In this episode of Block & Order, hosts Kyle and Moish sit down with Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Institute, to talk about what’s really happening with crypto policy in Washington, D.C. Kristen shares behind-the-scenes insights on bipartisan efforts to shape upcoming legislation, the challenges of getting lawmakers up to speed on digital assets, and how SPI is championing Solana’s role in the broader ecosystem. They also dive into timely topics like stablecoin rules, industry momentum, and how the SEC’s approach to crypto is evolving.

Follow Kristin Smith on twitter https://x.com/KMSmithDC and be sure to check out the Solana Policy Institute https://www.solanapolicyinstitute.org/!

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Chapter Markers:

00:00:00 Welcome to Block & Order
00:03:58 Welcome to Our Guest (Kristin Smith)
00:04:24 What does the Solana Policy Institute do on a day to day basis?
00:05:31 What would the passing of the GENIUS Act mean for the Solana ecosystem?
00:10:19 Why should we accept imperfect crypto legislation—especially regarding centralized exchanges—if the current regulatory gray area seems to be working well for the industry as of early 2025?
00:16:38 Beyond stablecoins and memecoins, what categories of economic activity on Solana—or in crypto more broadly—raise distinct regulatory questions that may warrant tailored regulation?
00:19:29 How would you assess the current level of crypto literacy on Capitol Hill, and is regulatory understanding progressing quickly enough to keep pace with the industry?
00:22:31 What is Project Open and how can we help with that?
00:26:52 With all the attention on Bitcoin lately, how does SPI stay focused on highlighting the practical use cases of Solana and other alt-chains beyond just being a store of value?
00:29:33 How would you rate the SEC’s recent crypto engagement and guidance, and what else would you like to see from them over the next 18 months?
00:34:29 Do you think the dismissal of recent crypto cases—without appellate decisions—sets back legal clarity on issues like Howey’s application to crypto and what qualifies as a security?
00:36:43 If the GENESIS Act and market structure bill pass this session, what’s next for SPI?
00:39:06 How much of your focus is on the U.S. versus other jurisdictions, and how has that shifted since your time at Blockchain Association?
00:41:15 As the pendulum swings from SEC enforcement to CFTC-led regulation, how do we balance fostering innovation with ensuring investor protection and preventing fraud?
00:44:59 Thank You to Our Guest
00:47:34 Closing Remarks

Watch or listen to the podcast here:

   

Transcript:

**This transcript has been prepared automatically by AI and may contain inaccuracies**

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:10]:
Welcome to Block & Order, the show that dives into the legal side of all things digital assets and beyond. I’m your host, Kyle Lawrence, and with me, as always, the SOLMAXI himself, Mr. Moish Peltz.

Moish Peltz [00:00:22]:
Oh, I’m not the SOLMAXI. I’m going to do the little, like, uno reverso card. Right. Back to you, SOLMAXI, buddy.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:27]:
What is it? Every accusation is an admission or something like that.

Moish Peltz [00:00:31]:
That’s right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:32]:
Look at you, Moish. You’re dressed like a real lawyer. What gives? Are you okay?

Moish Peltz [00:00:38]:
It’s not every day, Kyle, but it’s some days, you know.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:41]:
It’s laundry day.

Moish Peltz [00:00:42]:
I did manage a location change in between our conversations, so, you know, from a real law office to a fake one, you know, here we go.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:52]:
I mean, to the power of editing. It looks to me like you’re just in the next room. I don’t know. You could be anywhere in the universe. Like, where in the world is Moish Peltz?

Moish Peltz [00:01:00]:
As they say, anything is possible.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:02]:
Yeah. Well, very special episode of Block & Order today, Moish, we have Kristin Smith, the president of the Solana Policy Institute, drop by for really spirited discussion about the great things that the SPI are doing down in D.C. how they are helping not just the Solana ecosystem, but the crypto ecosystem as a whole. I really enjoyed the conversation. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the folks over there at the SPI over the past couple of months, and I personally, not just because I’m wearing the shirt, I personally love what they’re doing, and I’m really excited to show the interview to the world.

Moish Peltz [00:01:35]:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been a huge fan of all the Kris. The work that Kristin has done through the Blockchain association where she’s been, I think, one of the earliest and loudest advocates for the industry for, you know, way before it was cool to have political advocacy and she’s done a great job through that. And now I think you’ll be happy to find her working on Solana’s behalf at SPI. So really fascinating to hear her perspective. And she’s obviously been around the block once or twice in this industry and just has a lot of really reassuring and really fascinating viewpoints to express.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:13]:
It’s true. And one of the things that we get into a little bit during our conversation was I love how she painted her role as. It’s really a bipartisan effort, and you don’t hear a lot of that on the news. And I know we live in a hyper Politicized world. Everybody knows that I need to get into all that. But the fact that you do have both sides of the aisle working together to get this legislation through to me, you know, sparks some hope for the, for the rest of the country, but, you know, it’s great. And she approaches things, you know, she’s able to explain what they’re doing in a very simple way that makes it easy to understand. And when you’re dealing with people in Congress who are just besieged from all sides with all kinds of different, really complicated issues that they probably don’t always fully understand, not just in crypto, but the general legislation, certain tax code, the way the economy works.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:03]:
That’s why they have a staff for. But for her to be able to convey that information in a way that’s really easily digestible just inspires a lot of hope.

Moish Peltz [00:03:11]:
Yeah, I mean, we’ve said it numerous times on the show, right? It should, it should be a bipartisan issue, crypto. And you hear that, you know, woven through what, what Kristin says and, you know, really getting down to the point of it being just education and. Yeah, we’re going to have policy debates and there’s, there’s really kind of complex issues that you can have different viewpoints on. But fundamentally, you know, we’re still at the, we need to educate stage of this process and we get into that quite a bit on the show.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:40]:
That’s true. Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. It took a couple hundred years. But alas, journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The single step today is welcoming Kristin Smith from the Solana Policy Institute. So without further ado, let’s kick it off to that interview. Well, we are thrilled to welcome Kristin Smith, the president of the Solana Policy Institute, to Block & Order. Kristin, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Kristin Smith [00:04:07]:
It’s great to be here, Kyle.

Kyle Lawrence [00:04:10]:
It’s great to see you. We’ve met the folks at the Solana Policy Institute and you guys are doing just such tremendous work down there in D.C. and as a Solana Maxi, the shirt, that sign is a permanent statement. I didn’t just put that up for this show. Okay, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what the SPI does on a day to day basis.

Kristin Smith [00:04:31]:
Yeah, yeah. So Solana Policy Institute is an advocacy organization based here in Washington D.C. and we work on public policy issues on behalf of the Solana ecosystem. So it’s a small team, but we have a really good set of consultants and experience among the team that we have. And so we work with Congress and regulators in the White House to try to make sure that any of the new policies that are being made right now, and there’s a lot happening here in D.C. you know, reflect input from the Solana community and that they take into account the features of the Solana ecosystem. And so it’s. It’s a lot of fun.

Kristin Smith [00:05:12]:
I had been doing this work on behalf of the broader crypto industry for the past seven years. So it’s really exciting to be able to focus on a specific ecosystem, particularly one that has so much activity and excitement around it. So it’s. It’s a really, really exciting time to be on the ground here in D.C. that’s.

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:30]:
That’s really wonderful. And one of the things we were talking about, you know, before we started recording, is the Genius act, which I fully expected to get passed by the Senate yesterday. And alas, it got halted in its tracks largely on procedural grounds. I don’t think it was, you know, the doom of the bill. But what do you think about that? Where do we go from here? And what does that bill. That’s. This is a loaded question, but what do you think that bill, if passed, would mean for the Solana ecosystem?

Kristin Smith [00:05:57]:
Yeah, well, I think, number one, I think the bill is really important. And I think if you look across the legislative priorities in Congress, getting a regulatory framework in place on stablecoins is the most important of those priorities, because it’s pretty clear that there’s no authority at the federal level for dealing with this kind of asset. Right. This is. This is not something that. That banks are used to dealing with. And this is a case where stablecoin issuers are centralized entities. And we want to make sure that this, this product is.

Kristin Smith [00:06:31]:
Is safe and that the assets are there and that there are some guardrails around that, because I do think it has incredibly, like, large potential to transform the way we do payments and so many other things. But we can’t do that unless we can trust it. And it’s not one of those things that we can just trust because there are centralized intermediaries and those can fail. So I think this is a really key piece to getting particularly the payments section of the payments activity of what we can do with crypto to take off. But if you step back for a second, passing a bill is a really, really hard thing, like creating a new regulatory framework from scratch. It’s very rare. Right. It only happens, you know, maybe once a decade across all sectors.

Kristin Smith [00:07:19]:
Right. This is not something that happens every day. And if you look at the legislative process in general in, in my time in D.C. and I’ve been in D.C. for over two decades now, it. You, you don’t. I. Well even 25 years.

Kristin Smith [00:07:34]:
But this is very bad that it’s been around that long. But, but good for crypto because I know what I’m doing. But it’s very rare for, for standalone legislation to move through the Senate floor. And I think when we were all kids, we learned about the bill going up to Capitol Hill and going to the House and then going to the Senate and you know, lots of definitely remember the song playing over like that, that that’s just not how it happens. Like typically how it happens is, you know, a bunch of things are negotiated behind the scenes and, and legislation gets added to some sort of must pass year end package like the National Defense Authorization act or a big appropriations spending bill like an omnibus bill. And the reason that that is, is, is it’s actually really hard procedurally to get legislation through the Senate floor, which is sort of the design. Right. It’s supposed to be hard to get a bill through the Senate.

Kristin Smith [00:08:32]:
And what we have is this very unique situation where, where the Senate is actually devoting very precious time to considering stablecoins, which is, which is fantastic. But the reason that they have to do it this way is that this sort of what is not supposed to be the normal way, but by, you know, sort of de facto has been the normal way of attaching it to a must year package. That avenue is actually not available to crypto legislation of this scale because to attach something to a year end package, you have to have a bipartisan agreement between the House and the Senate and the chair and ranking members of those committees. And Elizabeth Warren, who is the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, is never going to sign off on a crypto regulatory framework. And so in order to bypass that process, you have to do the normal process. And the normal process is really, really, really hard. But you know, I think that the Senate outlook is good and I think the game now is going to be, you know, the White House really wants to see this, get to the President’s desk. And the fastest way to do that is for the House to just pass the Senate language, as is so kind of a long explanation.

Kristin Smith [00:09:42]:
But like this is, it’s been really fascinating working with offices in the Senate and even with the lobbying community and that people are really having to dig deep into the process because this is not something that has happened every day. And There’s a lot of really interesting rules that govern the process. And so, so yeah, we’re doing it the hard way. But I think the good news is when you get something done through this level of process, this is going to be a framework that is lasting. It isn’t going to go away like this will, this will endure for decades. And so I think it’s worth the ups and downs. But, but I do think we’ll get there on, on stablecoins.

Moish Peltz [00:10:19]:
I think you make a pretty convincing case that, that stablecoins that we’re relying on centralized into intermediaries. If one of those fails, that’s catastrophic both for industry and for consumer protection. That shouldn’t happen. Let’s, let’s set those for market structure. I’m less convinced. I mean, I get like that same concern for centralized exchanges perhaps, but if we have to live with imperfect legislation, which I think given where we are in the existence of the industry, we might have to, because we just don’t know all the things we don’t know. Why accept an imperfect bill if it isn’t necessarily going to be imperfect over continuing this kind of gray area, which seems like it’s been pretty good for the industry as of, you know, January 2025.

Kristin Smith [00:11:07]:
Yeah, no, Moish, I think that’s a great question and it’s, it’s one that we’ve been thinking a lot about at Solana Policy Institute because I think, you know, if you look at the various drafts of legislation over the past several years, none of them have been really ideal. I think, you know, it’s a really hard thing to do. Right. These are complex markets, it’s a complex technology. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not a complete innovation yet. Right. There are new things coming along all the time. So I think, I think it’s really hard to get it done.

Kristin Smith [00:11:38]:
Right. I’m, I’m of the mindset that, that we should wait to get it right and that, you know, I think if you look over the past four and a half years, like when we go back into when Gary Gensler was leading the SEC, that was obviously a really bad time for innovation in the U.S. right. And you had a very hostile chair of the SEC. And I think a lot of people of the industry were sort of saying, hey, well, if we can get a regulatory framework through Congress, that’ll stop the pain at the SEC. But we’re in a different spot today, right? We have a very friendly SEC. Doesn’t mean we’re not going to have a Hostile SEC again in the future. But we have a very friendly SEC that wants to use the powers it has to put rules in place so that the industry knows what to do going forward.

Kristin Smith [00:12:24]:
So if you look at the different, different buckets, different questions, policy questions that Capitol Hill are trying to address, I think there’s sort of three major buckets. One of them is fundraising, how to do fundraising with token projects. I think that the SEC has a lot of authority to address that via guidance and rulemaking today. And so we may see the SEC move forward on that at some point in the future, which means we probably don’t have to have Congress do it. I mean, I guess having Congress codify whatever the SEC does could be nice, but, you know, I don’t think it’s essential. I think another piece of it is figuring out what is a security and what is a commodity, which, which is kind of related to the fundraising piece. But having some guidance around that could be helpful. I do think that the case law has answered a lot of those questions for us in the past couple of years.

Kristin Smith [00:13:12]:
And I think everybody, you know, agrees that the, the orange of the Orange Grove investment contract is not a security itself. And, and, you know, that doesn’t seem to be an issue for a lot of people. That was just Gensler’s hook. So. And then sort of the other piece of it is, you know, what do we do about regulation of the crypto commodity spot markets? Because there is no federal regulator for crypto commodity spot markets. Well, if you look at it, it turns out there’s no federal regulator for any commodity spot market. So this would be like a very special thing for, for commodities regulator to be, to be developed.

Kristin Smith [00:13:50]:
And so, so you could say, well, these look like financial markets are very fast moving. They’re global, they’re 24/7. We should probably have some regulation there. And we should look to the centralized exchanges and give them that framework. And if we do that, that’ll probably entice institutions and other players to come in. Yes, I think that’s an important piece of it, but those are sort of the questions that Congress is looking at, and I don’t know if they’re critical. And I think there’s a lot of amazing things being built in the Solana ecosystem that are being built despite the fact that we don’t have this law on the books. So whether it would turbocharge it is, I think, an open question.

Kristin Smith [00:14:29]:
But if I look at what’s happening on Solana and I look at like, wow, Solana could be the home of Internet capital markets and we’re going to bring $2 trillion worth of assets on chain in the next five years. Having a commodity crypto commodity spot market regulator, like it doesn’t help that.

Moish Peltz [00:14:48]:
Great, fascinating answer.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:50]:
Yeah, great, great insights. And one of the things that we’ve always talked about on this show, and I’m amazed that we’re even here, is I’ve always been afraid of why like over broad legislation you look at Sarbanes, Oxley, it’s like you take a real situation and you respond to it but you just over correct to the point where now people it’s cost prohibitive to go public and the costs of all that are just nobody wants to do that anymore more so I think your insight is exactly right and I do.

Kristin Smith [00:15:16]:
Yeah. Well if you think about like what is the price for this, this you know, regulatory framework we’re going to put into place. Well at some point in negotiations, you know, it’s the same deal with, with stablecoin. Right. You have to get the bill through the Senate through the regular process and that means you need 60 votes and you have 53 Republicans. So you’re going to need, if you have all Republicans, you’re going to need seven Democrats. And the question is what is sort of the price of admission? And if the price of admission is we need to KYC all self hosted wallets like I’m not sure that’s a worthy price. Right.

Kristin Smith [00:15:56]:
You know I think there’s a lot of you know, like attempts to regulate DeFi marketplaces or there’s attempts to you know, do AML policies on non intermediaries or you know there’s a lot of things that could go wrong. But you know, again, that being said though, I think it would give a lot of the institutional world comfort to know there is a regulator there. They come from very regulated environments. But you know, if the goal is to rebuild our financial system from the ground up in a truly like new and innovative way, then we probably don’t want to try to to be so regulated that it prevents us from building something new and innovative.

Moish Peltz [00:16:38]:
So setting aside stablecoins which we’ve spoken about and setting aside something like memecoins which the SEC has probably given guidance. And I think a lot of people think about the economic activity on Solana, maybe their mind goes to one of those two categories. What other categories do you think raise unique regulatory questions on Solana or in the crypto ecosystem more broadly that we should be thinking about and maybe deserve their own types of regulation that-

Kristin Smith [00:17:03]:
Yeah, well, I think there’s kind of like the memecoin question, which, you know, should have probably very minimal regulation. Right. Like they’re supposed to be a novelty, but I do think there’s a lot of fraudulent activity in that space. We do want to police that. Stablecoins have their own unique situation. I think providing that framework for, you know, the tokenization of actual securities and providing some guidance there is important. And then there’s sort of like the other commodity bucket, you know, so things like SOL and I think we want to have, you know, we want those to be able to operate and flow as freely as possible. But I think, you know, in terms of legislation, I think, you know, stablecoin and market structure can cover most of that.

Kristin Smith [00:17:48]:
I think the SEC can do the stuff with the securities. I think the other big sort of bucket of policy items or tax related issues. And you know, there is a giant, big, beautiful reconciliation bill working its way through Congress right now. And you know, there’s an opportunity to have some crypto tax provisions in there. And so I think clarifying things like staking and when do you tax that? When you receive it or would you actually sell it? I think if we could get it so the tax, the taxation event isn’t until the point of sale, that would, that would go a long way towards clearing this up. So there’s, there’s things like that that I think that I think we could get done. But you know, a lot of those are the big issues. But to get to these issues and to do the regulation and the legislation, you know, there’s still this overarching challenge of making sure people understand what happens.

Kristin Smith [00:18:41]:
And in the crypto world and you know, if you go into a congressional office that isn’t on a committee of jurisdiction, you know, they have very, very little context still at this point. They’re very, they’ve probably heard of bitcoin, they’ve probably heard of FTX, but they don’t know all of the things that are being built on Solana or they don’t know what the Solana name is, or they think Solana is just like one big company and they don’t understand what an ecosystem is. So there’s a lot of depending on which policymaker you’re talking to, there’s still a need for a lot of education around like what is a blockchain? And you know, what can you build on blockchains and that you can’t even build on blockchains. Right. So there’s a lot of really basic concepts that we also spend time working on.

Kyle Lawrence [00:19:29]:
You. You kind of jumped a question I had. I was going to ask is what is the sort of current literacy rate of these types of assets on Capitol Hill? A couple of years ago, Moish and I were at, I think it was Decentral Miami, and we met a, an aspiring someone who was running for Congress. And he said part of his why he’s running is he wants to educate everybody in Capitol Hill about what crypto is. And at that time there was very few people who were even really talking about these things. Now you fast forward a couple years. Moish and I were recently in D.C. for the Digital Chambers Summit and there were a host of Congress people and senators who were, I think-

Moish Peltz [00:20:04]:
Over 40 members of Congress were speakers.

Kristin Smith [00:20:07]:
It’s amazing.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:07]:
Yeah, certainly come a long way. So I was going to ask you how that is and are we moving fast enough to accommodate the movement of the space?

Kristin Smith [00:20:17]:
Yeah, I think we’ve come a long way. I think that it might not be for the reasons we want it to come a long way. I think it’s really for purely political reasons. But we’ll take it, right? We needed some progress and so we’ll take whatever progress we could get. I think, I think we’ve gone from your average policymaker thinking, oh, that’s, that’s some silly technology that’s going to go away. I don’t need to pay attention to it to oh, wow, that, that’s a political force. I know people care about it. It’s kind of complex.

Kristin Smith [00:20:48]:
I know I need to learn about it and I’d love to hear about what you’re doing. You know, this is very different from the people who sit on the committees or the subcommittees that are drafting legislation. They’re actually very good and they’re fairly deep in the weeds and they understand a lot of nuance. But your average office knows that they need to figure this out. I would say that there’s one quality more than anything that defines if somebody gets it or not, and that tends to be age. The younger members of Congress are, you know, they just grew up digitally native and they, they get it. It’s, you know, the 70 and 80 year olds that, you know, you’re trying to explain, you know, how we’re upgrading the financial system or the Internet or whatever it may be. And they’re like, well, we don’t even understand how that underlying system works to know why we need the upgrades.

Kristin Smith [00:21:37]:
So, so it takes a lot of time. But, but I think it’s definitely better. And I think, you know, a lot of that is because the crypto industry across the board has, has stepped up. Right. And people are coming to town and they’re taking time to do these tedious meetings over and over and over to talk about what this is. And you know, eventually offices sort of have this aha moment and understand that all right, this is a technology that’s not going away. Let’s figure out the right regulatory framework and let it thrive and that we want it to thrive. Right.

Kristin Smith [00:22:12]:
I mean, there was a lot of people for a long time working in positions of power that did not want crypto to thrive in the US And I think we’ve turned that corner there and everybody, it’s like, no, no, we want that here. This is worth fighting for.

Kyle Lawrence [00:22:25]:
Kind of amazing that leading up to the election that people couldn’t see that. But here we are.

Kristin Smith [00:22:30]:
Here we are.

Kyle Lawrence [00:22:31]:
You had mentioned a few minutes ago Project Open, and I was poking around a little bit as to what that is. Can you explain to our viewers and listeners as to what that is and how we could help with that as well?

Kristin Smith [00:22:43]:
Yeah, and I can talk about it at a pretty high level. I’m still getting up to speed on it myself. But you know, I think, I guess it’s been since what, 2018, 2019, where people have had this idea of like, wow, this blockchain infrastructure, yes, we can do all these cool digital assets and build these layer one blockchains and like build these applications on top of that. But that this is also a good technology for tokenizing traditional securities, equities, bonds, other real world assets. And by doing so can lower the cost to do that. You can make the markets available 24/7, 24 hours, 7 days a week. You can build these types of applications where maybe you use those assets as collateral for something else like it. It just opens up a whole new possibility of innovation when you bring these assets on chain and.

Kristin Smith [00:23:44]:
But the reason that hasn’t really happened over the past couple of years is because there are a lot of rules on the book, books at the SEC that, that people have questions about. There’s, there’s custody requirements, there’s transfer agents and, and you guys probably know more details about this than I do, but it doesn’t map neatly to the way that blockchains work. And so the good news though is the SEC has.

Moish Peltz [00:24:09]:
We want intermediaries.

Kristin Smith [00:24:12]:
Yes, they, well, they. To intermediaries. But when we have an open SEC like we have now, you know, the SEC has a lot of flexibility in how they apply the law. And so they can update regulations and, you know, through guidance or through rulemaking, and they can make modifications that still make sure the underlying public policy goal is met, but do it in a way where, you know, you can use a blockchain to record the transaction as well, opposed to some other proprietary system like they do it today. But this isn’t something that can happen overnight either. I think we’ve seen a lot of discussion last month, and I think it was last month, in May, the SEC did a whole listening roundtable on tokenization. And it’s something that they bring up regularly. But I think there’s a lot of work to make sure that this.

Kristin Smith [00:25:07]:
This is done correctly. And I think it’s something that we’re excited. We’re starting to talk to the SEC. We’re also talking to Capitol Hill about it to let them know that, you know, let’s give the SEC some political cover to make some of these moves. So I think it’s really exciting, and I think it’s one of the things, like, it’s also, like, a really good example, because sometimes people ask like, well, why. Why do we need to Policy Institute? We have Blockchain association and all these other groups. And it’s like, well, as the industry is evolving and growing, I think you see different activities on different chains. And this allows us to take on a project like this and bring in others who care deeply about it, work with them, and really be sort of the driver behind moving this forward.

Kyle Lawrence [00:25:50]:
Surprised people would ask you that. Why do we need a second restaurant in town or a second car dealership? Yeah, yeah, it’s a completely different.

Kristin Smith [00:25:57]:
Yeah, Well, I mean, if you look at other industries, you know, there’s a whole set of organizations and teams that are working on any public policy issue. And I can tell you, when the blockchain association started seven years ago, and it was just, you know, 10 people total in town that were thinking about these issues. Not even at BA there’s only one at Blockchain association, that was me. But, you know, we weren’t making a lot of progress. Right. Like. Like, you need a lot of people, you need a lot of resources, you need a lot of thinking, a lot of lawyers. You need a lot of people working on these issues, and you need to make sure that the various subparts of the industry are represented in the final product, or it’s going to be more difficult to get across the finish line.

Kristin Smith [00:26:44]:
So, yeah, it’s fun to be doing it from the perspective of a single ecosystem. It’s a new challenge.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:52]:
Since you brought up the concept of other chains. Moish and I just came back from Las Vegas at Bitcoin 2025. Now we are, you know, we like bitcoin, we love Solana. We, you know, we like different chains. How do you, with all of the fervor around bitcoin these days especially, we’re hitting all time highs. It’s all over the news cycle. How do you, through the SPI, how do you maintain focus on, on the things that Solana and some of the other altcoins can do? Not just a store of value, but there’s actual practical application for Solana that is absent on some of the other chains. Same with Ethereum and same with Avalanche.

Kyle Lawrence [00:27:29]:
So how does you, how do you do that, you know, with people who are just. All they see is bitcoin?

Kristin Smith [00:27:35]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, we try to let them know that there are things out there that are, that are not bitcoin. And I think that, you know, you know, bitcoin is very good, you know, sort of a very narrow lane. Right. And, and I would say the Solana community, in my, you know, short timing, part of it loves bitcoin. Like, I think that they think it’s like obviously a game changing, life changing moment in human history. And I think that there’s a lot of love for bitcoin in the Solana community, but we’re not looking to bring tokenized treasuries onto bitcoin. Right.

Kristin Smith [00:28:15]:
Like we’re seeing that happen on other chains. And so I think it’s just like sort of explaining some of the technological differences and making sure that, you know, they understand that, you know, this isn’t just a sort of scarce digital asset that goes up and down depending on, you know, macroeconomic conditions. Like there, there’s a lot of, you know, really unique things that people can do. And so, so yeah, it’s, it’s just a lot of storytelling. But you know, even just having our presence in Washington is, you know, there’s a lot of people that now know Solana because Solana Policy institute is in D.C. whereas before that they didn’t, they didn’t have a reason to, to know Solana Policy Institute. So we, you know, sponsor a lot of events. We’re working on a briefing series.

Kristin Smith [00:28:59]:
We’re, you know, doing all sorts of things to get the Solana name in front of as many policymakers as possible so that, you know, they realize that it’s, it’s not just a bitcoin world and that we, we want to have policies that, that allow different technologies to be out there competing in the marketplace, but not have them. You know, we don’t, we don’t want the government picking winners or losers like we want, we want the marketplace to do that. And so, you know, we’re here to make sure, you know, not that Solana has an advantage, but really to make sure that Solana isn’t somehow disadvantaged, you know, by the policies that are being made.

Moish Peltz [00:29:33]:
You mentioned the increasing conversation now with the SEC and them now welcoming people in genuinely, not just saying it. And then increasingly they hosted roundtables. I think they had one, I believe yesterday on DeFi, and those are increasing. And they’ve obviously put out calls for comment and they’ve started issuing some guidance. We mentioned the memecoin guidance, things of that nature. I’m curious what you think so far. I think there’s very public about what the inputs and what they’re asking for in the conversations that are happening. How would you rate them so far on their outputs and what they’re putting out and the.

Moish Peltz [00:30:16]:
In the marketplace and whether publicly or in private conversations with market participants, obviously we’re not privy to all those. So how do you think they’re doing and how far along do you think they are on this kind of work, separate and in parallel to the legislative process? And what else do you hope that they will do over the next 18 months, perhaps?

Kristin Smith [00:30:40]:
Yeah, I’ve been blown away at how much they have been able to get done. And you have to realize takes a few months, typically at the start of an administration before you can get the permanent chair confirmed by the Senate. And so what we had is Commissioner Uyeda was the acting chair and Hester Peirce was given the job of running the crypto task force. And I think what’s really amazing is that they were able to dismiss almost all of the cases before Atkins even showed up. And they dismissed a lot of them with prejudice, so they could never come back, which is like, amazing. And the fact that they were able to get that like, burden off the plate and then start focusing on policy going forward was, was really big. I think, you know, we’ve seen a couple of different guidance letters on memecoins, stablecoins, staking. I think bitcoin mining was one of them.

Kristin Smith [00:31:37]:
You know, these are kind of low hanging fruit guidance documents that they’re, you know, starting to push out the door. I think if you go to the crypto task force website, last I checked, there were over a hundred different meetings that they’d held and they would let you know who they met with. They were completely transparent about it. And, and they’re being really responsive to, to the ideas that are being brought in. And so, you know, I think what would be most helpful for, for the long run is in addition to kind of narrowing down what is not a security, because that obviously has been the big focus of a lot of the litigation. If we could actually get to the point where they’re doing rulemaking, you know, going forward about how to launch new projects, if they could do a rulemaking on how to, you know, do tokenized securities. Like, I think there’s some actual rules that if they go through the full rulemaking process and they, and these rules become final, be very hard, even absent legislation, for a new chair to come in and undo those. The rulemaking process takes time.

Kristin Smith [00:32:43]:
But if they can get those started soon and get those done, you know, while Atkins is still chair of the SEC, then I think that would be really, really helpful. But, you know, if you’re out there and you have ideas of things you want to do, if you have a proposal for a no action letter or, you know, some suggestions on what guidance is needed, you know, I’ve gone in to meet with them a couple of times now. Like, they are very, very open to listening and they mean it. And it’s really different than the experience we had with Gensler or even Jay Clayton, where it was sort of like a feeding. It was like a feeder meeting to them investigating you down the road. Right. Like I used to tell people, don’t go into the SEC, like, don’t get on their radar. And so now we’re, you know, in a totally different place.

Kristin Smith [00:33:33]:
That’s really more, more stark because in contrast.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:37]:
You’re exactly right. It’s. If you walked in there, you’d be lucky to walk out, you know, not in handcuffs at all. You’re exactly right. It’s good to hear that they are. And it’s not just they’re paying lip service to the idea of a no action letter. It’s something Moish and I have suggested to, I don’t know, have a dozen plus clients over the past couple years because they say, well, we want to launch this project here in the United States. And we’d say, well, you can file for no action letter or just go offshore.

Kyle Lawrence [00:34:00]:
Not that it obviates everything, but. And they were like, we’re not doing a no action letter. There’s no chance we’re going to set foot inside that building.

Kristin Smith [00:34:07]:
Well, and what’s cool is if I’ve heard people who’ve gone in and they’re like, hey, we’re exploring this no action letter idea. And they’re like, no, we actually think that would be better as guidance or, you know, like they’ll have opinions on like, what is the most effective way to do it. And you can actually have that dialogue back and forth, which is I think just completely remarkable compared.

Moish Peltz [00:34:27]:
Very refreshing. Yeah. The one thing I want, I want to just, and you can feel free to comment is I, I, it’s great that all those cases were dismissed, but I think one of the problems is none of those cases were actually like, you know, decided on appeal. So I think some of the cases actually were good facts, would have made good law, but were dismissed anyways. And now from a litigation perspective, we’re almost have to restart the process if we were to litigate and get appellate or Supreme Court even decisions on some of these issues of like, what is a security, what’s on security, you know, what would be a Howey to applied to crypto kind of decision. And so we’re not going to get that. I’m curious if you see that as like, well, that’s kind of doesn’t matter. Like, we’re set the, set the table clean.

Moish Peltz [00:35:09]:
Let’s have conversations, let’s kind of reset.

Kristin Smith [00:35:12]:
Yeah. Well, I think the problem is like it, that’s a, you know, getting a Supreme, a favorable Supreme Court decision is, you know, that’s, that’s wonderful. Right. It just takes so long to get there and you’re tied to the facts and circumstances of any sort of given case’s case. So I think it’s just from, and again, I’m not a lawyer, but from my perspective it seems like, well, if you can have a more open process and you can consider, you know, a variety of different situations as you try to tailor that policy, that, that’s probably the better way to make policy if you, if you have the luxury of going that route. So, so yeah, though some of them especially, like there was some really good offensive litigation that was out there. That would have been nice to see it get across the finish line.

Moish Peltz [00:36:03]:
Yeah, I agree. I think taking a step back, it makes sense. And it’s like, okay, let’s do the work of educating everyone. Right. Not just policymakers, but judges, I think have a similar issue. And we’ve litigated cases before judges that are totally into it get every issue or asking like active, detailed questions. And we’ve litigated before judges that like, just like, what, why is this in my courtroom? And I get both perspectives, but I think it’s the same issue, right, is education, explaining. I think the passage of time, the increasing sophistication of the industry and the concepts kind of being socialized is only going to help that process.

Kyle Lawrence [00:36:43]:
So once the Genius act and the market structure bill, let’s say these, these all get passed in this session, what comes next for the SPI?

Kristin Smith [00:36:53]:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think we’re going to be working with the SEC for a while on Project Open or anything related to tokenization of securities and other real world assets. I do think though, you know, Congress is going to always be there. They may take another pass at trying to regulate crypto. I mean, I worked on the Hill in 2006 and we were very big at the time on trying to rewrite the 96 Telecom act because so much had changed with the Internet since then. We actually never succeeded in getting that done. But there was a big effort 10 years out. I would say though, that there’s a lot of open questions on what, if any regulation is needed in the DeFi world. And I think that, you know, if you look at what the EU did, they, they said, well, let’s, let’s take a pass at DeFi later.

Kristin Smith [00:37:48]:
Let’s focus on centralized entities now. You know, if that ends up being where we fall in the US then I think the work isn’t done. I think we’re going to have to preserve, you know, sort of preserve the, the freedom for, for DeFi to exist. And there’s a really big philosophical battle out there. I think that there are a lot of policymakers like we were discussing earlier, who really like intermediaries and they really like regulating intermediaries and they want the intermediaries to collect information for them and report to them. And you know, I think that DeFi sort of challenges like, well, who’s going to do that when you’re having a peer to peer transaction? And so I think that’s going to be an issue that remains. So, so yeah, so I think, I think there’s going to be plenty of work to do, but hopefully we’ll have a framework in place and we can participate in rulemakings to help put the details around those laws when they’re passed. But yeah, at some point maybe I get to take a sabbatical and go on a vacation and not have to worry about the crypto industry falling apart.

Moish Peltz [00:38:58]:
No, you got to go visit European Parliament and Singapore Parliament.

Kristin Smith [00:39:02]:
Yeah, we export all our good policies to the rest of the world. There we go.

Moish Peltz [00:39:06]:
Well, I’m curious how much of your focus is. You have to focus on the US versus other jurisdictions, and maybe also how that’s changed from your time in BA to now.

Kristin Smith [00:39:21]:
Yeah, well, right now at SPI, which is very similar to what we did at BA is we’re. We’re focused exclusively on the U.S. i think that this is. This is the one we have to get right, because whatever we do here is going to be copied by other jurisdictions around the world. And that, you know, especially as we’re looking to upgrade our capital markets. The US Is the home to capital markets. And I think that, like, we need to get it right here or it’s, you know, there’s going to be sort of this world that, you know, sort of like the Internet today. There’s the Internet in China and there’s the Internet everywhere else.

Kristin Smith [00:39:56]:
Like, I think we want the US to be connected with the rest of the world because there’s a lot of economic power here. And I think that, you know, this is where the focus needs to be. But that being said, it doesn’t mean we might not expand down the road. We’ll just have to kind of see where the needs are. And, you know, if we have the right kind of expertise within this organization that we can. We can bring to other jurisdictions.

Kyle Lawrence [00:40:22]:
Yeah, that’s. That’s really interesting stuff. And I think you’ve hit the nail on a few heads just in terms of where we are and where we want to go. Moish is smiling at me. But, you know, but. But to your point where we talk about, you know, once this legislation passes, tokenization of assets is. Is a great kind of example of. The point I’m trying to get across is it does open up these markets to new entrants.

Kyle Lawrence [00:40:46]:
It does create an easier, more seamless transaction. 24/7 accessibility. You don’t have to wait for wire confirmations and all those kinds of things. You don’t have the intermediaries. And I didn’t get a chance to say it before. I’m not ashamed to say it. Transfer agents of the devil. Transfer agents are the worst things in the world.

Kyle Lawrence [00:41:01]:
They won’t go to the bathroom without a legal opinion. And it’s just, bless your heart, if you have to deal with them. I’m sorry. I hate them, if they’re watching, I’m not ashamed of saying it. So there. But that doesn’t mean that there should be, you know, no regulation at all. And one of the things that I watch is the pendulum swing, which is now you have a.

Kyle Lawrence [00:41:19]:
Or you had an SEC that was going by regulation, by enforcement, and they were just so egregious and onerous in the things they were doing. So now you swing the pendulum the other way and you say, all right, CFTC, you’re going to handle most of these things, and we’re going to change the definition of this to digital commodity and all these kinds of things. And that’s all great. The only problem is that the SEC’s function for why it was created was to protect investors. Now we can sit here and say caveat emptor and buyer beware, and that’s all great, but if we sort of defang these agencies too much, there is going to be a lot of opportunity for fraud and for people to take advantage of these smaller entrants that don’t have institutional knowledge, that don’t have the financial wherewithal to fight somebody who’s issuing one of these tokens. You know, how do you, how do you navigate that? Because that’s a very delicate. You know, it’s a.

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:09]:
You have to thread that needle very carefully, I find. And I worked in politics, too, and it’s not an easy task.

Kristin Smith [00:42:14]:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think there are, like, competing, you know, sort of tensions. And I think, you know, we do want to protect consumers to a certain extent. Right. I think there are, you know, some reasonable measures there, but we don’t want to do it so much that it prevents innovation. You know, like, I could, you know, never get hit by a car if I always stay inside, but that would be a pretty miserable life. And so I think we want to, we want to find, you know, like, we want to allow for risk in a way where people can assess it. And I think that, yeah, I think these are really, really challenging questions. And, you know, you want to make sure you get the policy right, because if you get, you know, somebody on either side of the spectrum in power, you could either completely put everyone at risk because there’s not enough oversight into the market, or you could completely deny everyone access to new services.

Kristin Smith [00:43:09]:
Because like we saw with Gary Gensler, people went overseas to build these things and, you know, there were services that weren’t available here in the US because we were protecting consumers from. From things that, you know, they might not be smart enough to understand. And so I think, you know, this is, you know, the role that policymakers have. And, you know, there’s different, like philosophical and political opinions that sort of come into play there. But. But, yeah, I think, I think that’s why this is hard and why it’s, it’s not something that, you know, we’ve been able to get done, you know, outside of this multi year process that we’re, that we’ve been engaged in as an industry over the past, you know, I guess going on nearly a decade now.

Moish Peltz [00:43:52]:
Yeah, I think you’re still seeing some of that even continue now. Right. As there’s some token issuers that are issuing tokenized securities. But they’re doing so principally outside the US to start. But the hope that then they’ll, I assume the hope that they’re going to bring that into the US Once there’s a regulatory.

Kristin Smith [00:44:09]:
Yeah. Kraken announced at Accelerate that you can, you can do this, but just not in the US because the rules aren’t in play. The rules aren’t accommodating here yet.

Moish Peltz [00:44:18]:
So I think there’s always going to be a little bit of that. Right. Of like the people are going to experiment. Maybe the really edgy experimenting is going to happen somewhere not at the US but then the idea is with policy backing. Right. To build the frameworks and to do it responsibly and do it in a way that can really scale globally. And so I think that’s, you know, we talk about upgrading the Internet and upgrading the financial system. I think that’s what we’re talking about.

Moish Peltz [00:44:42]:
But it’s, it can be frustrating because it’s happening so quickly and there’s so much ambition and so much people working on such like entrepreneurial new things. But it’s just obviously the speed of policy can’t keep up with that. And neither can lawyers often sometimes. Right. We try to, but it moves really fast.

Kyle Lawrence [00:44:59]:
Well, Kristin, as we wind down a little bit on time, where can people find you? Where can they contact you? How can the average person help? How can we participate and help you fulfill your initiative?

Kristin Smith [00:45:12]:
Yeah, well, I would say, you know, visit us at solanapolicyinstitute.org there’s some basic information, soon to be more information about what we do. And you know, if you’re a part of the Solana ecosystem, please feel free to reach out to us, especially if you want to come to the D.C. area. We’ll put you to work going to educate policymakers. It’s one of the best ways I think is people who are actually building in this space to go have those conversations. I think that’s, that’s really effective. You can find us on, on Twitter, we’re @Solanainstitute or I’m a, mine, my Twitter handle is. Or X handle, I guess I should say is @KMSmithDC.

Kristin Smith [00:45:54]:
I know all this time it doesn’t roll off the tongue.

Moish Peltz [00:45:56]:
It’s actually we use Twitter on the show.

Kristin Smith [00:45:58]:
I know, it’s just, it’s just like too weird. But, you know, listen, I think my former organization, the Blockchain association, does job and if you’re not in Solana, but you work at a crypto company and you’re not involved with Blockchain association, you should go check them out. And, you know, if you’re really wanting to kind of activate around specific bills, standwithcrypto.org is a great website to sign up for there and they’ll send calls to action when there’s, when there’s really key moments. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot to keep up with, but it’s, you know, heading in a positive direction and certainly a lot more fun than it was a couple years ago.

Kyle Lawrence [00:46:38]:
I will happily participate in educating policymakers, starting with the ones here in New York who can’t seem to get out of their own way on a host of issues. Crypto being.

Kristin Smith [00:46:46]:
Well, yeah. On the federal level in D.C. you know, Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York, and Chuck Schumer actually had some good moments and.

Kyle Lawrence [00:46:56]:
She was at the Digital Chamber Summit. Yeah, she’s.

Moish Peltz [00:46:58]:
Yeah. Richie Torres is obviously very active.

Kristin Smith [00:47:02]:
Yeah.

Kyle Lawrence [00:47:02]:
The ones that I want to educate.

Moish Peltz [00:47:06]:
Yeah. Give us some other.

Kristin Smith [00:47:07]:
Probably safer. Yeah, we’ll.

Kyle Lawrence [00:47:11]:
Well, Kristin Smith, the president of the Solana Policy Institute, we really appreciate your time and thank you for stopping by and we hope to have you back on the show, you know, in a couple months or a year from now when some of these laws have been passed and enacted and we can reassess and see where we’re at and re ask the question of where does the SPI go from here?

Kristin Smith [00:47:28]:
Awesome. Well, thanks, Kyle. Thanks, Moish. Appreciate the conversation.

Kyle Lawrence [00:47:34]:
Thank you for Kristin Smith. We know her time is extremely valuable and we really thank her for her insights into not just what Solana is doing, but just the broader blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem. So really appreciate her insights and we hope you enjoyed them too. Thank you for joining us on this episode. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. Follow us on all our socials links are down below in the show. Notes Please note, the show is meant for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not legal advice.

Kyle Lawrence [00:48:01]:
Please hire your own attorney if you’re going to take the plunge. Neither discussion of nor the fact that Moish and I may own any of the assets we discuss, including but not limited to Solana is meant to serve in any way as an endorsement of such assets. Very special thank you to producer Shaun. Without him, the show would not be possible. On behalf of Moish Peltz, I’m Kyle Lawrence. Take care, everybody.

Moish Peltz [00:48:21]:
See you next time.

Please note that this show is meant for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not legal advice. Please hire your own attorney. The hosts or guests appearing on Block and Order may hold cryptocurrency, NFTs, or other digital assets from companies mentioned during our programming. This possession of digital assets does not constitute a professional endorsement, legal advice, or financial advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with their own legal and financial advisors for personalized guidance in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space.