a lot of things happening on the campaign trail, and one of the topics, of course, here in the crypto community, has been how the Harris campaign is starting to take a look at crypto. Well, there is a Crypto for Harris program that we're going to be breaking down for you guys today. I think you'll like it. We've got a special guest for you. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Joining me today is Sheila Warren, who is the CEO for the Crypto Council for Innovation. Great to have you on the show. Thanks, Paul. It's good to be here. Yeah, so Sheila, let's get into a couple of points I want to start with. And I think when you look at just the expectations from both the blockchain industry and the crypto community at large, part of this with the VP has been in the position of what is her position, what is the administration's position, and has it really changed from what the current administration is. I know she's in the current administration, but what we've

seen so far. So, uh, the takeaways from yesterday's meeting, uh, look to be not a great one. This was the headline: crypto executives clashing with Democratic leaders in a heated Zoom meeting. A couple of highlights within it that I wanted to kind of zoom in on was this one right here. A tense moment occurred, uh, when they told attendees that banks and regularities were not actively trying to cut the industry off from the broader financial system. And of course, they asked for a show of hands. And as we all know on our show, and I think most people watching it today, that that's just not true. We've seen nothing but, uh, chokepoint 2.0 activities. So, I guess in my question to you, uh, is this just tone-deaf? They don't understand what's happening in their own administration? Or is this trying to posture and look as they as if they don't understand what's happening? What was your opinion on what you heard in the call? Sure, well, Paul, I think there's a lot of things being

conflated here. Okay, so first of all, there is the current administration, and President Biden is still the head of the administration. He's still the president. He's just not the candidate anymore, right? So, there is a distinction to be drawn between the Biden administration and the Harris campaign, and I think it's important to note that Vice President Harris, who is still the vice president even though she's now also a candidate for the top job in the country, has not historically been engaged with really anything on crypto or crypto policy that was not within her remit. So, frankly, I was a bit confused about the meeting yesterday, and I wasn't entirely sure why it was happening because I don't necessarily think that a meeting with the current White House administration. Some of those folks are not going to remain into the next ad. I don't really know what the goal and what was trying to be accomplished was there to be very frank because we're talking about a new team, a new team, and

and to me, the biggest thing that we could see is, uh, in terms of policy changes, is who's going to be appointed some of these key positions. So, in that meeting, you had Wello, you had L. Bren Brainard, uh, people that have been part of the Biden Administration. Um, I would not say that they have been people who have been particularly interested in crypto, although there has been some, there was some engagement. Um, but the other thing I think is important to note is the evolution of any one of these people. So, just as with, well, I want to stop you there. So, I don't understand why that the Harris Camp would allow this because, obviously, this is, it says crypto for Harris is the topic. So, I think there was just confusion about what is, what is this because the people that were in that room, I believe there was one person who was a Harris, a former Harris adviser, but didn't say anything. And then there were people who are some of the top dogs in the Biden Administration who aren't necessarily reflective of Harris.

alone of you realize you realize how bad this is as a look on the Harris campaign from the crypto community. I mean, right now, we're talking about policy that's being essentially talked about for the next generation of who our lawmakers are going to be. So, uh, I feel like that is kind of a cop-out, really. I mean, the reality is that there had to be awareness of what was going on here. You're bringing in some of the top Democratic leaders out there. You had Richie Torres there. I'm not so sure, Paul, that that's how any of this works. And as somebody who does this for a living, I'm G to tell you that's not really. I wish there were that sort of level of tight coordination on topics, on any kind of topic. That's not really how any of this works. I think this is a campaign. It's a political activity. There's different staff. There's different people. They're running an operation saying that all the staff that was there probably will not be there in the future. I don't

know that we know that they will kind of hope they won't to be very honest well yeah uh I think that's the situation. Here's Caitlyn Long calling BS on a lot of this, of course most of this was L. Brainard because of you know her position uh within operation Cho 2.0 uh cuz she was in a position where she could have you know kind of uh reassessed how this is going to be worked in from crypto companies uh and obviously this is one of the things that I think is very uh contrarian uh within the industry because we've seen nothing but push back from the Biden Administration. So I would agree with you now I'm very confused as to why this meeting actually happened. Yeah same look I think if anything it was a very helpful venting. I think that people were really honest but you're venting to people who have no power. Well I still think I think that message does get across. I mean it comes out through press for example. It comes out through press well it is getting

across even if it's not being passed by the people in the meeting to other people. It's in the press. So the first White House round table, which was in person, also organized by Congressman Rana. I think people there, it was a slightly different tone, but nobody pulled any punches. People were very honest and candid about what had happened to them and how they felt. They'd been treated by the administration, how they had been treated by the administration, particularly of course by the SEC, which is the main actor here that we're talking about, but also by banks. And then in this next one, which was a Zoom, I think it was a similar message just with more vitriol and rancor, which frankly is justified. People are really angry, and I think they have a right to be. You have guys like Tyler Winlos also hitting on this just to be completely clear. You know, Winlos is a Republican supporter, so he of course is going after

this uh in the sense of the reset you know a true Harris reset being a scam. One of the things that he hit on there was a couple of items that they kind of focused on here uh they were still talking about you know customers that can you know Bank as crypto companies but in the reality that's not necessarily the case but I'm kind of curious do you think that if Harris does win in November that she would essentially be in a position to do two things one remove Senator Harris from the Banking Committee and two figure out a way to assist Gary Gensler with his resignation. I think you mean Senator Warren from the senator Warren I'm sorry yeah the thing to understand about how this works though again is the SEC is an independent agency and what I think has been so frustrating to so many of us is that is become a political agency. It's not supposed to be a political or partisan agency. It's partic it's specifically meant to be a political so the reality is that Gary Gensler has

politicized the agency, which is a big problem. So, I think it would be shocking if, certainly if Trump wins, we're going to have, you know, a change over there. If Harris wins, I actually think we'd still have a change over there because the reality, and the thing I think people in crypto miss, is that Gary Gensler is not popular among a broad variety of industry actors, not just crypto. It's not like other people love this guy, okay? So, yeah, I, you know, truly, truly people who are listing don't like him, exchanges don't like him. So, a lot of folks that have felt very, um, uh, victimized, I guess is the right word, by this particular chair. Now, the reality is that what normally happens here is that the chair resigns if the president, whoever the president is. It's not about the party, it's about the president themselves, right? So, under Biden, there was a big question: would he make a change because he's the person that got the chair Gensler into that chair? Harris

is knew. She's already indicated she's going to make changes in staffing on areas like national security, on antitrust, things that are big issues, and so I'm hopeful, very, very hopeful. And to me, it seems like very low-hanging fruit if Harris to win to seek a change in the chair position. Now, whether or not that means Gensler leaves or gets pushed down to being an ordinary commissioner, he kind of has to resign. He has a term till '26, you know, so the whole firing of him, that's about the chair position, not about his being on the commission. Those are different things, and people want to understand that, right? For sure, yeah, that that is true. We have talked about this on the show before, and you know, this still may be a situation that at least we know what we have with Chair Gensler, and maybe that at some point there could be some policy change coming from Congress that could realign the SEC, at least on their efforts. So, well, look, I also think we have to say the reason

that there's so much activity in Congress is because of Gary Gensler. If he were a little less rabbit about this, we probably wouldn't have the activity, which is what we need from Congress, which is kind of where we want the activity to generate, right? So, um, his sort of negativity has led to more awareness about this. I'm not, I'm trying to Silver Lining this, obviously it's terrible, it's not terrible, don't get me, but if there's a silver lining, it's that he's so extreme that everybody's forced to talk about it and pay attention, right? He wasn't about what he was doing is what I'm saying. So, so do you feel that, I mean, with this confusing meeting this week and what we've seen so far, because there just hasn't been a Democratic position that has come out, do you think it's too late for the Harris campaign in terms of a crypto position? I me, I I'm an internal Optimist Paul, I never think it's too late for anything, and I I think

it's important to think about history here, right? So, look at the evolution of Donald Trump. This is a person who was very skeptical of Bitcoin years ago, sure. Uh, who even a few months ago didn't seem to know that was positively inclined, but clearly didn't know that much about the topic. And then you get to Bitcoin Nashville, where point for point he's reciting the wish list of the crypto industry. So, education is possible when it's motivated, and it can happen fast. And we have a very motivated candidate pool, and I mean this down ballot as well, not just at the top of the ticket. We have a very motivated candidate pool to understand this topic and why it matters so much. So, I am an eternal optimist. I think a Biden pivot was a long shot. I think, I don't even think it's a Harris pivot. I think we still don't know what her views are. And I will tell you, I'm sure that there's a lot of consternation about this meeting in the campaign camp.

I'm sure because this doesn't play well for them either, and it doesn't reflect from everything I've been told. It does not reflect the views of the Harris campaign, which are still being formed. So when you say that everything you've been told, been told by who? By the industry? By people in the Harris camp? Yeah, all yeah. People met with the Harris camp. A lot of people are like, This is an issue that we're paying attention to. Lots of issues right now, okay? Remember again, this campaign is two weeks old. They just announced a vice president. A lot of attention was focusing there. They're hiring up the finance directors at the local and regional levels. They're building up a campaign infrastructure in five seconds. Most people have years to do, right? So um, or many or many many months, let's say um, and so I think the fact that they are taking meetings with crypto, with industry people, the fact that they are even paying attention to this and the suite of things that they have to focus on, well wait a minute.

You're saying they're taking meetings with crypto. You're not talking about the... Is there... Are there other meetings going on that... Again, this White House meeting, Le brard and Wello at this moment do not work for President, Vice President Harris, or for the presidential Harris campaign, right? That is a White House administration. They... White House administration officials of the Biden administration. The Harris campaign, which is totally separate people, completely separate people, has taken meetings, has been talking to people about crypto. Absolutely. I think... I think there's context here, right? So, so number one, like I said, this about semiconductors. I... I... I did this viral tweet in '23 that said the dissonance, the cognitive dissonance I'm having watching the Biden administration claw back chip manufacturing while blly offshoring crypto is just wild, right? Um, I... It's shocking to me. Like, we know we made a mistake with a critical technology 40, 50 years ago, and we're making the exact same mistake with this critical technology in... to crazy. What are we doing?

We are in agreement on that 100%. At most, fear about is that we're sitting in, you know, a position where we could have Russia, China, BRICS, all sorts of countries, because let's be real, right? Let's be real. Crypto's already won, okay? Like, crypto's not going anywhere. It's going to thrive. The question we're wrestling with right now is just where is it going to thrive? Who's? That's it. This, to me, it's less of a, you know, survival issue for crypto. And I think we should all just take a beat to recognize, like, this is huge success. We've got, you know, ETFs, institutional investors, and money flooding into this thing. We've got most jurisdictions in the world, apart from at the federal level in the US, with pretty clear policy and rails that we know how to build in those different places. The question is just, is America going to lose out? It's not as crypto going to lose out. And I think sometimes people get so upset and emotional, and it's like, y'all, yes, that's not it. It is a

terrible thing. I'm an American. I'm a DieHard Patriot. I want to see Innovation. I hear this argument from people around, you know, in other countries. We have a lot of other news and content creators that talk about this from other countries looking into the United States. But listen, if it's going to move the world's financial markets, it's going to come out of Wall Street, you know, full stop. It's not coming out of find a way to access foreign markets and exchanges. I think Larry will find a way. Yes, Larry thinks he will find a way. Yes, what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying. So, to me, the people who stand to lose here are Americans, are regular, ordinary, everyday Americans. That's who's standing to lose here. It's not, you know, investors. It's not the billionaire class. It's not the rest of the world. It's ordinary Americans who deserve the opportunity to engage with these assets. And if this is not located here, so that's why I see this as an apolitical.

issue. It's to every single American. It's relevant to everybody who creates a wallet on Shore in the United States, right? We need to be able to do that with safety, with security, with understanding of what the parameters and rules are around that, and to know that that is just an ordinary activity, like opening a checking account was an ordinary activity, probably still was an activity, use checks, but you know, these kinds of... It needs to be just normal, everyday activity. And until that... Again, it's important to remember who is really losing out here. So, some of the big voice voes, including the ones you named, I'm not convinced that I appreciate that they're fighting for this in the way that they're fighting for it. I'm fighting for it in the way I'm fighting for it, and it's... It takes a village to get people to understand, to get the government to move. It's a big ship, right? So, getting it to move takes a lot of levers, a lot of effort, and I'm appreciative of all of those efforts, but

the people who stand to lose the most here are ordinary everyday Americans who don't necessarily have a seat at the table, and it's them that I think we have to keep in mind when we're talking about all these topics. I want to jump over to this topic right here 'cause this goes to your point, is that there is and appears to be some movement at least on the selection of the advisers, and this comes in from adding plof, and then also within this David plof, of course, if you guys don't know, also did work with Barack Obama, but also Brian Nelson, who's been leaving his job as the US Treasury under SEC undersecretary. Yeah, he's coming in, and he seems to be somewhat pro-crypto. So these are both people that are very well aware, so that's a good sign for at least, I think, for the Harris campaign. Yeah, I agree completely, and I think you have to look at the levers that the Harris campaign fully controls, which is things

like who they're hiring, what the Harris campaign versus the Biden White House are saying, right? These are different things. And so, um, yeah, Brian Nelson's someone I briefed. You know, I think he is somebody who's always been very open to crypto, who understands, uh, its importance, who also understands, like, how to regulate it in a manner, uh, that reduces fraud, right? And who understands what the risk there is and what the risk isn't. Um, you know, and David Plouffe, of course, has spent time in the industry, so somebody who has personal connections, professional connections there as well. And so, I do take these as signs. Um, this is the beginning days of this campaign, right? To be, to again, as a reminder, we're at the very, very early days of this campaign, and already you have some top advisers there at least have an understanding and have lines into the industry and know people in the industry, you know, etc., and are well-connected and are inclined to be positively inclined. So, like I said, you know, you have to look at the

signals that the Harris campaign is controlling. You have to look at the timing of when these things are happening, and to me, I see positive signs. And until I see really negative signs, like I said, Paul, I'm an optimist, okay? So I'm gonna keep having these conversations until it becomes obvious that it's pointless. I would not go into Gary Gendler's office. What a waste of my time. And I would actually, and I have, but you know, you kind of go in there knowing what you're going to get. But here, I think it's pretty greenfield. And so I would encourage people to remain open because look, my view, the goal is to get to a time and place where I think my co-author Justin Slaughter put it so well, being against crypto should be like being against a toaster oven, like absolutely nonsensical. And it should not be about your party, your affiliation, where you are in government, what country you're in. You should just be like, of course, I support crypto. It's

crazy to have a different position. That's the world I want to get us to, and that means engaging with anyone who will engage with us and being open-minded about where they are and not being unduly judgmental or pessimistic until we have a very clear reason to be so, and even then trying to change the minds and trying to convince. Because I'll go back to saying Donald Trump is somebody who a couple of years ago thought Bitcoin was nonsense, and now you have him standing on stage in Nashville saying a point-for-point wish list of what the industry wants to see change can happen, and it can happen a lot. And back then, there was no incentive for anyone to pay attention as much as there is now. So, well, you know, I think the scenario is that maybe most of DC has started to realize that there's 30 million crypto voters now and that they're really serious about this. Not an irrelevant dat Point, there's a bit of a relevancy here. And the other thing is

I think people have started to realize that the blockchain and crypto innovation, um, I think movement that we're seeing is not just about, you know, finance. It's about innovation, which means jobs. Then you're talking about really the power center of control of finance in the future. That means control and hopefully building more communities around, you know, what's going to happen here in the United States. So, we're tracking a lot of the poll data, and the one that we like, of course, is Poly Market, uh, Poly Market, a predictive, uh, you know, obviously driven around what's happening in the crypto community. And Harris has been moving up dramatically in the polls on Poly Market. Ironically, though, you have Senator Warren who has been trying to move to essentially, uh, dismantle what Poly Market is doing. Do you think that that is even, oh, I can't imagine. I don't think they're aware of that. I, I think that's, yeah, no, I don't think they're aware of that at all. Yeah, I'm sure they're not. Yeah, and

again, like what a predictable move, right? It's almost like comically predictable, but yes, here we are. One more question for you. Um, when it comes to the fit Bill, and we've covered this pretty extensively, a lot of very interesting things went on between McKenry and, of course, uh, the Democrats in positioning of that bill. We didn't quite get it over the line. Um, what do you think is holding back, or if anything, do you think we'll get the Harris camp at least in a position where they would be more receptive to those kinds of regulatory movements? Yeah, I'm very hopeful about that because, I mean, look, we were able to get, and I'll give crypto counsel a lot of credit for this, we were really instrumental in this particular Bill, uh, 71 Democrats to come on side with that bill. Uh, people told me, Oh, you're going to get 27, and I thought, I thought maybe I'd get 35, and we got 71, so that is massive bipartisan

support for a bill that was drafted by Republicans largely. So, keep that in mind what a massive thing in this Congress. Let me contextualize this in this Congress, which had trouble electing a speaker of the house and has not exactly been collaborative. 71 Democrats came on side with this bill because they recognize the crucial importance of the industry and of clarity in the environment and in regulatory markets. And also, I should note to go back to our earlier ch CH Paul, because of frustration of their own with Gary Gensler. That was the reason some of them came on side, right? So, really, really big deal cannot be understated. And I think it's fair to say that the house, you know, is there. The house is there. The house understands this. Some of those folks are just fatigued, frankly, and just want to land this thing so they can move on to other topics, right? Going, we years been talking about this stuff, you know, but some of them are just really passionate, and that's true on

both sides of the aisle. The challenge there, I think, was on the Senate side. The Senate know you couldn't get banking to play ball. People were really trying. I think there were a lot of folks who the reason you had a bill in the house in part was because you had the financial services committee, which oversees the SEC, of course, and you had the committee which oversees the CFTC working in collaboration. And those are the two agencies of relevance here, right? In the Senate, you had the ad committee primarily driving the effort, and that was a challenge because the ad committee oversees the CFTC. They don't have oversight of the SEC, so you can only do so much of the bill. And there was complicated like how do you get the other part of it and where does that come from and all that. It's really, really difficult chess. It's also that we're at a time in the calendar that's really tight. There are only so many calendar days to move things in Congress, so it's

not like you know this is not a job like most of us work in. When you work 247, there are a set number of days you can bring something to the floor, that you can have conversations about, you can have hearings, and we're racing a calendar there. But I actually think, from our understanding of it, I think Biden understood that, the Biden Administration, I should say, understood that that had momentum, and I don't believe they were really standing in the way. I think it got caught up in the politics of all this. It got caught up in the politics of all this, and that is really unfortunate. It's unfortunate when good policy dies because of politics. It happens all the time, every single day, but it's unfortunate. There was a lot of work on the House side to come up with something. I think it was comprehensive and robust and strong, and I'm hopeful we're not done with this term yet, to be very clear. We're not done. There's still more time on the calendar before the inauguration of whoever is the new

president um, and so I'm hopeful that we can see some more progress there. We're going to work very hard on that, but again, the politics of it are determining a lot of people's appetite whether to stop, to stop now, wait, can we get something better later, you know, etc., etc. So we have to see how it all plays out. All right, well, I just have one last point I want to hit. I'm just G of get your opinion on this. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the Republican platform, but it does have some things to do with Donald Trump Jr. and his revealing plans to launch a new def5 platform. I'm kind of curious. Many people would look at this, well, if it's Junior, it might as well be djt himself, but this could really either go one of two ways, one positively in the sense of it's, hey, okay, maybe there's a time to start fostering some new financial systems out there. I mean, Larry thinks it is.

when you think about tokenized securities, or do you think this could potentially hurt crypto as a whole where people don't really understand what this is just yet? Well, I have to say, having just learned about this right now on your show, I don't know that I have a strong opinion on it. I mean, look, I'm always open to people experimenting with these different products and services. I think it's important. I think DeFi is the future, if I'm very blunt about it. Do I think it's the right time to inject that conversation at this moment in this very razor-thin election? Not so sure about that. Not so. Yeah, yeah, interesting timing, right? But I think it makes me happy to hear that people are looking at this, and people of all political stripes are looking at this because they should be because it's really important stuff, right? And it's the future. But yeah, the timing of this, I'm like, these are not easy things to build. Let me just say this: there's a reason DeFi is slow-moving. It's really

hard. It's really hard to build. It's really hard to secure. It's tough. It's not easy tech. And so, I guess my question would just be, I really hope you've got some really great coders on side, and there's some really strong people that are thinking about bridges and thinking about, you know, potential problems here because, uh, it's tough. It's this. This is credit to the builders in this space who persist with building this incredibly complicated technology in the face of regulatory headwinds, um, because it's not easy to do so. Godspeed, I guess, is what I say to anybody starting a new project, you know, uh, and best wishes, you know, but, uh, but yeah, I have to. Those are my questions, I guess. B, all right. It's coming, Sheila. We're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you coming in today. It's been a, it's been a great one. Yes, this is fun. Fun. Thanks so much. Excellent. All right, so if you guys are not tuned

in to our show right now. Make sure and subscribe. It's one of the best ways you get additional content like this, but you can also join our private membership, which is our Diamond Circle. And that is where I do additional podcasts, I drop additional research, all the kind of things you probably are looking for that maybe isn't necessarily just here on YouTube. So make sure and just click the link down below, and you can get in on that. Of course, follow me on X, which is just Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path. [Music]

"Crypto4Harris" A Disaster? ️‍🔥Sheila Warren | Crypto Council for Innovation

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