Ep 33 - January 22, 2025 - $TRUMP memecoin
Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Check-in recorded on January 22, 2019 5. I'm your host, Robert Sworthout, and I'm doing my my cohost, Andres Andate. How's it going, Andres?
Andres Sandate:You're moving so quickly, Robert, because we have so many headlines to talk about. Yeah. It's it's a rapid fire, show today. We do have a lot to talk about, with with with lots of big headlines. So, yeah, let's, let's jump into it.
Andres Sandate:It's
Robert Swarthout:Yep. Oops. That's I have the wrong one up here. Let me
Andres Sandate:We have, yeah, we obviously have, you know, a lot to talk about with respect to, you know, president Trump inauguration, a, a a crazy storm that's passed through, you know, many parts of the south, including here in Atlanta. So hope you're doing well.
Robert Swarthout:I'm doing well. I am, I'm happy that the, this last storm did not affect us on the north side of town. I was not in the mood for it again. Yeah. My dad was excited because he drives a school bus, and he, didn't have to work today because he's on the south side of town, and they
Andres Sandate:That's right.
Robert Swarthout:They, were off.
Andres Sandate:There we go.
Robert Swarthout:Anyways, yeah. So our first topic, it kinda a bit of a recap here just kind of like with the perspective of a year of Bitcoin ETFs being out there, just how much of a success they were. I think nobody would have guessed we were at, at following a year. Even, you know, Bitcoin Maximus probably would have never guessed this. So some crazy numbers here.
Robert Swarthout:You have Bitcoin, IBIT was the most popular for inflows last year of any ETF. It's kinda well, outside of the, inflation adjusted, and there's a couple of rules around it, but at the end of the day, it was the most popular by far. The the basket of all the ETFs was pretty incredible.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean, it's up there with some heavyweights. When you talk about ETFs, I mean, a lot of people are familiar with, QQQ. There's obviously done a a lot of advertising around that particular ticker. You see it, you know, technology, focused ETF from Invesco, and then you have Ishares, the MSCI, EFA.
Andres Sandate:So those are 2 household names, right, when you talk about ETFs from major money managers, BlackRock, Invesco. So for Ishares to be punching at 52,000,000,000 and change in 1 year Mhmm. And the second, you know, the second highest is Invesco QQQ, which is at 18 1,000,000,000 in the 1st year, but inflation adjusted only 34 only 34,000,000,000. Says a lot. Right?
Andres Sandate:This is a massive news for those who, you know, maybe questioned or speculated, would there be demand for these ETFs? There clearly is, and we have more to talk about on the ETF front, later in
Robert Swarthout:the show. I mean, the market has spoken. Market obviously wanted these. The SEC was forced by the courts to approve them, and now we're a year out from that and, you know, pretty crazy. So and I think the look ahead here is I think it's gonna continue to get inflows.
Robert Swarthout:But how soon will the SEC approve some of their Altcoin ETFs? Y'all Ethereum's already out there. It really hasn't done great, whether it's the asset or Ethereum for that matter over the last 6 months. But it's been a, well, it will be a interesting time with this new SEC coming in.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean and the only other comment I would say about this first one is it it's not just the 2 bigger issuers, in this case, you know, BlackRock and Fidelity with their Bitcoin ETFs that made the top 20. It's also, you know, the ARC, 21 has has an ETF that's, what, close to 3 or 4,000,000,000, a little over 4,000,000,000, of inflows that's attracted. And then Bitwise, it's Bitcoin ETF is attracted close to 2a half, 2,300,000,000, I think, to be exact. So you have, you know, ETFs that have, by all, you know, calculations, been successful launches in the 1st year, which is not the case.
Andres Sandate:Many ETFs just go away in in a year. They just don't get traction.
Robert Swarthout:Right. Yeah. And, you know, admittedly, there's a long tail of these ETFs for Bitcoin. I imagine some of them probably, you know, I wouldn't probably get that business gets sold off or however that will consolidation will happen because it probably doesn't make sense to have 9 of these things sitting out there. Right.
Robert Swarthout:But what I find fascinating about this next topic so, JPMorgan, was not JPMorgan the guy, but I figured I think it was an analyst or somebody from, JPMorgan saying that if the SEC were to approve an XRP and a Solana ETF that collectively they would, have up to 14,000,000,000 in inflows. This is amazing how 1 year of perspective can be changed so much because if we rewind a year ago, the the expectation for the Bitcoin ETFs was to get to 5 or 10,000,000,000, and we're talking about Altcoin ETFs potentially doing more than that, in our 1st year. So it's, it's it's been a fun time to be in crypto since the, the election, and I think the the first half or even this whole year will be pretty interesting.
Andres Sandate:Well yeah. And you have to also look at the signaling. Right? I mean, a a major bank analyst would not have put that type of node out 2 years ago. Right?
Andres Sandate:Oh. Not only because there was no not yeah. Not not not only because there was no ETF approved in trading, but, yeah, that would have been I mean, just politically. Right? Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:There would have been a a nonstarter. So I think it's the beginning of what I would expect we'll see a lot of from financial, institutions, analysts that are covering the space because, asset management, you know, moves the needle, right, for a lot of these, issuers in terms of new products and inflows and capital flows. So yeah. Yep. Pretty impressive, you know, how much, you know, the environment's changed for crypto in a short amount of time.
Andres Sandate:Right.
Robert Swarthout:I mean, just, you know, went from being heavy or strong headwinds to pretty stiff tailwinds Yeah. Around November 5th or 6th. So I guess rounding out our topics here when it comes to ETFs, I found it pretty entertaining. Friday evening of this last week, that was or Friday afternoon, that was Gensler's last time working at the SEC. And because he had resigned at that point.
Robert Swarthout:And the amount of ETF filings around crypto that came in after he technically was no longer, employed there was kind of comical. You can tell these things were teed up. There's some examples are like a Litecoin ETF, a, XRP leverage or an inverse ETF on XRP, a futures ETF, a salon of futures ETF, and and a couple others that are around debt strategy when it comes to digital assets. So pretty fascinating and I can't imagine this is the last we see. And the SEC, in my opinion, really obviously needs to hurry up and get the framework in place.
Robert Swarthout:Because if not, they're gonna have to weed through all these different things of an assets or different assets that are have are very cloudy in nature about their, you know, their place. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. It's gonna be tough for they, being the SEC, you know, folks that are there to review these filings and determine next steps. Right? So it's a multistep process to get one of these products to market Mhmm. Without a a broader framework.
Andres Sandate:I think we're gonna talk about that later in the show. But, yeah, it's, the the last 3 to 4 days has been just there's a remarkable amount across all agencies and just about every industry, just a remarkable amount of, rapid change, that's happening and or just the impact of, like, say, executive actions or executive orders and how to process it. So I think we're gonna be in the state of, you know, hurry up, and let's see what happens from our perspective, like analyzing
Robert Swarthout:Right.
Andres Sandate:The news for, you know, foreseeable future. I just hope that we get, you know, some folks in place, and we can start, you know, seeing, the results of this stuff. Yeah. The real work.
Robert Swarthout:The, I I was actually reading right before we came on an analogy that I actually think is quite fitting. It's it's easy to be excited about everything right now, and certainly it's Trump's first hundred days. Very early part of that, obviously. Yeah. But we're also coming out of, at least the analogy was a really bad divorce, and now you're in this honeymoon phase of the new presidency.
Robert Swarthout:So everything seems exciting. Obviously, there's all these new headlines coming out. They've been teed up. It's not like they did all this work immediately, and then talked about it. So they've been working on it.
Robert Swarthout:And over time, I would imagine the news cycle slows down a little bit around a lot of this stuff, and they actually have to actually go do the work, to actually get it done. So anyways, so next topic is about Tether. So USDT, the stable coin. They are currently based in the Caymans, and they are moving their headquarters to El Salvador. We talked about El Salvador in our last episode 2 weeks ago because they got a loan from the World Bank, and they had to drop Bitcoin from being part of their treasury and then investments they were doing in it, and make it only to be private citizens could be doing it.
Robert Swarthout:So I just found this interesting, like, you have it flipped and then all of a sudden now they're welcoming it. And I'm not quite sure that what this does for Tether's reputation of being in a lawless jurisdiction of sorts when it comes to finance, or less loss. So I don't know. This maybe this is the end of the story for them or maybe a different chapter that we don't understand. So
Andres Sandate:Well, I think a lot of people are hoping for, you know, 25. I mean, at least crypto optimists or people pro crypto are looking for stablecoin legislation in 25. So, yeah, I I think there's more to the story, but, I it's just, we're in a we're in that mode where we're just gonna have to see what plays out in 25.
Robert Swarthout:Absolutely. So moving on, our next topic, and we probably won't spend much time on this. If you would have asked me this a month and a half ago, it was me, I guess, 2 months ago, it was it was important.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. It
Robert Swarthout:has to do with the SEC Ripple case, and there, the SEC finally, submitted their brief explaining what they're what they will be, appealing. This got very little chatter on Twitter after it was actually, submitted. People were wondering if it was gonna happen at all. It did happen. And at the end of the day, I mean, the attorneys are basically saying they even had time hard times going through this, The the attorney's on Twitter, to be clear, because they don't think it's ever gonna be litigated at this point.
Robert Swarthout:They think it's gonna be withdrawn or settled, based on
Andres Sandate:I think there's so much change happening at the SEC. I agree with you, Robert. I I think this one ends up going away, you know, when when new leadership is in place. I think it's just a was more or less feels like a formality.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. And the last thing I'll say on this is the SEC is doing their first meeting tomorrow. One of the topics in the closed door meeting apparently will be, discussing cases, that could be in settlement or litigation. I don't know if it happens, you know, happens tomorrow per se, or they're gonna wait for the new, chair Atkins to get in place. You know, my I hope they do it tomorrow.
Robert Swarthout:I don't think it's terribly realistic, but it's, because they do have a 3, 3 commissioners still in place. 2 of them are Republicans, Esther Pierce and and Ueda. And Ueda is the acting chair. So they they could act they could do a vote to be a probably a 2 to 1 vote and they could, move and clean up a lot of this, non fraud cases is I think the way they would approach it. So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Next topic is so there's been a lot of talk talk since July, more so towards the tail end of the presidential race around setting up a Bitcoin strategic reserve for the US. The Bitcoiners think that they're the only ones that are gonna get it. There has been some discussion and there seems to be a rumor. The question is how likely of a chance it is, but it would be more than just Bitcoin. It would be US based cryptos including Bitcoin.
Robert Swarthout:So that would not be Ethereum, but it would be Bitcoin, it could be XRP, it could be ADA, it could be, I believe HBAR, like a in Solana, like a basket of maybe 5 or 6 of these. Again, we'll have to see how it goes, at the end of the day. I I even put the whole chances of any sort of reserve to 50.50, personally. I I'm just not convinced that it's gonna get across the finish line right now. There's enough news out there to make me at least pay attention to it, but it's, I think there's moral things likely.
Robert Swarthout:Like, legislation's gonna happen. I'm not sure that the reserve does.
Andres Sandate:So Do you agree do you agree that, at the state level that it it's less likely as well?
Robert Swarthout:You know, I I I think that's a great test area for them if it's gonna happen anywhere first. And I think there's, like, 5 or 6 states that have a bill in some form, that are trying to go through. I I don't know if it's the states are doing it because they're trying to front run the the US, the Fed, doing it. Not you know, again, then it could turn into a a race amongst other countries. I don't know.
Robert Swarthout:I I again, I'm not sure what kind of signal that sends if the US does it because, like, everyone they they keep saying the dollar's fine. Not a competitor to the dollar, but also you have a reserve of it. Like, how does how do you reconcile those things in your mind?
Andres Sandate:Well yeah. And I I read some analysis that, you know, the further you go to the central, centralization of, you know, crypto in terms of it's in the hands of these state actors or Sure. Centralized entities like state governments, state treasuries, federal governments, federal treasuries. It takes away from that whole, you know, crypto argument at the beginning, which was to decentralized finance, decentralize, you know, the the the sort of consolidation of of of power in the hands of large banks or large, you know, financial entities or or large governments. So, yeah, there's there's a lot that you know, if if we end up seeing this, you know, which there's no certainty that it'll happen, it it does lead to some sort of fundamental questions, around this.
Robert Swarthout:And I keep coming back to, like, why did the Bitcoin Max want there to be reserves so bad? And I think it's purely they just know that their their bags, if in crypto terms, are just gonna go up in value. Like, it's not that they're trying to make the dollar a stronger thing. I think it's purely that they just want, they want their number to go higher. So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Anyways, we will move on. So the next topic is still about Bitcoin, and it's around the idea with Coinbase. They started offering, the ability to get a loan, backed by Bitcoin that you hold. You would put it into their service. It actually gets shipped off to another service provider behind the scenes.
Robert Swarthout:They've talked about this. And you would get USDC, stablecoin. And, you know, you've been able to do this outside the US for quite a while. The regulators and this the environment in the US kinda wasn't allowing it to happen. And I think, not that there's regulations in place for this thing yet, I just think now that you have an SEC that's not gonna be an adversary when it comes to innovation like this.
Robert Swarthout:So
Andres Sandate:Any idea what the minimum size is on these on these loans?
Robert Swarthout:I do not. I think there's actually a maximum. I think well, there's a maximum LTV. Right? So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:I think it's 38% Okay. Or something like that. So you
Andres Sandate:own a $100,000 in Bitcoin. Theoretically, you go to Coinbase. You say, I wanna borrow, you know, $30,000. You're below that LTV. It's 30%.
Andres Sandate:In this case, you give them your Bitcoin, goes off to a third party for safekeeping. They give you $30,000 loan.
Robert Swarthout:And and and, also, the rates will vary depending on what the LTV is. Right. It looks like from what I'm reading here, the rates are from 9 to 20%. So it's in some sense, the lower end is not that much different than what you may get in a mortgage, but the high end starts to feel like a, loan shark or a, payday loan. So yeah.
Andres Sandate:Well, it's not the first time that, you know, an investor or, in this case, like, somebody that owns assets, like, take real estate. I mean, there's a lot of real estate investors who can't borrow money from banks, and they have to go to bridge lenders or they have to go to short term, financing, and they're not paying 7, 8, 9% at the bank anymore. They're now paying 13, 14, 15%, and people do that all day long because, you know, they're asset rich and cash poor. And they don't wanna lose a project or they need to finish a project, so they need cash. And so, you know, yeah, 16, 18, 20% feels super rich, but Coinbase isn't, you know, isn't a fool.
Andres Sandate:So they're gonna make money, you know, putting putting the capital out.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. And, you know, and I think in the sense, you know, these obviously are loans, but, like, in this in the traditional sense, you don't typically have the collateral potentially having a 50% drawdown. Right? I mean, like, so the the LTV on these things are It's gonna be low. Interesting.
Robert Swarthout:I mean, if Bitcoin was to go down to 50,000, there's a chance that a lot of these loans are borderline like, they may call them. Right? I I I don't know the exact terms. There's no, sets, end date on these loans from everything that I could tell. So they're more of a credit line than anything else.
Andres Sandate:So Mhmm.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I mean I I would imagine we start seeing a
Andres Sandate:lot of this kind of thing. Engineering.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:I was gonna say, I think you're gonna see more of this where you can, you know, margin your
Robert Swarthout:assets. Absolutely. Now we're gonna delve off into the world of meme coins. I did not think this was gonna be a topic that we would ever talk about. Blew my mind.
Robert Swarthout:So there was a as part of the whole inaugural weekend leading up to the, inauguration on Monday, there was a crypto ball, that took place Friday evening in DC. Paul Atkins was there. Beset, I think is how you say his last the new, treasury, nominee, and many other people, especially a lot of people in crypto. During the event, the Trump meme coin was launched. I have not seen any denial from the Trump team that it, that was that it wasn't him.
Robert Swarthout:So at this point, we're assuming it's him. He actually had a chance yesterday at a press conference to say that, and he didn't. He said, oh, I don't know much about it. How's it doing? But it shot up at one point.
Robert Swarthout:It had a market cap, I think, of, like, 60 to $70,000,000,000.
Andres Sandate:That's in the daily briefing, Robert. Let's be honest. Come on. Yes. Absolutely.
Andres Sandate:Be naive here. Yeah. Wink wink. It's doing very well. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:So so he launched the the Trump coin during this, effectively a rally of of source, right, in DC?
Robert Swarthout:And it's just that
Andres Sandate:It's taken off, like, big time.
Robert Swarthout:It is now, but it has the 29th rank market cap of all the crypto, and that's right at 7,700,000,000. Where's the is this, market cap? Yeah. 7,700,000,000. So it's come way down, partially because the other half we're gonna talk about is the Melania meme coin.
Robert Swarthout:So I think I think late Saturday or early Sunday, hers was launched, and a lot of liquidity just kinda swept out of Trump's. Within 30 minutes of hers launching, his was down 50%. I've heard some crazy numbers on this where you can see on chain, analysis was done, and somebody took a $1,000,000 of stable coin, USDC, and bought into Trump admittedly early on, and it turned into a $150,000,000. The the the challenge with these is the yes. The number goes up.
Robert Swarthout:It becomes very big. It's all about the liquidity. I don't think that you probably could've got a $150,000,000 out of it, after crashing the price. Right. But That
Andres Sandate:is the other side of the trade. It's post theoretical.
Robert Swarthout:Absolutely. So both of these combined, why are they doing this? Well, it's a chance to make money. I get it. We you're not gonna have an SEC that's gonna come after them.
Robert Swarthout:I get it. But the the running theory that I that I probably subscribe to is they had to do this now if they're ever gonna do it, and because once he was in office as part of the constitution, you cannot use your you cannot use the presidency as a way to make money for yourself, which makes a ton of sense here. He was not in that period yet until Monday at noon, so they could get it out the door before that. And Yeah. I don't know.
Robert Swarthout:I you had asked me yesterday what I thought about this, and I'll I'll say it on the podcast the same thing. It's like, I think it's a bad look for crypto. Right. But I think it's a great sign for how the the Trump presidency is gonna deal with crypto. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. So I mean, clearly two answers there. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. You have a pro crypto move here, but, you know, I don't know how many people are ultimately that surprised. Right? Like, we saw a lot of signaling over the last couple of years with, you know, some of the other headlines. Like, in fact, the next one, World Liberty Financial.
Andres Sandate:You know, we saw a lot of the signaling around this and, you know, say what you will about, you know, now president Trump. Like, he's a master promoter, master, you know, influencer when it comes to the media, and this plays right into the, you know, meme coin mania, right, that that we've seen, play out in crypto. You know, the the the some of the things that, I guess, we'll have to see play out with these 2 coins is and I asked you this before we started. Like, who are the buyers? You know?
Andres Sandate:What's the profile of that buyer? I think you said it's, you know, it's it it may not be who people think on the surface, like, for the nonfinancial, market player. It it's not necessarily the guys and gals who are, at the rallies. It you know, because it's complicated to actually buy the tokens or the coins.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I mean, they weren't traded in Coinbase or any centralized exchange. They were on Right. Solana network, so you had to be have funds on Solana or you get them there, and then you had to go to a decentralized exchange and kinda do your trading that way. So it was the true, degen crypto gamblers.
Robert Swarthout:And Yep. So if there was I mean, I could probably know this number if I had done it in in advance, but but there could only have been 10,000 people that touched this. Right. But it made far bigger news than 10,000 people would know. Oh, yeah.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Well, I think the bigger, question and existential question is, like, what you said earlier, which is, you know, folks that have been building in crypto and focused on things like commercial utility and focused on, you know, the broader impact of the technology on enterprise, etcetera. Like, when you see these types of moves, you know, it does make a lot more skeptics. Right? Say, see, this is this is ultimately what this is about.
Andres Sandate:Like, crypto is just about a quick buck or it's about, meme coins or it's about celebrity, who's holding the bag at the end of all of this is, you know, is their skeptical sort of question. So I think I think it raises some of those things that the industry will have to wrestle with over the next few years.
Robert Swarthout:Yep. Yep. But I, my my hope is the meme coins from the Trumps are behind us because there's a lot of other Trumps that can put meme coins here. The rumor was Barron was next, but Oh, wow. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:I I hope not. So, anyways, you kind of alluded to it a little bit there. But so our next topic around World Liberty Financial, so that is the crypto company that I believe Eric and, Don Junior have started up. You know, they have huge ambitions. We'll see what they kinda get to, but they obviously can pump money into this.
Robert Swarthout:And over the last, over the weekend and early this week, they have purchased and, again, this is all done with on chain analysis because we know the wallet addresses of their their Ethereum wallet from the NFT sales they did a couple years ago. They they have spent roughly about a $100,000,000 buying a couple different tokens, Ethereum, Bitcoin that was wrapped on the Ethereum network, but do you think of it as Bitcoin and Aave, Link, TRX, and ENA. It's, since that that number is probably closer to a 110,000,000. But it's you know, the the theory that I was reading about that I probably believe is they, when the buying stops from this wallet, that's when the regulations are coming. Because they, in theory, they need to get they need to get in place first, you know, the true, I guess, traditional finance way of approaching this.
Robert Swarthout:And but we just get to kinda see it happen, because they're on chain. So and these are the wallet addresses we know about. There may be other wallet addresses they don't talk about. So Yeah.
Andres Sandate:Have we seen, what what have been the moves of the of of the prices of these, you know, altcoins since those purchases were made public? You know Anything material?
Robert Swarthout:Nothing material. I I mean, the the last 3 or 4 of them are small enough coins that I don't pay attention, but Ethereum and Bitcoin have not done anything crazy the last Yeah. For that matter, Ethereum hasn't done much for the last 6 months, if you really wanna think about it that way. So
Andres Sandate:Mhmm.
Robert Swarthout:It hasn't had an influence yet. Ethereum has been lagging this, this run that we've had built since the election. So
Andres Sandate:Well, a lot of people speculated that you know, and Trump said and he says it in in in the Trump meme coin, I guess, you'd call it prospectus. It's really a website that explains what what the meme coins are, at least at his. You know, he has called himself the crypto president. And even though he didn't make, you know, crypto or or or, you know, any any sort of proclamations or didn't didn't even use the word crypto in his inaugural address. A lot of people do, you know, hold out hope that are pro crypto that that we're gonna see a lot of reg you know, regulation.
Andres Sandate:We're gonna see a lot of new laws passed around the industry. So Yeah. These two headlines would be signals that that is the case.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. And I certainly, have not changed my opinion. We we are we are gonna get crypto regulation. What does it happen in the 1st 100 days? Fingers crossed, but, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if it takes longer than that.
Robert Swarthout:So Yeah. I have been disappointed in the past in these topics, and I hope to no longer be disappointed. So moving on. Our, third to last topic here is, the Bank of America CEO, Moynihan, was in an interview and they asked him about crypto, and his response was, the financial industry is ready to adopt crypto payments if regulators give us the green light. That is the most direct answer that I have heard from any sort of bank CEO that is positive about crypto.
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:And and Middle East, kinda sent off some spidey, tinglies for me from some research I've done years ago where Bank of America has a lot of XRP patents. So who knows what happens there? But it was, it I did a double take when I read it. I'm like, wait. I need to reread that again.
Andres Sandate:I'm not sure
Robert Swarthout:I read it right.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Well, you know, he's he's one of many, I think, financial, financial institution CEOs, I think, over the last month or 2 that have really had to sort of gear up. Like, what are gonna be the talking points? Because I think they're gonna keep getting these questions, you know, when they go and do interviews. And, I think that they again, we said this earlier, like, there would have been a different answer two and a half months ago, 3 months ago.
Robert Swarthout:He would have been like, no comment. Like, there would not yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, even if we only get stable Chrome regulation out of the gate, that is just gonna turn up the the noise on this.
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm. And it's gonna be harder and harder for them not to at least answer some of the questions that they get. So I I look forward to it. It should be good theater nonetheless. So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Our second to last topic here is yesterday, the SEC announced that they are putting together a crypto task force led by commissioner Persse who has been very pro crypto. Mhmm. I mean, heck, her nickname is Crypto Mom. And, about putting establishing a clear regulatory framework. Like, this is what we've been asking for.
Robert Swarthout:This is what she's been asking for. And we were talking before we started about, like, you know, what may be a timeline for this. I think there's a chance that she's got more of this written, than people may realize. Not to say that it's gonna immediately be signed and released by the SEC tomorrow, but if it if we don't hear anything about this for 2 months, I would be shocked. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. At least the beginning stages of it because she has had this. She tried to push on Gensler when he came in. Obviously, that didn't happen, and we are, it feels like we're getting close, put it that way. So Yeah.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean, it's like like you said, to me, I mean, there's probably a playbook, you know, grab it off the shelf. The the regime has changed. It's no longer about it's going to change or it could change or if you need to change, it's changed. So, yeah, there's a different, you know, sheriff in town as they say, and, I think we will see a lot more activity on the regulatory front, to say the least.
Andres Sandate:And it starts with you know, you've got these are agencies. Right? They can't just stroke a pin. It's not an executive action, right, as much as some people would like that. There's gonna have to be a process, but it it at least appears, like you said, that there's a a playbook, and maybe they're not starting from the, you know, the the one yard line.
Andres Sandate:Maybe they're already at the 50.
Robert Swarthout:Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, fingers crossed that we talk about this soon. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:And so our last topic, I didn't have this on my bingo card, for today's episode. I was thinking this is gonna take a couple months, but, one of the campaign promises that Trump made when he was at the Bitcoin conference Yeah. Last July was that he would pardon, Ross Albright. So for those who don't know, Ross, admittedly, did commit a crime. He was the guy that ran the Silk Road website back in the day where you could, among many other things, buy drugs online and you're paying with it in crypto.
Robert Swarthout:It was he basically built an eBay for illicit,
Andres Sandate:thing. Elicit activity. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:And, he guns drugs,
Andres Sandate:all sorts of stuff. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:There's a movie out there about him. I forget the title of it.
Andres Sandate:If if Oh, really? Okay.
Robert Swarthout:You probably look it up and kinda see it, but, at the end of the day, he, got sentenced to 2 life sentences plus 40 years, which seems a little aggressive, for someone that did it was a nonviolent crime. And, anyways, so Trump ended up parting him. He's already out of jail as of late last night, and, you know, the Bitcoin community in particular, but crypto as a whole, I think was happy to see Trump follow through on his first crypto promise, or one of his this would be the first one he'd follow through on. So we, we can move on. So the US government still holds all the Bitcoin, that they seized from him.
Robert Swarthout:It was, like, a 190,000 Bitcoin worth, like, $18,000,000,000 at this point. He will not be getting that back. There's some law, I forget the name of it, I was reading about that. If you committed a crime and then you like, you don't later get your things back that you, committed a crime with even if they're not illegal. So Bitcoin's not illegal, but he's not getting his Bitcoin back.
Andres Sandate:So Yeah. Yeah. I think that's where you would have seen a lot of people draw a line. Right? Right.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I, I don't know how I feel about this. There's been so many pardons over the last 2 days where, you know, I have to honestly just suspend comment a lot of times and just process because it you know, we saw Biden pardon a lot of people on his way out. We saw Trump pardon a lot of people on his way in. You know, for those of us that are law abiding citizens
Robert Swarthout:or
Andres Sandate:at least law abiding by what the laws were at that time, it it it it does kinda make you scratch your head. I mean, this is just an American. So, yeah, I'm not gonna comment on it other than the fact that, you know, there was definitely a lot of people wanting this guy released. I wasn't paying attention to crypto back at the time Mhmm. You know, when the crypto bazaar or silk road was happening.
Andres Sandate:So I'd have to do more research, but, yeah, the guy's out of prison.
Robert Swarthout:Yep. Anyways, well, that that's a wrap on this show. So thanks for joining us on this episode of the week of crypto check-in. To stay updated on future episodes, you can find us at a podcast player by searching Teton Crypto Capital or the weekly crypto check-in. Take care.
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