War Hits Banks Triggering Crypto Escape🔥CLARITY Act Odds🚨Ron Hammond INTERVIEW

0:00We are in the middle of two wars out there right now. We're fighting clarity. We're also in the middle of a Iranian conflict. All this is going to play into today's episode before we get started. Do you want to thank our sponsor? And that is Tangum. This is where you can get into Self-Custy. And if it is the first time that you've ventured into Self-Custy, this is the place to go. So check it out. Use our link down below. It's going to give you a little bit of discount to get started. And remember that with Tangum, this is like one of the easiest wallets to set up. It's a little credit card. It works with your phones. Super easy to get going. You guys are going to love it. And if you never tried Self-Custy, this is the way to get going here. I'm going to have Ron Hammond joining us here at a minute. But before we do that, I want to kind of just showcase a couple of things that are happening. And you guys will have to excuse my voice. I'm a little under the weather. But hopefully coming back here. But we are seeing more targeting of economic and banking interest in the regions during the Iranian conflict. And this, of course, is getting into a major issue

1:02with some of the GCC states and countries right now. And what this is going to do with the rest of the markets. Because this is also having now an impact on data centers, banking, finance, economic conditions that are even beyond that of crypto. And even though we are seeing a lot of activity coming from crypto, I want to go to a clip that kind of explains a little bit more about this. Take a look. Foreign Minister of Iran said that the country's oldest bank was bombed. He also was promising payback of some kind. The Iranians say there was an air strike there that killed some people that were counting late into the night. In retaliation, they want to target financial institutions and banks. And that's no problem, addicts. Iran had already identified these firms as potential targets. And we advise people to stay at least one kilometer away from the banks in the area. City bank closes branches off the runs red. City bank has come up to say, and I quote, only one branch is open on Thursday. HSBC has temporarily closed all branches in Qatar. Standard Chartered has one of its most important

2:04regional bases there. At Goldman Sachs, employees across the region are also working from home. Dubai International Financial Center hosted more than 290 banks, 102 hedge funds, nearly 500 wealth management firms, and 1,289 family-related entities. I want to bring Ron Hammond in to kind of break this down a little bit. Ron, how are you? I'm doing good, Paul. I'm actually recovering from something as well. So hopefully I'll see you on the other side feeling better as well. Man, it's been bad. This one's been really good, bad. So listen, I get a lot of things to ask you, though. A clarity act. I'm looking at the polymarker right now. This is the one week. And we're still holding. Right now, I guess it's about 60%. But it hasn't been moving much with all the things that are happening right now. What do you feel is the current status and any catalyst that could possibly get this off of that kind of deadline right there around 60%? Definitely. So I would say the polymarker is still at least

3:06compared to a lot of the sources I'm talking to within DC as well as myself personally. I think it's still pretty high at 60%. I'm per se around 25%, 30%. No, I'll call my peer. Okay, see you would say. That's actually pretty high. So as we're kind of seeing with the Iran War, this is a great example of a lot of things are common as you can plan for a head time. And a floor time is very, very valuable. And so that's why we saw the Genius Act, for example, last year, become one of the first bills go out of the gate because they understood a lot of things in politics can really derail crypto legislation, let alone housing and all the plethora of other bills out there, kind of this limbo holding powder right now. And so the idea that you don't really have to move when the iron's hot and try to do it the kind of more the first time of your administration the first year, that's usually the critical time. So if you put things on the back burner, of course things like, in this case war, can delay action and control down to all these other policy issues because everything becomes under the lens of Iran or Middle East or energy markets and such. And so there's a huge focus on that in DC, obviously a lot of political capital to use it

4:06for your purpose or whatever party you're with. But at the same time, I'd say at least clearly right now is doubly subject to the whole political macro sphere of it just takes up a lot of time. And we'll go this later on, but the housing bill is a good example of just how sometimes floor time is really precious. And the closer we get to, I'd say August, that gets really dangerous because we need the Senate to have at least probably a whole week dedicated to voting on this, but we're not even at that stage yet. We still have a committee vote and markup. So we're still a couple steps out. I'm still less than volume market at the current moment. But the last thing I'll say is that you got the right players lined up here. So this can really turn on a done quickly and really move forward fast, especially with the White House involved if they do come to some agreement on some of these sticky issues. But right now, it remains to be seen. Obviously what we're looking at right now is what's going on in Iran. Is this taking any wind out of the sales? You mentioned a little bit about that. But are we actually seeing now where senators and Congress people are setting back and saying, listen, we got bigger fish to fry here. We're gonna have to slow this down.

5:07And we can't get through this. Are we seeing any of that kind of comments yet? Not in this way of saying, we got a positive crypto bill entirely, but more of, hey, we got more pressing matters on our hands here, even though Congress has given up a lot of its foreign power authorities here and their war authorities here. They still want to be read in. They still want to be looped in. They still want to communicate where they believe it's right or wrong. And so it does take up time, unfortunately. And that does take away from other priorities, including crypto. I think the more, you know, unfortunate angle here is that a lot of the detractors are crypto or maybe some of the folks on the fence trying to support the market structure bill see this kind of political moment and say, well, this is a good time to have more additional AML or KYC provisions added. Or, hey, we need to actually have more data collection on this matter. Maybe we should really shut down more on the self-custee side of things. You know, whatever the kind of angle is, usually people use global macro geopolitical developments to say, this is the reason why we have to clamp down on crypto in such a way. So, you know, we fought that every time in DC. We'll continue to fight that to come from both sides

6:09of the aisle on these attacks. By the end of the day, unfortunately, we've already seen the kind of percolate a little bit. We're some Democrats that are saying, this makes us really think that we should have more AML or KYC protections here because of what's going on in Iran. And the concern that Iran maybe is using crypto in some way, shape or form, we're trying to move Bitcoin to other wallets. So, I would definitely monitor the situation because it will have a direct impact on how the Democrats especially line up on clarity when the time comes. Yeah, I think this also has opened up the idea of self-custody and do it with commodities out there right now that are somewhat regulated. I mean, if you look at Bitcoin and Ethereum, stable coins, of course, are going to be huge. All of that plays into this. Right now, are any of the lawmakers seeing that as a positive and that this is another reason we should be doing this? Yes, definitely. Anytime you see these developments having, we've seen kind of more of the pro crypto camp. You could say a lot of the more old school centers say that, hey, this is a good argument for dollar dominance here,

7:09especially when we're talking about some more stable coins versus more obvious out there. But they're saying, hey, if there's more capital flight towards US dollar, we take that as a win, especially when we're competing against global forces like China here, for example, who are definitely trying to undermine the US dollar any turn they can. So, I think a lot of, you know, organs on the pro side are stable coins here, especially, you know, more of that China argument narrative. But also, again, for crypto, we've seen a lot of people use as a safe haven when they're, to your point, their local currencies have either gone to funds or they're trying to find a safe haven because of what's happening with the government. So, oh, well, I think it's still, you know, more positive than it has been in years reception wise and understanding kind of the arguments. We haven't fallen to the trap of its all money laundering again. But there's still a lot of education to go and there are definitely still some centers for using this as a tool to try to get their agenda across into the clarity act. I like that. They're using it as a tool. I want to go to a clip real quick because this is Trump talking about, we got a lot going on and of course, is clarity going to take a back seat now? Take a look.

8:11You want to see a stock market go down? Because now I have to start the tariff, so I don't forget very simple. And secondly, sir, you still plan to travel to Beijing at the end of the day. I don't know, we're working on that right now. So, it could be that we delay a little bit. Sir, will you attack Carg Island? Why would I tell you that? That's stupid questions. When you say Cuba is next. Cuba? It's Cuba, whatever you do with the military there, it seems like something. Will that look more like a ran or than as well? Can't tell you that they have nice land. They have nice landscape, you know. I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be good, that's a big honor. Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba, I mean, free it. Take it. I think I could do anything I want with it. You want another truth. He's all over the place. He's going everywhere, man, as far as what his focus is. I mean, is he thinking about clarity right now?

9:14I mean, he tweeted about it two weeks ago. He was pretty aggressive against the banks. I mean, I will tell a lot of folks, that's actually a pretty good sign for clarity, is that this still remains tough as mindset when he comes to everything going on. So, I mean, you'll have tweets on Iran, tweets against a celebrity, like Bill Maher, something, and then crypto, all of a sudden, comes out of nowhere and he's blasted the bank. So, I've been shocked. He's been waiting at this point. But then again, if we go back to the yield issue quickly, we still haven't seen any resolution there. As much pressure as the White House exerted, including the President himself, the banks have still not been able to find a compromise that they are willing to accept. So, we'll see what happens, but the White House being involved, even with everything going on, is a good sign for clarity. The second that kind of falls off the President's radar, that's when it needed a lot harder than most of the forces to get this cross-finished like time comes. Well, and one thing you've got to look at is the balance of power here. You've got midterms coming up just a few months away and it looks like the Dems have now started to lead out into the market. And I think is, what is the, is there kind of a backup plan?

10:15If the Dems take the Senate, especially, and start to control what we're going to possibly see in the House as well? I think we're kind of seeing the plan out right now. With the agencies really stepping up and saying, we're providing guidance. And here's a roadmap of what the guy is going to look like. We saw today with the no action letter for Annable, it's huge. And we're going to see a little more court agent looks like, maybe a tailored innovation exemption coming pretty soon from the SEC, CFC, FTC. There's that MOU last week. They're going to be coordinating a lot more together on oversight and enforcement potentially. And so I think the agencies are making that kind of backup plan that Congress isn't able to act. At least they'll have some guidance there to go forward. But again, the next administration can come and undo it all. And I think the hope is understanding that I think we're past the issues of what security, what's the commodity, and that nature of the discussion has really shifted a lot. It can definitely go back to that conversation and everything's a security against the 2.0 comes back. But the hope, I would say, is that the market as well as folks at DC understand that this is kind of where the market's settling at,

11:15and we should not try to upend it way getting rid of all the guidance of the Trump administration. You mentioned the no action letter to Phantom. This was a pretty big deal. What does this mean, though? You know, I think it's kind of the first, you know, we've seen other no action letters from the CFTC, but this is definitely a first when it comes to more of the self-custee side of things in a more explicit protections here. But also being able to see, you know, you don't have to register with the CFTC to provide the services. And you can actually work at DCMs and FCMs if you're a self-custee provider like Phantom. So shout out to my former colleague, Rissa Coppola, she did a great job over there in her team, again, a no action letter. But overall, that's a really positive sign because self-custee's always been one of those things where you eat in some of the modern Republicans, maybe not be on board fully with, but this administration's really doubling down, saying this is important. Big deal. Hey, I want to play a couple of clips for you. One is the ABA summit. Did you see some of the stuff that came out of that? Oh, yeah. It was horrendous. This is the kind of stuff we were dealing with right now.

12:17Let me go to this clip. If you follow the policy debate here in DC, you would think that everyone is eager to add stablecoin to their wallets. That is not exactly what our polls suggest. Only 17% are likely to buy, hold, or use stablecoin. What about the issue of the day, the issue of the moment? The debate over stablecoin rewards and yield. Our latest poll numbers show Americans share our concerns. Americans say Congress should bar stablecoin issuers and affiliates from offering interest and rewards. Three to one consumers are saying they don't want Congress to take any action. Where do they get this research? That's what I want to know. Where do they pull that stuff from? Because that was a bunch of BS data. Had to be. No, that's one way to play the DC game, and then they love these talking points. They love, you know, we go back to the crypto talking points in 2024, one in five Americans owns crypto. And a lot of people on the track, the tractor side are saying that's BS. I look at these numbers here. I question it as well. You know, do consumers say, yeah, actually, I don't want, you know, three to five percent yield on my deposit,

13:18you know, I want 0.01%. Again, I'm not sure why they're dressing up as a consumer argument, because I know it's more to appeal to Democrats, but it falls flat because anyone normal would be like, yeah, I want the one to get more money, because, you know, we'll take as much yield as we can get anytime when appropriate. But it seems here that the banks are really trying to dress it up as a huge lending concern. And actually, you know, later on in the conference, they do try to attack DeFi, which is at least in my experience, the first time they've really publicly done that, at least in the language. And that shows to me, you know, it's the yield issue they're not really compromising much on, or has really seen to give any way here, even though the crypto folks and White House are seem very open to trying to find a deal. And now the banks are doing that, the DeFi stuff, it lends me to believe that they're trying to throw as many roblox as they can for clarity. And that DeFi is probably the kicker, in my opinion, but we'll see how it plays out. But yeah, ABA is really going to aggressive here, and we'll see if they can compete with crypto.

14:18Well, yeah, we'll see. They had another clip that we put together. This was their survey data on merchants, because now you're talking about the retail side of this. Here's what they had to say. 61% would oppose versus 25% that would support lowering debit interchange fees for retailers. The merchant gets to choose which network over which the transaction gets routed. And the merchant's priority is to drive down the cost of acceptance. And it's out of everyone's hands, but the merchant. So out of everyone's hands accept the merchant, which of course gives a chance to hopefully, at some point, choose crypto or at least some sort of payment architecture that is going through crypto. So you don't have to get banks as the clearinghouse. So do Congress? Does Congress understand the way that these merchants are just getting killed with all these fees? Oh, hi, the interchange fee has been probably employing 100 lobbyists plus the DC for several decades at this point, because it's been a huge topic. But it's the credit card competition

15:18act that's a bill that got thrown in there at the Genius Act. It's going to probably get thrown there in a Clarity Act last second for amendments. So this has gotten a lot of folks on either side of the issue here, but largely has not progressed much in DC. But that interchange fee issue, it is one of the biggest ones in DC, but has not moved the yield too, too much. Although we've seen Trump entertain possibly, look at those it just rates too. So we'll see what happens with this administration. But overall, that's a huge fight. And that's been a lobbying battle for years. Yeah, it's a big one. They're right. Hey, I want to go to the lightning round with you. We got a lot of questions here. Military conflicts escalate and Clarity gets sideline. Do you think that'll happen? It's happening right now, and to make some sense. So I take yes, but again, it does not mean it's a game over. Yeah, I think yes, they'll get sideline. Now, the question is, how do they deal with it? Warren says, more terrorists in the Middle East are using crypto to scrape, escape the Iranian sections. You think, yeah, that's an easy yes. That's easy one, too.

16:19Yeah, she'll do that in a second. This is her. This is like catnip for her. What talking points is killing lobbyists? And Ron Hammond the most. You know, I'd say it's part of the corruption piece. I'd say it's a corruption angle, because yeah, it's, the media's really latched onto it. So there's just a race of you that, you know, like late I comedians talk about the Trump crypto corruption. So it's tough narrative because it's not through that way. But every time you're pitching to someone, you probably have to deal with that hurdle. You got to go over it every single time, right? Yeah, it's like, believe me. If we could all just buy a bunch of really financial and get rid of, you know, all these things, I'm sure a lot more people have done it by now, but that's a situation over in. Other crypto companies that are about to throw coin base under the bus. Do you think that's going to happen? You know, at least in the lobbying side of things, I've come to learn from the crypto side,

17:19especially that they love to eat their own tail. You know, no bills pervade for the crypto industry. Even the bill I work on, which is the first bipartisan crypto market, Richard Bill, I had some crypto companies come out against it, because it wasn't the way they like to see it. So yes, people will do that. A little larger majority of people throw coins into the bus by far know. And largely, Coinbase has been doing a really good job on a lot of exciting. All right, I think they will. I think they're going to go after them eventually. Who is the most reasonable negotiator right now? Do we have banks or are the Iran people? You know, I'd say the banks, because at least, you know, the folks in DC are speaking a very different language than what we're here in New York, where a lot more folks are a lot, very excited on the crypto side things and getting involved, whereas DC, it's the opposite. Opposite. Wow. Jonathan Gold, OCC, is he our ally or not? True or false? No, he's true. He's great. You're after them for years. He's a pro-Jay of Brian Brooks back in the day. So he's a fantastic guy. I know he's got a lot of pressure. We'll see what happens with all the OCC rule making there.

18:20Definitely keep your eyes on it, because the banks are definitely trying to use that as a backup to get to the yield issue. So we'll see if an overall job. Yeah, I'm more of a wait and see on this one. I got to see some stuff coming out of there. It's early, but I'm leading in there mainly because of that little timing that happened here recently with an OCC situation. So Bernie Moreno, he was supposed to be at that summit, right? What happened? How did Bernie Moreno? This is one of the best senators out there that should have been focused. Do you think they got the video, Bernie slammed him, and they said, oh, we can't put that out? What happened? I actually had a former colleague, two former colleagues who were in that office. So I do not know. I'm not asking them. Bernie Moreno has been fantastic though. So he's been, I remember meeting him back in 2018 on crypto back in the day in Ohio. So he's been OG guy here. I don't think he canceled last second, because I'd like to stay away from a fight. So maybe he'd be. Exactly. I think the ABA got it.

19:20They even mentioned it. We played the clip about it where they were saying, hey, listen, he's not going to have. Some people don't have the same ideas as we, but we want to listen to everybody. Then they had to listen to someone that actually made sense. And that kind of messes you up when you are against something, and somebody actually presents something, yeah, that makes sense. And then of course, it happens. Then they cut Bernie. Bernie, they cut Bernie out. I mean, come on. Here we go. Would Kamala Clarity Act have passed by now? No, we're assuming there's a Republican, or even a Democrat Congress. Yeah, it would not have gone to the stage yet. So I think everyone needs to realize that we would not have been here if it wasn't for this current administration or current Congress. We saw a lot of ways ago. What about what we ask in that knot? Yeah, who can come in and get this done? You know, I haven't never dumped too much with the Israeli regulators before, but I know they've been, you know, they got a pretty good cohort in Tel Aviv, crypto developers. So exactly. Yeah, I think you get crypto developers in there.

20:22We've had someone on the show here. Last question to you, Ron Hammond should quit and become a double agent in the banking lobby. It's secretly reports to us. You know, I like the flexibility of crypto, and I love the characters in there. You can move on. I believe in technology. So I'm good for pivoting anything, probably prediction markets right now. It seems to be the next boom in the lobbying side of things, but overall, as much as I think you can pull this off, Ron. I think you can pull this off. You know, the game bond of crypto. Yeah, we're invading crypto already on Wall Street here. New York, a bunch of the folks are in Soho. So it's kind of weird. It's all the crypto boroughs in Soho for the most part. And we are right next door to Wall Street. And we're here and we're drunk. I love it, man. We are interested and we're continuing to see a lot happening. So thanks for coming in today. We're going to be covering a lot of this because obviously clarity is heating up. And hopefully we'll get some kind of indicator here for sure. What would be the one thing that could come out this week that would make you think something's changed?

21:25So the next thing you're going to look for is a markup. That's when center Scott, Tim Scott, it's going to probably now it's when that's going to happen. Some rumors are staying before Easter. I'd say before May 1st is probably a good sign. Anytime it's after Memorial Day, we're going to start having the problems potentially. But right now, I would look at Tim Scott. He's kind of the guy who has a starting gun for the next big thing to give us being going. He had a meeting. Yeah, he had a big meeting today. I wonder what's going to come out of that. I haven't seen anything hit the press yet. So we'll see on that. Anyway, Ron Hammond coming in from Winter Mead. Thank you so much for stopping in. We appreciate it. Thanks, Paul. Get better. If you liked this video, hit like and subscribe. Drop a comment down below. And also, join our free private member group, the link is in the description.