'I Will Not Vote for Clarity Until We Address Ethics': Sen. Angela Alsobrooks

**Angela Alsobrooks** (0:00)
I will not vote for a bill that does not have the proper ethics language and that does not address the concerns of the law enforcement community. You know, I'm a former prosecutor, so I take very seriously the concerns around illicit finance. I think we're almost there, but I think it means that everyone should continue to keep their sleeves rolled up.

**Rebecca Rettig** (0:26)
Welcome to The Policy Protocol, a brand new show from CoinDesk that gives you a bite-sized overview of all the happenings in crypto long policy from the past week. This is your espresso shot of everything you need to be, everything you need to know to be in the know.
I'm Rebecca Rettig, I'm here with my co-host Renato. Who are you Renato?

**Renato Mariotti** (0:44)
I'm doing well. Wow, it's been quite a week yet again, Rebecca. So much to talk about.

**Rebecca Rettig** (0:49)
There's a lot to talk about. Tell me what's your hottest topic of the week. I think there were many to pick from, but where are you?

**Renato Mariotti** (0:56)
I think it's perps. I mean, look, one day after submission to the CFTC from Kalshi, the CFTC approved the listing of Bitcoin perp, and now it looks like Kalshi is going to list a whole bunch of perps. They're seeking permission and everything from ETH to Doge.
Then literally on the same day, Coinbase received permission from the CFTC to list Deribit perps on their exchange and to treat them as foreign futures. I mean, really interesting, and we essentially now have perps on board in the United States, but only on two platforms for now.

**Rebecca Rettig** (1:38)
Okay. Did the CFTC do or say anything particularly interesting when they were giving permission both to Coinbase and to Kalshi?

**Renato Mariotti** (1:47)
Well, I do think first of all, one day is remarkable turnaround from the CFTC. You know, usually it's 45 days or more for that review.
So I think a lot of competitors are going to wonder what this means for them and whether they need to get in on this action. And you know, regarding the Coinbase permission, I mean, one thing that the CFTC did is rely on the fact that Coinbase is a publicly traded company that wholly owns the foreign platform. I can't think of another company that does that, Rebecca. And so what that tells me is that maybe some other publicly traded companies in the US are going to start looking to acquire foreign platforms of their own.

**Rebecca Rettig** (2:30)
Interesting. So a few winners out of the gate last week. I think there was a lot that we could talk about. I think the hottest topic for me, because it has so many other implications, I don't think it's so strange, but earlier this week, the US Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, what we call OFAC, designated an exchange called Nobitex, which is Iran's largest digital asset exchange, along with three other Iranian crypto exchanges, as part of what they call Economic Fury. I think I have a lot of thoughts about this, but they basically sanctioned these exchanges.
One, this is entirely consistent with how the first Trump administration approached Iran. They were very, very aggressive on the sanctions front and really took a very hard line, which I think is notable. I think it's also really notable here that they were looking at things from the digital asset perspective too.
This administration has been so forward thinking on digital assets, but they also understand where the real national security implications come from.
I think when we look back at the prior administration, the Biden administration, now Trump one, just to make clear, there was a lot of talk of how do we combat illicit finance? As we'll get into a little bit more in the show, what are we doing on the illicit finance provisions in Clarity? There's so much focus on that with respect to DeFi. What do we do on combatting bad actors who use DeFi protocols, mixers, tumblers and the like? The most interesting thing is that the Financial Action Task Force, which is the global illicit finance regulator, they set standards that everyone is supposed to abide by, actually has said for a very long time that the biggest risk for illicit finance and violation of these international standards is offshore exchanges, that there is a lot that can be done there. And so people in the crypto community, including former law enforcement, former DOJ prosecutors have said, the biggest risk is the on and off ramps that are offshore. And I've long said, why are we not sanctioning more of these? And so I think this is a good example that this can be done, that the US government knows exactly how to shut down and put pressure on bad actors overseas, especially when they're using illicit finance. And I think that there will have a lot of implications to come from these types of sanctions going forward.