Oneshot: The Bill That Could Reshape Crypto | Rebecca Rettig

**Rebecca Rettig** (0:00)
People have said like, no bill is better than a bad bill. Understand that sentiment in many ways, but like we're pretty close. And if we can get it there and then do really positive rule makings, I think that'll be great for the industry. But yeah, it's not like, oh, I guess the industry goes away with no clarity. I think the industry will grow in a very different way and even more significantly if we can get clarity across the line. But like the institutions aren't gonna be like, oh, we started this whole thing, but we're gonna put it all away. Like Morgan Stanley is not gonna pull its bank charter or ICE isn't gonna be like, oh, we don't care about Polymarket anymore, right? Like everybody is gonna keep moving forward on this.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:36)
Nothing said on Oneshot is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Michael Vance and our guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed.

**Michael** (0:57)
All right. Well, Rebecca, welcome to the pod. It is March 5th. There is still no bill. We are looking forward to hearing from you as to what the status of that is and whether or not it will happen. But yeah, how are you doing?

**Rebecca Rettig** (1:10)
Good. How are you? Good to see you guys again.

**Michael** (1:12)
Yeah. Good to see you.

**Vance** (1:13)
We're officially the first guest of the Oneshot pod.

**Rebecca Rettig** (1:16)
Yeah.

**Michael** (1:16)
Here we go. Let's go. Wow. I know. It's an honor for everyone involved. How much time have you been spending in DC recently?

**Rebecca Rettig** (1:26)
There's time in DC and time on DC. I think you don't always have to be on the ground every day to be involved in conversations. The conversations have been ongoing. I think the time I spend on it depends on the week and the topic at hand and what is most pressing. Yield discussions are among people who really have a big stake in stablecoins, whether it be not the issuers so much, but anybody who is going to offer rewards. Then there are these other topics that are really relevant. Title III of the bill, what everybody talks about is the national security side, but it has a lot of impact on DeFi, so I spend a lot of time on that.
There are lots of different pieces of the bill and it just depends on the week and how much time I'm spending.

**Vance** (2:14)
I think one quick thing would be, there's a polymarket that's out there on whether or not clarity will pass. It seems to be whipsawing between 40 percent, 90 percent, 70 percent, 50 percent. What's your general sense as to maybe talking through a bit of just where the congressional process is and we're just talking about this before the show, but in DC, they say there is no bill until a bill is live.
Where are we in the process and how should we think about is this expected or is this just like taking longer for whatever reason?

**Rebecca Rettig** (2:54)
Yeah. Great question. I'll say a few things to start. That polymarket is indicative of how most policy people feel, which is like some days or some hours we're like, yes, it's going to happen and some days we're like, no, I don't think so, sometimes changes hour to hour. That's probably true of some congressional staffers or people on the Hill generally. I would say that the change is probably indicative of what people are experiencing live.
That's the first part of it. The second thing to really keep in mind about this bill is this would be the largest piece of financial legislation, like comprehensive financial legislation since Dodd-Frank. Just to put it all on to context, Dodd-Frank had a significant number of rule makings by agencies, and not all of them are done yet. It is really hard to pass comprehensive financial regulation. That's part of this. We have to put it in context. While we've all been thinking about it and harping about it, and it's been number one in all of our books for so long, because we just want to get it done, move on, and be able to build our businesses in pretty reasonable ways with a lot of certainty, there are other things going on in DC, hard to believe. Since it's March 5th, we can say there's a lot going on in the world that in some ways is taking attention away, and in some ways is not. The other thing that everybody should know is people are still working on this, not just on the industry side, but actually on the Senate side. But before we get into those details, let's take one step back to give an overview of where the bill is today. There was a comprehensive bill that we called Clarity that went through the House. It had SEC side that went through the House Financial Services Committee and the CFTC side that went through the House Ag Committee. It seems strange that the Agriculture Committee would care, but they have long been the overseer of the CFTC, because right at the CFTC was Historically Agriculture and Futures on that. And so that went out of the bill, out of the House with a majority and bipartisan. So then it got to the Senate and the Senate went and said, okay, we're going to pull these two pieces apart. The banking committee has the SEC and Treasury side. The Treasury side is important and we don't talk about that a lot, but we should today. And then the Ag Committee and the Senate has the Senate as the CFTC side of the bill. There's not a lot of focus on the CFTC side. That seems fairly baked. It is not so different than what we saw on the House. There is a little bit of discussion around one section of that bill that looks at sort of, for lack of a better word, like an innovation exemption on DeFi. And just like there has been so much attention on that on the SEC side, so that's what's happening on the CFTC side of the Senate. There's a lot of heat and everybody is paying attention to what's happening on the banking side because that covers the SEC stuff and the Treasury stuff. So on the SEC stuff that has held everybody up, obviously the yield question, which was section 404 if you want to look at the last version of the bill. And as everybody probably is painfully aware from crypto Twitter, there have been ongoing meetings chaired by the White House between the banking industry and the crypto industry. Narrow group of people. One of the last meetings, the funniest part was that everyone had to check their phones at the door, but then they also really looked at text and working on text. So I think that's and notwithstanding the March 1 deadline, nobody has left the table. We can see the banks being really loud about it and saying they don't want it. And we can see the White House, President Trump tweeted or posted on true social yesterday. Same, same. But that he had a very specific opinion on this. But ultimately, no matter how vocal people are being about how this is not, this is not acceptable, that's not acceptable, the deal is not off the table completely and people are trying to work on language still. So that's what's happening there.