The Road to CLARITY: Talking Crypto Legislation with Congressman Bryan Steil

Ari Redbord (00:02):

I am Ari Redbord and this is TRM Talks. I'm global head of policy. At TRM Labs, we provide blockchain intelligence software to support law enforcement investigations and to help financial institutions and cryptocurrency businesses mitigate financial crime risk within the emerging digital asset economy. Prior to joining TRM spent 15 years in the US federal government, first as a prosecutor at the Department of Justice, and then as a treasury department official where I worked to safeguard the financial system against terrorist financiers, weapons of mass destruction, proliferators, drug kingpins, and other rogue actors. On TRM Talks, I sit down with business leaders, policymakers, investigators, and friends from across the crypto ecosystem who are working to build a safer financial system. On this TRM Talks, I sit down with Congressmen Brian Steil, the chair of the financial services subcommittee on digital assets. But first inside the lab where I share data-driven insights from our blockchain intelligence team. Global law enforcement agencies have seized the primary domain of Garantex, a Russian based cryptocurrency exchange, responsible for facilitating billions in illicit transactions.

(01:20):

The takedown was led by Europol, the US Department of Justice, the FBI and authorities in Germany, Estonia, Finland, and the Netherlands, making it one of the largest coordinated crackdowns on a sanctioned crypto platform to date. Why Garantex? According to TRM Labs, Garantex accounted for a stunning 82% of all crypto volume tied to sanctioned entities worldwide. Even after its OFAC designation in April 2022, it continued to process over a hundred billion in transactions, including payments linked to ransomware groups like Rauch, Conti and LockBit. Darknet markets like Hydra and sanctioned Russian elites. But the takedown of a domain is not the end of the story. Garantex continues to operate on chain and new actors may attempt to fill the void. In a recent report, TRM identified ABCEX, a Russia based exchange tied to Garantex founder and one possible successor with signs of coordinated laundering activity and significant user volume.

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Why does this matter? This is a landmark moment in the global effort to enforce crypto sanctions. Garantex was simply the worst player, but it's also a reminder. Sanctioned exchanges don't disappear. They often rebrand, migrate infrastructure or use affiliates to continue operations for compliance teams. This means redoubling, our efforts to monitor indirect exposure. TRMs on chain data shows how risk can travel across multiple hops even when direct links are obscured. The Garantex take down is a win, but we must remain vigilant for much more on Garantex, the takedown and the years of sanctions. Go to trmlabs.com/resources and now I sit down with Congressman Brian Steil. Congressman, thank you so much for joining TRM Talks.

Congressman Bryan Steil (03:10):

Thanks for having me out.

Ari Redbord (03:11):

I have a lot of areas for us to hit, including your journey to really this critical moment in the history of digital assets in the United States, but we are on the eve of really a remarkable moment, the most important markup for any bill involving cryptocurrency on Capitol Hill. How are you feeling right now and what's going to happen over the next 24 or 36 hours?

Congressman Bryan Steil (03:30):

I'm excited. I mean, we are about to bring forward market structure legislation, which has been badly needed in the crypto space for years, and the good news is elections have consequences and we're in a position to move forward on this to provide clarity in particular as to what regulator owns the space. We saw this fight during the Biden administration between Gary Gensler and the SEC against pretty much everybody that wanted to come forward with innovation and development in the broader crypto space. This is our opportunity not only to work with the regulators who under President Trump are really positive, but also to make sure that we're locking that in for the future with the hope being is that that really unlocks investment in this space, which then unlocks the innovation that's needed to take us into a Web3 era.

Ari Redbord (04:14):

That's fantastic. When you hear from businesses, that's exactly sort of the rallying cry and that is we need to know the rules of the road, and I imagine that's very important here for you as you're thinking through this.

Congressman Bryan Steil (04:24):

So the biggest challenge that businesses have is lack of certainty, lack of clarity, which is why the CLARITY Act is appropriately named when businesses are making investments to decide where do we want to innovate development? Same as individuals. They just want to know the rules of the road. They want to know that if they invest in this way, if they're successful, their product will be successful. What's really difficult is to model out and figure out how to innovate, how to develop, where to spend your time, your capital, your resources in an environment where the government comes in with these enforcement actions and sues you. And that's really what was happening under Gary Gensler at the SEC. And so providing that framework, that clarity for people in this space, I think what we're going to see is a real unleashing of work innovation development inside the United States in a way that we haven't seen over the past four years.

Ari Redbord (05:13):

That's fantastic. So just as a purely practical matter, how do you see tomorrow going in terms of this markup?

Congressman Bryan Steil (05:18):

We've done a lot of work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and if you really step back, Gary Gensler and parts of the Biden administration made crypto partisan in a sense, but really at its core it shouldn't be. It really should just be pro-America. How do we get these rules of the road, right? And there are a number of Democrats who've actually leaned in with us. We spent a lot of time, a lot of conversations on making sure we get this right, and at the end of the day, the real goal is to get this right because if we do, we really set ourselves up to continue to dominate tech in the future as we have in the United States for the past handful of decades.

Ari Redbord (05:55):

It's interesting. There seems to be a slight difference now in this moment too, and I'd love to get your take on that. You and I met a few weeks ago, and quite frankly one of the reasons I reached right out to invite you onto the show is I think there's a new level of expertise now with members, and I was struck by quite frankly your level of expertise on these topics that's developed really since the beginning of conversations we've had around stable coins and house financial services and market structure. Do you agree that Congress overall, certainly house financial services is in a much different place from an expertise level than just a few years ago?

Congressman Bryan Steil (06:25):

The knowledge base of members of Congress has grown exponentially, but that's also true of the general public. I'm often the view that Congress really reflects the American public, and what we really see is more and more people understanding the crypto space, understanding blockchain technology, Web3, and as that enters our lexicon more and more and people will become more knowledgeable, that's also true on Capitol Hill. The other thing that plays out is just before legislation starts to bubble up and come to committee and come to the floor, people across the hill that may not be naturally inclined to spend time in any given space start to ramp up their understanding, their knowledge, their research, and I think we're really seeing that in the broader crypto space and I think it's pretty clear we're moving forward with two absolutely essential pieces of legislation between stablecoin and market structure. And if we do this right, they're going to be as transformative as I believe they will. And so I think what we're seeing is a lot of members getting up to speed, a lot of staff getting up to speed, but also the American people are becoming more and more knowledgeable about what this means and what this can mean to them if we unlock this technology.

Ari Redbord (07:31):

We're going to spend a little time digging into stable coins and clarity, but before we do, I think you got into your expertise and there is quite obviously a passion and interest in this area. Walk me through your journey to crypto to digital assets. It's not necessarily always the most obvious area to really lean into as a member of Congress.

Congressman Bryan Steil (07:48):

My background, I worked in American manufacturing, I worked for two different manufacturing companies in the decade before I ran for Congress at that time in 2018, I had never run for anything. I ran for student council in seventh grade, never ran for anything ever again until I ran for the United States Congress. And so I used to joke to people, I was one for one. I was trying when I ran for Congress the first time, I was trying to be two for, oh, and I've made a little progress in that now in my fourth term, but at that time I really saw what really drove the US economy and set the US apart from our peers and really western Europe and now adding in Japan, Korea, and Australia and coming out of World War II in large part, that was the power of US manufacturing an absolutely essential aspect.

(08:32):

And we outperformed the rest of the globe as we came out of World War II and set our economy apart. And then as we kind of get into the early nineties, we need to maintain our strength in manufacturing, maintain our strength in agriculture. But what we really saw in the nineties was this massive development of tech in the United States. And so what really then began to set the United States apart from our peers as we come into the early two thousands, it is really that we web to correct in the United States. And so why is the stock market up? Why are people's retirement accounts their 401ks, their pension plans, why are job opportunities for students coming out of college in the United States better than all of our peers across the globe? And in many ways it's the strength of the American tech sector. And so then we say, okay, what is going to set the United States apart from the rest of the globe for the next 20 years?

(09:22):

And that's making sure that the United States wins the Web3 race, right? Blockchain distributed ledger. And what we really saw for the past four years is Gary Gensler and the Biden administration preventing that innovation and development from occurring in the us. And so what they're really doing was shoving this development outside the United States, the detriment of US consumers who want to benefit from the product, US retirees who don't see the benefit in the capital returns and US workers in particular kids coming out of college. And so if we get this right, and the reason I'm so excited about the legislation before us is I think it's going to truly be transformative for the US economy. If you think and step back and say, what are the two things US policymakers should be focused on, it's economic strength and the strength of our national defense. If you're strong at home, you're strong abroad. And so getting this right I think is that paramount, that transformative that it needs to take center stage on Capitol Hill.

Ari Redbord (10:17):

It's interesting, I was asked to testify almost three years ago now before House Financial Services and it wasn't crypto, it was really on dollar dominance and the needs from a national security perspective. And I think it was one of the first times that there was this conversation around dollar backed stable coins and how ultimately important they were from a national security perspective. I know that's something that you've really championed in the house stablecoin legislation, but also I think more broadly in sort of supporting the space.

Congressman Bryan Steil (10:43):

Stable coins in particular have a huge opportunity as you noted, to maintain US dollar dominance is the world reserve currency. And so if you step back, you say, what the heck is a policymaker in Wisconsin caring about stable coins in particular something that has a proven use case in the global south. Why should I as a policymaker care if a day laborer in Argentina or Zimbabwe is paid in US dollar backed stable coins? Well, the reason is it cements the US dollar as a world reserve currency. And the second part of that is when these stable coins are up and running, they're buying US treasuries, which from an unfortunate standpoint that we're producing so much debt in Washington, we'd rather have them not have to buy US treasuries, but in the short term they're going to continue to buy US treasuries and that's essential to make sure that we are in a position where we're not paying massive interest rates from the federal government.

(11:32):

And so as you step back, the stablecoin legislation will be I think, transformative around the globe. You could think of a day labor like I referenced in Argentina or Zimbabwe and you could be offered to be paid, say at the end of the day you make the equivalent of twenty US dollars in wages and you could be paid in Argentinian pesos or you could be paid in US dollar stablecoin. The overwhelming majority of people I think are going to be taking stablecoin. I think we're going to see a massive adaptation across the globe in particular as we put forward a regulatory framework where consumers at the end of this have more and more confidence in the underlying principle in these transactions in the us. I think you're going to see them use more and more as a payment structure in really creating efficiencies in the US payments regime.

Ari Redbord (12:18):

Getting back real quick to your journey here, was there a specific moment where you said to yourself, wow, I've seen the transformative power of this technology. There was an interaction with the constituent that really inspired you in terms of this space, the opportunities presented here, this idea of this Web3 space race and how we won Silicon Valley, we need to win this one. Any specific stories or instances that you recall from your journey?

Congressman Bryan Steil (12:40):

Well, I think so much of this is meeting individuals who are on the absolute cutting edge of what is next. The challenge is the human mind is really good at understanding incremental change. It's really difficult for the human mind to understand transformative change. And if we look at what can be done in the broader Web3 area, it's truly transformative. I always reflect back and I think back, if you ever go back and watch back to the future too where they travel to 2014, which actually sad that it was 11 years ago, but they traveled to 2014.

Ari Redbord (13:12):

The self-lacing Nikes the cool hoverboards. Oh absolutely, yeah.

Congressman Bryan Steil (13:16):

But right in flying cars, it's all the things that are incremental. You tie your shoes and you think, boy, wouldn't it be great if they tied themselves? If you've ever sat in traffic, you think, boy, wouldn't it be great if my car could fly? But if you look at where they're taking phone calls and back to the future too, they're in phone booths. And the reason for that is because the idea that your phone wouldn't be connected to a cord that runs through a wire over to your grandma's house where you could talk to her, your brain couldn't wrap its mind around that. That was the transformative change. And so I think we see a lot of the incremental change right in front of us. So I think in particular the innovation development and stablecoin, that's really good change, but that is incremental. The broader financial services space I think truly will be transformed in this.

(14:03):

That's really important, but it's also in some ways incremental. We're thinking about I make a payment this way today. If I want to wire funds in or out of the country tomorrow, I could do it this way. It's the transformative change where you go and talk to some of these folks and you almost have a hard time wrapping your head around exactly what they're working on and what they're doing and you realize, oh wow, if this works though, that would be absolutely transformative technology. And then you step back and you think, what would've happened if we got web two wrong? And this was all domiciled outside of the United States. And so I am excited about the transformational change that I am convinced is there with the caveat being, unless you are living and breathing in a space every day, it is really difficult to know which one is going to win. But the policymaker in me says set up the framework and then allow the market to go and figure out who the winners and losers are in this space.

Ari Redbord (14:55):

Let's talk about the market real quick. I think that something that we have seen at TRM is spending a lot more time with large financial institutions than ever before that are really building in the digital asset space or ready to dive in. Is this the type of legislation, whether it's market structure or stablecoin, because both seem to really resonate with large financial institutions today. Is that how you see this place playing out where the market really drives it and the market could potentially be big traditional financial institutions in large part?

Congressman Bryan Steil (15:23):

I think you're going to see a little bit of all the above. I think the reason that comes front of mind is because in large part, the way that Gary Gensler was operating the Secur and Exchange Commission in the Biden administration was the threat of enforcement action and suing. And so if you step back and say who's the most threatened by that? It's regulated entities. So the entrepreneur in a basement or a dorm room might say, I'm going to wing it and give this a shot. But some of the bigger financial institutions with large amounts of capital at stake, a large number of employees that are dependent on that company for their job, they don't want to roll the dice in the same way. And it's understandable why that's the case. And so I think as we look at this, it's an opportunity to say if we put in place a regulatory framework where everyone knows the rules of the road here, it's just clear if you're inside this space, you are free to innovate, develop.

(16:13):

You're not going to be sued one-off by the federal government if you're in this safe space of innovation development. I think that's the moment that a lot of these currently regulated companies, large financial players or others will come in and deploy capital and get off to the races in competing in this space. At the end of the day, that competition is actually good for everybody, what makes a stronger competition? And so I don't know that they regulated financial institutions win the race, but I think they're definitely very likely to enter that competition is good for everybody.

Ari Redbord (16:45):

That's fantastic. Building off of your point about transformative technology, I was a prosecutor at the Department of Justice for many years. I'm constantly thinking all day and night about risk and how to mitigate risk. Illicit actors have always been early adopters of transformative technology. They go to where the money is, they go to where the innovation is end-to-end, encrypted messaging, apps, the internet, you think of sort of all these big innovations in crypto, we see fraud, we see financial crime At TRM, we put out a report about a year ago that said it's about 1%, a little less than 1% of the overall ecosystem. Talk to me a little bit about how these bills do and should work to mitigate illicit finance, risk market abuse, those types of issues.

Congressman Bryan Steil (17:26):

A couple of things at play, and so one is anytime we have a new technology, we're really good humans, right? Thinking about what is potential risk, but we don't always think as thoughtfully about how we can mitigate that risk. So in the same way technology can come forward and create a risk, the same technological and market forces can mitigate the risk. And so I think you're going to see a lot of innovation and development in that space as well on the mitigation side because I think you're going to see a lot of say those institutional players or others that want to make sure that they're operating in a safe, efficient manner and I think they're going to be investing in that technology as well. The other is what should be our standard? This is I get into conversations with people a lot on this and Washington DC is really good at letting perfect be the enemy of the good.

(18:09):

And so it's always to me is what is the baseline? So by definition I want zero people on planet earth to fund terrorism, drug trafficking, all the horrible things that are out there, but the baseline that I think is an appropriate measure is the current status, the current state. And so today people could transact using hard currency, US dollars or euros that they could trade, they could use bars of gold, they could do a whole host of things. They could elicitly sell modern art and transfer funds. And so the question isn't is any new technology perfect? The question is how is it substantively different from the status quo and the status quo has significant flaws, but it also has a whole regime to prevent its abuse. I think we're going to see that continue to evolve and develop and then by its definition, distributed ledger and blockchain technology is in some ways actually more transparent than other types of transfers of value gold bars where you can't go on and start to begin the research unless you find the person with the gold bar crypto is a little different. You can actually eventually get back to the source and try to freeze and burn that. I think the market is going to really develop in this space as well.

Ari Redbord (19:19):

Fantastic. Yeah, very much part of the conversation we had recently and what I was struck by was your understanding of these unique capabilities of public blockchains to track trace funds on immutable public ledger. You mentioned all these areas when I was a prosecutor, I did cases of high value art and diamonds and bulk cash smuggling and networks of hawalas and shell companies like there was no TRM to track and trace those things. It is really different and maybe we need less regulation for blockchain technology when you could leverage the technology itself.

Congressman Bryan Steil (19:48):

Well, that's the goal. I mean all of us are aligned I think globally in all policymakers, right? Is to figure out how do you weed out the fraud, the illicit actors in the space. And the key is to lean in and to say, okay, this technology is coming. How do we make sure that we're leveraging this for good and manage the downside risk? And there's two fallacies in this space. There's the fallacy of the left and the fallacy of the right and the fallacy of the left is kind of the nanny state mentality which says you cannot do anything unless I say you can do it and give you permission. And then there's the false belief that that means nobody will do it. What it really means is it just goes elsewhere. So what we saw during Gary Gensler and the Biden administration was it was not as if this development and innovation wasn't occurring.

(20:30):

It was just occurring offshore and outside the control of the US and so it shouldn't be lost on anybody. When FTX blew up, you had a bad system in criminal activity and a lot of people were hurt by that, but where was that located? It was outside the United States. And so the fallacy of the left wants to believe that you can just stop this innovation development question is are we putting it inside the United States under our values, under our structures to protect it? It's probably worth noting there's fallacies on the right and the fallacy on the right is the ultimate less say, fair libertarian approach, which is often where my heart is and where I start. The false notion there is that if we do no regulation, we don't move forward with the CLARITY Act and with the stablecoin legislation we're actually in a better spot.

(21:12):

The reason that that is false is because we are not in a Laissez faire system. What we're actually doing is just allowing poorly structured regulatory frameworks to control the innovation and development. So you're relying on things like the 33 and 34 ACT ideas from now approaching a hundred years ago for traditional securities or traditional commodities if it was at the CTFC to be regulating the space rather than thoughtful regulation. And so in the middle of that between the nanny states and the absolute libertarian is the legislation that we brought forward, which is why I think at the end of the day we have an opportunity to get true substantive bipartisan support of this legislation.

Ari Redbord (21:50):

It's fantastic. Look, I mean we've never been more down the rabbit hole on this stuff than we are like right this moment. I mean you're having this huge markup tomorrow. It's all we're thinking about. I'm refreshing crypto Twitter in real time. What's the latest reporting? Where's this bill? But that's going to change eventually and we're going to come out of this having rules of the road. How do you see all of this playing out over the course of the next, you can't even ask in terms of years in this space, months a year or so down the road, what does market structure look like for digital assets?

Congressman Bryan Steil (22:19):

Well, I think you're going to see significant deployment of capital, both human capital as well as financial capital, and that's a really good thing. I think you're going to unlock the ability for innovation development in dorm rooms and basement, not just in board rooms and law firms. And I think you're also going to chase that with financial capital to be able to hire people who are engaging in this space. I think you're going to see transformative change on the hill on the policymaker side. I think we're going to have a lot of oversight of our agencies to make sure that we're implementing this legislation correct. There's going to be a lot of rulemaking that will ultimately have to come out of this and making sure that those rules are well drafted, that they're working with important stakeholders is going to be a huge piece of what's next for us. But I think there's going to be serious investment innovation development in the transformative change that was what makes you and I excited about this space.

Ari Redbord (23:11):

Absolutely. Would love just your view of this, just given where you're sitting here, let's take stables and clarity individually. What are you most excited about from these bills? I mean for me, you see reserves and the things that are being required for stable coin issuers to really I think bolster security in that space for market structure. It's obviously who's going to regulate, right? We have to get there before we figure out how to, but there's a lot, there's just a lot in there and a lot of potential from your seat. What are you most excited about from these individual bills?

Congressman Bryan Steil (23:39):

On the stable side, on the stablecoin side, I'm uniquely interested in dollar dominance in how individuals across the globe interact with stable coins are dollar back and use that as a standard mechanism of currency across the globe. And this is ideas that have been around for years and years and years about how you could dollarize a lot of the global economy. And I think what we will see is an uptick in the use of the US dollar without the cumbersome process that many people would otherwise have to go through in their respective country. And the more we're dollarizing around the globe, the more the US dollar becomes and maintains its status as the absolute global reserve currency. And that's good for US citizens and I actually think it's good for global economic stability and global stability underlying that in the CLARITY Act, I think we're finally going to step away from the four horrific years of Gary Gensler coming after the crypto industry at the SEC and say that if we pass this, we'll never return to that because there'll be clear rules of the road that even if we got an SEC commissioner that doesn't share my philosophical view, they'll actually be hamstrung by this legislation.

(24:49):

And so we'll have true substantive clarity not only for the near term but for the long term as well.

Ari Redbord (24:55):

Fantastic. You've mentioned southern Wisconsin. How does this issue resonate with folks back home? How are they engaging with this space?

Congressman Bryan Steil (25:02):

I think Wisconsin's the best place to live in the world, and so let's assume that's the case that everybody agrees with me. The real beauty of Web3 is that you are really democratizing the internet. And so if you came out of college in the early two thousands when I did, you had friends that went to Wall Street, you had friends that went to government service and you had a growing number of people that went into tech. Now more and more people are going into tech jobs as well. And if I look at where my friends went that went into those spaces, if you wanted to go into tech in the early two thousands, you left Wisconsin and you went to the Bay Area or you went to New York City and off you went and you made your money and good for you. This is really an opportunity to say in Web3, if you want to leave high school, leave college and go work in tech, you can stay in Wisconsin, you can live in Kenosha, Wisconsin and be an innovator and a developer and make money.

(25:56):

And that is a really good thing for places in the country in addition to San Francisco and New York. And so to me, the beauty of this is really saying, look, instead of having to go to the Bay Area to work for Google for Meta, for Amazon and the big players, you can actually be a major player in the Web3 space from anywhere you want. And that's a good thing for kids graduating high school, technical college or college in the state of Wisconsin because again, I think it's the best place to live in the world, but wherever you want to live, you can reside there. You're not dependent on having to physically get yourself to the coast, which has been a problem for a long time in the United States. There's a lot of great communities around the country have been in some ways hollowed out is their best and brightest have departed.

Ari Redbord (26:43):

I love this argument. It's one of the best arguments for decentralization when it comes to crypto, right? In a totally different way. At TRM, we're fully remote. We always have been. We can just hire the very best people no matter where they are in the world. And we always have seen that an advantage. I love the way you articulated that. It's very cool. You can build absolutely anywhere where there's talent

Congressman Bryan Steil (27:00):

And the talent is equally distributed. So where people are born doesn't dictate their talent level. Your talent isn't dictated by the zip code you were born into or the broader metropolitan area that you were born into. It's not like New York or the Bay Area or inherently more talented when you're born. It's just a giant sucking sound to concentrate talent there. And there was a reason for that, right? In the late nineties, early two thousands, you had to physically be with people to be able to do this. And so now we have this huge opportunity to say, let's decentralize this. I think there's a real value of people coming together, but they can do that as easily as creating a group of folks in Kenosha, Wisconsin as it could be a group of folks in the Bay Area. And I can promise you that your home is a lot bigger and nicer for the same dollar amount in

Ari Redbord (27:48):

Wisconsin. Absolutely. And the sports teams arguably are better these days.

Congressman Bryan Steil (27:52):

There's no question.

Ari Redbord (27:54):

Yeah, Packers. Brewers, exactly. You're set with that just real quick because you are in the middle of this thing, but what should people expect to see and hear tomorrow?

Congressman Bryan Steil (28:03):

So the markup of the CLARITY Act is actually really unique even for Capitol Hill in the sense that two committees hold jurisdiction on the same bill. And so one of the things that makes you just want to pound your head into a brick wall when you start to understand Congress, if you come from the business sector like I do, is there's all these silos and one of the major silos is the committee silos. And often they don't work well together. That's kind of a broad state. I think if you work for a big company, it's like HR doesn't usually work with legal, that doesn't work with finance, that doesn't work with the marketing team to really get a good product out, you have to have all those groups come together. And so this bill is going through two committees simultaneously. The House Financial Services Committee where I sit with Chairman French Hill and then the House Ag Committee with GT Thompson on subcommittee chair Dusty Johnson, who's my peer on the subcommittee side.

(28:50):

I think you're going to see some Democrats lean in on this, be forward thinking, because again, this isn't partisan in nature. This should be about the future of the United States and our strength and our economy. And I think you'll see that, and we have seen that in particular as we moved forward with stablecoin legislation. I think you'll have other people that want to be a reflexive No, that's by no means does not everybody, but there is a healthy chunk of people that just want to be partisan and a reflexive no. And I think on the Republican side, you'll see broad overwhelming support. Again, there's fallacies on both sides. So in the early negotiations on this and on the stablecoin legislation, I sat down with a lot of my friends that are the true libertarian and let's say her again, where my heart is in many ways and brought them into the fold.

(29:36):

And we've sat down with a lot of my democratic friends, some who buy into the fallacy of the left and brought them in. I don't think we'll get everybody, but I do believe that we will have a large number of folks engaged in thoughtful, substantive dialogue on the underlying bill. And then there's always the rabbits that people love to chase the shiny object, but that's where the partisanship comes in, right? People just jump off on a whole host of topics because they do love the president or they don't like the president. But in the sense of the substance and the text of the bill, I hope people really focus in on it because this is going to be transformative to the us.

Ari Redbord (30:12):

I am a career civil servant who just believes in innovation and this technology and the use of stablecoin for payments cross border value transfer at the speed of the internet. And I'm hoping that sort of wins the day, right? Like we're building better payment rails. When I testified to that hearing a couple of years ago, the chair at the time asked me the first question and that was, do we need stablecoin legislation now? And my answer was yes, then it's absolutely yes. Now of course we do. We need to bring clarity and then ultimately market structure. Let's talk something slightly different than crypto for a minute. What is really top of mind for you other than this big markup tomorrow and digital assets, what are the other really key issues for you and for your constituents

Congressman Bryan Steil (30:50):

Outside of this specific space? I mean, to me, front and center is the massive spending problem that we have at the federal government side. I mean, we are spending roughly $2 trillion more that we're taking in every single year in a way that's unsustainable. And we really struggle to have an adult conversation in Washington about what the cost drivers are and the mechanisms in which we can reduce spending in dc. And then how do you also drive the revenue side? I don't believe we have a revenue problem in the context of rates. We have a revenue problem in this side, meaning that our economy's not growing fast enough. And so if we focus in on economic growth, we focus in on cost, on cutting spending. I do believe we have a huge opportunity to size our national debt and deficit, which again, long-term is going to be needed to make sure that the US economy is as robust and as strong as it has been really since the end of World War ii.

Ari Redbord (31:42):

Fantastic. And I'll leave you with this. I asked every guest, and you probably have even less time than most of my guests, but what are you doing when you're not sort of bringing clarity to crypto markets across the United States? What is congressman Steil doing when he's not in a markup?

Congressman Bryan Steil (31:56):

If I get an hour or two to myself, I am outside working out. So in the summer, I love to go bike riding. I got a couple different bikes. I'll go out on a road bike and bike out into the country and in the winter I'm going to cross country ski. That is my absolute favorite. You get a good snowfall in Wisconsin winter and you get up early, you can get out and get an awesome workout in the woods in the snow, and you can be back by the time everybody else is waking up and you're in great shape. I just love to get outside. I love to work out and that's my favorite thing.

Ari Redbord (32:26):

I love that so much. We do not have a cross country ski club, but I do this thing called the TRM Run Club, which wherever I travel, I have folks at conferences and we had about 75 people show up in consensus in Toronto, a couple of weeks to run with us. So maybe I can get you out for a run next time we're together.

Congressman Bryan Steil (32:42):

It's a plan. Lemme know I'm in.

Ari Redbord (32:44):

Awesome. Thank you so much for the time, especially on this really busy, busy eve.

Congressman Bryan Steil (32:47):

Thanks for having me out.

Ari Redbord (32:52):

There are a couple of things to me that were really extraordinary about the conversation. One, obviously the timing, right? We are on the eve of the most important markup in the history of crypto policy in the United States. It is very, very early in the process of bringing legal clarity to cryptocurrency markets in the United States, finally determining who is going to regulate and then ultimately how we're going to regulate the space. Is it a commodity? Is it a security? Is it the SEC? Is it the CFTC? But then what I loved is we zoomed out into a broader conversation, why does policy matter? Why does it matter for the US dollar? Why is it important that 99% of stable coins are backed by the US dollar? Why is that important for soft power? But even more broadly, why do we need market structure? Why do businesses need rules of the road?

(33:43):

Why is it important that Web3 is built in the US just as the age of the internet Web two was built here? So I feel like what was really cool is we had this very specific moment in time, essentially today, where you have this market structure bill Clarity being marked up by House Financial Services and the Agriculture Committee, but then zooming out and really understanding the context. And I think what we're really on is the road to clarity, the road to a framework for digital assets in the US and so cool to have Congressman Steil on. To lead that conversation on TRM talks. On the next TRM Talks, I sit down with Michael Greenwald, Global Head of Financial Innovations and Digital Assets at Amazon Web Services. If you love the show, leave a review wherever you're listening to it and follow us on LinkedIn to get the latest news on crypto regulation, compliance, and investigations.

TRM Talks (34:40):

TRM Talks is brought to you by TRM Labs, the leading provider of blockchain intelligence and anti-money laundering software. This episode was produced in partnership with Voltage Productions. The music for this show was provided by ikoliks.

Ari Redbord (34:58):

Let's get back to building.

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