When crypto meets policy: How the sector is evolving in 2025

This week's episode of What's at Stake explores the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency as the industry gears up for a transformative 2025, amid strong support from both the Trump administration and Capitol Hill. Ron Hammond, senior director of government relations and institutional engagement at the Blockchain Association, joins Penta hosts Ylan Mui and Bryan DeAngelis to discuss the vibeshift in Washington and the industry's policy priorities.

Their conversation covered:

• Policymakers' evolving perceptions of cryptocurrency
• Challenges and opportunities for stablecoin legislation
• Crypto interest from institutional investors 
• Building consensus across the crypto universe

Transcript

Bryan DeAngelis: 0:06

Welcome to this week's episode of what's at Stake. We're your hosts. Bryan DeAngelis, partner and head of the Washington office here at Penta.

Ylan Mui: 0:14

And I'm Ylan Mui, managing director at Penta.

Bryan DeAngelis: 0:17

And today we're diving into what's shaping up to be another transformative year for the crypto industry. The market has seen rapid innovation, regulatory shifts and continued volatility. To help us unpack all that we can expect in 2025, we're excited to welcome in Ron Hammond, senior Director of Government Relations and Institutional Engagement at the Blockchain Association. Ron has played a major role in shaping crypto policy. While he was on the Hill serving as financial services policy lead for Congressman Warren Davidson, he worked on several pieces of legislation, including the Token Taxonomy Act and the Derivatives Fairness Act. Now he represents the Blockchain Association on Capitol Hill and he's here today to help us break it all down. Thanks for coming, ron.

Ron Hammond: 1:06

Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

Bryan DeAngelis: 1:13

Let's jump right into the discussion. So a lot of momentum heading into this year for the crypto industry and, as advertised, it's shaping up to be a pretty monumental year for crypto. Bitcoin, I think, may be down a little bit the last couple of days, but has seen a huge surge over the last few months. Adoption among institutions and corporations continues to increase, but, as history has shown, crypto is still kind of a new industry and there are swings that can happen. So what are we kind of looking at? Are we truly in a fundamentally different time for crypto this year?

Ron Hammond: 1:48

First off, thanks for having me and I will say definitely yes. You know, when it comes to at least Capitol Hill's view of crypto, for the longest time we were quote down bad, you could say. Many folks didn't care about crypto. I like the Taylor Swift reference.

Ron Hammond: 2:01

I had to throw it in there for a little pop culture, but for a long time people didn't care, and if they did, it was the internet, funny money or it was utilizing terrorist activities, and so that was up until about 2021. So I mentioned the bio here, because back in 2017, a lot of my friends and a lot of folks on Capitol Hill just really didn't care about this issue. They actually gave me a little nickname, captain Crypto, because I worked at Compton Crypto or Davidson, and we would always ask about crypto.

Ron Hammond: 2:28

You know, whether it be Jay Powell or Janet Yellen, it's always about crypto but no one really cared. And then 2021 came around and then, all of a sudden, everyone's talking about crypto. It would be NFTs or this new guy, sbf, this FTX exchange Coinbase. We saw it in DC at least, when the lobbyists started to get hired. So that was when we kind of saw at least in DC seeing a really big shift and that culminated to what happened in the election in November. We saw a huge win for crypto.

Ron Hammond: 2:52

Across the PAC side, we've seen massive momentum in terms of both Republicans and Democrat candidates getting elected, and pretty resoundingly in most cases and they've actually in some cases, flipped seats, which is crazy to see. So we went from pretty much being one of the industries that no one cares about, or even viewed as very negative by many members of Congress, to we carry a lot of weight now. A lot of folks have been asking us what's going on and it's been very awesome to see it from at least me personally, to see this shift. But now the hard work comes and everything we've been talking about for years is culminating to right now, and that's no easy task to get this across the finish line, so we'll see what happens.

Bryan DeAngelis: 3:30

Yeah, Tell me more when you saw the shift, because that's we probably got involved in crypto with some of our clients around that time in 2021. And then there was obviously FTX, which was a you know I'll call it a dark moment for the industry, but we saw, probably sometime in end of 23, 2024, a lot of the education that companies and others and the Blockchain Association had invested in this city started to pay off a little bit.

Ron Hammond: 4:00

You're 100% right. It did pay off and these efforts took years to get to this point. Back when I was at Hill Stafford in 2017, I was reaching out to pretty much every single office on financial services, both Republican and Democrat, trying to find a co-sponsor for this bill, because the idea was, hey, the first market structure bill out there. We want to be bipartisan. We were able to get Darren Soto from Florida, but it took a lot of meetings and, frankly, most folks didn't care. The shift definitely happened 2021, 2022. Dc, in my experience, about six months behind the bull market cycle.

Bryan DeAngelis: 4:31

So in 2017-. I think that's very generous. That's very generous. Sometimes it feels like six years.

Ron Hammond: 4:35

That's fast for DC, it's slow for crypto, so we kind of struck the middle. But 2021 was a big shift. 2017 is actually the kind of like started me working on crypto policy as a staffer and we're kind of seeing a lot of that right now, where there was a big bull run post-election. There's a lot of hype and obviously there's a lot of market actions recently that you know some are better, some for worse, but you know the upside is at least the interest is massive and we've seen crypto listed in the first 108 priorities of the House, which I never thought I would see to that point.

Ron Hammond: 5:08

You know we've always been so bottom of the list in terms of what folks care about, even last Congress, but this Congress it's a number one listed priority. So that's huge. And we have the administration behind it. We have senators who are very much knowledgeable, mostly on this issue. The House is a lot farther ahead, um, but uh, I think we got a lot of work to do but we still got some good progress. But it's a lot of the education took years to get there, um, especially when you're so headline driven in this industry and DC, um, that's kind of the problem is, every time we're making progress.

Ron Hammond: 5:36

There's a new part of crypto that comes out, whether it be again NFTs, meme coins uh you know a hack or scandal Like these are things you'd explain in a 15, 10 minute period to a 75 year old senator. It takes a couple of those meetings to actually have it cemented to get to that point, but a long way to go still.

Ylan Mui: 5:53

Ron, I think that's a really good segue actually to you know the policy landscape, I think, for crypto going forward. Now that DC actually cares about crypto, what are the priorities for the industry? What do you want to achieve now that you're at the top of the agenda?

Ron Hammond: 6:10

Well, first I'd probably say this list was made back in the fall of last year was hey, we got to stop the SEC, the enforcement division, is going crazy on all these projects. I mean, if you're a top 10 crypto project in the United States, odds are you probably have some SEC action against you in some way, shape or form or with one of your major partners, and that's just untenable. And we've seen the market react very drastically when that threat of enforcement withered away with the new administration. But now it's going to get to the difficult part of trying to bring the industry together, who was always a collective, fighting the bad guy in their mind, which was the SEC primarily, and coming together to get a market structure bill together, and a market structure bill that's again I personally worked on back in 2017, 2016. That's you know it's been almost eight years at this point and we still haven't gotten a coalition around what final definitions need to look like.

Ron Hammond: 6:57

There are plenty of views within the industry itself, and the industry does evolve so rapidly that sometimes when you write legislation, it's outdated in a year because the market has come up with this new idea or product that maybe doesn't fit in the exact mold. So it's always been tough. But right now we are trying to get those bright line tests, especially with the market structure bill and they understand that where the CFTC jurisdiction end, as well as the SEC's jurisdiction end, and figuring out exactly when folks need to go to the proper regulator, um, and figuring out exactly when folks need to go to the proper regulator, uh, and some other more just general you know compliance things as well, like anti-money laundering rules are important to codify. Uh, we're looking at stable coin regulation as well. That seems to be the hottest topic right now is stable coins.

Ron Hammond: 7:35

And then you know some other small things, like protections for NFTs, um, and figuring out exactly where other consumer protection elements, uh, need to come to play. But, as I mentioned, I talk more at a high level because there is a disagreement among a lot of the folks in the industry. You know some warranted, some maybe not as warranted different views on where those lines should be, and that's what we do at the Blockchain Association. We try to find that common denominator, which can be very difficult sometimes, but, as DC is kind of realizing now, is that the crypto industry is not a monolith, so you know which is what one exchange or what one DeFi company CEO or exec says could be very different from what another executive says or another policy person. So that's the next education thing is understanding for Capitol Hill where the major players are and where you know their pain points and maybe why they disagree with certain language.

Bryan DeAngelis: 8:23

So not to put you in the hot seat, but I wanted to ask a question like that because it is such a diverse industry, from asset managers to stablecoin issuers to you getting to DeFi, and they've had this common enemy, as you've said. They've been pretty united. But as you get pen to paper, how do you, especially sitting at the trade association that represents all of them, continue that momentum from last year where there was a lot of great education and engagement with policymakers, a lot of support from the industry for people on both sides of the aisle, a lot of grassroots support? But inevitably, you could name any industry in the world there's going to be disagre, could name any industry in the world there's going to be disagreements between that industry when, when pens start going down on paper. So how are you guys managing all of that?

Ron Hammond: 9:12

We're trying. I'll put it that way. This is the weird thing about the crypto space in particular is it lives on Twitter. Our ex is called now and that is for better or for worse, because early on, capitol Hill really wasn't using Twitter too often and then the folks who did is mostly political Twitter. You know, everyone's kind of got their circles and their silos within their social media apps, but you know, largely I found myself on the crypto side when I was using the app and it's a great way to get bill analysis or hear from thought leaders, whereas obviously, in the political side, folks are just getting what's happening on Capitol Hill for that week. Whereas obviously in the political side, folks are just getting what's happening on Capitol Hill for that week.

Ron Hammond: 9:45

But now and I'd say this happened about two years ago there's been a merge now where a lot of folks members of Congress and staff who are working on crypto legislation or maybe trying to work against the industry are seeing very much what the executives are putting out there on Twitter and again, some folks have really good bill analysis or have views on a rule. So that's always been helpful, but now, you know, it's usually rule, so that's always been helpful, um, but now, uh, you know it's usually been against uh, what's happening at the current administration? Uh, now, obviously we've got to bring folks together and that's been very, very difficult and Twitter is very transparent. So some people like to throw some bombs on there on Twitter, um, and it does make my life a little hectic. But, um and again, sometimes it's good to raise these points because it is kind of like that digital town square where people can weigh in and you don't have to fly in DC. And you know, there's a very many circumstances where I've had a tweet sent to me from a member of Congress or a staffer or a regulator and saying, like, what is this, what's happening? You know, please break it down. And that's what we're here for. The Blockchain Association is kind's kind of, hey, here's the no BS answer of what we're seeing from our side. And then it does the same thing for the industry saying, hey, what's happening on Capitol Hill? All this craziness on Twitter we're seeing, it's like, no, it's not happening. Let me tell you what's actually happening behind the scenes. So I think transparency is important.

Ron Hammond: 10:59

Twitter is a great thing for getting a lot of folks to communicate, but sometimes it does derail the legislative process and it has happened several times where we've seen, you know, a certain tweet critical of something has really derailed legislation. And just for a fun fact I mean the first I've mentioned the Token Taxonomy Act and this is kind of my first wake up to Twitter was really excited. I put years of work into that bill with Congressman Davidson and we drop it. And on Twitter I'm just getting lambasted and I'm like these are the people I'm helping and they are just going after this bill.

Ron Hammond: 11:27

You know, for minute details and, mind you, I'm not a lawyer, but I worked with a lot of lawyers on this bill and that was my first wake up call. I was like, oh, this is not a monolith of an industry. They always have different views and it's sometimes, you know, hurt to see a tweet critical of the bill, that of the industry you're trying to help, but at the same time that's how good policy is made is hey look, let's see what works, let's see what doesn't work but also understanding like this is happening, like we're going to get legislation, this libertarian mindset of like you know no rules whatsoever, that's not happening.

Ron Hammond: 11:54

That evaporated long ago.

Ylan Mui: 11:56

So it seems like it works both ways, right, like you have to explain to your members how Washington works as well as explain to Washington how the industry works, so I guess I'm curious what policymakers are most interested in when it comes to crypto. How have their questions to you changed and how has their I guess focus on the industry changed over the years?

Ron Hammond: 12:20

So you know there's I break it down it's not Republican versus Democrat, although there are some similarities in lines of questions that we get in private and public conversations, depending on the party. But it's been very generational. I mean, we noticed that years ago, where the younger folks were able to at least sort of grasp what crypto was, even if they didn't know what crypto necessarily was when they got into Congress. They have an idea of kind of the tech sector and a lot of the evolutions and fixing inefficiencies in the system. So whether it be, you know, young progressives like Richie Torres or Warren Davidson's not as young anymore, but he was young when he started working on this. But Brandon Gill is another example of the youngest freshman in Congress right now. He's very pro crypto.

Ron Hammond: 12:57

So we're not seeing that sign of excitement usually around the upper echelons, the older folks in Congress, and those are the ones who tend to hold power. But at the same time, a lot of those questions have been really headline driven, at least for those older members of Congress, usually involving hacks or AML concerns or North Korea, and again, all very warranted for the most part, but in the early days there was a lot more talking about just blanket. Everything for crypto is money laundering and that took a long time to really wear down that narrative and show them the facts and Introducing the people in the industry who are actually very much trying to improve the life for everyone. But the same time, I would say the most recent ones have been stable coin regulation. That's what everyone wants to talk about. Just what's going on with stable coins. What is this company Tether? What is this company Ripple?

Ron Hammond: 13:45

You know there's figuring out who the major players are and then also understanding what happened with something like Terra. And you know, breaking down Terra a decentralized stable coin to a 75-year-old senator in 10 minutes can be very, very difficult senator in 10 minutes can be very, very difficult. So it's been a lot of that and trying to use analogies and stuff to at least help them understand to an extent what they're voting on or what they're potentially having a hearing on. So but it takes a lot of work and you have to do that for the staff as well as a member of Congress and it takes years. But the good thing is that we have a lot more reinforcements in DC. For years, it was just a couple of folks on the lobbying side. I remember 2021, the infrastructure bill, we had six lobbyists in all of crypto I think. Now it's probably 50, 60. So we're still pretty small compared to the banks.

Bryan DeAngelis: 14:27

That was sort of the moment where things were turning to DC. Yeah, that was the moment.

Ron Hammond: 14:32

A lot has changed since then, but I never thought we'd be in the situation we are now, which is exciting.

Bryan DeAngelis: 14:37

Yeah, going back to the, I want to connect that last thought back to the question on X and Twitter. I mean, part of this is educating that very excited community and they hold a lot of power with their grassroots ability. But the three of us know, you know, the first draft of a piece of legislation is never the final draft and if they get something done in eight months, that's, that's a pretty good clip for Washington DC. How do you take kind of all that energy on X or, or, you know, do the best you can and redirect that in a way to support the effort rather than maybe react to every kind of twist and turn?

Ron Hammond: 15:15

You know, the funny thing is that it kind of does take a life on its own. And you know, sometimes, like you know, we can help that narrative and sometimes it's just completely out of our control. I remember the early days a senator or a member of Congress would tweet like I funded a hospital in my district for you know X amount of millions of dollars like awesome work on my end. Three likes on Twitter. Right Crypto is the future of America. 3,000 likes on Twitter and all of a sudden their staff goes. Hey, uh, the boss wants to work on crypto.

Ylan Mui: 15:40

Doesn't know anything, but he just knows people really like it.

Ron Hammond: 15:44

And that's when, like when Elizabeth Warren launched her anti-crypto army and I was like it was kind of like again, I used to do campaigns back in the day, but it's a major blunder, um, politically, I just like I thought that was just a misstep. It's calling out an entire industry regardless of, like you know, political factions. And if you look at the comments, you look at the ratios like it got ratioed hard on X and a lot of people are saying like this is a really bad move to just call it. All these people, regardless you know their political ideologies. And I think we saw that play out very well in November, where a lot of folks in the grassroots side came out and there was a dismissal of the crypto voter.

Ron Hammond: 16:15

I mean, can't really do like I thought like hey, who, candidly too, like I thought like hey, who's gonna go to the polls for just crypto when there's so many other things on the table for this election? Uh, but I was proven wrong, like many others, uh, and the grassroots is there and props to stand with crypto and a lot of other groups for um mobilizing that voter base because they came a force and I think, a lot of folks in dc, even if they were anti-crypto, they've been knowing, knowing that, hey, you don't mess a crypto they got, uh, they're a nasty bunch and they can be very scrappy. And it's not just, you know, campaign dollars, it's a Twitter, it's social media. It's a lot of the lobbyists coming in and educating. There's there's a lot of vectors of the industry wants to educate folks and engage. But, um, if you attack it, uh, there is now to your point.

Bryan DeAngelis: 16:57

just having that kind of closed-minded blanket. It's all wrong, I think, was an incredible blunder on some progressives' parts and taking the time to learn the industry and understand it and then, like we do in a good democracy, right Pressure test with hard questions and work on the legislation Of course, and you know DC is a very headline-driven city, and so crypto hacks, you know crypto views for illicit finance, silk Road those things dominate the headlines and especially in a national security heavy focused city that tends to stick out.

Ron Hammond: 17:30

So you know, again, I don't blame some of these older members of Congress having a view, but hey, like you have to learn every day and you know this is a new space that's been really taken off, and if you're still ignoring it, you might ignore it to your own peril.

Ylan Mui: 17:44

Yeah, I mean this election was clearly a big win for crypto, but, as we also know, the next election starts the day that the last election ended. So do you all see that same level of engagement continuing through? We've got the midterms coming up right. Obviously, next four years. How do you keep that going?

Ron Hammond: 18:05

Well, I don't run it personally. Obviously we were just doing more on the lobbying side here, but we were definitely keeping that machine going and actually we had the Fairshake folks double down. I think it's $60 million At least right now they have in the reserves for the next cycle. So it's a pretty sizable force there and only likely to grow over time. So you know we'll see exactly how maybe some of the progressives to your point shift a little bit. You know, will we see an overt anti-crypto army push again this cycle? I doubt it, but you know things can change. It's politics and you know we'll see how heavy folks lean into being pro crypto. We saw some candidates being really, really, really pro crypto, donald Trump being one of them, um, but then we saw others just kind of say one positive tweet and that's it, uh, and we'll see if they vote. You know when the time comes, uh, uh for the things that they stood for. So you know varying degrees here, um, uh, of interest. But I will say, lastly, post election especially of interest. But I will say, lastly, post-election especially.

Ron Hammond: 19:01

You know I usually handle mostly republicans on, uh, I've had a lot of folks outreach saying we want to do something on crypto. We're really excited about it. We just know it's this kind of new area of legislation that no one's really written the rules for. So it's kind of like this wild west of legislation which is rare, um, and the political lines aren't really fully defined yet. So, um, let's like, let's work on it's work on it. And that's what drove me to the issue of just like, hey, this is new. At least when I work on a bank issue, I know where. Hey, this is where the Republicans historically are, this is where Democrats historically are, and that's been nowhere. For crypto, it's a complete blank slate. So it's like, hey, let's not make this partisan. Like, why do we need to do that? For? Like a quick political win get good legislation, good policy, make it bipartisan. It might take a little longer time, but it'll be here to last, rather than just kind of you know, turned over whichever next administration.

Bryan DeAngelis: 19:46

If you can, I'm curious what is that coalition looking like? Like we've for lack of a better word danced around a little bit like the age issue, but are you seeing younger generations of members of congress more open to this? Are you seeing it just over time, across the board? Now I mean overall across?

Ron Hammond: 20:05

the board. I mean it's more just like generally with the vibes, but like for individual folks like angela also, I mean, mind you get also, uh, young for congress. It's, you know, a relative term here, so bear with me, yes, um, so I take, like adam schiff or and ang Brooks, two Democrats in the Senate Angela Also Brooks just got on the Senator Hagerty stablecoin bill, so she's already, you know, putting her marker down that she's pro crypto and trying to get regulation done. So we've already seen kind of younger Democrat senators move in this space. Richie Torres is kind of that icon in the House, has been pro crypto, but he's got plenty of other folks, darren Soto being the one the younger guys in the OG days.

Ron Hammond: 20:47

And I mentioned Republican side. We have Brandon Gill who's been fantastic. Will Timmons has been good on NFTs and that's a cool thing I mentioned about crypto is that there's so many facets here that sometimes for like market structure, we probably can't get to everything here, but things like NFTs do need regulation and that's where it's good to have like individual members of Congress say, hey, I want to work on NFTs or I want to work on Bitcoin mining and it's like good. Let me put you in touch with those experts and let's craft good policy to get something across the finish line here. And so that's what I've been mostly doing, at least at my end, is trying to divvy out like, hey, let's find the right people to work on the right issues, and I'm like I can fully control that. But the idea is more just like hey, we can't have everyone work on a stablecoin bill as much as that's the hot topic this month. Let's work on some other issues, because likely those will become issues for the industry down the road.

Ylan Mui: 21:25

Yeah, can you give us an update on where that stands? I know that David Sachs, I guess the new crypto czar, said that that was one of the top priorities and he was optimistic about getting some type of legislation on crypto passed within the first six months of the administration. Do you think that's realistic, and where does that coalition stand?

Ron Hammond: 21:45

So it's going to be tough. I think we'll have some congressional action, but probably it's out of one of the chambers before the 60 days are over. But to say you get signed to the president's desk, I'd say optimistically before August but more likely probably in the fall. It just really depends how these next two weeks shape out. But it looks like we're going to vote in the Senate, in the Senate being committee, on the stable coin bill for Senator Hagerty fairly soon. Right now there's two Republicans, two Democrats and that's very new for the Senate. The Senate usually only had one pro Democrat senator, that was Kristen Gillibrand, and now it is a lot wider of a group so optimistic on stable coins and there's less political hurdles, I would say, than market structure. It gets a lot more complicated in the weeds, whereas stable coins has been largely baked for the most part.

Ron Hammond: 22:36

The only issue that happened last year or two years ago ago was the Fed objected. It passed the House, they were ready to go and the Fed said no, we want full control over stablecoin regulation, we don't want the state to have any role. And the Republicans and some Democrats pushed back saying well, new York has a stablecoin regime like they should be able to have it Same with Wyoming. We're looking at Nebraska potentially too. So all these states have been doing their own individual thing. But that's where the bill died last time was just that one line of saying you know who is the main regulator at the federal level, or should there be one? And now, with that kind of gone away, with Brainerd gone, it seems to be a lot more you know easier of a pathway.

Ron Hammond: 23:16

But the two bills that you should watch are the Hagerty bill as well as the French Hill Brian Stile bill. In the House. They are purposely different. So what's going to probably have to happen? You're going to combine them at some point once they pass the House and Senate, and then they're going to vote on it again. So that's why I'm more looking towards maybe the fall timeframe, just because you have to have three separate votes, but progress is going to start in March.

Bryan DeAngelis: 23:38

It's.

Ron Hammond: 23:38

Congress. I've explained that to Crypto Twitter. Just because we vote on a committee, we have a lot more steps and votes to happen to get something to the president's desk.

Bryan DeAngelis: 23:46

Yeah, connect this back to the broader, I guess, economy. So the policy landscape obviously is looking, I'll say, positive for the crypto industry. But you're also seeing, in traditional finance, either more adoption or certainly less skepticism. I think you're seeing this both on a consumer level, but also some of our big traditional financial services as well. Maybe a chicken and egg situation where both are helping each other. But how much do you guys see that continued adoption and how's that beneficial to your efforts here?

Ron Hammond: 24:23

Well, I didn't have the title institutional relations beginning of this year, I'll put it that way, but after so many folks reach out, especially post-November, especially on the institutional side but taking a step back here, the institutions have been engaged, especially on the lobbying side, even dating when I was a Hill staffer in 2017, bny Mellon was trying to self-cust or were trying to custody crypto, and they were having regulatory issues to do such Same with State Street, and so we've seen the institutions on the precipice have been wanting to get involved. We've seen plenty to your point, though, have been purposely on the sidelines or poo-pooing the entire industry, and that drastically to the point that, post-november, I've been getting calls from major G-SIBs, and not like they're lobbyists, but like they're research teams or like they're, you know, policy teams less to the extent, some of their exec teams in some cases, but the amount of outreach, especially from the institutions, and the banks in particular, has been astounding, and it's almost two a week at this point to have calls with. They would just randomly reach out to me. So the interest is there, but at least in my experience talking to these folks, some of them have progressed a lot farther, behind the scenes and building a product and services just waiting for the regulatory clarity to happen, and the two main things that were holding them back were SAB 121, which is a rule by the SEC basically that prevents custody from any bank whatsoever of crypto.

Ron Hammond: 25:39

And then there was the Fed policy statement of January 3rd 2023, which basically told all the banks use extreme risk mitigation when it comes to crypto, aka touch crypto be careful. And we could be going after you after that. So those two have now gone in these past two months and that is huge. So we'll see what that means for the business signs no-transcript. The last thing I'll say is some folks have put a lot of work in and they're going to have a pretty detailed product. From my conversations, they didn't say everything, but it's a decent amount of institutions and they're going to have a huge leg up versus the ones that have been on the sideline who are just catching up now. So you'll see that pretty soon, I think in the coming months.

Ylan Mui: 26:24

Is there a broader economic argument that you're able to make now to when you go talk to lawmakers on the Hill? I mean just thinking back to the early days of crypto. One of the arguments was well, crypto is only good for itself, right, it's purely an investment vehicle. And now we're starting to see real world examples of at least blockchain and some of the technology that underpins the industry being used in a variety of sectors. How are you able to talk about, I guess, more of the real world impact with lawmakers now in a way that maybe you weren't able to before?

Ron Hammond: 27:02

I think you mentioned the grassroots from earlier on and that's been the cool part of crypto. It's so diverse in terms of the camps and folks who are in it. Then the cool part of crypto, it's so diverse in terms of the camps and folks are in it. I mean like, for example, like NFTs have brought a whole different cast of characters that I've never met before. You know, I'm usually dealing with finance bros or tech bros before 2021. And all of a sudden, the artists you know, we have Blau, for example, who does a lot of good DJ stuff that I raged to in college, apparently, and then we have a lot of these actually people and stuff who are making nfts art itself. And there's a whole cast of folks on capitol hill, more on the democrat side, who are very sympathetic to artists and saying, hey, like I can make money now on my own here through nfts, and we've seen that play out, where some democrats came a lot more pro crypto because of the nft angle.

Ron Hammond: 27:46

Um, for republicans it was largely around revitalization of rural areas, especially around Bitcoin mining.

Ron Hammond: 27:53

So Rockdale, texas, a city that lost a major manufacturing plant, thousands of jobs, the city was pretty much on its last limb and then, all of a sudden, the Bitcoin miners moved in and they're paying $100,000 plus to a lot of these folks who, in rural communities, weren't making half that at the manufacturing plant.

Ron Hammond: 28:11

Again, the jobs may not be as much as they were before, but there was nothing there early on and a lot of Republicans really grasped into the economic benefits, especially again for rural communities, that a lot of Bitcoin miners have. And that's just two examples. There is a whole cast of characters that the good thing at a trade is. I can pull and pick from all these companies or folks, just even on Twitter, who I've interacted with and say, hey, we need to bring you to Capitol Hill. There are a couple members of Congress who would really resonate with your story, and I think that's what's going to be best, instead of just having one solid message that may resonate with some folks and may not for others. You know, meet people where they are and bring folks that they would listen to. And again, it takes a lot of time to meet the right people and in crypto there's a cast characters.

Bryan DeAngelis: 28:51

You probably don't want around politicians, but you know when you find the right group. One more question for me. I just wanted to take a moment and kind of zoom out. So obviously a lot of the industry's messaging over the last few years has been let's keep this great innovation here in America. Let's, let's help it grow. How are you all as things move forward? Ideally this year we get more regulatory clarity how are you all engaging kind of with the rest of the world on either rules of the road or making sure kind of American companies are competitive?

Ron Hammond: 29:26

Well, unfortunately, you know, we've been behind on a lot of these rules of the road here. So a lot of my conversations in the past have been hey, dear state association or dear state lawmaker or a dear um you know group operating in Singapore or the EU, pick a country almost like they're all ahead of us at this point. So a lot of those conversations in years past have just been what have you done to get to that point? What worked, what didn't work? Now you know we have the opportunity to take maybe, you know, to catch up here I wouldn't say the lead necessarily. Um, you know we're still a free bar behind, but, um, you know there's gonna be a lot of tough conversations around things like d5, for example. That haven't really happened yet.

Ron Hammond: 29:58

The eu, uh, pretty much exempted a lot of the d5 situation because a lot of people are still scratching their heads how do you regulate this? But, uh, in congress it looks like they're going to try to tackle that may, maybe not in the market structure bill, but that seems to be kind of. The next priority is to tackle this tough thing where maybe we can take the lead in setting standards here that we have lost that before. So we'll see if that pans out, but there's plenty of issues in the crypto space that are going to be keeping us busy for quite some time, let alone meme coins, like you know. Where does that fit in the conversation? They're not security.

Ron Hammond: 30:27

So that throws a wrench into a lot of things. So there's one thing I can know about the industry is that they'll innovate to keep me busy.

Bryan DeAngelis: 30:33

So that's good.

Ylan Mui: 30:36

Well, last question for you, Ron what does success look like for you? Maybe let's just pick two years from now. You've, you've, you know, enjoyed the momentum of the past election. You've enjoyed, you know, growing support both within Washington and across the country. You know, two years from now, what do you want to say? That you guys got accomplished.

Ron Hammond: 30:56

I want to get a stablecoin bill done by the end of the year. And then, you know, market structure is really important to me, but I want to make sure that everything is done on a bipartisan basis and strong bipartisan. I think we got that in the last House vote, with the 79 Democrats voting for it at 21. But I'll never forget this quick story is that it was the last day of 2017 in Congress. We're about to drop the Token Taxonomy Act and Warren Davidson goes on NPR and talks about his other bill, talking about building a wall and individual donations being utilized to build a wall, and the NPR host said you know well, how would you fund it? And offhand, because we were talking about crypto a lot before that interview, he goes I don't know, we can probably fund it with crypto or something, and then, all of a sudden, all these headlines come in saying you know?

Ylan Mui: 31:38

there goes the bipartisan, and that's actually happened.

Ron Hammond: 31:41

The Democrat calls up and says, hey, I thought we were regulating just more markets and stuff like that. And it's like we are like this is not related at all and the Democrat walked. It took basically a two hour conversation on the House floor on the last day and I'm sitting here in the House chambers like, please, please, please, even though this bill is not moving this year, like this is important to me by partisan. We can't lose it on like political silliness and it went through and I'll never forget, like fist bumping in the air when Warren Davidson giving the thumbs up that the Democrats back on board and but for me personally I was like, hey, look, we've worked a lot of time to get here.

Ron Hammond: 32:15

This space has a lot of silliness sometimes that can really, you know, peel folks off for support. But like this is the future, it's obviously here to stay. Let's get this rules done and let's make sure it's by Parson, because I don't want to be doing this again when the new administration comes in and says let's undo everything that the previous administration did and when we just go back ping pong back and forth. That's not healthy, that's not sustainable.

Ylan Mui: 32:37

It's only healthy for lobbyists, but I'd rather be working on more substance economy. Yeah, exactly. Well, ron, thank you so much for joining us. I know that you have a busy day ahead of you. You're headed back over to the Hill after this conversation is over, so we really appreciate your time.

Ron Hammond: 32:48

Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Ylan Mui: 32:50

To our listeners remember to like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and to follow us on X at PentaGRP and on LinkedIn at PentaGroup. I'm your co-host, Ylan, and, as always, thanks for listening to What's At Stake.