Why Trump's New Fed Chair Means Bitcoin Number Go Up | Arthur Hayes

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Is it going to be bullish for the price? Does it even matter? Does Bitcoin even need regulation? The new Fed chair that, you know, he passed the Senate yesterday, is that a good thing for Bitcoin? Is that a bad thing for Bitcoin? What's your take on the guy? Or does it even matter? Are the best days behind us? Right now, where Bitcoin currently sits at $79,824, where do you believe we are in the cycle?

**Arthur Hayes** (0:23)
I think it'll take longer than the floodsters say it will, it'll happen sooner than we think. It's just that.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:31)
Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL. I'm here with the man, the myth, the only Arthur Hayes. Arthur, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I think this is the first time you're joining us. I'm super stoked about it. How are you?

**Arthur Hayes** (0:45)
Excellent.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:47)
Good to hear, good to hear. Hey man, so many things have changed over the last couple of years. Our industry went from being othered, being on the outskirts to being like accepted in a way. Like it was wild seeing the president of the United States posting from the White House account saying he wants to make America the Bitcoin capital of the world, right? You have Wall Street being interested in Bitcoin. You had these big banks. And that is a complete change from the back in the 2016, 2017 ICO era where it was like the basically the Wild West, which in my opinion was a little bit funner, was a little bit wilder.
What's your take on that, man? Because it is different. In a way, it feels like we're becoming suits.

**Arthur Hayes** (1:33)
I don't think so. I still think that at the end of the day, the reason why Bitcoin and crypto has values, it does something differentiated from the traditional financial system. Why would banks invest time and money on-boarding clients to trade crypto if it did the same thing that every other financial product does, which is a liability of the banking system, and that comes with issues. So the value of Bitcoin is that it's outside of the system. Now, obviously, there's trading volume that's going on.
Banks make business of allowing the clients to trade stuff. So as it got to a large enough asset class, with a two-something trillion dollars, then of course, they want to trade it. Of course, they want to earn fees in this new asset class that's uncorrelated with everything else that they're selling to their clients. So I don't think this is any sort of philosophical alignment on what Bitcoin is. Because at the end of the day, this is all about sound money, and banks are all about the exact opposite of that. This is about a bank is in the business of making money, their clients want to trade this thing, and they're going to allow them to trade it in a way that they feel comfortable with, which is all these sort of derivatives and on balance sheet crypto products. And so, yeah, I don't think Bitcoin is becoming Suits. It's just that, okay, the Suits feel like they can make some money, when they're coming to the conference. Great. I mean, it's an open source system. That's the whole point. Anyone can participate. Here are the set of rules. And if you want to join, come on board.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:54)
One of the narratives that I've been hearing on Bitcoin Twitter, I so call it Bitcoin Twitter, because BitcoinX sounds weird.
But one of the narratives that I keep hearing, Arthur, is that the centralization of the custody of Bitcoin, right? And you look at the largest ETFs, except I think Fidelity, they all custody their Bitcoin with Coinbase, including MicroStrategy as well, or Strategy as well, right? Does that concern you at all? Because I think this is the first cycle, really, that you've actually seen less people taking custody of their coins than in previous cycles.

**Arthur Hayes** (3:28)
It's definitely concerning. I hope that we don't, you know, that Coinbase doesn't get hacked or have some sort of issue. And I hope that all these folks don't have to learn why we say not your keys, not your coins in their own lives because, you know, it's not very nice to have your shit ganked. But at the end of the day, this is the point, right? It's not your keys, not your coins. If you don't control the private keys, then you are just a schmuck. That is the whole thing that Coinbase does good on security. And I don't think they've been hacked to date, so the record is perfect. But there's no such thing as 100% safety in this world. So that is that risk.