench anywhere if they did that to a young person the way uh the way we had so maybe you grew up saying hey it's not about us being the supreme whatever it's about the united states doing the

right thing and being able to compete the world over making sure that the members of our society people who are lucky enough to be americans or to come to this country and experience uh this great experiment and freedom that they be afforded the opportunity to create and grow anew i mean right now the big fight is do we really want to be like the communist party of china right do we really want to allow government officials in this country

whether they're at the treasury whether they're at the fed whether it's a combination of those those uh agencies uh and uh in the defense community right the defense community who they're so scared of everything that's out there that we have to give up our liberty so they can protect us i i said it yesterday to somebody and i've said it for years you can become a prisoner of your own security uh we need to take control of this uh ryan what's at stake uh your opportunity

to uh and people are going to think this is overly dramatic but it's not if you let the fed and the treasury do what i suspect they are off they have set off to do regardless of what their words are saying because this thing is already in motion if they create a central bank digital currency that is nothing more than a surveillance tool for americans much like the digital authoritarianism that's being practiced in china i we are going to lose not only uh potentially the dollar is the world's

reserve currency but more importantly we're going to lose what really makes this country special which is a place where you know you and me i'm i used to tell people where a dumb schlub like me can come up with this great idea uh this business plan and go see my local community banker in the tiny little town that i live in and go i got this great idea for a thing that i want to call amazon i got a great idea for something i want to call harley davidson or i want to call uh walt disney by the way all those companies

started in someone's garage that brian is what i think we're risking uh the loss of because if you think if people struggle with the concept that special interests right pay uh uh public relations people aka lobbyists to influence congress how are you gonna feel when we don't need those anymore because the government knows exactly who you are what you're doing every day because they can monitor your transactions they can

monitor where you're traveling and by the way if you have some new disruptive change well it's one thing to be fighting with uh bill gates for market share right uh he's got all the money but you still have uh the citizen lobbyists that can fight back uh what happens when it's the government that is all-powerful and they're the ones that are protecting their own market share that's that's that's what's at stake to me represent november i want to take a devil's advocate

stance here and put myself in the shoes of somebody like elizabeth warren for example uh because you listed off you know some companies that perhaps started in their garage and started building really really cool things but uh in the the difference is is those companies like apple or google that started off in their garage has much left less of a capacity to do harm in the way that we've seen inside of the crypto industry uh for example like you know we just had a 30 320 million dollar exploit that somebody

stole you know 320 million dollars of funds from this one thing uh in in the crypto space uh we also recently have seen an ex-felon be a treasury uh manager in in the d5 space who is completely anonymous uh and then there's also tether which is you know dubiously uh unknown to be backed and there's also usdc which has just much less regulations than a typical bank so like uh to i wanted to ask the double devil's advocate question about like all right like what about all of the scams like what about all of the craziness that's

going on uh how do you square that with representing that side of the industry well david i would say first off i the wild wild west that people uh want to uh uh claim crypto uh is i this isn't uh this isn't crypto from 15 years ago this is crypto from 10 years ago it's not crypto from five years ago uh you've mentioned some bad actors and by the way i don't care if it's the crypto space or

it's your your local church or fraternal organization you know what there's creeps and crooks everywhere i in does that mean that everyone you should assume is up to no good no no but that is the place for government right that's uh if there is a place it's but here we can over think this right uh like i had a colleague in our leadership meetings a couple weeks ago uh suggests that the colonial pipeline uh uh hostage situation where they uh

they paid the ransom in crypto right uh the uh he suggested that we only got some of that back no we got all of it back i mean we have the ability uh and we should empower law enforcement to do what they need to do to enforce laws where one individual or one entity is literally scamming or taking advantage of another or others right we should also have what i would argue is light touch

regulation uh in the crypto space i i think these sandboxes are the way to go with safe harbors right uh until you know what you're dealing with don't start uh regulating before you know what you're trying to regulate or the problem that you're trying to you know uh resolve uh you might need to learn a little bit more on the goal and then create guard rails as you see them and then to the elizabeth warren thing you know the place where uh and i amazed that i'd say this i i don't know

that we'd agree uh the uh by the way i loved uh our friend from tesla his uh back and forth with uh with the good senator uh that was really entertaining i i won't repeat it here but it was fun to watch on twitter we'll include a link in the show notes elon musk is uh he's got a sense of humor man uh and it's a good one but uh where we might agree the senator from massachusetts and myself is we have anti-trust laws for a reason uh and really i i just don't know

we've got a uh a department of justice that just seems to be so uh out of touch with main street usa instead of uh behaving like a political entity that does the republicans bidding when they're in office and does the uh the democrats bidding uh when they're in office you know their agendas once you start doing stuff for the american people you know when you've got companies that have gotten so large that they literally are killing competition in the marketplace that's what we had anti-trust for right

that's that's the idea is that you got to let everybody participate and i think the the senator from massachusetts and i might agree on that i last think david i i think you got to have a complete rewrite of the banking laws in this country this is not the 1930s we do not have the same challenges and you bring up a company like tether which unfortunately you know there are issues but you can solve an issue with tether by requiring reserves and and specifying what is a uh

a valuable and reliable reserve and what do you have to put up behind whatever it is you're offering so that a person that is uh trusting you actually knows that uh there's something backing up that uh that investment so uh there are things we can do but here's when you play devil's advocate i love it because in our committee you know we've got these guys aren't as detailed as you you know they want to talk about climate change they want to talk about uh you know everybody's dirty