This incredible conversation was recorded live in the Arch Public Lounge at Bitcoin Las Vegas. To dollar-cost average into Bitcoin efficiently and to check out all the other algorithms, go to archpub.com. Welcome to Hollywood. So obviously the lowest hanging fruit is stablecoins. It's the silliest question of all time, and lo and behold, I get asked that question. I was going to ask — I view my office as really being an administrator between White House policy, inter-agency activity, industry, and what's happening on Capitol Hill. And so there's a big knowledge gap that exists with many of these legislators in terms of what this technology does, what Bitcoin is. I literally wake up sometimes at 3:00 in the morning in cold sweats thinking, 'Fire Gary Gensler.' The Trump administration is moving quickly to undo the mistakes of the past. As we all know, the Biden administration had a contentious relationship with the crypto industry, and in just a few months, the Trump administration has begun to dismantle all of the bad policies from before. Nobody is working harder on this than Bo Hines, the executive director of the President's Council of Advisers on Digital Assets at the White House. I sat down with him in the Arch Public Lounge in Las Vegas during the Bitcoin conference to talk about all of the plans that they have for the crypto industry in the future, to make sure that we get sensible legislation and regulation that lasts into perpetuity. Bo Hines is an incredibly impressive individual who's clearly going to go a very long way in politics. If this is just the beginning, I have high hopes for the crypto industry. Listen to this conversation now. That's dope.
So Bo, obviously the United States government has gone effectively zero to 100 on crypto. We went from the most contentious possible environment to basically taking the governor off entirely. But I imagine in your role, there's a lot of noise and it's hard to figure out what the low-hanging fruit is, what the first priorities are. So maybe start from your perspective and from the administration's: what are the first priorities, the things you think you can get done the soonest that'll have the most impact?
Well, you know, we kind of view this in three phases. We've had the demolition phase over the course of the last five months, which has been really getting rid of a lot of the red tape — or as we like to call it in the White House currently, 'blue tape' — or overregulation and really just policy that was made through prosecution over the course of the last decade, more specifically over the last four years under the Biden regulatory regime. I feel like we're about 80 to 90% of the way home there. Then we'll move on to the construction phase, which is really relying on our colleagues on Capitol Hill to help us out: how do we enshrine a clear regulatory framework into law? And I feel like that's well in process. Obviously the Genius Act is moving full head of steam in the Senate with bipartisan support, and right around the corner will be market structure. That gets us to the third phase, which is implementation: how do we help these trad folks understand how to integrate these technologies into their current ecosystems in a way that revolutionizes the financial system more generally? We'll dive a little bit deeper into Genius, but I think I'd be remiss not to thank the President for his leadership in this space, giving us the authority to do what we need to do to clear the deck and create an environment for innovation. Also David Sacks, our brilliant AI and crypto czar, has been phenomenal. He's been the guiding star. I think we should point back to the first digital assets executive order the President signed on day three, signaling how this is an immense priority for the administration. He created this internal working group, which shouldn't be lost on folks, comprised of all the relevant inter-agency actors inside government that touch anything regarding this space — Commerce, Treasury, DOJ, SEC, CFTC. This has created a workflow and allowed us to streamline the process to clear the deck of overregulation, but also put out fires instantly. Having principal-level conversations makes things a lot easier to get stuff done and allows us to cut through the minutia that is often presented with government work. So it's been great.
The demolition phase has been a lot of fun to watch, obviously for those of us who were railing against that for the last four years. All of the regulation by enforcement that you alluded to — you said 80 to 90% done. What's the remaining gap there? The things you think still need to be fixed from previous administrations?
So you know, as an administration, the President said very clearly he doesn't believe in independent agencies, and that would include the Federal Reserve. With that being said, we have Michelle Bowman going in as the Vice Chair of Supervision. She's very pro-digital assets, and we expect them to start issuing pro-innovation guidance in very short order. But we still expect the Fed to come along. I'd say there's a little bit of a remaining gap there. In the first digital assets executive order, we also had landmarks. The 30-day landmark compelled inter-agency actors to do an internal review or audit of anything they touched in the space and produce that to the working group. The 60-day landmark compelled the same actors to produce a list of recommendations, things they could do independently to create this more clear environment. We're working towards the 180-day landmark, which will be a comprehensive report — I say report, it's more like a book — that outlines the most robust framework that could possibly exist in the world to permit innovation here in the United States, to ensure that builders can do what they need to do without fear of prosecution. One thing our inter-agency actors have done is they've been begging us to tell industry to come in and pitch us new ideas. This isn't Gary Gensler's SEC — 'come in and register'; we've heard that before. Yes, correct. As they're writing your Wells notice as you're sitting there pitching your new idea, right before you can leave the building, you've been slapped with an enforcement action. Those days are long gone. This is a complete sea change in the United States of America. The President understands how immensely important it is for us to spearhead the effort to revolutionize the financial system and really plug these technologies into our current ecosystem as it sits today. So obviously the lowest hanging fruit is stablecoins, and we have multiple bills on the floor. As you said, it looks like it will likely be passed. We have Genius in one house and Stable in the other house.
First of all, maybe we should discuss how you can have two bills coming from two houses and how eventually those will have to merge. But B, we had a little bit of a scare not so long ago when a few Democrats wrote a letter, and even two Republicans got on board — Holly and Paul — and basically were able to pause the cloture vote. So is there a chance this doesn't pass? I mean, is that still on the table?
So basically what they did was an effective filibuster. A lot of this was political posturing, which is unfortunate because at the end of the day, digital asset issues should be completely nonpartisan. We're talking about updating an archaic system in which the plumbing of our financial system needs to be completely overhauled. That's what stablecoin legislation does: it creates a pathway for more expeditious payments, instant settlement times, more cost-effective payments, and obviously secures US dollar global dominance for decades to come. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, I don't know how you fight against that. With that being said, we've gotten past the cloture vote. We've actually picked up numerous Democrats in that process. I think it passed with 69 votes in the Senate. Getting anything done from Senate Banking in a bipartisan way is a monumental feat. That hasn't been done in years. Folks should be conscious of the fact that things are progressing very quickly. I am very optimistic that we're going to get Genius passed in the Senate next week, and it'll be on the President's desk in short order. That'll give us an opportunity to move towards market structure. To answer your question about how this process works between the two chambers: the Senate in this particular case has done a lot of heavy lifting in terms of updating their bill, working with their colleagues to get to a place to produce the best product that was much more reflective of what was in the House. They've brought the bill to closer alignment. That gives our colleagues in the House the ability to put this on the floor and get it on the President's desk, in my opinion. I think it does everything we needed it to do. It provides the regulatory clarity, ensures that issuers are one-to-one backed with US Treasury notes, which is good for the American economy, and ensures they are audited by one of the Big Five. Basically everything people were begging for so that banks can actually implement these new payment rails into their systems. This gives way as the foundation for everything that can be built on top of it. You're talking about tokenization of public securities in 24/7 markets. If you want to access those 24/7 markets, you're going to have to be using a dollar-backed stablecoin. You're talking about pouring trillions of dollars into the US economy, trillions of dollars of US debt being purchased overseas. This is extremely exciting stuff. For Bitcoiners, we try to emphasize how important this is for that ecosystem because as money is coming in and you're able to go in and out of asset classes at will, there's naturally going to be capital that flows into Bitcoin. We love Bitcoin. We've said it repeatedly. We believe Bitcoin is digital gold. We want to harness the asset for the American people. We understand it's unique, which is why we set up the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve the way we did. It's a commodity, not a security, has intrinsic stored value. As David and I say repeatedly, it has the 'immaculate conception.' These are things that meet a decentralization standard that no one else has developed an ecosystem to do in the same way. But that being said, we also have the Digital Assets National Stockpile, and this was our recognition of the technology that's being built across other ecosystems. We still want to encourage that and foster innovation here in the United States and allow people to continue to build, whether in DeFi or beyond. We're extremely excited about where we are. We've delivered on many of the President's promises thus far, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Let's talk about the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Obviously we have an executive order, but you've alluded to the fact that we need these things codified in law to make sure that if there ever is regime change, they last. What's the path to that happening? Obviously Lummis presented the bill in Nashville; everybody was there when President Trump went off stage, and Senator Lummis is obviously one of our favorites. What are the odds of that getting passed? It seems like there's a hierarchy: stablecoins, market structure as you said. I'm hearing people talk less about the actual legislation on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve for now.
Well, I think we bought ourselves a little bit of time there just through the executive order. We've shown our views on Bitcoin itself, recognizing it as unique for what it is. I think that was a very clear landmark that we've laid down. With that, providing the clear regulatory framework more generally for everything happening in the digital assets ecosystem gives us the momentum we need to enshrine the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law. I think our Democratic counterparts certainly recognize that we have to harness this asset class for the American people. There are going to be countries overseas racing to accumulate as much as they can. I've had this question asked to me repeatedly by journalists: 'How much do you want?' That's the silliest question of all time. And lo and behold, I get asked that question — I was going to ask no. I will say very clearly: we want as much Bitcoin as we can possibly get. We have to do this in budget-neutral ways that don't cost a taxpayer a dime, but there are countless ways we can do it. If you read the fine print of the executive order, it kicks these innovative ideas over to Commerce and Treasury to come up with, but we'll flesh these out amongst our working group actors. We will move expeditiously on those that can be quickly implemented. It's not one-size-fits-all; we don't have to do this in one singular format. There can be hundreds or thousands of ways. We talked about this in different verticals, whether through mining activity or through Bit Bonds. There are tons of creative things. People ask me to give clear examples, and the reason I don't want to tell you what we're going to do first yet is because I don't want to poison the well. We want to do something that's going to be the most effective for the United States. When we're ready to announce that, which I'm sure we will in short order, I think this community will be extremely pleased.
You talked about the report, which is effectively a book. So you write this book, you go to every agency, you get all the recommendations, you get everyone in line, but you still need to go to Congress and the Senate and get bills passed. So what is that process like? What impact can you have, without being a congressman or senator, to actually make sure that the legislation gets done and that they take the recommendations?
I view my office as really being an administrator between White House policy, inter-agency activity, industry, and what's happening on Capitol Hill. There's a big knowledge gap that exists with many of these legislators in terms of what this technology does, what Bitcoin is, what blockchains do. Mending that knowledge gap is extremely vital. We've really helped our counterparts on Capitol Hill in the process of educating. It's really that simple: as people start to understand how important this is for the American people, they come on side very quickly, including our Democratic folks. There's no reason this should be partisan. It just so happens that our President is the first Bitcoin president, the first crypto president. Naturally there's hesitation from the other side, but I'm still confident we're going to deliver on the President's wishes to get both stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation on his desk before August recess. If we do that in parallel to this 180-day report, hopefully we can use that as a backstop to fill in any remaining questions that might exist with inter-agency action.
I asked David Marcus the same question today. Now that we're getting legislation — you alluded to the fact that we're getting legislation from legislators who aren't necessarily educated on the space. So even if they're making their best effort, isn't there a chance that we get some serious unintended consequences from legislation — things we don't see that could be coming down the road from the way these bills are presented? Maybe actors that we would like to participate are locked out because of some clause. How do you make sure that the legislation is broad enough to guarantee that it's usable in the future?
I think they've done a phenomenal job with the Genius Act. Watching the process unfold — and when I say process, it's more the procedural process in the Senate of how this works, how folks interact with one another, how they plug in advice and guidance from the White House and our policy team — I feel this bill is truly in a remarkable place. It successfully captures everything we're looking for in providing clarity, a framework that makes sense for traditional financial players to plug into their current ecosystems. Because the process is so rigorous, I think it's actually a healthy exercise that prevents some of the harm you might be describing. There are countless eyes that look at this legislation. I'd be remiss not to mention Luke Pettit and Senator Hagerty — Luke works for Senator Hagerty now. They have done an incredible job pushing this thing home, pulling their Democratic colleagues on board, and working with Senator Gillibrand on the other side. Her team has done phenomenal work. That's something I was extremely pleased by, because if we build this momentum across the aisle heading into market structure, I think the sky's the limit. Yeah, I think Tether alone is the sixth or seventh largest buyer and holder of United States Treasuries. As you said, everybody should be interested. It's in the interest of the country, national security, everything for stablecoins to exist.
