Coinbase Vice Chair Ryan Vangrack Talks CLARITY Act

0:00For Begrim, one of Thailand's oldest established companies, growth does not begin with a deal. It begins with trust. Later in this podcast, hear how that approach has taken the company from Thailand to South Korea and the United States. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. US Senators are set to take a critical vote on the crypto industry's top priority when they return later this month. Firms like Coinbase have been working with lawmakers to get the clarity act legislation passed. So let's bring in Coinbase vice chair and head of corporate affairs, Ryan Van Grack. He says the dog days of clarity delay are over. So you were in town here. You just came over from Washington, DC. What is your confidence that this will get resolved before the midterm elections? Give us your odds. Yeah, well, the important thing is that it's time to stop talking and start voting, right? Over the last few weeks, what we've seen is actually a broader coalition of groups,

1:00law enforcement, major wall street heavyweights and millions of crypto voters coming together because they've taken the time to digest what's in this bill and they realize it's critical because after a year of bipartisan negotiations and compromise, the Senate is faced with a very stark choice. Do you adopt comprehensive federal oversight in this space? Or do you stick with the status quo and the status quo prevents a stark contrast, which is to say, if you fail to pass this bill, the Senate fails to pass this bill, you get no new consumer protections, you get no new law enforcement tools, you get no new framework to help address illicit finance. So I'm hopeful that senators will elevate policy over politics and get this across the finish line. But if they don't, if they don't and midterm elections come and go, what's the plan? Well, it's important to keep two things in mind. First, the last year and a half have been a sea change for the crypto industry. You look at the pace of innovations and even what's happening at the regulatory level.

2:01It has exploded domestically and abroad. You see regulators like the SEC and the CFTC making very clear that they intend to issue and propose rules in this space and it's very unmistakable internationally that there's progress being made both with international regulators and with innovations like tokenization and agentic trading. So the pace of progress is going to continue and accelerate. It's simply a question of whether Congress can keep pace. Do you see the banking industry giving any ground since the last time we thought we were really close? Well, it's interesting because it's not a surprise that incumbents would fear competition and takes an issue with innovations and providing more choice to consumers. But if you look beneath the surface, you look at the reality, not the rhetoric. It paints a very different picture. Just a week or two ago, about two dozen major banks announced a consortium to issue a new stablecoin. And the reason that's critical is because it shows

3:01that traditional finance is no longer asking whether they should be engaging crypto. They're asking how. And that's something that we at Coinbase identified over a dozen years ago and we think inevitably they are moving in our direction and recognize the importance of this technology. Okay, so let's look beyond clarity. Let's say it does get past what's sort of the next big hurdle for you and the team at Coinbase. Like what do you still need to see from lawmakers? What do you still need to see from Washington beyond this bill? Well, I think of opportunities not hurdles. But if clarity passes, people forget. The next step is rules and regulations that flow from clarity. You're going to see the SEC and the CFDC very active in enshrining some of the principles that we have in place. Now that's from the DC side of things, but in terms of innovations and developments, areas like tokenization, like agentic trading are going to continue to accelerate domestically and internationally. That's gonna happen whether or not clarity passes. Now speaking of the SEC Coinbase last week

4:03filed with the SEC and CFTC to offer single stock perpetual futures for US investors. You already offered them internationally on seven stocks with up to 20 times leverage, which is just kind of mind-boggling. The CME just launched single stock futures across 50 names in July. You are now asking regulators to let retail investors make leveraged 24 or seven bets on individual stocks without owning them. We were talking earlier about the feud between Robin Hood and AMC. How is what you're doing different from what Robin Hood is doing with synthetic tokenized stocks at AMC called contemptible among other choice markets? I think there are two distinctions that I want to make. First, when we talk about tokenizing stocks, for example, having a digital representation, what we are doing at Coinbase internationally is we're making sure that these are essentially one-to-one backed, that you're not getting some synthetic representation, but you actually get the underlying shareholder rights, including the ability to vote and have dividends. That's an important part of what we offer, I think that's an important part of the future

5:05of tokenization, but it's also worth underscoring that talent and innovation flow where rules are clear. This is already happening internationally. The question is not whether tokenization is going to occur, it is where it is going to occur, and we should want the benefits of the innovation to happen domestically, but we should also want the influence of American regulators to ultimately have a major leadership role in the space, and in the absence of speaking, other regulators are going to react, and that's never been how America has addressed the financial system, I think. We think that's a mistake in this ecosystem. Speaking of talent, I want to talk Anthony Armstrong, no relation to Brian Armstrong, but you added Anthony Armstrong to Coinbase's board, you see FO of X and XAI, he was Morgan Stanley's head of tech, M&A, he advised Musk on that $44 billion, Twitter deal, he was a senior advisor at the Office of Personal Management during the Doge era, so his list goes on, I'm curious about a Musk ally, a Doge veteran, what do they bring to a crypto exchange?

6:05Well, you could have even gone on longer. Anthony Armstrong is a massive win for Coinbase and for the industry, he brings decades of knowledge on how to build and scale financial infrastructure across a variety of ecosystems, and the reason that's so applicable is because crypto and Coinbase are not one unique thing. We've offered this everything exchange, where you can buy crypto, stocks, perpetuals, prediction markets, you name it, we likely are offering it or trying to build it. Someone like Anthony Armstrong appreciates and has the vision to scale that across multiple sectors. And so his biography, his background, it's exactly what Coinbase and crypto needs at this day and age. What will point you stop calling Coinbase just a crypto company? You mentioned everything exchange, you've had a lot of personal changes, you've brought on folks like Anthony Armstrong, 88% of your net revenues now comes from sources other than Bitcoin spot trading, is this everything exchange idea and evolution or an emission that the core crypto business

7:07isn't doing it, isn't enough? No, it's certainly a former, not the latter. It is number one, an acknowledgement that we are more than just crypto, right? We are a platform that allows people to, essentially have a one-stop shop for all things finance. Land, borrow, there's so much that you can do, even now we have a mortgage-related product on crypto. It's not a suggestion that crypto itself is not enough, that technology is being adopted, as I said, across the financial space, it is the up level, it is the future of finance, but that is going to underlie all of the financial rails. What matters is what we build on top of it, and Coinbase is taking the lead position and making sure that we are first and foremost building on top of that platform. So whatever you transact in, you could do it more effectively and more efficiently on Coinbase and with crypto. Ryan Van Grekk, thanks for visiting us in person. It's good to see you here, good to see you. In New York City, come visit us again, we do appreciate it. Coinbase, vice chair, head of corporate affairs,

8:08Ryan Van Grekk. A new chapter in global growth is being written and much of it is happening in Africa. Africa needs to invest. There are deals to be done and business to be won. I'm Jennifer Zabisagia. Every week on the Next Africa podcast, we track capital flows and political shifts shaping the continent's future. The digitalization of Africa is going to power its growth. Providing the world of something like HIV is possible. Population growth is so enormous in Africa. Listen to Next Africa on Apple's Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.