Bitcoin Just Got Something It Didn’t Need Congress For | Dennis Porter

Scott Melker (0:01)

Bitcoin and the crypto industry just got something it did not need Congress for. Actually got quite a few things over the past few days that it did not need Congress for, including some potential rulemaking from the CFTC that we have been waiting for. I know your favorite topic is politics, and I know when you want to talk about politics, you want to hear from Dennis Porter. So we brought him on alongside Tillman and Andrew today. Let's go.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the show. We're going to go bring on the guests straight away. Dennis, Tillman, Andrew, good morning, gentlemen. How are you?

Ran Neuner (0:54)

What's up?

Tillman Holloway (0:55)

Very well, good morning.

Scott Melker (0:56)

I had to tell Dennis before the show that now my new habit is apologizing to our fourth Tuesday guest before the show starts.

Ran Neuner (1:04)

Good, yeah.

They should be forewarned every Tuesday. Absolutely every Tuesday, they should be forewarned of the chaos that they're walking into.

Scott Melker (1:13)

Yeah, I made the mistake, or maybe not mistake, of going to the raised Yankees game last night. And man, am I tired. But it's always fun to see the Yankees suck.

I'm a Dodger fan of Tampa Bay, but I just don't like the Yankees. And my wife is a huge Yankee fan, so you know. OK, let's talk about why the Clarity Act failed. I'm just kidding.

Dennis, actually, as much as a joke, you probably were closer to that process than anyone. I've seen you taking strays left and right on X as a tradition and I share a lot of the same opinions that have been catching strays. But just the very broad strokes before we dive into what the government is actually doing now that we don't have clarity and it's very clear that we won't have clarity. Just the quick TLDR in your mind on why that didn't happen because you were kind of in the halls when it was being discussed.

Dennis Porter (2:12)

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to be on with the crew today. First time with the crew, excited to see how this goes. Always been a big fan of Scott for a long time, so happy to be here. So for me, you brought it up, catching strays. I was probably one of the first or at least the loudest voice to say that I believe that Trump played a major role in the defeat of clarity purely because of the many different projects that he launched and the money that he made in the space. Roughly $1.4 billion was made by Trump during his second term, which is more than a republically traded company in the entire space, including Coinbase. Now, that's not the only reason it failed. Of course, there's a lot of little bits and pieces that went into it, but I was very excited in the waning hours of the passage of the bill or potential passage of the bill for the motion to proceed.

We saw some great changes coming that I knew needed to happen. One of the first things I did when I came to Washington is I tried to figure out where can I go be the most helpful. And very quickly, I, as of being here for almost a year now, quickly discovered that Democrats needed a lot of help. So I started spending a lot of time with Democrats trying to figure out, OK, what can we do here? What needs to change in order for this bill to get across the finish line?

There were some things around DeFi. There were some things around the banking side of things, stable coins, and also the ethics provisions. And I saw some great progress happening, but I also knew that the ethics provisions were not going to be enough with the bill that they released shortly before they tried to take that vote on the motion to proceed.

But there was a last minute negotiation in the halls of Congress, back in the Senate, in a little cloakroom. They were trying to decide, OK, what can we get done here? Republicans and Democrats came together. Republicans were telling Democrats, you're going to get what you want. Their negotiations were going well. And then all of a sudden, at the very last second, once everything had come together, Republican staff came in the room, broke up the meeting, said negotiations are over, and we're not going to be moving forward with these negotiations. So that is ultimately partly why Democrats ended up voting against the motion to proceed, because they were told they were going to get their part of the deal. They didn't get their part of the deal, and of course, we all saw what happened next.