LIVE: Trump Pardons Ross Ulbrict, TRUMP Offical Memecoin, SEC's Pro-Crypto Pivot | Alex Thorn

We have a Trump meme coin almost at $50 billion. There was a crypto ball in Washington, DC, and there's already movement out of the SEC and CFTC. To help me cover through all this news is Alex Thorne, who is the head of firmware research at Galaxy Digital. He's a proud Bitcoin flavored patriot, a New Yorker, and a regular patron at PubKe, the beloved Bitcoin pub located in Manhattan. Alex, welcome back to Bankless.

Yeah, David, great to be here. A lot to talk about. What a weekend.

Yeah, dude, I have never like every once in a while something happens where there's just so much news consolidated into just a few days. And Alex, you've kind of been at the center of all of it. You were down in Washington, DC at the crypto uh the crypto ball, uh, also just kind of watching uh all the shenanigans going on down there. Uh, I know you've been commenting on the Ross Ulbricht Parton. Overall, kind of just give me a vibe, a summary of uh your sentiments and thoughts over the last like four days of activity out of the Trump administration in crypto.

Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. Um, we were a sponsor of the Crypto Ball, and we were there uh that that was a celebration, I would say, of by crypto, for crypto, for Bitcoin and crypto, right? It was put on by David Bailey and David Sachs, um, and with a bunch of industry sponsors like Galaxy and MetaMask and

and Sui and Coinbase and um Exodus Wallet, Anchorage, I think, uh, and others, MicroStrategy, others that I

I mean, I think in the end it was many sponsors.

Um, that just started the weekend, right? Because the entire weekend was filled with events related to

the inaugural, um, some of them official.

Um, many companies, regardless of who is elected president, give money to the presidential inaugural committee,

uh, which then funds the celebrations and events all around the parade, security, all that type of stuff.

Um, and an enormous amount of the money that was raised for President Trump's inaugural community committee also came from crypto firms.

So throughout the weekend, there were events that we and others attended that

um

were filled filled with executives from crypto firms. I mean Brian Armstrong's Jesse Powell's um

uh Michael Saylor was all over the place. Obviously, David Sachs, uh, who's the incoming crypto and AI czar,

um, tons of others, folks from Bitcoin Inc. and

uh Sergei Nazarov, altcoin founders were all over the place. I mean, it was really

Very visible crypto throughout the weekend. I think overall the weekend was um very celebratory.

Um not, you know, some minor protests in DC, but nothing like

um what was expected. You know, you saw um

like local shop owners putting up, because they've gone through this before. And by the way, in many past inaugurals, one side or the other is,

you know, upset and that they they put up, you know, put wood on their glass windows. Didn't see any real issues while I was there, except for the fact that it was extremely cold. I know in New York it was extremely cold as well.

Um, really high security, really fun time, and um just a lot of

um anticipation about what is to come for the digital assets industry uh in this administration.

The last time we had you on was right after the election. And I remember you calling this the golden age for crypto, at least the golden age for crypto in America, because of what the crypto industry was anticipating might be coming. And like I said in the intro, we're under 48 hours in. There's already been a presidential pardon of Ross Ulbricht. Uh this SEC is already making moves. Uh is this what this looks like? Uh or are we imagining things? Uh, or is this the actual you you said it was the golden age of crypto. Is this just what this looks like uh coming down the pipe?

Yeah, I think I think we're off to a great start. I mean, I it's funny watching uh like Bitcoin Twitter, crypto Twitter broadly

sort of like

think that the president was gonna, you know, take the oath of office on like on a copy, a pocket copy of Satoshi's white paper, right? And that you would get like within you know minutes or hours, like action on on our issues.

Um, e even people were saying that, you know, the president, then nominee at one point later president-elect, now president, had promised to free Ross on day one.

And because it it wasn't in one of like the first like seven executive orders that he signed, literally the

in the first like eight hours of his presidency on January 20th on Monday.

People were already saying that he didn't keep his promise. Of course, he did pardon Ross during the first full day of his presidency. That was last night on

January 21st.

Um, look, the the president, even in the first campaign, he campaigned on two primary slogans make America Great Again

and Promises Made, Promises Kept.

And he's been, I think, already very um,

he's stayed very true to what he has said so far. I mean, some of his promises don't matter anymore. He said he would fire Gary Gensler. Well, Gary Gensler resigned, right? Um, he said he would free Raw State one, not.

I count that.

Yeah, ACAP will take it, we'll take it. Um, and not just um at

the Bitcoin conference, but also even before that at the Libertarian National Party Convention,

um, President Trump pledged to free Ross Ulbricht on day one. And he did.

Um, I think, by the way, that was an extremely uh for crypto. Obviously, look, I'm a supporter of

getting Ross out of jail. He obviously broke the law. I think a double life sentence plus 40 years is an extreme and egregious.

Sentence for what he did, I think,

um, and and certainly what he was convicted of, I should say, which did not include things like ordering assassinations. He was never convicted of that. As far as I know, they never found victims of those alleged crimes.

Um, so I'm supportive of it, but also I think it's quite bullish for

the promises made, promises kept. Now, I think it doesn't mean that he's gonna do everything that he said, but I think if he didn't do this, you'd really have to wonder

uh, you know, really have to wonder if he was gonna follow through. But of course, he did it.

Um, and was quite proud to say it, as you show here on the screen. So

um, yeah, and off to I think we're just off to a good start. You've got Mark Ueda as the acting chair of the SEC. You've got Hester Peirce, who will chair the crypto task force at the SEC, which I view as a just a normal, strong first step

to figuring out what they're going to do and sort of getting the ball rolling. That's already happened.

Um, so I view it as we're off to a great start. I think this is what it looks like.

Yeah, we have a Donald Trump Jr. tweeting out a picture of Donald Trump uh tweeting on Truth Social or truthing on Truth Social just saying, I called the mother of Ross William Ulbrick to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly that it was my pleasure to just have signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. I uh could not imagine.

Receiving that call of the mother of a son who has been in jail for 13 years, who was going to be in jail for a double life sentence plus 40 years. Uh, the free Ross Twitter account, which has been relentlessly trying to garner support for the pardoning of Ross Ulbrick, tweeted out Ross has just been granted a full and unconditional pardon by uh Donald Trump words cannot express how grateful for we are uh how for how grateful we are. President Trump is a man of his word, and he just saved Ross's life. Ross is a free man. And this has 62,000 likes, which is a very big tweet. Uh, we got this picture of Ross walking out in the parking lot, a free man with a bag of his stuff and a little tiny plant.

With a big old smile on his face. Uh, and I actually kind of want to just draw the attention to uh Lynn Ulbricht, uh, who I I I I I wouldn't be surprised if you have uh met her uh in your travels. Alex, I met her at Bitcoin 2019 where she was collecting signatures

for the pardoning for the release of her son, and she has just been pushing this movement forward.

One of the best moms that there ever was. I cannot imagine. I know Ross is happy, but I also cannot imagine how incredibly relieved Lynn Ulbricht was. What what would how would you place this into history as the legacy of the legacy of Bitcoin and the legacy of crypto? Ross Ulbricht, of course, founder of the Silk Road dark market, uh, which was known for selling illegal drugs and other paraphernalia and other things that would not be savory or legal to buy or sell in any any other capacity, and he went to jail for that for a big saga. We actually had the FBI agent who kind of led the arrest of Ross Ulbricht on the podcast to hear his uh side of the story, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Is that Chris Carbell?

Yeah.

It's it's a really uh I think poignant uh bookend to what I mean think about this the Silk Road at the time was