Can We Fire Gary Gensler? with Rep. Warren Davidson

Self-custody is one of the things. If they can't cancel all of crypto,

they want to make it account-based because then they can control the companies uh more easily than they can control millions of individual people. I think self custody is really at the key to that.

Bankless Nation, we have an episode today with Representative Warren Davidson. He is an outspoken member of the U.S. Congress and an advocate for cryptocurrency. And hey, it's 4th of July in the United States. Americans call this Independence Day. So it's a good day to ask the question: how do we gain our independence from unelected bureaucrats who want to stifle this industry, who want to stifle cryptocurrency in the United States, which is, at its core, a freedom technology? A few questions that David and I raised today to Representative Warren Davidson. Why is Warren Davidson trying to fire Gary Gensler? What is the SEC stabilization act? Can we stabilize this institution?

Number three, is the US losing ground to Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong? How can it catch up? Number four, does Congress care enough about crypto to do something about all of this? How can we change the course? Is there good legislation coming forward in 2023 and 2024? And in these divisive times, I feel the need to say another reminder before we get in. Of course, even though we have a congressman on today's episode, Bankless is not a political podcast that divides on red blue lines. We have no party affinity in the United States or in any other nation. What we do care about, though, is the values of decentralization, autonomy, and power to the people that underlie this crypto technology. And so, to the extent these values are political,

We are also political, but we don't divide on party lines. We'll continue to give voice to crypto values no matter what political party they come from. We've had Democrat representatives like Richie Torres on the podcast, and we've had Republicans on the podcast like Representative Tom Emmer. And we'd host a Cynthia Lumus, a Ted Cruz. They're welcome here. So is AOC and Elizabeth Warren. We just want to have the conversation. And for my own part,

I have to say, I see massive value in this crypto movement for both conservative and true progressive values. So, with that said, we're going to get to the conversation with Representative Warren Davidson. But before we do, we want to tell you about these tools to help you go bankless. Starting with our friends and sponsors at Bankless Nation, we are super excited to introduce you to his first time on the Bankless Podcast, Representative Warren Davidson. He's a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 8th Congressional District of Ohio, and he's been serving in Congress since 2016.

You may know him most recently as the guy who created the hashtag FireGary Gensler and proposed the SEC Stabilization Act. Representative Davidson, welcome to Bankless.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. Big fan of your podcast.

Oh well, thanks so much. You know what? Um, I'm kind of a fan of this hashtag, I gotta be honest, and uh want to start there. It's been a frustrating year for us in the in the crypto industry uh for a lot of reasons. And one of them is the intense intense pressure from unelected regulators. Uh, it seems like the U.S. is squandering an opportunity here, and it seems like

Gary Gensler, the leader of the SEC, is uh the lead of the Calvary there in squandering this opportunity for the United States. As you can tell, Representative Davidson, we are crypto advocates.

We think this technology is important for the world.

And uh maybe let's start here with this hashtag fire Gary Gensler. Seeing this come out of uh a member of Congress was uh interesting to us. Can you tell us what prompted this uh SEC stabilization act and your initiative here?

Yeah, I mean it's uh caught on pretty widely with the crypto community, but it's a broader range of things that Gary Gensler has done

uh that highlight we don't just have um really a Gary Gensler problem. I think a lot of people are paying attention to that.

We have a structural problem with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So,

you know, he he he clearly has been bad for crypto. I likened it in hearings to

Hotel California, a little different because you check in.

Uh, but the commonality is you can never leave. People check in, they stay stuck forever, they go into endless discovery,

uh, and there's never resolution and clarity at the end of this. Uh, there's no escape.

And so uh that's something that this community's experienced.

And the other thing is,

while he's been super aggressive in rulemaking, on average, two per month. I mean, the only time that the SEC has been this aggressive in rulemaking

was right after Dodd Frank passed. And that was a major overhaul of the U.S. financial services space. So clearly there was a need for rulemaking at that time.

The only thing that happened here is Gary Gensler became the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And he just went on this really aggressive agenda.

And then he coupled that with.

Really short comment periods, sometimes as short as 15 days,

on rules.

And normally, you know, under the Administrative Procedures Act, that's like a 90 day period

where you solicit feedback. And I think everybody's kind of caught on. Gary doesn't want any feedback.

He's working to front run everything,

but he's put all these rules out on other things, but he's done nothing like that for crypto and digital assets. So that's kind of the paradox here between the two.

And he's done things on the one hand where he has no legal authority,

like the ESG rule, whether you think we should have

reporting requirements for environmental social governance

models for publicly traded companies or not.

Um, you know, there's no underlying legislation that provides clarity for that.

And he's just claimed it. And the Supreme Court recently ruled

that uh agencies uh can't do that. So the EPA was trying to regulate carbon.

Whether or not we should regulate carbon, there's no underlying legislation that gives the

Uh, the Environmental Protection Agency, the ability to regulate carbon, they regulate air quality, they regulate water quality, they have uh authorizations for all sorts of things in laws,

but not carbon. So they they uh had the clean power plan

struck down by the Supreme Court.

And I think the same thing would rein in

uh, you know, these some of these aggressive actions from Gary Gensler. So

um, with all of that, he's kind of front run

Congress where

He pretends like there is legislation for

uh all the clarity that he would possibly need to regulate crypto, for example.

Um,

and and we're trying to pass

a law right now, but he's actively working to block it.

And, you know, the

the enforcement mechanisms that he's used

have been selective as well. So the example I use is

you know, uh he reached a settlement with uh, you

know, the Kardashian Kim Kardashian for promoting an unregistered security.

Uh she paid a one and a half million dollar fine.

But the uh alleged unregistered security, Ethereum Max, had no enforcement action against that. So it's been incoherent uh on that. So he's front-running

uh, you know, Congress in that sense and and not providing clarity for the market. So