#727: Orange Pilling The Deep State with David Zell

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:18)
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:29)
I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. You probably should be, you probably should be.

**Marty Bent** (0:36)
What a week in Austin, Texas, gentlemen.

**David Zell** (0:39)
Oh, what a week.

**Marty Bent** (0:42)
Did we do something here? What did we do with this Coinbase de minimis tax exemption? Do you think it's a big thing that we made some noise this week about it?

**David Zell** (0:52)
I think your tweet did a lot of really good stuff.
And I'm really just honored to be here with the Alex Jones of Bitcoin. Although, if I had my way, it would be the real Alex Jones. But I'll settle for the JV.

**Marty Bent** (1:07)
We're going to get Alex here. Yeah, no, I think it was important for the broader Bitcoin community and Bitcoiners generally, particularly in America, to know that this stuff is happening behind the scenes. So I had a one source reach out last week and I was like, OK, this is interesting, can't really confirm it, and then I had somebody reach out a couple of days ago.

**David Zell** (1:32)
So you had multiple independent sources come and tell you this?

**Marty Bent** (1:37)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:37)
Yeah.

**David Zell** (1:39)
Yeah, I mean, it's been very interesting to see, you know, you obviously have been a sort of journalist and commentator in Bitcoin for like a decade plus. You know, your incentive to lie, as a lot of people are accusing you of, is very low. Like, you already have, you know, a successful podcast and this isn't my beat. Policy isn't really your beat.

**Marty Bent** (2:04)
Policy is not my beat.

**David Zell** (2:06)
The incentive for you just to like, I guess the accusation from the detractors is that you just woke up on a random morning and said, I'm just going to make shit up about Coinbase to just be a problem. You know, and I find you very credible.
I think, you know, the sort of reluctance to go with something like this until multiple kind of disconnected parties tell you, I think it's a very high degree of confidence that there's a there there and that that's true. I will say, you know, the silver lining of Coinbase's response is that they are not only doubling down on your claims being a lie, but, you know, they're doubling down, at least in public, on de minimis being something they care about. And I, like, I'm not, to my knowledge, I don't know if there's been, you know, like, for example, we did a, you know, an open letter from industry members, basically telling Congress, hey, after clarity is done, we think the most important thing to work on next is tax treatment for Bitcoin and making it money and removing the de minimis or creating a de minimis exemption and removing taxes and obligations for reporting on everyday transactions. This is a very innocuous, like, letter, you know, we were not, you know, beating the maxi drum. I think we maybe even had language in there about, like, other digital assets, getting a de minimis exemption, trying to build, like, a big tent. Extremely uncontroversial. And Coinbase didn't sign it. You know, and maybe they don't, you know, whatever.

**Marty Bent** (3:44)
I was even aware of that. Yeah. When was this?

**David Zell** (3:46)
It's like two months ago.

**Marty Bent** (3:47)
OK.

**David Zell** (3:48)
It was like the end of last year, early this year. You know, and like now they're all saying, all the executives on Twitter are saying, no, we do, in fact, care about this and great. So now we have that sort of on record. And like you showed me this morning, you saw before I did. But somebody from the Coinbase team responded to Connor, my colleague, who kind of proposed in the wake of all of this and said, OK, why don't we do a joint roundtable where Coinbase and BPI kind of present a unified front? And we talked to the key members in a public setting about why de minimis is so important for the future of this country. And they responded this morning and said that they'd do that. So I guess time will tell, but it will be a lot harder to sort of squirrel away from... I mean, I've read this as a public commitment from Coinbase to championing this cause after Clarity is passed. And so, you know, I think that's more... That is, I was aware of no such commitment from Coinbase prior to this sort of shit on Twitter.