HUGE CLARITY ACT NEWS! JPMORGAN BLOCKCHAIN, RIPPLE XRPL LENDING, & BLACKROCK ETHENA ENA!

**Tony Edward** (0:05)
Hey folks, welcome in to The Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. I'm your host Tony Edward. On your way in, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple, please be sure to leave a five-star rating and review. Okay folks, we have a big update around the Clariac. So the White House has met with law enforcement groups to resolve the Clariac objections, with Senate Majority Leader Thune suggesting he may bring the bill to a floor vote in July whether Democrats are ready or not. Now we heard just last week from Senator Cynthia Lummis that this bill will be making its way to the Senate floor in July. So we're expecting some action. The ball is rolling on many fronts here. Obviously there's no guarantee that this bill passes, but fingers crossed that it's able to. And you know, we could see some sort of relief rally with the market, not a move to new all-time highs, but just a relief, a strong relief rally. So the White House has invited law enforcement organizations objecting to the language of the US. Senate's Crypto Market Structure Bill to sit down for a meeting on Monday, according to a person briefed on the plan, which is meant to iron out objections over the way the legislation protects against illicit finance. The tension is focused around the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act section known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, in reference to earlier legislative effort. That section, 604, seeks to ensure that software developers who don't mean to ultimately control the tools they're enabling can't be held legally responsible as money transmitters, considered a vital protection for developers to continue creating decentralized finance projects, also known as DeFi. So DeFi is still a hold up here, and you can imagine the banks like JP. Morgan and others are the ones pushing against this. We saw Citadel's letter to the SEC about DeFi and much more. The banks want to continue to control these things. They are clearly building with crypto. We're going to talk about JP. Morgan in a bit, but this is certainly the banks fighting back.
So groups such as the National Sheriffs Association said they have significant concerns with the language despite other law enforcement officials voicing some support. Here's a quote, no good reason supports giving mixers, tumblers and DeFi a blanket exemption. The sheriff's group said in a mail letter to the leaders of the Senate Banking Committee, while some software developers are not engaged in money transmitting or other activity that should subject them to the BSA regulation, plenty of others are. So this is where they're trying to regulate DeFi the wrong way, but they don't understand this is decentralized, right? You can't, who do you go after to when no one's controlling that asset? Now they can do their job and go after the bad actors, you know, trying to use blockchain analytics firms and, you know, plugging into the blockchains and tracking the transactions and going after the bad actors. But you know, trying to say, hey, a wallet, a decentralized wallet or a tumbler or a mixer is doing nefarious activities.
It's ridiculous, right? But again, this pushback is coming from the banks. So we got, you know, some conversations and dialogue going here. We'll see how it pans out. But I'm happy this is happening despite you do have some pushback. But this is all part of the sausage making process. So let's see what happens. And it looks like this bill is definitely going to be making its way to the Senate floor in July. And that's very good news. And let's hope it passes. Now I just mentioned the banks fighting back and JP. Morgan is specifically Jamie Dimon. We've seen him come out against Brian Armstrong and the Clarity Act as well. So we got an update here that JP. Morgan urges strong safeguards as Congress weighs crypto market structure rules. The bank says Congress should pair regulatory clarity with safeguards as Senate negotiates the Clarity Act.
So clearly the sheriff's association being backed by JP. Morgan and the banks and Jamie Dimon, right? They're trying to stop as much as they can, not only DeFi but also stablecoin yield. They're fighting that tooth and nail. So we're in for a fight and there's also the ethics piece. We haven't seen a lot of that recently, but you can imagine that's coming up, right? Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters and others, they're going to bring that up, but we have a bigger issue with ethics because Congress can trade stocks, the President can trade stocks, all these things. So it's not just crypto. They're trying to single out crypto, but it's not a crypto specific issue. Guess what? Members of Congress can transact in information that they may know about the stock market, gold, oil, and let alone crypto, right? So there's a bigger issue here. So I'm not going to read everything that JP. Morgan is saying because again, we know their MO is they're the incumbents, they're getting disrupted, and they're trying to control crypto because they are building with the technology and launching crypto investments, but they don't want to give up control, right? That's what it's about. They want to keep getting those big, fat bonuses at the end of the year while paying out consumers next to nothing, 0.04% on your interest on your money, right? While they collect the majority of the 4% that they are earning at the Fed, parking your money and their money at the Fed. So this is where you can go earn more on stablecoin yield and they don't like that.