Bitcoin Sold Off On The Crypto Vote. The Fed Could Send It Higher Today | Laura Shin

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We finally have, no pun intended, clarity on the Clarity Act. And it is not good. Obviously, crypto and Bitcoin across the board sold off on the news that the Clarity Act, cloture vote, did not advance. And now we move on to FOMC today with consensus being that the Fed is likely to hike rates. But that could potentially be good for Bitcoin. We're going to talk about that and everything in the news. I think primarily a postmortem on Clarity right now with very special guest, Laura Shin. Let's go.

Good morning, everybody. Happy FOMC rate hike decision day to those who celebrate. Yesterday, we were celebrating Clarity cloture vote, there was very little to celebrate by the time the votes actually came in. I'm going to go ahead and bring on Laura now and we can get into it. Good morning, Laura. How are you?

Laura Shin (1:34)

Good. How are you? Good to chat.

Scott Melker (1:37)

Yeah. Do you ever find it really strange to be on the other side of these conversations?

Laura Shin (1:41)

I was a little bit. Yeah.

Scott Melker (1:46)

Let's start with the Clarity Act. I think that's obviously the big question of the day we spent. Man, what a year, 18 months unpacking the likelihood of this passing, and it kind of died with a whimper, to be quite frank. I know a lot of that was politics, but ending with zero Democrats coming across the island voting for it, including the ones who sponsored the bill, like Gillibrand. And then, of course, having, I believe, four Republicans not vote for it, it fell exceptionally flat. It didn't even come close. I mean, the vote was 49 to 50, right? So not what we were looking for here, and many saying that it's pretty much dead. So I guess your first takes on having gone through this experience, covering this for so long and seeing where it landed.

Laura Shin (2:31)

Yeah. So my perspective here is it's giving it neurofiddling while Rome burns. And what I mean by that is that politics is what killed the bill. It doesn't have anything to do with crypto. It doesn't have anything to do with the substance of clarity itself. It's literally just that there are these politicians who are in power and they kind of want to control their little fiefdoms. They want to swing things their way. They want to do things that benefit their party ahead of the election. A lot of this is posturing. And so it's very disappointing that this bill, which in my opinion is actually quite important to help the US maintain its position as the lone global superpower and kind of to maintain this world order. I actually think that if the US continues to go down this road of prioritizing politics over staying on the frontier of finance and tech, that it has really large geopolitical implications that in my opinion are just frankly not good.

I mean, there are plenty of criticisms I can make about the US. However, I do think when you compare it to the other choices, I actually think it's a pretty good thing that we are the global superpower. And so I find it very disappointing that these politicians could not put aside their differences to push something forward that is actually really good for our country and the grand scheme of things. However, I do want to call out also that, you know, like President Trump, I do think bear some of the blame for this. And, you know, I know this is a kind of controversial statement because obviously the crypto community right now is definitely blaming the Democrats. And I can also blame the Democrats.

Let me just throw around some blame right now, actually. Let's go all the way back. So the Democrats started the politicization of crypto. So they bear the they're sort of like they they have this original sin, I would say, for just turning a neutral technology into something that became this way for them to score political points amongst their quote unquote base, which, you know, as has been pointed out so many times. Yeah, there is no anti crypto army. So, and it just, you know.

Scott Melker (4:56)

There's no anti crypto voter. Because of this. Like there's people who go, okay, maybe I don't like it, but they're not voting as a result. Yeah.