Is Crypto DEAD? Or Will the Election Breathe in New Life?

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  Speaker 1:
  Hello everyone. Thanks for joining today. It’s October 31st, happy Halloween. As you may have noticed, we’ve given our title a Halloween twist. Welcome to the webinar: Is Crypto Dead or Will the Election Breathe It New Life? In today’s panel, we’ll explore the future of crypto and blockchain in the light of the upcoming election and its potential outcomes.

  Next slide please.

  Now, some disclaimers before we get started. This presentation is made for informational purposes only, is not an offer to buy or sell securities, which are only made pursuant to the formal offering documents for the fund. Please review important disclosures in the materials provided for the webinar. 

  Please note you’ll be on mute the entire presentation and this webinar is recorded and will be shared after the event. We encourage you to submit your questions throughout the webinar. We’ll try to answer your questions during the Q&A section.

  After the panel discussion, please enter your questions into the questions section of your GoToWebinar control panel and click submit.

  Also a political disclaimer to begin—please note that the views shared here are those of the panelists and myself alone and do not reflect those of Alumni Ventures. The purpose of this panel is solely to provide an objective discussion on how each candidate’s administration might impact the future of crypto.

  Next slide please.

  So the agenda today: We will provide an overview of Alumni Ventures, quickly followed by our panel discussion with our esteemed panelists, followed by an audience Q&A, and then an overview of the Blockchain Fund V raising now.

  Next slide please.

  So Alumni Ventures—let me give a quick overview here. Alumni Ventures is one of the largest venture funds for individual investors in the US. We started 10 years ago and have raised $1.3 billion in capital for more than 10,000 individual investors.

  According to PitchBook, Alumni Ventures is one of the most active VCs in the last few years with over 1,400 portfolio companies. We have over 120 employees and have five offices across the US covering most active startup regions including Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and Chicago.

  Next slide please.

  Alright, now I’m going to get into the panel. I’m going to ask all the panelists to come on camera and unmute themselves. I will introduce myself first and then I’ll hand off to each of you to give an intro of yourselves and then we’ll kick off the panel discussion here.

  So my name is Jack Statza. I’m a partner at Alumni Ventures’ Blockchain and AI Funds. I’ve been here for three-plus years with a background in FinTech investing and AI and blockchain investing at the likes of Allstate and, prior to that, Booth and Wisconsin—undergrad and MBA.

  So that’s my background. I’m going to hand off to Alex now because he’s next on the slide and we’ll go in the order of the slide there. So Alex, could you introduce yourself?

  Speaker 2:
  Of course. Hey Jack, and hi everyone. My name is Alex Chizik. I’m a Chief Commercial Officer here at HarrisX. We are a boutique marketing and data analytics consulting shop. We do a lot of polling both on the political side as well as on the tech and telco side—Apple, Samsung, and the works.

  I’ve been in and out of this industry for the last eight years. I worked in a political lobbying arm before my role at HarrisX and am really excited to do this conversation today. Actually, the blockchain run—and we just launched a dataset this morning about the SEC’s egregious actions and overburden of regulation within the industry. So we’re going to come to you with fresh data, fresh alpha, and really excited to chat.

  Speaker 1:
  Perfect segue to Ron to introduce himself.

  Speaker 3:
  Fantastic. Hey everyone. Ron Hammond with Blockchain Association. I’m the Director of Government Affairs, which is a.k.a. the lobbying side, as well as the Institutional Investors Engagement Lead for BA.

  The Blockchain Association is a trade association comprised of about 110 companies right now—all US-based, all crypto-native—ranging from your big ones like Coinbase, Kraken, to your small players in DeFi, the stablecoin space, and some venture capital firms as well.

  So I handle more of the Republican side of the aisle. I’ve been doing that for about four years. Before that, I was Ripple’s in-house lobbyist for a year, and then before that I worked on Capitol Hill for five years and most notably wrote the first bipartisan regulatory framework for crypto known as the Token Taxonomy Act for Republicans and Democrats. Eventually a lot of those elements became what many know as the Market Structure Bill or FIT 21, which I’m sure we’ll get into shortly. So looking forward to chatting.

  Speaker 1:
  Awesome, thanks Ron. And Alfred?

  Speaker 4:
  Yeah, I’m Alfred here. I have been managing decentralized organizations for decades before they were called decentralized organizations. Those were called industry consortia or standards bodies before crypto came around.

  I’m the co-founder and CEO of WD, and we help these crypto-oriented consortia and DAOs manage their projects. I also am the Executive Director for OMA3, which is an industry consortium/DAO focused on gaming and the metaverse for Web3. And I also work with the energy industry and help them implement Web3 use cases as well.

  Speaker 1:
  Awesome. Alright, well we’re going to start the panel discussion. I’m going to start by listing out some quotes by the two respective candidates first—and their views around crypto.

  So Trump, here are two quotes that I pulled out:
  One: “I want the US to become the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.”
  And here’s the second one: “I’ll ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA, not driven overseas.”

  Alright, and then Kamala Harris, her two quotes:
  “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors.”
  Second quote: “We will invest in biomanufacturing and aerospace, remain dominant in AI and quantum computing, blockchain, and other emerging technologies.”

  And then lastly, I want to bring up a quote that the Coinbase Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, came out and said on Bloomberg TV recently. He believes we will see a pro-crypto Congress regardless of the election outcome.

  Alright, so now I’m going to kick off this panel discussion with Ron here with a pointed question. Ron, you work frequently on Capitol Hill. Catch us up to speed on developments there this year and what our audience needs to know about where each candidate stands on crypto.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, actually Jack, when you were literally talking about this, Trump just tweeted about crypto just now—16th anniversary of the Satoshi white paper.

  “We will end Ham’s war on crypto and Bitcoin will be made in the USA. Vote Trump.”
  #Bitcoin #FreeRoss

  So yeah, it’s pretty explicit here now. At least from the lobbying side here, we’ve come across two dynamics when it comes to the Republican side and the Democrat side.

  Focusing on Trump first quickly—he’s been very positive. And candidly, we had Steve Mnuchin during his last tenure try to push a midnight rulemaking in a lame duck session—which would probably be this time four years ago—to try to really go after self-hosted wallets.

  We were able to fight that on the lobbying end and stop it. Candidly, Trump was pretty anti-crypto and he even tweeted pretty badly about crypto. We’ve seen that 180-degree turnaround. It seems to be more about trying to get more votes here, but he’s even really heavily leaning into the Bitcoin narrative and crypto as a whole.

  Generally, I’ve engaged with a lot of folks on his staff, on the advance team. I’ve been helping a lot of folks on the advance team vet people to make sure we get the right people in the right place.

  My concern personally on the Republican side is that if Trump wins, it’s going to be pro-crypto. The problem is we want to make sure it’s for the entire ecosystem. It’s not, “Hey, let’s take Bitcoin to future reserve and we’re done,” or “Hey, let’s just solve the SEC-CFTC issue and we’re done.” There’s a whole slew of issues here.

  And let’s not forget—Congress will be tackling a lot of other issues including tax come next year. So we’re going to have a lot of things to fight on, both in Congress and in the administration. Just because a Republican wins doesn’t mean it’s a snap of the fingers and everything is all hunky-dory. It’s going to be quite some time—actually probably toward the end of 2025—before we could get legislation. And that would probably be stablecoins. So I would look toward that.

  On the flip side, let’s go to the Harris side. In our conversations with them, it’s been—and this is a general theme for the Harris campaign as a whole—that they’re really being held by the Biden administration and their current actions. They don’t want to supersede a lot of the decisions that the Biden administration has gone with.

  And in a lot of our private conversations, even, they won’t go as far as saying Gary Gensler needs to be replaced. Now they’ll suggest that potentially that could be an option down the road one day, but at least right now they’re doing a lot of these nice platitudes.

  And I would say two years ago that probably would’ve actually resonated really well with the industry. But the Republicans have really jumped out ahead of this and made this issue their own. They put it in the Republican party platform. Trump is now tweeting about crypto and Harris folks are giving the niceties—but it is very vague.

  And candidly, we just haven’t been able to unlock that position. I will say we have moved the needle significantly though. The crypto industry is one of the strongest forces in D.C., and you could write a movie about it, candidly.

  Because two years ago it was FTX and we were at the bottom of the barrel—where Democrats weren’t even taking our meetings for a whole year. So things have rapidly changed. The money does play a role there, but by no means does a pro-crypto candidate getting elected mean everything gets better.

  We’ve got a lot of stuff to do on the lobbying side and you probably won’t see the results of that until 2025 or 2026 in the best-case scenario.

  Speaker 1:
  Thanks Ron. Anyone else have anything to add there? I was just going to say too—you mentioned there’s a lot more money being thrown at this issue than ever before. I was reading about the Fair Shake super PAC and how they’ve deployed $170 million to challenge congressional candidates that have been opposed to crypto.

  Can you enlighten the viewers on what that PAC is about and why it’s different this time around than before?

  Speaker 3:
  Definitely. And Alex, feel free to weigh in as well here too. I don’t by any means own it, but at least on the PAC side here—this has been a huge game changer.

  Now a lot of folks are saying, “Well, this is just like buying votes,” or something to that effect. I think French Hill from Arkansas—he did an interview two weeks ago—he said it best: for years the crypto bills, including one that I worked on for a long time, didn’t get to that level where they were able to be voted on in Congress.

  They didn’t build a groundswell of grassroots engagement or a public call saying, “We need this right now.” And the lobbying side was about four or five people up until about 2021. That has increased significantly.

  The resources in D.C. have increased. We’ve been beating the banks even though we’re underfunded on the lobbying side and the PAC side. But we are going to be seeing some issues where we’re trying to make sure that we avoid a partisan fight here.

  So Fair Shake—though we don’t control it, I’m one of the advisors for it—we want to make sure that we give to both candidates equally or both parties equally. Keep that bipartisan balance.

  Because candidly, on the Republican side, my job is a lot of times to prevent it from being partisan. And we have a lot of Republicans who are really antsy, who want to jump on this and say, “I can really hit the Democrats hard.”

  And it’s like, hey look, that may be great for a quick soundbite, but overall, in the grand scheme of things, this is going to really screw things up and make it partisan and nothing’s going to get done. And then we’re going to be going off of MiCA standards for the rest of the time here, and that’s just not tenable.

  Speaker 3:
  So we need a lead here, we need the rules, and we don’t need to defer to the regulators. So the hope is the money does move the needle a little bit. I am concerned though that crypto being such a big player, I’ve had calls from folks both on the campaign side—on the Republican side and Democrat side—saying, “You are jeopardizing our majority, crypto. How dare you donate to this candidate or this candidate.”

  It’s like, hey look, we’re power players here. We’ve had enough, but we need to make sure we funnel that energy into good legislation. It can get really partisan really quickly. So that’s going to be another battle we’re going to have for a while. But regardless, I’m feeling pretty optimistic.

  Speaker 1:
  And this PAC, in terms of its size—from what I was listening to—is pretty large historically, correct? I heard that it was the largest PAC that wasn’t a candidate’s PAC.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, it’s the largest—it’s crazy. I mean back in the day, candidates or the members of Congress—I used to work for Warren Davidson from Ohio—I remember it was like $5,000, $10,000 max a year he would get. He was the guy. It was him and Tom Emmer and a few other folks.

  There were only eight people in Congress that cared in 2019. But at the time they were like, “Hey, look, I’m doing a lot of this work, putting a lot of groundswell in, but I got to run for reelection.” And when I go to Ohio and say like, “Hey, I’m running crypto legislation” in 2019, people really didn’t care.

  And the industry was like, “This is great.” And we’re like, “Hey, we’ve got to keep this guy in Congress.” And I think the industry finally woke up—like, this is how you play the D.C. game. Crypto can change a lot of things when it comes to the world here, but politics is entrenched for better or worse. And so you’ve got to play the game.

  And I think the D.C. folks finally understood how to communicate to the crypto folks, like, “Hey look, the banks run D.C. because they play the game—and guess what? We’re now playing at their own game and we’re beating them.” So the thing is, we’ve got to see if we can continue this momentum for quite some time.

  Speaker 1:
  That sounds like crypto is getting noticed with the money it’s putting behind itself here.

  I’m going to switch now to Alex. You run a marketing analytics and polling shop. What are you seeing in the polling data around voters and crypto? What is the current state of the electorate?

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, look, I think it’s a great question. Just before I answer—one quick add to what Ron said just to frame up the industry. I’ve been in it since 2015–2016, so I’ve seen all the ups and downs. Very many smart people have come into this space, and the ethos of the space has always been, “We’re just going to build really cool and interesting things.”

  In 2021–22, when FTX collapsed—because Sam Bankman-Fried set us back many, many years—and frankly, he embarrassed politicians. So as Ron said, it was very hard to get meetings with Democrats because of that whole collapse. But it also forced the industry to grow up—and grow up very quickly—from a lobbying perspective.

  And so you see some narratives in the news about how all this crypto money is pouring in. It is. But it’s also because it’s never poured in before. We always were of the ethos of, “Let us be cool geeks and devs or business folks that are just building.”

  When the industry and other lobbies came after the crypto industry—when the politicians came afterwards—the industry grew up quickly. But the data is actually very encouraging.

  So if we look at crypto voters or crypto holders: very evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, when we ask them, it’s about 30/30 Democrats and Republicans, and 40% are Independents. That’s more or less how it splits in a lot of the polls.

  When we ask how people are going to vote or who they trust more, it’s also evenly split. It’s angling a little bit more towards Trump.

  So a typical American crypto holder is younger, more multicultural, a little bit wealthier—and that’s also the demographic that’s disproportionately swinging towards Trump: male. So there’s a male, multicultural vote that’s disproportionately swinging towards Trump.

  And so we’re seeing that in the data as well.

  Very few crypto voters are actually one-issue or single-issue voters. But for many of them, it’s an important issue to vote on.

  And in fact—what’s interesting—in the data we released with Ron and the Blockchain Association (you guys can see it at theblockchainassociation.org/regulationbyenforcement—so we can maybe put up a link), there are interesting numbers there.

  But two figures stood out to us:

  • Two in three people—two in three American voters, not just crypto holders—want Congress to act and give us the rules of the road.

  • And on a ratio of two to one, people prefer the SEC give out clear rules rather than rule by enforcement.

  And we worked with the Blockchain Association to tally up and enumerate what this has cost.

  The SEC’s actions have cost the crypto industry—just from a handful of respondents through the last few days—over $400 million in legal fees over the last two or three years, which is an astronomical figure of constant enforcement actions that, by the way, later on, in many cases in court, get proven wrong or the courts side with the crypto player.

  Now, I don’t think anyone in the industry is… I think the industry’s for sensible regulation. In fact, when I was on the lobbying side a few years ago, it was the most interesting job because you go to the Hill and say, “Please regulate us.”

  Every other industry is lobbying for certain rules. I mean, we are as well—but the rules are more just: give us clear guidance. FATF rules. Allow us to open up bank accounts. Give us clear guidance on security versus commodity.

  It’s not asking for special favors. It’s asking for regulatory clarity. And we’re seeing the same thing come through voters.

  And so this isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue. And I’m super encouraged that—before FTX—this was a nonpartisan issue. And now we’re digging ourselves out from this whole FTX debacle and collapse, which is a calamity. It was terrible.

  But fraud happens in every single industry. And if we look at banks, the fraud that happens within the banking sector is orders of magnitude higher than what happens in crypto.

  It’s now becoming a nonpartisan issue again. Voters on both sides.

  And I would echo two things that Ron said that we’re seeing in the data as well:

  1. From a Harris perspective, I think she needs to come out and actually have policies instead of platitudes that will enable people to switch—because we are seeing a lot of crypto voters are willing to vote for the other party. Because while it’s not a single-issue vote for them, it is an important issue.

  2. In any administration—Trump or Harris—there has to be a notable move: getting rid of Gary Gensler, getting rid of some other regulators that have been keeping the industry away. That signals an actual shift versus just some of these platitudes.

  And again, our data—we’ve done this with the Blockchain Association twice. The first time we did a partnership with Ron and team and Consensus, which we launched and published about a month ago—we spoke at the conference.

  Time and time again, over the last couple of years, we’re seeing the same thing:

  • Nonpartisan votes

  • A very attractive, I would say, demographic—especially leaning multicultural in the US—disproportionately willing to switch votes because this is a very important issue

  And overall, they’re just saying, “Hey, we agree that the SEC is a decent or the right regulatory body, but you have to rule by giving us the rules of the road—giving the industry the rules of the road—versus coming down with these egregious enforcement actions that are costing the industry developer jobs and money.”

  And I’ll say one last thing and then I’ll pause:

  When we look at the data, many more people are saying the US is falling further and further behind when it comes to financial innovation and crypto innovation than they are saying the US is still ahead.

  And this is a big, big deal for us—because we’re seeing, over the last few years, the industry has lost its leadership in developers. Most of the developers were in the US—I think it was over 40%—now it’s closer to 20%.

  And you’re seeing this because of a regulator that’s suing by enforcement versus by setting standards.

  Speaker 5:
  Thanks Alex. I’m going to add a little point there too.

  Speaker 1:
  You had mentioned how the lack of regulatory clarity is really causing a lot of people to go through a loop. I’ll give a venture capital perspective.

  We’ve underweighted investing in DeFi and stablecoins and all this stuff where we just don’t know where the US government stands right now, and we don’t want to take on that risk for our investors.

  And to your point, the rest of the world is carrying on with blockchain technology and making investments in the space. Fortunately, at least Alumni invests globally, so we can capture some of that value. But yeah, we really want clarity as a VC investor as well.

  So now that you’ve got that VC perspective, I want to turn to the founder perspective. We have Alfred here.

  So Alfred, you have experience dealing with crypto regulations as a US-based founder and launching a token. Can you share your perspective on how founders are viewing the current regulatory environment?

  Speaker 4:
  Yeah, it is tough, right? You don’t know when that Wells Notice is going to come to your door and you have to kind of cover all your bases.

  You have to assume, okay, what if the SEC considers everything a security? What if the CFTC is regulating it as a commodity? You have to be doubly or triply careful about how you do things.

  So at OMA3, we launched a token. It’s locked to members for a year—can’t be traded to anybody. That was for regulatory reasons.

  We created an organization that’s based in Switzerland. A lot of our members are in the United States, but of course a lot of them are in Europe as well. But we created it in Switzerland because Switzerland has clarity from a regulatory perspective.

  Even that’s changing a little bit—they just changed the head of that area in FINMA. So we’re seeing a little bit of change.

  But yeah, it’s very difficult. I mean, you’re spending lots of money on lawyers. When you’re starting a company, usually you don’t hire lawyers—but you kind of have to in the crypto space. And that’s a big drain.

  Luckily for OMA3, we got a pro bono attorney who’s top in the industry—so Zebra Lawler, I want to give a shoutout to them. They’ve been hugely helpful.

  So yeah, I’ve talked to a lot of founders—visceral reaction. They can’t see the current administration. They’re all thinking about moving out of the country, if they haven’t already, right?

  So a couple OMA3 members have already moved out of the country because of what’s happening.

  And so yeah, I see anecdotal evidence of what Alex is seeing—that people are moving out. I’ve looked at a lot of these accelerator reports. Each batch that they accept has fewer and fewer US founders. That’s problematic.

  For a while, crypto companies anywhere would not accept money from US investors because there’s just too much risk there. So that just shuts out all these US investors from that opportunity.

  A lot of the projects themselves are geofencing the US, right? “Okay, well if you’re in Iran, North Korea, and the United States, you can’t get this airdrop.”

  So we’re getting lumped in with those countries. But we’ll see what happens. I think the next few months will be a big indication of whether founders stay in the US or not. So that’s what I’ve been seeing anecdotally.

  Speaker 1:
  Thanks Alfred. So we kind of have an idea of the state of the market now.

  I want to now pivot to—first with Trump—and kind of tie into what Ron was saying about how he’s focused on Bitcoin.

  I was listening to a podcast where the host of the Bitcoin National Conference—that’s the large Bitcoin conference Trump keynote spoke at—was telling the audience on the podcast what Trump’s views were on Bitcoin.

  And basically, he viewed it similar to how countries store their gold in the US—that improved the strength of the US dollar.

  He wants to do the same thing with Bitcoin—be the world custodian for all countries’ Bitcoin.

  Can any of you guys elaborate on that? Is it apples to apples—gold, Bitcoin—there, and being a custodian on a digital asset for the world?

  I’ll throw that to the panel right now.

  Speaker 3:
  I can take it. I don’t want to speak, obviously, on behalf of Trump here, but there are a lot of folks in the policy world who are trying to also influence the Trump campaign too—and also the Harris campaign, candidly.

  So we’ve seen different factions, and again, Trump in some cases has latched onto a lot of these factions. Like NFTs—that is allegedly the thing that got Trump really involved in crypto from the get-go, was the NFTs and the nexus to Polymarket, and in seeing how live-time that was.

  So for him personally—that’s from what all sources I’ve been talking to—those are the main entry points there. And of course, everyone goes naturally to Bitcoin. It’s kind of the first education-level piece.

  So a lot of folks he surrounds himself with are very close in the Bitcoin world. But you also have to look at the Trump world. There are other power players around who are a lot more important, I think, for the macro of what potentially could happen.

  So the person that comes to mind most in particular is Howard Lutnick with Cantor Fitzgerald. He’s on the advance team. He is leading the advance team for the financial services group. I’ve helped with some of the folks surrounding his team in the Trump campaign.

  But given their presence with Tether and the stablecoin regulation that could potentially happen in the lame duck Congress in the next two months—I’m putting that at 20% odds, and it’s decreasing as time goes on, unfortunately, just because of how politics is and it’s looking pretty hectic.

  But where does Tether land? I think you have Lutnick there, Cantor Fitzgerald—you have this somewhere in the admin.

  By no means was Tether ever getting a ban this year. I mean, I’d say a year ago, two years ago, we were having some of those conversations where people had some questions. But you’ve got to look at other folks around Trump’s universe, and it’s not just the Bitcoin lane.

  You’re going to look at the stablecoin lane with Tether. You’re going to have to look at him personally with the NFT lane—that’s been under scrutiny with the OpenSea case, as we all know, and a few other metrics here and there.

  Brian Brooks does have another role to play here. He was really big on pushing the OCC to approve a lot more charters that a lot of these companies were able to utilize. And we’ve seen that choked off in this administration.

  So look at the personnel. Personnel is policy, as some folks like to say. It’s kind of a joke, but it’s true. The first Trump go-around in the administration had a few issues on the staffing side, and they’ve really doubled down to make sure it’s going to be a lot better on this front.

  So hopefully we can get the right person or folks in there. But that’s just the Trump world right now.

  The last thing I’ll say to you about the Trump world—the running joke in D.C. is the most important and influential person in Trump world is the last person to talk to Donald J. Trump.

  So it is not always consistent when it comes to policy. It can change just like that before you know it.

  Speaker 1:
  No, that’s helpful. I was trying to get to whether any economists have come in and said, “Yeah, we can be a global reserve holder for Bitcoin.” Is there actual economic backing to do the same thing gold did for the U.S. dollar and strengthen it?

  Speaker 3:
  There are some folks on the think tank side who are probably pushing that narrative. I’ll probably just hold off on saying who those folks are.

  And you also have to remember there are folks like Senator Lummis who’s pushing the same policy—but in a bill form in Congress. She’s a Bitcoin maxi, largely, in Congress too. So you have to look at those folks too.

  There’s a little partnership as well. But in terms of custodians and who’s pushing that, there are probably some folks who have a little bias there and are trying to push their solution.

  But I’ll say this—if you’re trying to get regulatory capture in D.C.—because I deal with this all the time, unfortunately—you’re not going to win through regulation in the crypto space.

  This is a very transparent ecosystem. And a lot of folks try to regulatory-capture the specific token or the specific stablecoin, and it’s like, guys, guess what? It’s very transparent.

  We’re going to call you out on that as an industry. So I think we’re going to see a lot more of that.

  By the way, if it’s a Harris administration, we’re going to see a lot of companies do kind of what happened with FTX.

  They were trying to screw over DeFi two years ago—where they’re going to say, “Hey, we’ll take this proposal or this legislation. It may be hurtful for other parts of the ecosystem, but it benefits our business.”

  So that’s the great danger. And then we have to come in and say, “Well, this hurts the rest of the folks or this particular sector.”

  So let’s keep that in mind with the whole ecosystem—not trying to benefit one sub-sector of crypto.

  Speaker 1:
  No, it makes sense. You mentioned Polymarket—and just so our audience knows—that’s a site where people can bet with crypto on who’s going to do what. In this case, which candidate’s going to win the election.

  And in the Polymarket, Trump I think has a really large gap versus Harris, but in polling it’s tighter.

  So my question to the panel here is: What do you think of these prediction markets? Why are they so divergent from polling?

  My thought is maybe more crypto-savvy people are actually using prediction markets and they lean more Trump. But that’s just me not knowing anything else. And you’re shaking your head, Alex—I want to hear what you said.

  Speaker 2:
  I can try to take it, then I would love to see if Ron or Alfred have a different take.

  I actually don’t think they’re very divergent at all. I think they’re just telling us two different things.

  So when we look at polling, we want to understand the horse race, right? In our polling, for example—well, actually three things, right? There’s polling, there’s margin of error, and then there are prediction markets.

  So for polling—the horse races—it’s a very tight horse race nationally, which is measuring the popular vote. Statewide, which is measuring the vote within those states, more or less.

  One, you have to understand margins of error. All of these polls typically do 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters. So in every poll, look at the footnotes—it’s just like financials. The most important notes are in the footnotes of the financials, not necessarily in the P&L or the balance sheet.

  You have to understand how they’re all conducted and how they’re compiled.

  When you have a 1,000-person poll, you have about—call it—3% margin of error. So when you see:
  “Trump 48, 47 Kamala” or the other way around—
  That’s all within the margin of error.

  What’s important is to see the trend. Okay, over time, what is happening within the same polling company?

  Behind it, we can talk about the way the sausage is made—the way the weights are done, who you poll, how you get your sample. We won’t go into that—that’s the core of what we do.

  And we do it pretty well. We strive to be the most accurate—The Washington Post, others—I like to think what we do is pretty strong.

  But just so people understand—when you look at a poll, look at the margin of error, look at the people that are sampled, and look at over what time period.

  The Polymarket and others—
  One, Polymarket is a non-U.S. entity. It’s a prediction market.

  The Polymarket is saying, “Who do we think, based on all of these polls, has the best chance of winning?”

  So here’s an example: Kamala can win the popular vote—48–47.

  She can be coming up in every poll—48–47, she’s ahead by one. But Trump wins Pennsylvania. Trump, let’s say, is ahead in Pennsylvania, Trump is ahead in Georgia, Trump is ahead in North Carolina.

  He wins those three states, but Kamala gets a lot of the popular vote from New York and California. So she’s ahead in the popular vote, but her chances of winning are pretty low because she has to win the swing states—from an electoral college perspective—in order to win.

  So Polymarket is measuring the chances of a candidate winning the entire race.

  While most polls are measuring: What is the head-to-head comparison in the popular vote?

  Those are two vastly different things. Again, you can be ahead in one and still have a low chance of winning the overall country.

  Kamala—people talk about the Rust Belt and the states on the East Coast. Kamala has Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio—that she needs to essentially defend.

  Trump has Carolina, Arizona—we’re talking about certain Democratic states: New Hampshire, New Mexico—that are starting to come in play for Trump. Virginia, for example.

  So the best way to marry Polymarket with what’s happening on the ground is in this last week to look at where the candidates are holding rallies.

  If Trump is starting to go into, for example, New Mexico—or starting to hold a rally in New Hampshire—it’s a chess match, right?

  One, they think they can play in those states. And two, they want to divert Kamala’s resources away from battleground states that are important for Trump. So it’s an offensive and defensive play.

  So—slightly measuring two different things. And you have to look at both together.

  And really, if you want to understand the U.S. electoral map, you should be looking at state polling.

  I’ll say the last piece—a rule of thumb is: Whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election, more or less. That’s the way it’s going to go.

  If Kamala loses Pennsylvania—I mean, she’s done. She pretty much has to win every other swing state.

  And we see Trump in play in at least Wisconsin. And he can potentially get New Mexico, Arizona, Georgia, and others.

  So she has to do well in every single one of those states if she loses Pennsylvania.

  I’ll pause on that and see if Alfred or Ron, if you guys have any other thoughts.

  Speaker 3:
  There’s one thing I can add, Jack. Quickly—the Polymarket stuff has been blowing up on Capitol Hill. It’s been the hot topic. The CFTC case was pretty monumental for getting that moving forward, and we’ve seen public companies like Robinhood and a few others getting involved in the betting space.

  I think the political problems, though, are going to probably keep going for Polymarket and the betting markets as a whole. Again, it’s just more of a general political reaction.

  Most of the Democrats have largely been against the betting markets. And so hypothetically, there could be a situation where politics says, “Hey, this tainted the views of people coming out to the polls. We need to bring these guys in, we need an investigation,” or, “Polymarket, Kalshi, whatever…”

  Or even if it’s not a direct accusation, they’re still going to be saying it had an effect on the polls and therefore, we’ve got to bring in scrutiny.

  So I do think there’s going to be additional scrutiny on the betting markets for quite some time—especially if there’s a Democrat-controlled government and the Polymarket folks are wrong, or the markets are wrong in this case.

  This is going to bring a lot more scrutiny. So I don’t think this is going to be the end of the story for the betting markets—it’s just beginning.

  Speaker 1:
  Yeah, that’s a good point too.

  Just wanted to make a reminder to the audience—please direct any questions you have for our Q&A section coming up after this panel discussion to the portal there. Just type them in and we’ll sort it out.

  I wanted to kind of take the conversation now to stablecoins, CBDCs—all that good stuff.

  You had mentioned stablecoins earlier. I think it’s pertinent because Stripe just acquired Bridge. Stripe’s already interconnected into all the traditional finance banks and systems, and now they’ve made a bet in the stablecoin space.

  So the question really is—Trump’s been opposed to CBDCs. Harris has been more open to consumer protection and digital finance.

  How might their positions affect U.S. competitiveness globally if other countries are going for CBDCs? And what do you think the view is on stablecoins?

  There must be warming to it if Stripe would go ahead and acquire a company for a billion dollars.

  So yeah, I’ll throw that to the panel—see who grabs it.

  Speaker 4:
  I think my perspective is—nobody’s really defined what this CBDC is.

  Is it a centralized server somewhere? Is it running on a blockchain? What kind of blockchain? Is it public or private? Is it going to be programmable? Is there composability with other smart contracts?

  So I think when people say, “I’m against CBDCs,” what exactly does that mean?

  China obviously has their version of a CBDC. The U.S. version of that could look a lot different.

  How does it protect privacy for its users?

  I mean, the stablecoin is the killer app for blockchain right now. And not just stablecoins—but it’s the whole concept of onboarding real-world assets onto the blockchain, right?

  So the U.S. dollar is a real-world asset, and you’re just tokenizing that in the form of a stablecoin.

  BlackRock’s tokenizing treasuries right now. And that’s the killer app—because now, as somebody in Africa, I can boot up my little wallet here and get access to U.S. treasuries and the yield that offers.

  So I think on CBDCs, people need the definitions a little better—put some requirements on what would be an acceptable CBDC before we start debating it.

  But stablecoins—I think there’s a reason why Capitol Hill is focused on that. It’s going to be the one thing that really cements the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

  Speaker 1:
  And just so our audience understands too—CBDCs would be the government U.S. dollar making a de facto token for that.

  That would be the new global reserve currency, or whatnot.

  I’ve always wondered—would governments ever do that because of the transparency it opens up?

  Governments have historically been very opaque on where spending goes. Wouldn’t a CBDC open up seeing how your tax dollars are being spent?

  Ron, you’re biting your lip.

  Speaker 3:
  Well, it is a dynamic that’s growing on Capitol Hill—on the Republican side—where the moderates are starting to realize these other countries are doing this to provide social services or something like that.

  And there are benefits, and there’s transparency to your mention too.

  I’m sure the Pentagon doesn’t want to take the CBDC route because they don’t want the transparency.

  But there is a growing view that the very anti-CBDC wing of the Republican Party—while it’s a good position for politics and the voter base, and pointing to China is the boogeyman, which is a scary thing and an easy specter to raise—the tech-optimistic Republican moderates have started recently changing the language a little bit.

  From, “We’ll never have a CBDC” to being like, “Well look, there are some benefits here, but the way that China’s doing it—we’ll never have that in the United States. Get rid of it.”

  But the Democrats—again, there’s that moderate group that’s like, “Maybe there’s a technology here.”

  I would say there’s not really a pro-CBDC view besides the Modern Monetary Theory folks—and they’ve been losing a lot of power and credibility candidly these past two years, as a lot of the policies have backfired and have been shown not to be popular with the American people.

  And then lastly—quickly on stablecoins, because this is the hot topic—the last thing I’ll say on this:

  We’re going to probably have a stablecoin bill, if not at the end of this year, then by the end of next year.

  I’m 85% confident on that front—that we’ll have it done in some way, regardless of who wins.

  The things you’ll look for though are going to be:

  • the algorithmic stablecoin moratorium or ban—we’ve been able to lobby that down from a ban to a moratorium, and that’s in response to Terra

  • whether banks or non-banks can issue stablecoins—we’ve beaten the banks, for the most part, on that front, but it could still be a contentious issue

  • and lastly, the Tether question—how do you get Tether onboard? How do you bring them onshore?

  They just hired their first lobbyist in D.C.—that was public news recently. So they’re trying to make waves in D.C. that they haven’t done before.

  So a lot of these factors are all going to amalgamate to either the end of this year or sometime next year.

  So it’s going to get hot—but these are major, major, major policy topics that will have a huge impact on the markets.

  By the end of the day, I think I’m confident a stablecoin bill gets done by the end of next year.

  Speaker 4:
  Two comments on that.

  The other issue is federal control versus state control over who can regulate.

  And I guess one thing that I was always thinking of is—with Tether—they’re earning billions and billions of dollars, more than Goldman Sachs, on getting all the yield.

  Obviously when interest rates go down, they’re not going to earn as much.

  But the next big thing is going to be tokenized treasuries, where now I can still trade U.S. treasuries like a stablecoin, but I’m also generating yield off what I’m holding in my treasury.

  So I think that’s where the industry is going to go down that path—where perhaps users are getting more of that yield than the—

  Speaker 5:
  Person who’s issuing the stablecoin—similar to how people are used to getting treasury yields on—

  Speaker 1:
  Their cash—

  Speaker 4:
  Money markets. Yeah.

  Speaker 1:
  Makes sense.

  I wanted to now segue into DeFi—decentralized finance. Trump has been very prominent. Harris has been more cautious.

  Trump launched World Liberty Finance—his own token—which sounds like it’s a skin over Aave, which is a crypto lending protocol.

  It sounds like he wants to make his own bank on Web3 and the internet.

  What’s your view on that? Is it just a publicity stunt? Is there something behind World Liberty Finance and Trump’s token?

  I’m curious what everyone’s hearing—what the Hill’s saying.

  Speaker 2:
  I can give you an Alex view. That’s not a HarrisX view or any kind of official capacity view—there’s not like there’s a lot of data on it.

  In this case, I wish Trump would just focus on what he does best. I don’t think we need this.

  He’s going to launch a token—or he launched—I don’t even know where he is with this.

  A token—is it a security? Is it a commodity?

  It’s going to create talking points for the Democrats.

  We don’t need any more random projects in the space.

  But listen—Trump is who he is. The nice part about Trump is you kind of know what you’re getting.

  He’s an opportunistic guy. So this is—he saw the space, I’m sure, and thought he could make some money off of this.

  And I don’t know, he took it.

  I wish he would focus on—he’s going to be running the greatest country in the world, and we are coming into monumental issues if he gets elected, of course.

  I don’t know anything that anyone else doesn’t.

  We have two wars, we have insurmountable debt, we have BRICS talking about creating a new currency—which is where stablecoins can come in as almost like an export of the U.S. dollar to the world.

  It’s short dollars—where people are now starting to talk about a new Bretton Woods.

  Outside of the crypto and Bitcoin maxi circles, it’s now becoming a little bit more of a popular opinion—at least in the libertarian/Austrian economic circles that are more mainstream.

  We have enough things to worry about, then, I think—for Trump to have—what is it called? World Liberty Financial?

  Whatever it’s called.

  So in my personal opinion—if you win, Mr. President—focus on all of the other colossal problems we have in the world other than launching another coin.

  But that’s just Alex talking.

  Speaker 1:
  I just looked it up. He’s only sold 5% of his total supply.

  So I don’t know if everyone’s bit on this.

  Maybe it’s just trying to be more pro-crypto to the one single-issue voters out there—by going one level up and making his own token.

  Ron, what do you think?

  Speaker 3:
  I’ve been trying to kill this thing behind the scenes for a while—but yeah, it launched regardless, and I’ve been working with a couple of folks.

  Here’s the thing, just at a high level here—the crypto folks, no one was really hyped about it in our circles.

  Again, these are the biggest players and smallest players—the general reaction was the Alex response. That is the exact view on the political side.

  I mean look, you’ll have members of Congress shill for Trump Steaks—there’s that cult-like mentality, candidly, on the Republican side with the Trump brand.

  And I was working hard, but you didn’t see that at all from the political folks on World Liberty Financial—and that was for a reason.

  There were some folks who did reach out saying, “Maybe we should defend this thing, Gary Gensler’s coming for DeFi.”

  It’s like—whoa, whoa. Again, there are a lot more questions than answers.

  Let’s try to make sure we focus on good policy and actual transparency, versus “my team versus your team” and involving politics.

  That messes things up.

  But for DeFi in particular, I will say—this is going to create some problems politically down the road.

  If he does win, or if Trump loses—when DeFi comes up on Capitol Hill, World Liberty Financial is now going to be associated with that—for better or for worse. And candidly, for worse.

  But DeFi—we’re going to be… the goal is to take the BSA approach where we can just kind of keep punting on this issue.

  It is complicated. We really haven’t been able to dissect what a good framework is.

  Neither has the EU yet—they just had their first congressional hearing on DeFi regulation last month.

  And it is more of a starter for 2025.

  So we might see some really light-touch, study-style initiatives on the regulation front for DeFi.

  But besides enforcement actions, I don’t see really too much on the DeFi space happening anytime soon—positive or negative—if we’re doing our job right, candidly.

  Speaker 1:
  Alright, no, that’s helpful. The last question I want to ask before we have to start winding down here is about the candidates specifically, looking forward.

  So Trump’s VP pick JD Vance has ties to crypto advocate Peter Thiel, while Harris’s team is maybe generally more cautious—advisors around her.

  How might these advisors influence and shape the respective crypto policies?

  With both campaigns also receiving crypto industry contributions, could this lead to more favorable post-election regulation for the industry?

  I’d like everyone’s thoughts here.

  Speaker 3:
  Alfred, I’m happy to go to you first—

  Speaker 4:
  I want to hear from Alfred, the founder.

  I know my view on Harris is that she has this anchor around her neck, which is some of the deals that Biden did with other members of the party on running the economic agenda.

  The question in my mind is: If she wins, will she be able to take that anchor from around her neck?

  That’s the big question. I don’t know. I don’t have any insight to that.

  Ron, you’re saying that her camp is saying, “Hey, we don’t want to step on some toes.”

  How long will that be the case? It’ll be a big indication.

  She’s put some people on her staff or her advisory board that were responsible for some of the policies that were very anti-crypto.

  Did she do that just to get elected? Or is she going to actually listen to that person years into her presidency?

  So obviously JD Vance—big crypto guy.

  If there’s any doubts about Trump going back to his older stance against Bitcoin, not liking it—with JD Vance and World Liberty Financial, I think you are kind of pretty certain that he’s not going back to those opinions.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, maybe I can jump in.

  But to your point, Alfred—JD Vance, RFK Jr.—he’s more pro-Bitcoin than he is pro-crypto, but still pro-industry.

  Vivek—I think Vivek was one of the folks that helped get Trump truly orange-pilled from a Bitcoin perspective.

  So I think on that side—plus the Republican/libertarian ethos of being pro—

  I think on the Harris side, I agree—she has an anchor.

  The nice part is—and what we keep on doing, and what we keep on doing with the BA, with Blockchain Association—is to say, “Hey, look, it’s really not a partisan issue.”

  If you just look at crypto holders, the actual lean is slightly more Democrat.

  They’re even, but again—margin of error—it leans more Democrat.

  So this is multicultural Democrats, younger males—who Harris, by the way, needs to attract back into the party.

  And they’re willing to switch parties for the vote.

  This is the right demographic to go after.

  The question is: Can and will she do it?

  I’m optimistic for two reasons:

  1. To be just very cynical—I think Harris is just saying things to get elected. Okay? She’s literally saying whatever to whatever group in order to get elected.

  2. She’s also an establishment candidate. She’s like the quintessential establishment candidate.

  And with a much bigger crypto Congress that we are working—and Ron is working—and the industry is working to elect, she will listen to the constituents of her party, essentially.

  And again—it’s an attractive cohort that holds crypto in the U.S. and it’s only going to get bigger.

  We should be theoretically going into another run with more retail coming in 2025.

  So if all things come together, it’s going to be an attractive cohort to go after.

  I’m hopeful because of that.

  Because again, the executive branch is just one branch of government—you still have Congress.

  And if Congress is more pro-crypto—and we know from our data that we launched with the BA that people want the rules of the road written—and we have all of our lobbyists going out and knocking on doors every single day to get those things written—eventually, it will come.

  So I’m hopeful in either case.

  Obviously, look—let’s not mince words. Trump is a much easier case for the industry, because him and his entire team are all in.

  Speaker 3:
  The last thing I’ll just quickly add here—

  If the Democrats win, we still have a lot of power here.

  And we’ve actually had a lot of things happen behind the scenes that we don’t want to put out there publicly.

  But the ETF is a good example.

  Where the ETF reversal decision that everyone thought was going to be denied—

  You’re hearing that internally at the SEC. That lined up right when the S.J. Res. 121 veto happened—

  Which is the most bipartisan bill Joe Biden has vetoed in his administration, on any policy.

  It was the most bipartisan bill—59 senators.

  And it was that week that, allegedly as a way to try to get the industry to be okay with the veto on S.J. Res. 121 (which, yes, is a priority)—they greenlit the ETF.

  That dynamic would not exist if we weren’t as powerful as we are in D.C.

  And so—even with the Biden administration—we’ve seen the narrative shift.

  And that’s why Alex’s work is so important, in particular.

  And then Alfred—keep building, keep bringing more stories to D.C.

  Because the narrative is what really shapes a lot of this.

  That’s where we’ve seen—we’ve got to bring this out in the public domain.

  And that’s where we’ve seen a lot of wins.

  It’s not even the policy. The politics win. Not the policy—because, let’s be honest, it’s still very complicated policy.

  But when the politics—the narratives—go in our direction, it goes well.

  And that’s where we get the ETF. That’s where we get Joe vetoing a bill, but saying he’s open to a regulatory framework.

  Which directly contradicts the SEC Chair’s statement—saying the regulatory parameters from the 1933 and 1934 Acts for securities law are fine.

  So this is shifting. It’s going well.

  It’s not doom and gloom if Trump loses, because we’ll make sure we get the stuff done in one way or another.

  Speaker 4:
  You guys are doing a great job.

  Speaker 1:
  Appreciate it.

  The well-known: Ron’s up there on the Hill and Alex is feeding him data—so very good.

  Alright guys, I appreciate the panel discussion.

  I’m now just going to do some parting message to our audience here about the upcoming Blockchain Fund and FinTech Fund V.

  It’s open to invest into now—there’s only a limited number of spots.

  In parallel, we’re offering a significant discount for investment commitments made earlier.

  First close ends today, with the largest discount today.

  Second close ends November 30th.

  See the link in the chat and our team can reach out to you to learn more.

  Lastly, finally—a thank you to our panelists for sharing their insights today.

  My takeaway: Regardless of the election outcome, I’m optimistic after hearing our discussion of a more crypto-friendly Congress and environment going forward.

  So at least we can put a feather on that—and we’ll see next week where we landed.

  So great seeing you guys. Thanks again.

  Speaker 5:
  Thanks. Thanks, everyone.