Ep 65 - May 20, 2026 - Clarity Act moves to the full Senate
It's it's thinking. Why is it not going? Welcome to the Weekly Crypto Check-in, your go to podcast for navigating the wild world of cryptocurrencies. Robert Swarthout Andres Sandate. Today, recorded on May 20.
Robert Swarthout:We're diving into the latest market shifts, blockchain breakthroughs, and expert insights to keep you ahead of the curve. How's it going, Andres? Good. Good to
Andres Sandate:see you, Robert. Hope, you've been good. I know it's been a couple of months since we recorded. We talk in the in in between shows, but it's nice to be back on the air. And, you know, summer is upon us yesterday in Atlanta was pretty steamy, and it looks like it's gonna be a hot weekend ahead.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, summer is certainly here and humidity with it. You know? And like you said, it's been two months.
Robert Swarthout:We not that we intentionally took a break. We kinda got tired of talking about the same news and didn't feel like much was newsworthy and no sense of wasting anyone's time. So we I guess, kind of what bumps me to wanting to do this recording now would be that the Clarity Act, kind of our first topic here. Yeah. Finally, some progress.
Robert Swarthout:More so than just rumors. It advanced out of the banking committee. It was a long drawn out process. The the banking, I guess, lobbyists and the and the everybody was and crypto lobby. Yes.
Robert Swarthout:And and all revolved around stablecoin yield. The
Andres Sandate:Correct.
Robert Swarthout:In some way, the most basic of all the topics we could be talking about. And finally, the bankers essentially won out at the end of the day. So kind of what allowed it to kinda get over the hump was if you hold Stablecoin, a Stablecoin issuer is not allowed to pay you yield effectively. They they did write in some language, and I guess the compromise of sorts was that the the issuers could pay a reward, put that in air quotes, a reward if you're using the stablecoin. But, idly, holding it in a wallet to not do anything is not gonna get you anything.
Robert Swarthout:So at the end of the day, I'm glad that this finally did not hold it up any longer. I was slightly concerned that we were just gonna end up with nothing this year because midterms are here and Yeah. You know, things are gonna be more important likely than news around the Clarity Act. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I you know, in in reading and trying to come up with a, I guess, an easy sound bite to encapsulate the the compromise, it's like it sounds like it's akin to a credit card. Right? If you use the credit card, you can earn points, and those points can then be transferred into rewards. Right?
Andres Sandate:Miles can be converted and you know, or points can be converted into miles, I guess, is a simple example. So, yeah. And I what I liked about this is that we talked about this before we went live that, you know, we had two senators across the aisle, two Democrats Yeah. To come to come over. So the the the the bill went to the full senate with a 15 to nine, vote.
Andres Sandate:So you could say it was bipartisan. Now the question, you know, remains is given just that the midterms are looming, as you said, and, there's a lot of really important issues going on in in in voters' minds right now. Is this something that can get done before, you know, let's say, the the the August recess? I know that there's a July 4 target of trying to get something done before then and get it on president Trump's desk for a signature. Or does this, you know, slip and get bundled into something else?
Andres Sandate:You talked about the amount of, amendments or the amount of, pork that was stuffed into this bill to get it to where it is. It'll be interesting to see if it can, you know, if it can get enough support in the senate as it's written without major changes to to go forward. I do think, though, it's a good signal to, you know, Wall Street and to financial institutions and and investors, you know, globally that have been sort of waiting to see if The US could get its, you know, get get get its act together around this. And, yeah, I'm with you. I'm I'm glad that this compromise around stablecoins, you know, didn't drag out, you know, for for months and and ultimately kill all the momentum that we had going into the year.
Andres Sandate:And, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase's text, thought summed it up, like, mark it up. Let's go. You know? And keep this thing moving.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. You know, it's I I imagine those that were on the inside negotiating this were exhausted with it because it was literally more than two months of negotiations back and forth. I don't know if it was daily, but, like, I imagine at some point, it just felt like it was never ending. So Yeah. But yeah.
Robert Swarthout:You know, at least on early part of May, so Cauchy, the the Odds website was putting
Andres Sandate:prediction market. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. Was putting it at a 60% chance that it gets passed this year. So we'll see. July 4 is here, basically, in a month, and it's especially with the holidays, it it'll either happen quickly or it's, we'll be holding our breath. So we'll we'll see how it goes.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Definitely something, we're we're gonna be following in future shows now that we have something out of committee and, you know, goes to the full chamber. So, hopefully, this, you know, this is this finally moment that we've been talking about for some time is not a moment, but is actually the beginning of of, what we hope will be some very transformational change in in the industry. But there's a lot of other things going on in crypto that we, you know, we can talk about. So let's move on.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. So oftentimes when I'm talking to just random people and they, you know, they find out that they they do this fund, they often are curious about the crypto, but they're more curious about AI right now. Everyone's more curious about AI. Sure. And I I often kinda bring up on that conversation.
Robert Swarthout:I was like, there's a crossroads of crypto and AI. I didn't expect it to happen in May of this year, but it it has happened, the at least the beginnings of it. So kinda set the stage here. You know, you have AI agents that are starting to do things for you, you know, like, go make a reservation or do whatever. Right now, they don't really do anything that they would have to pay to do or you would have to pay to do.
Robert Swarthout:So you don't you're not gonna issue a credit card number to an AI agent. A, for security, but also, b, just because they may be doing a task that technically would cost less than a dollar, and running a transaction on a credit card doesn't make sense for less than a dollar. So this is the perfect crossroads of crypto and AI, and that's the news here. So AWS has launched with Coinbase and Stripe kind of helping them along, allowing agents to, autonomously buy data, APIs, content, and, do transactions with crypto. This was a, I assumed it would happen, but I was almost certain it was gonna happen thing, and it's really cool.
Robert Swarthout:So, like, an example we were talking about before we started recording that I think kinda help illustrate it is right now, you might let an AI agent help you plan a trip, plan a vacation. Right? I'm gonna go here. I'm gonna do these things. It kind of helps curate data, but it doesn't really book anything.
Robert Swarthout:So in a world where they can use crypto or some payment mechanism, you could say, hey. Yes. I do like this. Go book it for me. So it's gonna go book the airfare.
Robert Swarthout:It's gonna go book the, you know, the hotel or whatever it may be. So I I would've I don't know if I'm gonna put a date on this necessarily, but if it it wouldn't surprise me if in the next year, you had AI agents that can be basically, replace a travel agent full stop. And that's just one of probably millions of examples of what they'll be able to do long term. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean, without getting into the more technical and, I guess, engineering and and programming aspects of this, which is which is definitely more your field, it it feels like an environment could be nearby where, yes, like, you you have this relationship with an agent that is doing all these things in your, you know, in in your life. Like, you brought up travel as a really good example. Right? You're going, on a week long trip, right, and you've gotta get reservations and car rentals and, things change mid course.
Andres Sandate:Right. Anybody that's done, you know, any type of of of trip like that, you can imagine, like, the benefit of being able to, you know, text and and get a response and can get a confirmation. You know, we take for granted now that we can book a reservation to go to a restaurant. Right? And all that sort of set up when we get there.
Andres Sandate:Mhmm. And it's a big occasion. Right? So the the nature of being able to take it a step further and empower these agents to do you know, to, you know, to handle the the the billing, the payment, the settlement, all of that. I mean, the technology is clearly there.
Andres Sandate:It's interesting on the back end of all this. Like, there's clearly companies that are gonna win. Mhmm. And and those that are gonna be, I guess, the blockchains where a lot of this type of activity happens. And I think that speaks to the commercial use case, and the utility around these blockchains that we've been talking about for for some But it's but it's, but, yeah, it it it's neat.
Andres Sandate:I think that the still the average person, is still trying to wrap their head around, is AI gonna be a good thing?
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Net net, or is AI gonna, you know, take jobs? You know, this is graduation season. Right? A lot of young people going out into the economy, into the, quote, unquote, real world, and, you know, I'm starting to see and read and and and just hear more and more about this backlash that's growing around data centers and around AI Mhmm. And just the impact.
Andres Sandate:And I think there's this fear. Right? There's a a a viral speech, from Eric Schmidt, you know, the former CEO of Google that was booed when he talked about how AI was gonna transform our economy and have an impact on everybody, and I think he was probably being pretty honest. Yes. But I think he was also, you know, probably getting some of that feedback from the graduates who are like, I don't know if this is a good thing.
Andres Sandate:And I think anytime you have some big transformational moment, right, like, in our economy and especially when it impacts jobs and people's futures, there's this fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Right? So there's so much to work out. I think it's cool that we can come on the show and just talk about, at least from a crypto perspective Mhmm. You know, how this technology with crypto can actually hopefully make things easier and and more efficient.
Andres Sandate:You know, you hate to think it's taking jobs away from, say, a travel agent, for example. But hopefully, it's finding ways to do things efficient more efficiently. And what that translates into, hopefully, is people getting more time back, you know, some of the hassle factor goes away. Some of the, the things that are more obsolete, become a thing of the past. So we'll see.
Andres Sandate:It's, but it is cool from a from a crypto standpoint. Like, we've always talked about what's that killer app, you know, for crypto, and we're starting to see things, you know, play out at with this convergence of AI.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. And I guess a little bit, we can tie the first topic with the second topic here is this will likely be done largely with stable coins going forward. So Right. You might actually get some rewards aka credit card rewards points when your AI agent's booking your travel or whatever it may be.
Andres Sandate:So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. Moving on here. So part of, you know, part of having a fund, you're looking for signals, good and bad. Right? Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:When Wall Street starts to hire for crypto positions, I generally get a little bit excited because it's like they they tend to be ahead of the curve or or they know where it's going. So when I saw a bunch of job postings come up about crypto, this was right after and or right at the cusp of the the Clarity Act getting out of the Senate Banking Committee. I was like, okay. We we are making progress here. They're not gonna go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per position to for for the fun of it.
Robert Swarthout:So this is, you know, a lot of times it's a research position or it's engineering because they're trying to integrate it in. So it's a wide ranging, amount of positions. So, I guess, progress there. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. And it's major firms. Right? It's the JP Morgans. At certain point, like, you know, Jamie Dimon was very vocal about his stance on crypto.
Robert Swarthout:Anti.
Andres Sandate:And and was yeah. And now you're seeing these firms, not only launching products, but also, you know, again, hiring for what are now gonna be business lines effectively. Right? These are business lines, and they're gonna be part of the earnings call. How is your retail business doing?
Andres Sandate:How is your commercial lending business doing? How is your asset management business doing? How's your investment banking business doing? And, oh, how's your crypto business doing? Right?
Andres Sandate:So these are business lines. They're gonna have to create profit, and they're going to be bringing people in. What I think the candidates for these positions are gonna, are are gonna have to be able to do is they're gonna have to be able to navigate a crypto and a traditional finance environment. From everything I've read, and and looked around these headlines, the jobs are gonna be going to people who have the ability to operate in both worlds. You can't be, you know, the crypto native, with a a vision or an operating environment or operate in an environment where crypto is gonna take over and need everything.
Andres Sandate:We just saw the impact of the bill Right. Of an environment where just because you could do it one way with respect to stablecoin yield doesn't mean you're gonna get that done. And Right. The the bank lobby and the the bank stakeholder is still very, very important to The US economy and, obviously, to the the future of politicians' lives, right, their their ability to get reelected. So there's so much that has to, probably the the candidates that are gonna be able to land these positions, I think they have to be able to navigate in both worlds.
Andres Sandate:And what Mhmm. To me is fascinating is, you know, when you think about where crypto has come over twenty years, it's it's fascinating that for so long, the banks were not hiring for these positions. Right. And now in a matter of, like, literate it feels like it's a year, right, or maybe six months. It it's like now that's where the jobs are.
Andres Sandate:If you look at the crypto companies, I mean, they have not been hiring in the last six, twelve months. Right? So it's, like, funny how now a lot of these folks that probably were gonna go crypto and stay in crypto are now gonna end up finding themselves looking at jobs on Wall Street.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. You know, in in many ways, people that are outside of the engineering positions, you know, any of them, they're, like, say, senior director, those kind of things. Like, in they're, like, this weird world of bilingual when it comes to technology and traditional finance. So they're they're gonna have to be able to talk both ways and kind of bring those groups of people together to be successful.
Andres Sandate:So Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:We have a Yeah. Relatively limited amount of people that have that kind of skill set right now. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I think we're two of them, but, you know, there's others. But, yeah, you're gonna have to have this domain overlap. You're gonna have to be able to talk tokenization, but also understand what are we tokenizing. Right?
Andres Sandate:You're gonna have to be able to understand the you know, to some extent, the technology and the blockchain and and the the you know, what's going on behind
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:And underneath, if you will. But you're also gonna be able to have to translate it into a language where you're sitting in a management meeting or you're sitting in front of a prospective client or customer and relate it in terms where they're not a crypto native
Robert Swarthout:Yep.
Andres Sandate:Person, but they you know, they're making a buying decision. They're making a purchase decision. Mhmm. And so, yeah, I think this whole domain overlap concept really resonates with me because, you know, we've been we've you know, I've been relatively new in crypto. It's it's only three years, but, you know, some people have been, you know, in it only three or four months, and some people are just getting into it.
Andres Sandate:So yeah. Pretty fascinating. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Move on to our fourth topic, and it literally might be one of the things that these positions are working on when when they when they start is the tokenization of real world assets. We're we're so what we're talking about here is the the amount of assets that are tokenized is is Mhmm. Across the $30,000,000,000 mark. That's a lot. This and in the same breath, it's nothing.
Robert Swarthout:Right? But most of this is roughly, I guess, 50% of this 30,000,000,000 is made up of US treasuries that have been tokenized. And, you know, I I thought this was gonna be a theme this year, tokenization. And I and I think that it still will happen in a much bigger scale, but what caught my attention on this particular graph was it it went from being a rather, you know, I guess, calm curve up into the right to starting to be a little bit more, exponential. So we we're about to hit that stage.
Robert Swarthout:And and, again, it's probably the Clarity Act that will allow this to happen because more people feel safe to be in the market, innovators, the banks. And, all of sudden, we're gonna wake up and 30,000,000,000 is gonna seem like a daily number, not not an all time number. So
Andres Sandate:Right. Yeah. The growth of five x in eighteen months is is is kind of the subtle headline below the headline. Right? I think so many people I said this to you before we got on.
Andres Sandate:I mean, I feel like tokenization is gonna be like what securitization was to the sort of mainstream person in finance, the mainstream person in the economy. Mean, you know, obviously, securitization was a very bad thing coming out of 2008. Right? Because it was a bad thing in the eyes of maybe more mainstream because of the of of how it was maybe taken too far in a way. And, yeah, securitization has not died.
Andres Sandate:Securitization is still very much alive, and well, and I feel like tokenization is gonna be similar. Right? It will be something that is very, much probably there's gonna be some good things that come out of it. There's gonna be some things that we're like, we didn't need to tokenize that. Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:But, nevertheless, I think that there you know, you had said this early in '26. This was gonna be one of your big kind of themes to focus on, and I think now we're talking about when you talk about money market funds and treasuries, those are not speculative assets that we're tokenizing. And those are fundamental institutional assets that are the, you know, the oil of the of the of the engine of the economy globally, certainly in The US anyway. And, yeah, I mean, I I think the you know, one of the one of the cool things is the wallets that are gonna get created and are being created for tokenization. You know, my little world of financial services and asset management, I think, is just one of many sectors that are really ripe for tokenization to play a a bigger role.
Andres Sandate:And I know we have a headline, you know, coming up with the DTCC pilot, right, which kinda speaks to, some of the real world activity that's happening. So it's neat. I mean, just just being in the asset management space to watch how this is going to really transform and hopefully will bring, you know, liquidity more liquidity to markets, you know, where where it's needed and wanted. So pretty cool.
Robert Swarthout:Yep. And kind of along similar lines and kind of a bit of a theme running through the middle of these topics here, but our next topic is the first cross border settlement of a tokenized US treasuries. Yeah. That's a mouthful. So part the first thing that caught my attention was the bank that was attached to this from the beginning was JPMorgan.
Robert Swarthout:Again, you you alluded to it a minute ago. A year and a half ago or prior to the Trump administration, really, Jamie Dimon was extremely anti crypto and claimed that he would fire anyone that would touch it. Now they are in the middle of it, and you can be assured that they are they got their eyes set on how they're gonna make money in this. So what happened here was Ripple, JPMorgan, and Mastercard in a small startup called Ondo basically tokenized US treasuries and settled them across the blockchain and sent US dollars into Ripple's Singapore bank account. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:They you know, this is effectively done in less than a minute, and this would could have been done in off hours. It was under five seconds? Yeah. Yeah. On the equity ledger portion, it's it's yeah.
Robert Swarthout:It it it is settled outside of traditional banking hours. That's, I think Right. The most important part of the headline there.
Andres Sandate:Right. Right. Yeah. So Real real yeah. Really cool.
Andres Sandate:I mean, the the milestones, are are starting to grow. Right? I think the, thing I'm reading, is that tokenized US treasuries crossed 10,000,000,000 on February 26 and stood at a little over oh, close to 13,000,000,000 as of early April. So, you know, up, significantly over the last, you know, year, year and a half. I think you said this earlier in the show, Robert.
Andres Sandate:I mean, we are we are looking at these numbers, and they seem like big numbers in the grand scheme of things when you talk about, you know, global payments and cross border settlements. This is like a pittance. This is a fraction of of what happens on a daily basis. And I think we can easily take for granted that the these seem like really big numbers, but then when you, you know, zoom way out and and look at what's happening, the naysayers would would maybe be critical and say, ah, you know, it it's not that much. But, yeah, anybody that's studied any type of exponential growth, like, underestimate, you know, what what what people are capable of in the you know, and then overestimate.
Andres Sandate:Right? Yeah. Mhmm. And and so I I think this is one of those examples. I think we'll look up in six to twelve, maybe twenty four months, and just be blown away by by how much activity is is happening here in in just this one use case.
Andres Sandate:Like, this is just cross border payments. Right. You know?
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. And, you know, everything's currently measured in billions right now. When when we start talking about trillions, we know that it has moved to its next stage.
Andres Sandate:Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:You know, some some of these markets will be measured in trillions per day. Some are per month or per year, but everything is in billions right now. And in some cases, even millions. So, you know, we gotta walk before we can run, but we are we are starting to get the motion yeah. I guess, the ship in motion here.
Robert Swarthout:So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. No doubt about it. Yep. This this next one's always fun. We get a good catch catch up with our our our friends over at MicroStrategy or, I guess, now called strategy.
Andres Sandate:Let's talk about let's talk about what what's what's next in Michael Saylor's you know, journey with Bitcoin.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. He for the longest time, he was a a HODLer. And for those that don't know or don't remember, HODL, h o d l, is a is a meme within crypto because somebody spelled hold wrong once upon a time. And, basically, it means you hold it with your diamond hands, and you never sell, and you wait for it to go to the moon. Right?
Robert Swarthout:All the memes there. And, you know, I guess, as part of his evangelism for his his his strategy, literally, of holding Bitcoin. He said he was never gonna sell Bitcoin, and, you know, he's had some crazy predictions for prices. Yeah. Well, I think reality has set in, and, you know, the the coin that they hold is worth, you know, on average, 75,000 a piece.
Robert Swarthout:We sit at 77,000 change. So they're slightly above water, but they also have this massive dividend they have to pay because they've had this different share class that they've issued. And I think that instead of always reissuing new, equity Yep.
Andres Sandate:To
Robert Swarthout:pay old investors, they've kind of wised up a little bit. So, you know, I I wasn't thrilled that they that they had to do this, but I was thrilled that they're coming to their senses and that they potentially won't turn into a a, too big to fail company with within crypto because that that was a concern for a while.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I had brought that up. I mean, I I've said that to several people in my circle. It's just what what what happens to this company if they get to the point where they own 2,000,000 Bitcoin? And they there's an infinite number of people that wanna own strategy.
Andres Sandate:Right. And they they they're just along for the ride. And, yeah, and so who know? I mean, maybe I'll be proven wrong. I mean, the goal is not for this whole industry to collapse on, you know, one company going down.
Andres Sandate:But, yeah, I mean, what what's interesting is you look at the numbers. So so they own about 818,000 Bitcoin at an average price of around 75,000 a Bitcoin, and price for Bitcoin today is just over 75. It's gone back and forth in recent days between 77 and 80. Right?
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm.
Andres Sandate:Yep. And it's up in recent months. Right? I mean, the start of the year, it's up. Right?
Andres Sandate:So what's what's fascinating is the you know, I guess the you talked about this earlier, running a fund. Right? You're looking at signals. And talking to somebody at an institutional crypto asset management firm, last week, they're Bitcoin Maxis, and they talked about their view of Bitcoin. And they said, you know, you you you look at it from our perspective, and you see all these different crypto strategies, and you see all this, opportunity to invest in this space, and they still believe the number one strategy is owning, you know, a significant amount of Bitcoin.
Andres Sandate:And they believe from here at the 75, $80,000 level, it still could go five x. And so they're long term, you know, bullish, and they spend all day, every day looking at all these investment strategies. But they also, you know, recognize you have to be diversified. And so it it it is, yeah, it it's gonna be fascinating to see how people diversify their crypto exposure over time. Because there's still a lot of people, when you talk about crypto, they still associate it with just Bitcoin.
Andres Sandate:We've spent the last twenty minutes talking about all these other things going on in crypto outside of just Bitcoin. Yep. But it still very much is the the 800 pound gorilla. And I I'm gonna be fascinated to see how people's exposure to the space grows and evolves over time. And does does it grow beyond Bitcoin in the near term, or does it take us five years for people to start to look at other tokens and look at, you know, commercial utility or start to look at other other strategies?
Andres Sandate:And how fast does that happen, I guess, is one big question. And number two is, you know, as that shift happens, how do they express their view as an investor and get exposure to these, you know, to these other parts of the economy, the crypto economy, the digital asset economy? You know, it's there's there's a lot of different angles. We could spend the remainder of the show talking about, you know, Sailor and talking about, you know, Bitcoin, which I don't think any either of us wanna do. But but, yeah, it's, you know, it's fascinating because the good old fashioned debt holders and the good old fashioned, like, investors that are owed this dividend, tried five people.
Andres Sandate:Right? And, you know, they they've they've got rights. Right? So I think he's realized, hey. I gotta pay these dividends.
Andres Sandate:And, you know, I can't I can't keep raising more capital. So, yeah, it's gonna be fun to watch, you know, how this plays out. And, hopefully, for for Crypto's sake and the asset classes sake, like, it doesn't it doesn't lead to some bailout, you know, which which Mhmm. I don't think would be a good signal.
Robert Swarthout:Correct. Absolutely. So our next topic is the DTCC is gonna be pilot testing a tokenized securities trading in July with a full launch set for October. If it happens by October or around October, I will be shocked, but I will be thrilled at the same time. The DTCC is massive.
Andres Sandate:A 114,000,000,000,000.
Robert Swarthout:Yes. Of of of assets under, I guess what do you call it?
Andres Sandate:I guess Custodied assets effectively. Yeah. Kind of report through their technology, the backbone. Yeah.
Robert Swarthout:Yeah. I mean, literally the backbone of the equities market. Yeah. But it it's cool stuff. I mean, like, I don't think we have tons to say here.
Robert Swarthout:I mean, beyond there's 50 firms as part of the 50 big name firms too as part of the initial trial and what's I imagine they've already been doing testing behind the scenes too. But, you know, it's BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, NASDAQ, and then you have some crypto companies Circle on the Ripple Prime, which is part of Ripple and many more. So pretty cool stuff.
Andres Sandate:Yeah. I mean, and what when you go underneath and sort of dig in, I mean, a lot of a lot of the, you know, a lot of the big stuff. Right? When you talk about owning owning stocks, right, you get you get voting rights. You get dividends.
Andres Sandate:You you just we take for granted all those rights we get as an owner in a company. A slice of a company, a share of a of a US company gives you rights. Right? And Right. And so all those things are gonna transfer to you know, are gonna transfer, you know, the same bankruptcy protections, the same voting rights, the same dividends.
Andres Sandate:You know, you get your proxy in the mail. I mean, all that stuff is is gonna transfer, to this, tokenized trading approach on the DTCC that you once had with book entry. And, you know, I think it's gonna be, like, almost like the you know, you go back to the year 2000 when there was all this fear around what's gonna happen and is the are computers gonna go haywire? And Mhmm. I remember that.
Andres Sandate:I mean, you know, I remember that transition, and it's sort of like it turned to one one, 2000, and then nothing happened. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, we just make a huge deal out of this stuff, this is another example of, like, maybe it'll be an awful disaster. But I'm I'm willing to go on to prediction markets and say there's probably a good chance that it's gonna go just gonna go fine because they're gonna they're spending so much time testing it and making sure. So we'll see.
Andres Sandate:I mean, if there's no event in an in our in our, I guess, our update on this in six months, I mean, it means it's going great. And Right. Another example of, like, the this stuff works. You know?
Robert Swarthout:Mhmm. Yep. So our last topic, and this just shows progress. I mean, there's nothing terribly meaty here, on this topic, but Schwab, the big retail brokerage, basically turned on direct crypto is direct Bitcoin and Ethereum trading to the 35,000,000 clients, which total assets is 12,000,000,000,000. It's it's a big deal.
Robert Swarthout:I haven't seen volume numbers on this, and this immediately took on this news was back in April. But, like, it it's it's interesting. It's, like, it's not that they're trying to do ETF wrappers. There is the direct ax assets. So they are competitive, I guess, with Coinbase in some sense.
Robert Swarthout:I imagine the fees are less than Coinbase would be on Bitcoin or Ethereum. But, I don't know the plumbing behind the scenes. Maybe they're using Coinbase to kind of route the, the the trading too. So
Andres Sandate:Yeah. Like you said, they're they're gonna be going head to head with Fidelity, Coinbase, Robinhood. Mhmm. You know? What what I thought was interesting according to Charles Schwab that their clients, you'd mentioned 35,000,000 of them.
Andres Sandate:Mhmm. And what's nuts of that 12,000,000,000,000 in client assets? And, of course, that's RIA assets. You know, we're an RIA. We have assets at Schwab.
Robert Swarthout:So Yeah.
Andres Sandate:Our underlying households have assets custody at Schwab. They're part of that 12,000,000,000,000. What's fascinating is that 20% of spot crypto exchange traded products are held by Schwab clients. You know? So one in five according to Charles Schwab, one in five of of spot crypto exchange traded products are held by Schwab clients.
Andres Sandate:So they have a pretty big role in Yeah. In in retail crypto when when you step back and you look at some of these numbers. And they're gonna be, they're gonna be charging three quarters of 1%. So 75 basis points, one three quarters of 1% per trade. By comparison, Fidelity charges 1%.
Andres Sandate:So Mhmm. That might be an incentive for people to do some trading with Schwab. Robinhood charges between three basis points and 95 basis points. So what that means then No. Factor.
Andres Sandate:Right? So if you have a whole bunch of money at Robinhood, you probably charge you're getting charged three basis points. If you have very little money with Robinhood. Like, I have a Robinhood account, not a lot of money there, just kind of more novel. Yeah.
Andres Sandate:But, you know, I'm probably paying 95 basis points. And then Coinbase's fees can be as high as 4%
Robert Swarthout:for retail. Yes.
Andres Sandate:So, you know, one thing we're gonna see is I think we're gonna see fee pressure Mhmm. Around trading, and people are gonna move move money if if they are trading, especially if they're high volume traders over time. But I think yeah. To to to your point, like, I think the word you said is sums up this whole episode, which is signal. There's a lot of signal in a lot of these headlines.
Andres Sandate:And, obviously, the biggest one being, you know, the the Clarity Act moving out of committee onto the, I guess, onto the full chamber floor for discussion. The hiring the hiring in Wall Street, major signal. Those are real jobs, you know, $203,100,000 dollar salaries. Those are real investments in the business. And then I'd say just the last one is, you know, good old fashioned stockholder rights, bondholder rights when it comes to strategy.
Andres Sandate:You know? They have rights. You know? And and so, you know, the the CEO, Sailor, and the the management team are are now sort of facing that is, are we just gonna keep raising more money? How would that be received in this type of market environment?
Andres Sandate:Or are we just gonna go ahead and sell some Bitcoin and, you know, make a make a dividend payment, which it looks like they're they're gonna do. So Yep. Pretty fascinating.
Robert Swarthout:Yep. A 100%. Well, that's a wrap for this episode of the Weekly Crypto Check-in. Keep updated with the latest crypto insights by searching for Crypto Capital or the weekly crypto check-in on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a review if you like what we're saying, or, like, find our LinkedIn page and give us a like.
Robert Swarthout:Until next time. Take care.
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