ASH BENNINGTON: Welcome, everybody, to the best time at Real Vision Crypto Insider Talks in the history of the network. Raoul, Kevin Kelly rip up the script, big day today, guys, what’s on your mind?

RAOUL PAL: That video is just fucking great. That was exactly, I saw that. It’s just been tweeted out from the Real Vision collective account, I saw that, and like, this has to be the opening of the show, because this is exactly it. We’ve got the degens, the ETH ETF, the Bitcoin ETF dancing and the crypto motherfuckers playing the drums.

KEVIN KELLY: And it got better as it went on, you’re right.

RAOUL PAL: I told you.

KEVIN KELLY: When it started, it couldn’t get better and it somehow got better, unbelievable.

ASH BENNINGTON: Alright, guys, historic moment. How do we contextualize this day?

RAOUL PAL: Well, it’s more than the day, it’s the week because as I’ve said before we went live is beginning of the week, we’re all going to prison. We were the most hated people in the world. The government wanted to shut us down, [?] us out of the country and shut down all innovation. By the end of the week, they’re passing crypto laws, they’re approving an ETF and banning a CBDC all in one week. It’s like, holy shit. the political panic that went on in the US this week was quite something to behold.

ASH BENNINGTON: Total roller coaster. Kevin?

KEVIN KELLY: Yeah, that’s probably the biggest political 180 in any given weekly period that we might ever see. The applications of today, again, to clarify, you get the 19 before, which are really the extreme side of the equation for these ETFs launching, still up in the air on when the S1s will get approved. But to be honest, at this point, it’s a matter of obviously, when not if.

ASH BENNINGTON: Break it down, by the way, the difference between the S1s and the 19B4s.

KEVIN KELLY: Yeah, so what just approved is basically the exchanges getting approval to list these specific ETF products. The second piece of this is the– spot ETF products, that’s correct. The second part of this is the actual issuers themselves. BlackRocks, Bitwise, BitMEX of the world, the issuer themselves actually getting their S1s of their individual products approved by the SEC, which what we wind up having for the Bitcoin ones was that accelerated timeline, and those all got approved, basically, same day, and then all went live trading the same day, which probably would expect something similar here, even though you could argue it’s not maybe the most equitable way to do it.

Especially because you’ve got people at BlackRock that are in the mix that are probably going to benefit substantially from this or more so than some of the smaller issuers, but neither here nor there, the next step is these S1 approvals. And the timeline on that is the jury’s still out on the timeline for it. I think it’ll probably be a little bit faster than most anticipate, just given how quickly we saw on the Bitcoin side. But yeah, it’s now it’s officially a matter of when not if.

RAOUL PAL: And look, the big thing is here, and somebody wrote a tweet thread about it, I can’t remember who it was, is what is going to be BlackRock’s narrative around this. But what’s been very interesting is things signaling about this is we’re going to build the financial system, Ethereum is the most important thing for us. That he’s made very clear. So what is going to be the narrative that they construct around this? And that will be the thing that drives the amount of flow? Because if it’s like, oh, it’s another cryptocurrency and it’s like Bitcoin, dang, going to work as well.

But if it’s like, well, Bitcoin’s this, and ETH is the technology for the future financial system, this is going to be gigantic, and we’re going to build on it, okay, that’s going to attract huge flow. So that’s the next thing is, what is the marketing and it’s got to be driven by BlackRock more than anybody else, I think.

ASH BENNINGTON: Raoul, by the way, talking about a shift in market, shift in the way the world works, Rick Reader, one of the founders of BlackRock on Real Vision with you about two weeks ago.

RAOUL PAL: Yeah, we weren’t allowed to talk about crypto. But I’ve spoken, I had dinner with Rick. He’s held it on and off in his portfolio so he’s not averse to it at all. He’s a gunslinger. It was really interesting to see what a gunslinger he is and he trades his portfolio like nobody’s business. I was thinking he’d be like consider it, set it and forget it. Of course, they do a lot of that, but Rick himself, he’s the motherfucker trading the nonfarm payrolls in size.

KEVIN KELLY: The man in the arena.

RAOUL PAL: He is the man in the arena. He’s a good guy. Really, really nice guy. Very thoughtful, knows what he’s doing.

ASH BENNINGTON: Alright guys, let’s talk a little bit. We talked about Fit 21. Let’s talk a little bit about the stablecoin.

RAOUL PAL: I just need to say thank you to Tad, because Tad introduced me. Tad is a Pro everything member. And I had dinner at Tad’s house with Rick. So Tad, thank you, my friend, as ever.

ASH BENNINGTON: A Real Vision member facilitated.

RAOUL PAL: Yeah.

ASH BENNINGTON: What else would you expect at Real Vision?

RAOUL PAL: Exactly.

ASH BENNINGTON: Fit 21 stablecoin, Bill, I believe sponsored by Tom Emmer has been on Real Vision with me, Congressman Tom Emmer. Guys, any thoughts on just a broader framework that we see right now? Because it seems there’s a lot of momentum happening in the regulatory legislative space?

RAOUL PAL: Go ahead, Kev, you go for that one.

KEVIN KELLY: Yeah, I think there’s been a ton that’s happened in just the last two weeks. With Fit 21, I think this one’s a bit more contested or highly debated, because the actual substance of it, if approved, if it actually gets approved through the Senate, which is the next step. And there’s a lot of people who actually don’t think it’ll make it that far. So people, the takeaway, the positive takeaway is that it’s being viewed as a signal for widening support, especially among Democrats towards crypto and actually getting real crypto legislation passed.

The contentious point is that when you actually dig into some of the specifics, it technically widens the purview of what the CFTC has historically had purview or oversight over, especially given these are spot markets and on a time that’s more derivative focused. So the takeaways from it, I don’t think are as necessarily positive as some are making it out to be. But overall, it does signal that there is widening Democratic support, which is, again, can be seen as a net positive.

But aside from that, you’ve got the walkway repeal of Sab 121, which has now made its way to Biden’s desk if that actually doesn’t get vetoed and shot down, that’s probably a bigger one because or more widely accepted as positive for crypto because that imposes some pretty severe capital requirements on institutions like crypto custodians basically forced banks to not really move into this space because of some of those restrictions.

ASH BENNINGTON: This was a liability rather than an asset on the balance sheet.

KEVIN KELLY: Right, exactly. So when it comes to capital requirements and all that, and just how do you account for it, and the liability have to take on, that would obviously be beneficial. And then you had, this was not necessarily related to crypto, but you did have the FDIC chair also announcing he’d be stepping down. And she was pretty instrumental, a lot of people thought he was pretty instrumental in Operation Chokepoint which was this coordinated attack, so to speak, from legislators on dismantling the crypto industry, slowly but surely.

So again, there’s a lot of things that have happened in Washington over the last week or two, that broadly speaking, I think, certainly signal positive landscape for crypto. It has removed a lot of the regulatory overhead and a lot of the burden. You could argue this, to me, this may have even started with Trump’s comments just a couple of weeks ago coming out and publicly supporting crypto or at least trying to work with crypto firms to make sure that companies and tea

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