Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: [00:01:00] Carlo, I've been wanting you to join me as a guest on some future day forever. It's so great to have you today. How are you, my friend?
Carlo D'Angelo: I am doing great, Mark. The feeling is mutual. We have not talked in far too long, so I'm excited for this interview as well as to catch up with you, my [00:02:00] friend.
Marc Beckman: Totally, totally. So it's an interesting time because president Trump came out roaring. I think 2025 can be super encouraging, perhaps even super encouraging for crypto, perhaps even like the biggest growth sector in 2025 for our nation. The executive order's title. Is strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology.
It seems like a weird government type of thing, strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology. Can you, from a top line, break it down for me, explain, you know, what this executive order is doing, what the goals are and. You know, what's feasible? What's next? Let's get into that. Let's start there.
Carlo D'Angelo: Look, I think it opens the conversation that everybody in this sector has been waiting for, and that is, are we finally going to see from the top down regulatory clarity? Nobody in this sector is looking for outright [00:03:00] deregulation and lawlessness. We're looking for the proper lanes to navigate so I can advise clients and so we can all safely conduct ourselves in this space.
And the most exciting thing about this executive order is it's an entree to what's coming. And it, it, it, I think, gives people the faith that they can bring blockchain projects back to the United States and get to the work of building again. So I think it's the start of a conversation. Is it going to in and of itself do anything constructively? No, but it opens the conversation because we need the legislature to open the purse strings. And the good thing about it that I like is it's not just focused on a Bitcoin reserve. It's looking at the entire crypto space. And I think ultimately I'm bullish for the entire sector when it comes to what's in that order.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, that's good. I mean, I've been very vocal about the fact that the SEC's uncertainty has [00:04:00] had a chilling effect on our industry on cryptocurrency. I know that's how we met a while ago. The. The fact is, and it's undeniable at this point that there was a, there were a ton of builders in the United States, great projects being stood up, private equity really got behind crypto for a while.
And then when the Biden administration came in and the new SEC chairman showed nothing but uncertainty, exactly what I predicted happened: dollars from the investment community flew into foreign markets away from the United States. And equally as important, in my opinion, is the fact that we lost a ton of great talent.
Uh, builders in the community, engineers, programmers, etc. They all went overseas, too. So, do you think that the certainty come Hopefully the certainty that comes out of, uh, this administration's vision will have a positive impact on the community as start to start.
Carlo D'Angelo: I 100 percent do. [00:05:00] Caveat. The crypto sector is not knowing for having patience. So I think we expect immediate gains and immediate pumping of our bags based on every single thing that Trump does going forward or Senator Loomis does. And the space tends to get a little bit disappointed if they don't get that immediate.
dopamine rush, just like you're hitting that espresso, the space is always hitting for that dopamine rush. But I agree with you. And the thing that I'm most excited to see about this new era is that regulators through overzealous enforcement and arbitrary enforcement have had their foot on the throat of this industry.
And it's exciting to me to finally see the potential of this sector. Once those handcuffs are taken off, that's what I'm looking forward to.
Marc Beckman: So I wonder when you talk about patience, if you're talking about the speculative nature of cryptocurrency, [00:06:00] specifically on the retail side, because if you think about it, Carlo, we're in a situation where most builders, I believe, are thinking long term. They have long term visions with sustainable goals.
However, what will happen is retail investors, the average Joe, who we were trying to protect for a while, they'll jump in and they might see crypto as a get rich quick scheme, as gambling, you know, I'm gonna bet my horse on Bitcoin, or on ETH, or SOL, or ADA, or whatever the flavor might be. How do we get over That psychological issue.
How do people start to learn that there are real assets here, digital assets that provide real value to individuals to brands, financial mechanisms, the Web three ecosystem is definitely way more valuable than just a being a financial asset on its own. How do we get [00:07:00] over that hurdle?
Carlo D'Angelo: So, the, the challenge is this. We're at the casino phase of crypto. People see the incredible gains that are happening in, especially the meme coin sector. You know, you look at that Trump coin, which I know we'll end up talking about today, but that thing shot up exponentially and created hundreds of thousands of Millionaires overnight, and people see that.
And of course, they're attracted to it. So that's going to bring in quote unquote retail. But that's just the beginning stages of this. This is a long game. And I think the sector needs to continue to get network adoption. We're going to see exponential growth in this sector, and we're going to see mass adoption.
And I fully believe, especially when you listen to people like Larry Fink at Davos talking about the fact that he wants to tokenize every security and every asset. We're looking at real world asset possibilities, ticketing, [00:08:00] community collaboration, crowdsource funding. The, the opportunities are limitless.
The thing that's always been the problem is We've had people like Senator Elizabeth Warren and her war on crypto and Gary Gensler and his uneven handed agenda and approach to the sector that has stifled that because people have been made to believe that this is just a scammy space. And yes, there's going to be speculation.
There's going to be gambling. There's going to be winners. There's going to be losers. And everyone's responsible, in my opinion, for making reasonable choices with how they spend their money. The SEC's job is to not protect people from making choices. It's to make sure that the marketplace is safe. And if the commodity and futures side of this is going to be what regulates crypto.
Then what they're really looking at is outright fraud and investors should be free to pick and choose what they want to put their money into.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I think a free market is super important, but a lot of [00:09:00] people did, to your point, rush into, um, the Trump meme coin. I'm just, as you were talking, I pulled up this, uh, interesting data that Chain, uh, Chainalysis provided. Uh, here are the stats. They're pretty wild. 50 percent of Trump holders had never bought a Solana altcoin before.
47 percent of buyers created their wallet the same day they purchased the tokens. 83 percent of holders own less than a thousand dollars worth of sole assets. I mean, that really is a historic retail onboarding event. It's massive.
Carlo D'Angelo: I think it's for two things that we have to be very careful of when we look at those statistics. Number one, we don't know how much of that is bought wallets. wallets that were just spun up immediately and were just used for the sole purpose of getting in and out of this token. But let's assume that we've got a majority of retail coming in.
This is an exciting statistic to see, and it only [00:10:00] reinforces what I previously have written about. There isn't another human being on the planet. end of story who can leverage the attention economy like Trump can. So when Trump decided to put his name on a meme coin and we're calling it a meme coin, and I'm not so sure that that's what this is.
It might be more than that, but I think for legal purposes, they're playing it very safe and calling it a meme coin, meme coins. Live and die on the attention economy mark. It is the internet culture, and it is the ability to get massive attention behind a token that drives price. Nobody on the planet can do that better than Trump.
So this was like a no brainer when I saw that pop up on the timeline.
Marc Beckman: So Carlo, let's get into that concept of attention, the attention economy. What is it that you see? Working as it relates to driving a meme coins value. What kind of attention would make the Trump meme coin [00:11:00] effectively successful?
Carlo D'Angelo: It is the, it is the persona. Or the meme behind the token, because what drives these things? And you can look at so many examples. You can look at the Tik TOK phenomenon with the chill guy drawing. You can look at Pepe. You can look at Doge. All of these things are culture tokens and people identify them and identify with them.
Number one, because they're an opportunity to make money. Let's, let's just be real. I mean, that is the number one motivation why people buy these things because they're speculating. But beyond that, they enjoy sharing and having a community unified against mimetic culture. So I think it's a combination. I think you have to have a meme, a character.
And that's why Mark, so many celebrities during that metaphase. Where the new trend was celebrities jumping into meme coins, many of which rugged and disappeared. But you've got some like [00:12:00] Izzy Iggy Azalea, who's still here grinding everyday building. These celebrities know that attention economy is what drives their industry and the growth of their personality.
So meme coins are just a great way to rally that. If you get someone like Taylor Swift who decides to launch a meme coin, and make that the currency of her ecosystem, and tell her massive following, hey, you're going to get first place. You know, you're going to get first preference for concert tickets and so forth, and you're going to be able to pay for it with this meme token as the currency of my ecosystem possibilities are endless.
Marc Beckman: Okay, but then therein lies the problem, right? From a legal perspective, what you just defined as far as first access to tickets shifts it from just a simple attention coin, a meme coin. A token into what could be perceived as a security because at that [00:13:00] point, Taylor Swift would be offering her community unique access to benefits.
Right? So I think the nuance here and you as attorney, like, like, step in and let me know if I'm getting this right. But I believe the nuance is a meme coin thing. is not a form of cryptocurrency. It's not a security. It's not built for investment purposes. It's simply an attention coin. It's a meme. It's a piece of artwork with no value against it.
And the second piece of it is that there won't be any value given to the holder, any special type of experience, first access to anything. The second they move out of that formula, it becomes a security. Is that correct?
Carlo D'Angelo: Well, that remains to be seen because again, I, I don't want to accept that as fact because it is all premised on reliance on the Howey test. And the Howey test is, as you know, a Supreme Court case that goes back to [00:14:00] the, the, the early iterations of the Securities Act, and it interpreted what defines a security.
Is it based on the efforts of others? Is it an investment of money? Is it coordinated in a way that would suggest that the price goes up or down based on the efforts of others? And, you know, for a long time, we've been boxed into accepting the Howie test as being the definitive answer as to whether a digital asset is a security or not.
I firmly believe we need to revisit that test. Yes, it suits Gary Gensler's agenda. To treat it like that because then he can bring The scope and the reach of the securities and exchange commission to police the entire sector But if they are commodities Commodities are not so much focused on those Aspects of the howey test they're more focused on fraud So i'm fully expecting and i've said this before that I think we're going to see a case come [00:15:00] out And get to the Supreme Court to once and for all put Howie to the test and maybe the Supreme Court overturns Howie as it applies to digital assets and maybe out of the court comes a much better framework for evaluating these things.
Now this is all presuming that we don't see a slew of SEC pending lawsuits get dismissed once we have this new administration really take power.
Marc Beckman: We don't even have an SEC chairperson right now, right? We're sitting in this like weird moment of, of limbo.
Carlo D'Angelo: We got Crypto Mom, who's in charge right now of the committee. We've got Uyeda. I always get that name wrong, so we may have to edit that out.
But, we've got a interim SEC chairperson who is very favorable to digital assets. We're in a little bit of a vacuum period right now, but I would not be surprised Mark, if we see the Coinbase case, the Kraken case, and several other SEC actions. Go by way of dismissal or what we call in the law [00:16:00] non suit because they just don't want to waste the resources having these fights.
Marc Beckman: Well I think that's really interesting and as you're aware as we're seeing play out literally in real time, Trump's Appointments are coming from areas that are, um, unpredictable areas that aren't necessarily from within the government. Right? I think it's fair in almost every single instance, maybe Marco Rubio and a couple of other exceptions, but most aren't being, um, appointed from, uh, most, most appointees don't have a big government history.
They're not just part of the bureaucratic system. I wonder if we're going to see someone from the tech industry or the tech sector, take the stage as our next sec chairperson. Who do you think it might be?
Carlo D'Angelo: Well, I think it's going to be Atkins. I think he's the front runner. I think he's coming up for his hearing next month as I understand it. I have to believe if I were advising him, if I were preparing him for that hearing, I would be preparing him to get some tough questions [00:17:00] from the bipartisan committee that's going to be evaluating him.
With respect to well, I don't know what just happened there, but we'll take it. Happy birthday, Carlo I don't know what that was But I think we will see questions about the trump meme coin They will ask whether this thing is a security or not based on the very things that you and I just talked about But I think at the end of the day, this is someone who's going to have I think, uh, resounding support and will be seated as the chair of the SEC, and I think under his direction, we will see the clarity we desperately want in this sector.
Marc Beckman: Carlo, I heard that Trump is filing, um, with the sec to take the meme coin into an ETF, can you explain what that means exactly?
Carlo D'Angelo: First of all, I'm not altogether certain whether it is Trump who's filing for it, but there is someone filing for it. I don't know the exact connection, I haven't looked that deeply at it, but I know there is an application pending [00:18:00] with the SEC from a trading house, I guess, that wants a listing of Trump and Doge and several other mean coins as
Marc Beckman: I believe, right? Yeah.
Carlo D'Angelo: And what that does is it creates an interesting paradigm because it opens up mean coins and cryptocurrencies in general. to the adoption by retail from the traditional investment sector, because now you are going to have, if these things get approved, you're going to have investment advisors who are going to be able to present to their customers.
This option, maybe you should have 1 percent of your portfolio in this Trump coin. You've got a great basket of securities. You've got a great basket of equities. You've got a great basket of bonds. Maybe we should add a little bit of crypto. And hey, here's this Trump ETF. I recommend you put that in your portfolio.
Once we get to the point where [00:19:00] investment advisors are allowed under the law to recommend this stuff to their customers, that's going to exponentially grow the pot here. Because right now, we are still a very insular and enclosed community and ecosystem. Things pump and dump relative to the attention that's going on within crypto.
And we don't have a lot of outside money. But this Trump token, I think has finally changed that paradigm.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think that's interesting. I think what Trump does also is breaks beyond just celebrities. So I'll tell you like some inside information. I have reason to understand that Kanye is in the marketplace looking to launch his own meme coin right now, right? So that's not so far fetched. It's kind of expected.
It's celebrity. But on the political side, I've learned that the president of Argentina Mr. Milei is actually out shopping to have his meme coin launched as well. So it's kind of interesting when you see leaders [00:20:00] of governments then thinking in terms of launching their own digital asset or their own meme coin.
What do you, what do you make of that?
Carlo D'Angelo: Look, I think
Marc Beckman: Definitely the Trump effect,
Carlo D'Angelo: yeah, the Trump effect, you cannot ignore. It's the, it's the latest shiny object. It's the thing that you can. You can grow your reach and you can crowdfund so much. Now, they're all going to have to play by the rules and this is a good point to drop the caveat. I've written about this and I want to stress it.
Just because you see Trump doing things with meme coins and talking about them from the Oval Office, talking about his own meme coin. I've seen people comment in the crypto, uh, space that now it is the Wild West and we can do whatever we want and crime is, uh, you know, the latest thing or there's no laws anymore.
And I'm going to remind people that That is not the case. If you're going to engage in rug [00:21:00] pulls, scam tokens, pump and dumps, you're going to be investigated because both the SEC and the CFTC are not going to tolerate that type of behavior. Trump is in a unique position because he's the President of the United States, he's in a position of power, he's got a tremendous amount of momentum behind his brand and what he's doing right now, but if you think you're going to be able to kind of ride that momentum and launch a scammy token and take advantage of everybody and not have any consequences, you have another thing coming, and I don't want to see people get wrecked like that, Mark.
Marc Beckman: So it's interesting to analyze how your concept of patience ties into your, the point you're making right now. So for example, if, if a new meme coin is launched and it doesn't continue to increase in value financially, if it doesn't hit that upward trajectory, it's a volatile market. Let's face it. Crypto has always been.
[00:22:00] volatile. So what happens when the lack of patience results in, um, outrage? I think we saw this with the hawk to a, uh, mean meme coin, right? Where, um, she went up, made a ton of money real quickly and it dropped and it really collapsed. It bottomed out quickly, but nobody gave it a chance to even succeed.
Nobody gave it a second to say, You know, let's and I understand there were snipers and I know that there were other issues involved, but just let's, let's start with this, this, this point, Carlo, like the, the, the fact that people are so impatient equates to the fact that people don't have the ability for long term.
They're not in it for this long term growth. And then they're making accusations like, Hey, this is fraudulent. It's not real. It's not, you know, there's no value to it, but they're not in it for the long term. Like the Trump, the Trump meme coin honestly should exist now for, you know, forever, arguably forever.
[00:23:00] Right. So what is it about the psychology there where if, if, um, like, like, will we ever get over that hurdle? Like what's the dynamic that I'm trying to explain?
Carlo D'Angelo: Not until we see a lot of retail come into this space and change the flow of liquidity. The problem we have right now, and we'll set aside The potential insider stuff that was accused or charged in, in the Haley Welch Hawk to a token, you know, this is someone who had achieved celebrity status and I use that in quotes, but she became an internet sensation.
She got with some people who told her it would be a good idea to launch a coin. She probably did not understand the full implications of how this stuff works and she got over her skis and Things got out of control very quickly and she went from being an influencer who was pumping a token to being now The most vilified person where people are still wondering when is she going to wake up?
When is she going to come back and speak to this stuff [00:24:00] and then it turned into a lawsuit a class action lawsuit and all kinds of consequences. And I think the takeaway from all of this is in the current crypto environment liquidity moves in tranches And if something is pumping the liquidity goes the attention economy takes over But the moment attention shifts or you get what we call in the space FUD Where you get these blockchain sleuths who look at the transactions and see some suspicious movements when they start to FUD the token it creates controversy and then the attention migrates to the next shiny object as long as we're all trading within this arbitrage where it's just basically moving the same liquidity around and playing hot potato with it.
We're going to continue to have that volatility. It's when we have a lot of outside involvement from retail and crypto, where it's not just the same pool of liquidity running around from project to project that I think we might see that [00:25:00] soften right now. The current meta is things are being launched.
People are trying to figure out, is this real? Is this authentic? Is this a hack? They shoot up people sell because they freak out and think it's a hack. Then the person comes out and says, no, it's my token. I created it. I stand behind it. And then it shoots up again. And we're just seeing massive volatility right now.
But Mark, I think that's what you need for the nascent technology to develop. You've got to go through this phase. I don't think you can avoid it.
Marc Beckman: So are you talking about institutional investment? Are you talking about, um, third party, um, exchanges, uh, you know, crypto exchanges, like where, where are you seeing that additional money, um, entering the, the crypto community to stabilize some of these assets?
Carlo D'Angelo: think all of the above because If you liken what's happening in this sector to what happened at the very, very beginning of the dot com, the dot com boom and the [00:26:00] internet revolution, you had to see exponential Growth and adoption of the technology. You know, they talk about Moore's law. You're a tech person.
You get all this, but there are certain formulas to this, and it is speculated that we are about to probably see tenfold increase in the amount of wallets and the amount of people moving on chain. Because let's be very real. Is our society becoming more or less digital? Obviously more. And if that's the case, then it just stands to reason that our money is going to become more digital as well.
So I think it's all of the above. I think you'll see institutional adoption, retail adoption, and consumer adoption, but it's all got to be tied to the exponential growth of blockchain usage. We're just so very early still but it's coming.
Marc Beckman: So the issue of utility matters too, like you just like went back to e [00:27:00] com and web 2 and we saw tremendous growth in e com and web 2 when the convenience of apps on a mobile phone became prevalent. became ubiquitous. We don't really have that yet. I've seen some advances on my side as you have with regards to, um, functionality, um, for, you know, accessing digital wallets, trading on different types of, um, mechanisms, not necessarily centralized, exchanged, et cetera.
Like we, we've seen some growth like that, but it's still not easy for the average person to just Get into crypto, honestly speaking, like even my brother and sister, my siblings, they, they wouldn't know where to start. So what's your opinion on that? How far off do you think we are as it relates to mass user adoption coming in because of ease, simplicity, and, um, and utility, like a need for the product.
Carlo D'Angelo: We're close. I think the problem is that we have a constant struggle between the [00:28:00] purist who want to see this be a purely decentralized form of transaction. They want unhosted wallets. They want to have all the things that are kind of at the root of the crypto ethos. And then on the other side of that, you have the clamoring for centralized multi chain adoption.
It's happening because if you look at things like, for example, moonshot. Moonshot was a pivotal thing in the growth curve of meme coins because what it did is it enabled anyone with an app on a phone to download the app, put in their email address, link up a credit card and instantly play in the meme coin space.
You didn't have to get a phantom wallet. You didn't have to write down a seed phrase. All the things that you and I went through over the last several years and trying to figure out this clunky tech. I mean, think about it. How far have we come from Meta mask? Meta mask is like so frustrating and [00:29:00] rudimentary compared to where we're at right now.
And that's what we need. We need people to be using crypto and I know this is going to catch a lot of heat. This is going to be a controversial take, but we need people to be using crypto but not know they're using crypto. When it is as simple as using an iPhone app, we have made it. I think we're there.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I, I hope so. I think we're getting there too. So going back to the, uh, Trump executive order for a second, because I want to stay there. Like we, we went sideways as we normally do, but I want to stay there for a second He expressly addresses the issue of CBDCs. And I find something fascinating about it. Here you are, running a government, leading the executive branch, and you're, you're, you're pushing back. My interpretation of the EO is that he's pushing against CBDCs, but he's also trying to stand up.
[00:30:00] a, um, digital asset, cryptocurrency vertical to benefit America. So I'm curious in, in, you know, from your perspective and with your knowledge, what's he trying to accomplish there? Actually, let's back up. What is he stating in that area? And what's he trying to accomplish over the long term?
Carlo D'Angelo: What he's saying is, and again, he doesn't make law with executive orders and he cannot change existing law with an executive order, but he is setting the tone in that executive order and saying, if you try to bring a bill across my desk, like Elizabeth Warren wants to create a centralized digital token.
In other words, turning our cash into digital money. Which people on the opposite side of that debate say absolutely not. I do not want the government being able to turn my money on and off, to monitor my money and surveil my activity, what I donate to, what I pay for, and to turn it off if they don't like my [00:31:00] speech.
The purists in this space say absolutely not. That is a deal breaker. And the people that have been talking in Trump's ear about this stuff I think have made it clear to him that you have got to draw the line in the sand that that bill is not going to get signed. Can we have a potential digital asset reserve?
Can we do some creative things with digital assets and our government? Can we stop the DOJ from selling all the Silk Road bitcoin that was seized and hold it as a reserve. Yes, those are all really good strategies and I think they may be interesting ways to help in paying down our deficit. And just like we relied on gold as a reserve, there's no reason in the world we cannot rely on digital assets.
Marc Beckman: Do you think that might happen
Carlo D'Angelo: Yes, I do. He's made it very clear that we're going to lead the world when it comes to this sector. And from our perspective, you know, the last time you and I saw each other in [00:32:00] person at the New York State Bar Association conference, where we talked about the future of this stuff from a global perspective, we were down in the dumps.
Because we had, we just had so much uncertainty and so much disappointment from what Biden was putting out and what Warren was doing with her agenda and this war on crypto that we were so beaten down, but we never gave up. We stayed in the trenches and we kept fighting with the hope. Mark, I know you agree with me on this.
We could not have scripted a better story here when it comes to this sector, the people he's putting in place to make these decisions. This is astounding. I cannot believe we're here.
Marc Beckman: Carlo? That's for sure. It's almost I, I had this conversation with a colleague in crypto just yesterday. It's almost as if. These four years in between his, um, his two times as president gave us the ability to, like, really understand and look at what was happening in the, in the crypto marketplace and then to make some [00:33:00] decisions and be strategic.
I remember it was just a few years ago when Congressman, uh, Donald's joined me on Javits Center and I asked him in front of a room of, you know, 1, people. Do you think the United States government is capable of properly regulating the crypto sector? And his answer was flat out no. And that he said he wanted the people in the room, the crypto experts, to participate.
And it feels like that time period really gave Um, President Trump, hopefully it will will amount to this, but it gave President Trump the ability to like understand the sector a little bit more. Remember early on when Trump was president and then after his presidency, he said he would never, ever, um, use crypto.
He was protecting the banking sector right now. Even the banking sector is embracing it.
Carlo D'Angelo: Yep, because I think he had, he had people in his ear who were advising him, people that have been very dismissive of this technology, people from the trad fi and banking sector who [00:34:00] saw this as a threat to the apple cart that they've got and Something has turned now, and it's definitely exciting to see that we are not continuing to plow down and doing things the traditional, old fashioned way, and now the institutions want in.
I know that makes people nervous, because when the bankers jump into it, obviously it becomes less decentralized, and there's more, uh, uncertainty about how they're going to adopt this tech and potentially fluctuate the numbers, and We don't know where this is going to go because this is uncharted ground, but there's no denying that this is opening the door to unprecedented innovation, something we could never have imagined before this term.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I agree. But Carlo, it's interesting when you look at the banking sector, something I address in my book in my new book is the fact that we're living in a post trust era as it relates to the banking sector. And that's why I believe that crypto [00:35:00] will be embraced. Um, so what we're talking about, what we're describing right now is the leaders of these financial institutions, these retail banking entities, uh, Going in and essentially taking a position with cryptocurrency, endorsing crypto.
So if we see more blending of these worlds, what could be the negative implications to the crypto community? What happens to that? Um, doubting individual who doesn't like what the banking sector has done. And this is one of the first conversations actually you and I had was after, uh, choke point 2. 0.
Remember, I think I got on your show and we broke this whole thing down. Um, but really, what are we looking at if the banking sector is embracing crypto? Is there a downside to it?
Carlo D'Angelo: there can be. Um, obviously we, we, we experienced what was happening and now it's come full. Uh, you know, they say sunlight is the best disinfectant. Coinbase put pressure on the FDIC through the courts to release those redacted [00:36:00] memos where they were, uh, Obviously and clearly discouraging banks from doing business with the crypto sector.
So we had a very antagonistic relationship with the banking sector because the FDIC was discouraging banks from doing business. So the sector was being debanked. How can you build In this sector in the United States, if you can't get access to banking rails now, this is exciting because now we have a willingness by the banking sector to embrace this technology.
Now, what's going to happen is they're going to want to inevitably launch their own internal chains, and they're going to want to replicate what they've been doing with currency and with leveraging customer deposits, and they're probably just going to try to do that same thing with a digital asset.
Will it speed up getting a wire transfer? Absolutely. Can we get away from SWIFTs and all the ridiculous hoops we have to jump through to send money from Carlo to Mark? Yes, so they're going to be able to [00:37:00] tokenize and use their internal blockchains. They're also now going to, now that we saw yesterday, another major development That the SAB order from the SEC, the rule that really stifled how banks could hold and, and, and deal with cryptocurrency assets on their own balance sheets is changing.
So now banks are going to play in this space. They're going to accumulate this stuff. And now the race begins. Are you going to let the banks take your Bitcoin? That's the real question.
Marc Beckman: So, so when you talk about accumulation and Bitcoin, it also applies to the government. And I think that, again, cryptocurrency for many, including myself, is all about protecting the individual, individual freedom, hands off of my, My money, right? So my question to you is yesterday we heard Trump state publicly that he's going to take a position, a governmental position of Bitcoin.
Um, I'm sure you heard it. What does it mean? It's
Carlo D'Angelo: Oh, [00:38:00] this is an arms race. I mean, I, I liken it to the Soviet era Cold War arms race, where now, we're not talking about accumulating nukes, we're talking about accumulating Bitcoin. And you had better believe that every country in the world is closely looking at this and saying, Okay, We're in an arms race to see which nation states are going to have the most Bitcoin.
What is that going to do to the price of Bitcoin? Probably send it up exponentially. What is it going to do to the retail consumer? Well, you better start thinking about these things, and you better study up on things like self custody. It is not your token unless you have the keys to it is a mantra that we have preached in this space.
Not your keys, not your crypto. People trust centralized entities like Coinbase and Kraken, and they're fine. You know, if the government trusts Coinbase with [00:39:00] their assets, It seems that would be a safe, secure place to put your assets. And for people who don't want the burden of being responsible for keeping their private keys and self custodying their crypto, it's an excellent opportunity to segregate your money and protect it in the form of digital assets.
But for the people who are really concerned about what might happen to the supply crunch that's coming, Then you probably want to study self custody and you want to take control of your keys so that no matter what happens in the world, no matter how chaotic and frenzied this gets, you've got your bag of Bitcoin secured.
Marc Beckman: funny because, um, it seems like ages ago when we started using the term of art. Not your keys, not your crypto. And I guess you're right. Like a lot of people are going to come back into the community now and they've never even heard that. So it's, I'm laughing because it's like amazing that they're going to be newbies coming into the space that have never even heard that or understand the concept of self custody.
Carlo D'Angelo: And it's an important concept. I [00:40:00] mean, it's the fundamental ethos of this space. It's why, like, you have to go back and study history to understand where we're going right now. Bitcoin was created in response to what the bankers did to the abuse and to the fact that the banks were let off easy and rewarded for their bad behavior.
And that was what generated that white paper. And that needs to be front and center to anyone who truly wants to play in this space. You need to understand how we got here if you're going to jump into this. Because if you don't know how we got here, then you're not going to fully see the significance and the importance of why this stuff and things like self custody matter.
Marc Beckman: So it's kind of interesting because the issue of governments that cause inflation is also applicable but it seems like some of the governments which have had a history of corruption and massive amounts of inflation are taking a big position on Bitcoin right now. [00:41:00] Internationally speaking, Carlo, which governments are ahead of America right now?
Who has the biggest position of Bitcoin as you understand it?
Carlo D'Angelo: Man, it's hard to say. I don't know how much China holds. I don't know how much Russia holds. I have to believe that both of those countries understand the importance from a strategic standpoint of having this in some form on their balance sheet as nation states. We know what's happening obviously in South America with El Salvador and it's incredible that we're seeing countries go on the Bitcoin standard.
I don't think Trump can pull that off here. I have no idea why that thumbs up emoji just popped up, but I'll take it. Um, I, I think Trump understands and I think the people advising Trump understand you cannot trade the dollar as the world's most powerful currency for Bitcoin, because I think that would be ultimately.
and potentially [00:42:00] disastrous for the dollars footing in the world as the world's number one currency because the reason we're able to exert such influence and power around the world is because the dollar still dominates and for us to just go full on El Salvador. might be a bridge too far because El Salvador can do that because their currency is not a global standard.
It would be hugely disruptive to the entire global economy if we just turned on Bitcoin and turned off the dollar.
So I don't think to see that.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, but is that really for us to determine? It's what we hope. We want the dollar to remain as the global, uh, reserve currency, but the truth is the dollar wasn't always that. I think before the dollar, it was the British pound sterling, right? And, and, you know, here we are. So is it inevitable for, uh, Bitcoin or a form of cryptocurrency to become, uh, you know, recognized as the global reserve currency?
Carlo D'Angelo: It may be in this [00:43:00] respect, the dollar's under incredible pressure because the dollar's full faith and credit rests on the strength of the United States, both militarily, And economically around the world, and we are running massive deficits in this country, and all indications are we're probably going to continue to do that.
Because as ambitious as Doge and what Elon is trying to do sounds, there are still massive deficits that it takes to run this country. And our GDP and our spending is not correlated. We spend far more than we bring in. So. Does it make sense to have a position in Bitcoin as a hedge against the potential ultimate demise of the dollar?
Probably.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I see that. I see that. So give me another highlight. I've been throwing a lot of the executive order highlights that caught my attention at you. Um, what's catching your attention in this executive order?
Carlo D'Angelo: Well, [00:44:00] I'm very excited that we're going to have. An actual cabinet position and a quote unquote crypto czar and that we have the in the executive order the formation of a digital asset committee that's going to be looking at all of this stuff because We look at what came out of the biden administration And what they were outwardly presenting And, you know, Biden took a pause and wanted to study this stuff and issued a massive report and he got input from DOJ and SEC and all these agencies.
And at the end of it, we all just saw that we're going nowhere. We're spinning our wheels. Now, in, what are we, day five of this administration as we're recording this episode today? We're just seeing exponential signals that he is full on supporting this technology. I mean, in a matter of a week, he's done executive orders.
He's launched a meme coin. He's made it very clear at [00:45:00] Davos that we are going to lead the world in digital assets and cryptocurrencies. And he pardoned Ross Ulbrich. The infamous person behind the Silk Road case who got two life sentences for basically setting up technology to conduct illicit activity.
And there's a whole story there and I've done an extensive, uh, you know, my own extensive podcast about that story and it's interesting. But Trump followed through and pardoned this man for the absolutely stunning sentence he received. in relation to what he created.
So
What he built, but what was it that he was sentenced for?
the case was fascinating because it has so many twists and turns. He wanted to create a purely decentralized way of exchanging goods and services. He. [00:46:00] was interested in facilitating a way for people to transact in controlled substances, which from his libertarian perspective, he believed the government should have no right to intervene in.
So he basically created the eBay for drug trafficking. Well, as with most ideas, they tend to catch a life of their own and spin completely out of control. And because he launched it on the dark web, it naturally drew a lot. of nefarious behavior. There were allegations of guns being traded on the platform, hardcore serious drugs, and it absolutely just Exploded.
What happened is, Mark, it happened at the exact time that Bitcoin was introduced and starting to get attention, and you had people like Chuck Schumer, and you had people in the administration at the time who saw this technology As an absolute threat to the stability of the dollar and a currency. [00:47:00] So they made it their initiative to take down this network.
And indirectly, they wanted to, I believe, take down Bitcoin. So when the investigation opened up, you had so many law enforcement agencies vying to make a case. You had people out of control in what they were doing to the point where at trial, it was revealed you had corrupt agents. who were stealing Bitcoin, who are on the take, who are actually allegedly bribing Ross in exchange for Bitcoin.
And when Ross tried to present all this at trial, to a certain extent, his hands were tied. There were also very troubling things that were brought up at his sentencing about paid hits, people that were apparently in danger of being taken out because of this case, which wasn't a factor in the trial, wasn't presented to the jury, but was something the sentencing judge took into consideration.
And a lot of people believe that's one of the biggest reasons that he got hammered. He was political [00:48:00] fodder and he was politically vilified because the climate at that time was very anti Bitcoin and the sentence he got was not proportionate to the conduct that he was on trial for, and that's what's always bothered people in the cryptocurrency community.
Yes, there's no denying he created something that was used for illicit purposes, and he did have to take accountability for that. But two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for what he went to trial for was absolutely unconscionable in many people's minds.
Marc Beckman: So you support the pardon.
Carlo D'Angelo: Yeah, I think it's the appropriate thing because he served 11 years.
A lot of the crimes he went to trial for had mandatory minimums that started at 10. Some of them were 20 at the end of the day. He was sentenced very harshly for exercising his right to go to trial and proportionate to his conduct. I think it was exceedingly harsh. Two consecutive life sentences [00:49:00] plus 40 years is what he came out of this with.
He would have died in prison if Trump didn't intervene and pardon him.
Marc Beckman: Carlo, he was a young man too, right? When he was arrested, he was in his early 20s.
Carlo D'Angelo: Yes. He was. He was, uh, fascinating. He came out of Texas. Went to Penn State, was always interested in technology. From what I understand the story, it all started very simple. He was, I think, growing psychedelic mushrooms in a little basement apartment.
And then got the idea that, hey, it's dangerous to buy drugs on the street. You don't know who you're running into. You don't know what you're getting. Let me use this fancy thing called Bitcoin and this, uh, dark web. And it's ironic because the Tor network that he used was created by our own government.
It's kind of a layer of the internet that's sort of under the public facing internet But it is the dark web as it's known So he got a very very creative idea and he started promoting it in chat groups like look at this thing My gosh, you can buy marijuana on this thing and not [00:50:00] have to worry about a face to face transaction And you can send bitcoin and get your marijuana shipped to you.
Isn't this great? But it started to then explode and it turned into heroin cocaine um weapons. And, and that's where I think he got way over his skis.
Marc Beckman: So going back to, um, the, the crypto czar, I believe that's David Sachs, right? He's overseeing both AI and cryptocurrency. Um, I'm curious, like, why would one individual have to oversee both AI and cryptocurrency? What's going to be AI's impact on cryptocurrency and vice versa as we go, as we go forward now?
Carlo D'Angelo: It's going to be huge because frankly, I believe that AI is not fully priced into crypto yet. The two technologies are going to go hand in hand because what we're seeing right now with AI is the very, very, very rough beginnings of it eating the [00:51:00] entire economy. People are not yet understanding the full impact it's going to have on the job market.
On venture capital on the startup space, you know, we have AI agents now that are being launched that have an IQ that is two or three times that of any human on the planet in every single subject. When you start to leverage that stuff to create companies at a thin air, you're going to have an environment where someone can spin up a multimillion, if not billion dollar idea.
With an AI agent and no operational cost or employees. That's stunning. Now, when these AI agents fully become integrated into commerce. They need a mode of transaction. You're going to see AI agents taking over several things that we do now. Again, more balloons. I have no idea why these are here. But you're going to see AI [00:52:00] agents start to transact with each other.
And what are they going to use to transact with each other? They're going to use crypto. Crypto is going to be the payment rails for AI. And the smart people in this sector know this. Brian Armstrong at Coinbase, he knows this. You're going to see bots self executing transactions. Hey, I want to start up XYZ business.
I need to bring in a vendor. AI bot is going to contact AI vendor bot, and they're going to do the transaction. You're going to have trading bots doing your entire investment portfolio for you, going in and out of trades in seconds. based on your risk tolerance and your preference. So there's no way you're going to have exponential growth in crypto, in my opinion, without exponential growth in AI.
Marc Beckman: So going back to the former scenario where, um, an individual, like a human being, comes up with a creative concept and then activates their own A. I. Agent with, um, [00:53:00] the ability to spend money, uh, in order to execute or to realize that vision, right? So that that that metahuman, let's say that that A. I. Agent, the metahuman then is interacting with third party entities.
Some might be living in human, others might be metahuman. Maybe some will be robots too, but we're going to see cryptocurrency facilitate all of these transactions and growth. And that might lead to different types and forms of digital businesses to businesses that we have not yet seen. So when you talk about AI.
Taking away jobs, or at least you imply that I think we're going to see a lot of job growth to in areas that we can't even we haven't even dreamed of yet because of these agents. Do you agree?
Carlo D'Angelo: I don't know what the future looks like. It's too murky and unclear to see at this time. What I do know is, is that this technology is going to grow at such a rapid pace. Exponential speed in the [00:54:00] coming years that it's going to be disruptive. It's going to disrupt every sector of the economy. Is it going to make our life easier and like the Industrial Revolution repurpose what humans do with their time?
Yes, I think humans are going to have now freedom to become more social. And I think people will gravitate to human created content and authentic. human content and it will have a premium because people will be inundated with robotics and AI. When you look at what Elon is doing and some people question, you know, Tesla and what he did with X.
There's a long game here that he's playing. Tesla is going to be, through his robotics arm, probably the biggest robotics company in the world. X, through Grok, is probably going to be the biggest AI because what he's done with X is he's scraping all of our [00:55:00] interactions on X and training his own standalone AI.
When he merges his AI with his robotics, we are going to see what the Mundane tasks and, and, and repetitive tasks be replaced by AI driven robots. Now, what does that do for the gig economy? You know, this country relies a lot on the gig economy to
Marc Beckman: For sure.
Carlo D'Angelo: The service industry, Uber. When you've got robotic taxis that are completely self autonomous and run by AI, because Tesla's been driving for a decade now, scanning every road and every track,
Marc Beckman: already. They're out in Arizona. They're here already.
Carlo D'Angelo: What's that going to do to the gig economy? What is that going to do to your primary way of sustaining your life? I don't know where it's going to go, Mark, but I do know this. If you're not opening your eyes to it and thinking about how you can bring value in that new era, then you're going to get left behind.
And I don't want to see anyone get left behind. So I would encourage everyone out there to be thinking [00:56:00] about, how can I bring value When this switch flips, and I think we're very close, closer than we may suspect to that full on AGI.
Marc Beckman: Do you really? Okay, A. G. I thought you were gonna say we were close just to that moment in time where we have, um, widespread use of both artificial intelligence and crypto. Let's at least start there before we get to A. G. I just for a second. So, you know, obviously I'm somebody that is tremendously bullish about all of these emerging technologies.
It's just built into me. It's who I am, but somebody slapped me back the other day and they were like, Hey, Mark, why don't you open your eyes and really look at how artificial intelligence is being adopted at the enterprise level? It's not really ubiquitous yet. If you think about it, some of the bigger corporations are doing great.
Some hardware. Offers, um, opportunity for the average individual, uh, to use AI in an underpinning type of way, you know, if you want to find efficiency at home with Nest or something like this, of course, it's great. [00:57:00] But we're not really, this person said to me, we're really not at the point now where, um, the use of AI is ubiquitous.
Why do you keep saying it, Mark? You're at this point where, you know, you're, you're so bullish about it. You're always talking about it. You're always promoting it, but it's not really. All over the place. Open AI launched what? 18, 24 months ago, maybe longer, but not too long ago. And we thought that would accelerate just all of our friends and families use of it.
But yet somebody just wrote me the other day and they were like, Hey, Mark, I heard you talking on a show about how search is better with perplexity and GPT. Can you explain it to me? How do I get access to them? And I'm just like, Oh my God, how do you not know? Like to me, Google is outdated. As far as a search model.
I hardly rarely, um, in fact use Google, but, uh, people don't understand this yet. So are we really that close to using AI and crypto?
Carlo D'Angelo: Yes. And I think what you're saying makes me even more bullish, because I go through the same thing. You know, I'm a [00:58:00] lawyer. Lawyers are very slow to adapt to technology. I use it every day. And I, I have replaced search engines with it because I, like you, am a technologist. I'm fascinated by the stuff and I'm playing in it and I'm learning.
But the vast majority of people are still not seeing it. It's the frog in the pot. And it's going to be a little bit and then all at once. And I firmly believe that we're still in the nascent stage. You know, we're playing with it in the crypto space. You've seen like AI16Z and AIXBT and all these chatbots that are communicating.
And it's interesting and they're giving trading advice, but it's still clunky. It's not the true potential that this technology is going to have. We're just at the infancy. But. If you look at things like Moore's Law and how fast this is going to multiply and adopt, we've never seen [00:59:00] anything like this in the history of
Marc Beckman: I hope so.
Carlo D'Angelo: I mean, we are, we are like, we're, we're like rubbing sticks together to make fire. At this stage, but we have never seen a technology like this in the history of humanity that's going to have this much disruption, so it's very hard to see the future, really hard to see the future. What I would suggest is while you can trade on it and learn it so you don't get left behind.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I had an incredible meeting. I haven't shared this with anybody, but I feel like you would really appreciate this. I had an in person meeting, um, one on one with the CEO of SoftBank just this week, um, Masa san, and yeah, it was really incredible. And what he did was he painted this picture for me as to how, um, not just Japan's infrastructure, but all of our societies is.
Thank you. Are going to [01:00:00] accelerate with growth and efficiency as a result of artificial intelligence. Specifically, we weren't talking about cryptocurrency to be clear, but what his mind went to was efficiencies that can really help all of mankind thinking in terms of dissemination of utilities, thinking in terms of advances with regards to https: otter.
ai curing disease, diagnosing disease, these types of things that we kind of take for granted, like we've been sitting in these systems for a long time, and we're okay with it. Like, it's almost like habitual. Um, but he feels very strongly that all of these efficiencies are going to be unlocked to our benefit.
Um, so it was like an incredible conversation. It was a very special meeting for me, as you can imagine. Um, I was honored to meet Masa San on Alone 101. It was incredible. Let's go to AGI for a minute, but let's, let's tee it off, Carlo, in the way that I end the show, because you've given me a [01:01:00] ton of your time.
And I think you're familiar with the way that I end my show. I hope you are. Right. With my guests. So I'm going to lead you here, but we're going to focus on AGI specifically. So in some future day, AGI will have an impact on cryptocurrency because
Carlo D'Angelo: In some future day, AGI will impact cryptocurrency because it will give anyone in the world the opportunity to have financial freedom and career freedom to be able to launch and create things exponentially fast at very low cost without the need to have to seek out tons of venture capital or debt to accomplish these goals.
It's going to. explode the potential for the startup realm. You just touched on it with respect to what it could do to biomedicine and what it can do to healthcare. And at the same time, [01:02:00] in some future day, it's going to free up people in society to have more personal community connections with each other and have to worry less about how to scrape and struggle to make a living.
Marc Beckman: wouldn't that be amazing?
Carlo D'Angelo: I hope so. And I'm not saying this by universal basic income. I'm saying this by creating entirely new rails of the economy that we never could have imagined.
Marc Beckman: I love it. Carlo, thank you so much for joining me today on my show. It really means a lot.
Carlo D'Angelo: Oh, this was awesome. I was so honored and, and so excited when you, when you contacted me about doing this. You know, I really enjoy talking with you, Mark, and we need to do this IRL very soon because it's been way too long, my friend.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I look forward to it. All right,
Carlo D'Angelo: Mark.
[01:03:00]