Kyle Lawrence and Moish Peltz kick off this episode of Block & Order with a look at the growing rivalry between the SEC and CFTC, and what their latest moves could mean for the crypto industry and everyone building in it. They dig into NASDAQ’s headline-making push for tokenized stocks, unpack what tokenization really means, and discuss whether it’s the next big thing or just the latest buzzword. The conversation also covers the OCC’s new efforts to keep politics out of banking, and how Washington’s legislative gridlock is stalling much-needed clarity for digital assets. Kyle and Moish wrap things up by diving into the billion-dollar AI copyright lawsuit rocking the publishing world, reflecting on what it means for creators and the future of tech.

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Chapters:

SEC & CFTC Joint Statement Signals Crypto Regulation Focus https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/joint-statement-atkins-pham-090525

CFTC Chair Brian Quintenz Nomination Stalled – Acting Chair Leads https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/09/08/the-case-of-the-headless-wall-street-regulator-00549958

NASDAQ Files to Tokenize Stocks https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/09/08/nasdaq-seeks-nod-from-u-s-sec-to-tokenize-stocks

OCC Debanking New Guidance on Politicized Banking Practices https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-2025-84.html

Anthropic $1.5B AI Copyright Settlement with Authors https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/anthropic-judge-blasts-copyright-pact-as-nowhere-close-to-done

Clarity Act Senate Democrats Push for Crypto Oversight and Ethics https://www.cryptoinamerica.com/p/100-crypto-firms-unite-for-defi-protections

Watch or listen to the podcast here:

   

Transcript:

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

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:00]:
The Alphabet soup agencies go at it. Brian Quintenzs. Who is he? Where is he? What is he? And NASDAQ tries to convince us that tokenizing is the only game in town. All that and more coming up on Block in Order. Welcome to Block in Order to your one stop legal shop for all things digital assets. I’m your host, Kyle Lawrence, and with me as always, he’s a good boy. He’s not wearing white after Labor Day. Mr.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:34]:
Moish Peltz.

Moish Peltz [00:00:35]:
That’s right, Kyle. After Labor Day. And we’re back in blue because we’re ready to rip and run here.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:39]:
I think I made that same joke last year. What’s the genesis? I may have.

Moish Peltz [00:00:44]:
I don’t know, the Labor Day, like no white after thing. Yeah, I assume, like it’s only for summer and now we’re serious people again.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:53]:
I feel like it’s one of these old world Wimbledon kinds of things. And when does it reset? Is it New Year’s? Like, can I wear white on Thanksgiving? Like what, what happens?

Moish Peltz [00:01:02]:
No, you have to wait till, till spring again.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:04]:
I think I can’t wear white at all. That’s. That’s ridiculous.

Moish Peltz [00:01:08]:
No, not even a little bit.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:10]:
This goes back to the episode a couple months ago where we talked about arcane laws and I talked about how you can’t tie your shoes on the sidewalk in Nashville, which is true, but this is nonsense. I don’t think it’s a law, but it doesn’t make it less stupid.

Moish Peltz [00:01:23]:
It might be a law somehow. Maybe it’s not a law. It might be like a regulation at the country club.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:28]:
Well, I think one of our users can. Can source that for us and let us know. I personally would greatly appreciate it because I want to know.

Moish Peltz [00:01:34]:
That’s right. There’s any viewers out there that know about the white where, on which days and whether it’s just guidance or some formal regulation somewhere, please let us know.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:46]:
Somewhere in this world that is a law.

Moish Peltz [00:01:49]:
Endlessly curious, right?

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:51]:
Well, Moishe, we got a lot of stuff to unpack to today. Of course, on Block and Order. We’re very excited to have everybody back and watching and listening. So why don’t you kick us off with our main topic du jour, the SEC CFTC joint statement.

Moish Peltz [00:02:06]:
That’s right. Our first topic is the SEC and CFTC. As you preview and have issued a joint statement. Both SEC chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Acting Chair Carolyn Pham highlighted a regulatory harmonization priorities including topics such as having 247 markets events contracts like Poly Market, Perpetual Futures Portfolio margining, innovation exemptions, DeFi and announced a joint roundtable on September 29th that we’re now all looking forward to. And relatedly, there was a staff joint statement issued this past week inviting filings from regulated venues to facilitate trading of certain spot crypto asset products, signaling staff readiness. So here we go. A lot of focus by both the SEC and CFTC, the two big regulators on the block on crypto. And that’s continuing not just through election day and the first hundred days, but here we are, you know, September 2025 and like this is still like a huge part of the focus of both these agencies.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:11]:
Moishe, how long do you think until we get some actual written rulemaking in place? Because there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say political jockeying, that’s not really what these agencies do to their credit. But there is a lot of uncertainty as to which agency is actually supposed to be controlling here. And one of the things that I’ve always harped upon is the administration has, in its guidance and in project Crypto and in the White House statement that they issued, you know, right after election day, it was no, no sec, the CFTC is going to be handling all these things now and that’s great, except the CFTC has, I don’t have it in front of me, but 700 employees, whereas the SEC has over 4,000. So that’s a wide gulf. Is it purposefully trying to say, okay, CFTC, with your lesser, you know, staffed body, you’re going to be taking control of all these things? I don’t think it’s that nefarious, but it’s just curious to me. So I wonder how long until we actually get something tangible that we can sink our teeth into here?

Moish Peltz [00:04:15]:
What do you think if you had to take a bet, you know, over under six months, which way are you going?

Kyle Lawrence [00:04:20]:
I mean anything government related, only a fool would take under six months. That’s just my personal view. So I’m definitely going to say over, you know, you have cross agency rulemaking, that means multiple committees, back and forth, recess elections are coming up, even in off year. That’s still something that drives a lot of focus. You have harmonizing venue and product definitions, capital versus margin, DeFi, safe harbors. You have all these things that, that go into rulemaking. It’s not something that happens very quickly. I mean, I wonder historically what the fastest rulemaking ever was.

Moish Peltz [00:04:55]:
That’s a good question. I mean I would say though, and I agree with you, right, government’s very slow Here. You know, one thing we noticed right, there’s SEC has a chair, the CFTC does not. We’ll preview that in our next topic. But it still is a public joint statement. There’s been not just a roundtable announced in September and that’s coming up very soon, but there’s been a series of roundtables that have already happened. And they’ve also just signaled that they’re going to review these filings pretty quickly. And I think that’s going to be, you know, the notice of proposed rulemaking is going to come out.

Moish Peltz [00:05:31]:
I would assume it’s going to follow pretty shortly. I would be surprised if it went the full six months, even though I think you would normally anticipate that. But we’ll see what happens. I can put, you know, what’s, what’s the currency du jour of block and order wagers? Like what do we even have at stake here?

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:48]:
Oh, it’s a good question. I mean we can always make the $1 bet like in Trading Places.

Moish Peltz [00:05:53]:
1, $1, 1 USDC, 1 USDC of.

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:58]:
Big BR sense, not one Bitcoin. I don’t think either of us won bitcoin. Sorry.

Moish Peltz [00:06:04]:
We could do a Solana. You know, maybe that makes more sense.

Kyle Lawrence [00:06:06]:
That’s fair. I could agree to that. I think here, $1.

Moish Peltz [00:06:15]:
Well then turning to our next topic, which I previewed a little bit, is the idea that the CFTC, here we are September, we’re almost a year into the, into the first year, the administration, and we still don’t have a chair. And you know, the SEC can kind of see it’s like kind of dragging the CFTC in its chairless form, like, hey, let’s do a joint statement. You don’t got a chair. We do. Let’s make some stuff get done. But Brian Quintenz was nominated at a hearing in June. Subsequent committee votes were yanked twice, including at the White House request, leaving the agency basically at in limbo. Meanwhile, Carolyn Pham, who has been acting chair and very crypto forward, including pushing a quote unquote crypto Sprint, has been very active.

Moish Peltz [00:07:08]:
So what do you think, Kyle? What’s going on here?

Kyle Lawrence [00:07:11]:
Tough to say. There have been a lot of reports about the Winklevoss twins making a phone call and expressing their less than thrilled reaction to him. I can’t certify that that’s accurate or what’s behind that necessarily, but surely they are very influential in the space and they do have the administration’s ear, as it were. So that could go into it. There’s also the thinking, right or wrong that when you have an interim chair of one of these regulatory agencies, it’s much easier for them to be removed by the current president as opposed to a full time chair, which there’s a little bit more rigmarole that goes through or typically is in typical times, although nowadays, who knows. I guess the next question would be is this good or bad for, for the agency in general? Because you have effectively a leaderless organization. I know Carolyn Pham is there and she’s doing a great job, but she is an interim and when you’re an interim, you’re not going to have the full breadth of authority that you would otherwise have if you went through the full confirmation process and were approved. So I, I don’t know if this is good or bad.

Kyle Lawrence [00:08:16]:
What do you think about that?

Moish Peltz [00:08:18]:
Well, it’s interesting, right, because I, I do think, I mean something you’ve seen with this administration, not just in CFTC instance, but the idea that instead of appointing a full time committee Senate approved leader, leaving an acting person in the leadership role actually allows the administration to exert more control over them because it’s like, well, you’re acting chair, so if you don’t like what you’re doing, we’ll just yank you out.

Kyle Lawrence [00:08:52]:
Right.

Moish Peltz [00:08:53]:
And, and it gives them more of a say in how the administration is and how the agency is run. But it seems like this is kind of a, an end around, around the proper functioning of what should be a very important regulator in the space and a regulator that you want, you know, coming to bear and having a real voice in, in not just, you know, coordination with the SEC and the CFTC, but also in the, the Senate and the House are proposing different market structure legislations which are going to significantly impact how the CFTC is going to function, presumably for decades. So you think having like a real invested leader, Brian Quintenz was at a 16Z, was very involved in their policy efforts, knows a ton about what’s going on and presumably would have a lot to say, but just isn’t a voice in the conversation because he’s not approved.

Kyle Lawrence [00:09:51]:
Moish, are you intimating that the administration wants to put in a yes man into a very important regulatory agency? Do you want to step on that grenade?

Moish Peltz [00:09:59]:
I would never say that, no, never.

Kyle Lawrence [00:10:03]:
We would never impugn the integrity of our administration.

Moish Peltz [00:10:06]:
That’s right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:10:07]:
Well, next up, NASDAQ has asked the SEC to permit an option to trade tokenized equities alongside its traditional stocks that it’s done for years with equal Execution priority. DTC would handle post trade with full shareholder rights that flow with the token. Moish, there’s been a lot of talk about tokenize, tokenize real estate, tokenize stocks, tokenize this, tokenize my computer, tokenize everything that I’m wearing. So when we get down to it, I think, I personally think that a lot of people, it’s the, it’s the thing du jour, it’s, it’s today’s NFTs, today’s DAOs, it’s a beanie Baby, whatever you want to call it. Is this the wave of the future? Is what NASDAQ is, is doing here good overall? You don’t have to get too specific about it. But is this a good thing? And do people really understand what tokenizing means?

Moish Peltz [00:10:58]:
All right, let me, let me, let me say, let me take those differently. I think yes, it is very good. And no, I don’t think anyone understands what tokenizing means. I mean, certainly people in the industry that are working on these things, at least some of them understand. But I think when you talk about what does it mean to tokenize real world assets, tokenize intellectual property, to tokenize shareholder rights, which is what stocks are, the implications of that I think are difficult to understand. And I think the potential impact is significant and frankly, really cool. I think the idea, and this is what we’ve talked about, is you can tokenize lots of things, but people are scared to actually tokenize real securities because those are securities and you have to comply with securities laws. That’s very onerous.

Moish Peltz [00:11:50]:
And there’s no way to trade these things in the public markets, which is ultimately people want to do with their securities. Like the highest and best use of a security is it’s publicly traded and It’s a Fortune 50 company. And there’s infinite liquidity and you have cap tables and voting and ownership. It’s all just taken care of. Nobody even thinks about, you know, Apple shareholders. They just vote. It just happens. And whenever they vote, like that’s carried through and if management screws up, it gets fixed because it’s an important company and everyone pays attention.

Moish Peltz [00:12:21]:
And none of that exists, right, for any tokenized stocks because it’s not there. So I think the idea that we’re going to upgrade the financial system, which I think is really the goal here, is to make things like T plus 2 is now T plus 1, instant settlement, all these things. If we’re going to clean up the way the financial system works, this has to be the way that it happens. And if it can Tie natively into crypto rails. Like that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do here. That’s the whole like legal yellow brick road we’re trying to build. Right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:12:57]:
Absolutely and perfectly said. I completely agree with you about updating the financial system. It’s been top of mind for the administration. It’s something that RFK Jr. Talked about when we saw him in Nashville last year when he was, when he was at the bitcoin conference. And yeah, absolutely. We are working within an arcane system in some ways with some of these transfer agents. It move.

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:18]:
It’s very slow to get shares moved from point A to point B in the public market. Very, very difficult. Very onerous. It could be very expensive too. It’s just the legal rigmarole you have to jump through. And we’re lawyers. I mean I’ve done. It sucks and I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody.

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:35]:
So if you can have a system where in order to buy stock or get a stop legend removed or whatever it may be that you can do that on chain and it happens instantaneous. It’s an extension of the thing that I’ve always talked about when people ask me what is purpose of this kind of new technology. And the example I always give is if I’m representing a company that’s based in California and they’re buying something from France and they initiate a wire on Friday afternoon, well, guess what? That money’s not going to get there till Monday. And that is a harrowing 72 hours for everyone involved. You put these things on chain, that problem goes away. This is an extension of that. And, and that. And for that I think it’s great.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:14]:
Now tokenization is not this great panacea that everybody likes to make it out to be. It doesn’t automatically mean that people that have lesser assets can now participate in real estate syndications. All it says is that instead of you getting a physical certificate for your equity, you’re just going to get a token, which is great. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but that’s all it is and I think it’s important for us.

Moish Peltz [00:14:35]:
Yeah, but, but you can’t even like no one. Even if you asked your broker for a physical security, you couldn’t get one now anyways. It’s already digital.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:44]:
I mean you can get one, but.

Moish Peltz [00:14:45]:
But you can anymore. I think they’re gone.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:49]:
I don’t.

Moish Peltz [00:14:50]:
If you have one, you can trade it in. Yeah, but I don’t think you can get one anymore.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:55]:
But you still have to go through this again.

Moish Peltz [00:14:57]:
Block and order listeners. Prove me wrong.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:59]:
It’s been so long since I’ve done it and I don’t do. I don’t do public company work anymore. But, but even if it’s fine, even if it’s a digital certificate, you still have to go through the transfer agent. They treat it as if it’s still a physical thing that exists in the world, which makes it even dumber. They still do 100.

Moish Peltz [00:15:14]:
The stupidest thing. It’s a vestige of a system that doesn’t exist anymore. So let’s just put it on the new system.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:21]:
Yeah.

Moish Peltz [00:15:22]:
Oh my gosh.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:22]:
Well, all in all, this is great.

Moish Peltz [00:15:26]:
Yeah. But you, you seem more. I mean, I think that’s right. You seem more skeptical about the. The near term. Like how much is this is really going to happen? How much of it’s really vaporware until we get five, ten years out? I, I don’t completely disagree with that too. We’ll see how quickly this moves.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:44]:
We’ll see.

Moish Peltz [00:15:45]:
All right, our next topic is the occ. Kyle, pop quiz. What does the OCC stand for?

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:52]:
I actually don’t know.

Moish Peltz [00:15:54]:
I believe it’s the office of the controller of the currency.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:59]:
Wow, I learned something today. How about that? Just another Alphabet soup. See, I mentioned in the leader.

Moish Peltz [00:16:04]:
Little did I know, division of the u. S. Treasury. Man, what a name.

Kyle Lawrence [00:16:10]:
It just rolls right off something a.

Moish Peltz [00:16:12]:
Little like catchier by now. Anyways, they’ve issued a new depolitic depoliticizing debanking guidance which is intended to take the politics out of debanking and take the discretion away from banks to or and presumably the government from forcing banks to debank people for political viewpoints that they disagree with. So the occ, who knows what they’re called.

Kyle Lawrence [00:16:45]:
Yeah, you know me, right?

Moish Peltz [00:16:49]:
We’ll consider a bank’s past record and current policies on political politicized unlawful debanking when reviewing licensing applications and when assessing their performance. It also updates intake for BSA and aml oversight. So Kyle, what do you think? Do you think that the occ is going to be able to step in here and take the politics away from banking?

Kyle Lawrence [00:17:14]:
I almost think this is the opposite of that. I think that with the stance they’re taking, they’re effectively legitimizing the practice that the administration is openly said they’re going to implement, which is, oh, you’re a bank and you wouldn’t lend to a gun manufacturer. Well, guess what? We’re going to look at your charter and we’re going to look at your, your capital requirements and they, I mean, they openly have said that. And I think that this, the OCC statement here is effectively saying was like, well, you know, we’re going to take that into consideration because we, we have to. And now you’re going to see a deepening of that scrutiny. It’s, oh, well, you, you, not only did you not lend to these gun manufacturers, but you lent to this group and that group and, and these people over here that we don’t like, well, we’re going to look at your, your bank charter and consider revoking it. I mean, you, you see this all the time on Truth Social about the government threatening people for these kinds of things. Now you have a supposed neutral organization that serves on, within the Department of Treasury saying these things.

Kyle Lawrence [00:18:14]:
I don’t know, man. I don’t mean to be Orwellian about this, but I don’t like this.

Moish Peltz [00:18:20]:
Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good point. Right? And it’s, it’s almost like by trying to solve the problem that they see they’re, they’re exacerbating, they’re exaggerating the problem because now they are saying your past record of how political you were is now relevant in assessing the going forward viewpoint. So, so I, I am concerned, right? And this isn’t the only context about this yo yo, of, you know, from one administration to the other. Yes, you’re favoring this group. No, you’re favoring that group. And it’s going to swing back and forth. And so, so now if the, if the analysis is of how good or bad of a bank you are, is your past record on politicized or unlawful debanking, then whatever you do, whichever administration you favor, you in trouble. So maybe the answer is people are just going to not do what the administration wants them to do.

Moish Peltz [00:19:16]:
I don’t, I don’t think that’s realistic. Oof.

Kyle Lawrence [00:19:18]:
I don’t know. I mean, this is a classic regulation for thee, but not for me and not to be, you know, one side of the aisle versus the other. You and I were, you know, on record repeatedly saying how we hated operation choke point 2.0 and the Biden era rules, that they were, you know, just hammering banks and other organizations over the head. This is just the same thing, just on the opposite side of the aisle. And I don’t like it any more than I didn’t like it then.

Moish Peltz [00:19:42]:
Well, at least the intent is to depoliticize debanking, right? I don’t, I don’t think that was, I suppose, intent. But you know, I think, I think, I think the heart’s in the right place to some degree. It’s just. Yeah, I don’t know if this is.

Kyle Lawrence [00:19:58]:
The right way to do it as we’ll find out. All right, next up on the order, Anthropic the anthropic author’s case. At a Sept. 8 hearing, Judge William Alsop declined to grant preliminary approval for now of the proposed one and a half billion dollar class settlement with book authors blasting it as a quote, nowhere close to complete, end quote. And demanding a finalized list of covered works plus a clear claims notice process including rules for co owners. He set a near term deadline and warned against forcing a deal down the throats of authors. A little bit of background Anthropic, which incidentally just closed a $13 billion Series F round. You don’t see a lot of those.

Moish Peltz [00:20:39]:
The valuation was like $180 billion. Like it’s a company that didn’t exist like what, three years ago.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:45]:
It’s just magic money, man. The power of Internet money. In June of earlier this year, summary judgment was entered and the same judge held that training LLMs on lawfully acquired books is fair use quote, exceedingly transformative. But he also said that building and keeping a central library of printed books is not the issue would proceed towards pirated books. Pirated books, excuse me. He did not decide whether LLM outputs infringe upon these rights. And then last week there was a settlement announcement where the parties unveiled this one and a half billion dollar proposal with roughly $3,000 per covered book and there’s about 465,000 works at this stage. It’s a lot of money.

Moish Peltz [00:21:26]:
Another books that’s a lot of money.

Kyle Lawrence [00:21:28]:
So it still needs court approval. But Moishe, this is, this is right up your alley. These, these copyright cases tell us what you think about this and thy know.

Moish Peltz [00:21:37]:
Yeah, I mean we previously blogged this decision and I think this is probably the right decision. I’ve always thought that training LLMs with, with books is just a transformative fair use. And the judge held that there was another decision that was issued on the same time that held the same way. But the keeping a library of pirated books and using those to train might not be. And this was a potential liability for Anthropic or anyone else. I think Meta also had a similar decision that they had done some training with allegedly pirated books and that this was a potential liability for, for you know, trial where they could really get dinged and the, and the potential damages were massive just because of the massive scale of content and obviously the massive amount of money these companies have raised. And so I think the idea here, from Anthropic’s perspective, was to basically cap their liability by saying, all right, we’re going to pay out for past alleged piracy infringement by training, by paying this one and a half billion dollars. And that’s a lot of money.

Moish Peltz [00:22:49]:
It’s $3,000 of books. Pretty cool. The judge just stepped in and said, no, like I get to vet this. This doesn’t make sense to me. And I think that’s right. I think the judge is stepping in and saying, I don’t understand what’s happening here. This is this weird, putative class, I guess. And, and there’s all these other cases that are, that are pending.

Moish Peltz [00:23:13]:
And so I think the judge is saying we need to really clearly define which works are covered and how we have a claims process and how he makes sense of this. I think that makes sense.

Kyle Lawrence [00:23:24]:
But is, but does this, I mean, does this slow things down? How do you reconcile, you know, this sort of ownership question? Do authors have to opt in? Like, how does this practically work going forward?

Moish Peltz [00:23:38]:
I, I don’t know enough about what sort of claims process is contemplated and how they’re going to get opt in or, or opt out of the authors and like, who’s part of the class already and who’s not. I just don’t know enough about how this particular litigation works. But I, I think it should be really clear. I think there should be a process. I think there’s, there’s, I think over 50 pending AI IP infringement class suits. Now you can check Ed Lee, who was prior guest of the show, tracking all of them. Yeah, I mean, it is slow litigation. Slow AI is fast.

Moish Peltz [00:24:22]:
And litigation with AI doesn’t really mix because it’s too fast for anyone to keep up. But that’s the process and it has to be followed. And I think ultimately, I think what Judge Alup is doing is doing here in requiring that this be more clearly explained to the court. And so everyone, not just the class, but the general public and the other judges watching this litigation with pending litigation in their courts, like know what’s happening over on this side of the fence. To me, that seems like judicial efficiency, even if it’s a little bit slower.

Kyle Lawrence [00:25:00]:
You know, you’ve heard me catastrophize about AI on prior episodes, some what to, you know, joking effect. But, you know, I would give a shout out to my father who would Just love watching the sort of spread of these AI cases and seeing just new technologies impact things that have been around for, for decades or even centuries in some cases. It’s really cool. He was a real lawyer, as lawyer, and I think he would get a real kick out of this kind of stuff.

Moish Peltz [00:25:25]:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, the part that does make me a little bit uncomfortable is like, like, what happens after this? Like, even for anthropic, it doesn’t solve. Like, all right, they’re still training stuff. Now all these other AI companies are doing just constant training. I’m sure a lot of them are. I’m not sure. I assume a lot of them are. Are sourcing their training materials in like, less than licensed ways.

Kyle Lawrence [00:25:53]:
Yeah.

Moish Peltz [00:25:54]:
I think this also sets a big precedent for, you know, authors and other IP owners to say we now demand license fees. So this isn’t quite that because it’s not quite a license fee for the LLM training, which is still fair use according to the decision, but they are getting a payout. Yeah, right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:14]:
Getting there. Yeah. It’s really, really cool stuff. Really, really interesting. Yeah. Well, last up, we have the Genius act, which has been passed and is going to become law now following it up is the Clarity Act. And because the Clarity Act has passed the House and is now waiting passage in the Senate, turns out that the Republicans need the Democrats on their side after all, to pass this legislation. So earlier guess.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:40]:
Oh, my God, what are the odds? Politics and government trying to function. So Senate Democrats earlier today recently released their seven points that they want addressed in the Clarity Act in order to get their approval. And some of those, some of those points are they want spot market oversight, which is kind of addressed. You know, and just to backtrack a little bit, we’ve talked about the Clarity Act and it’s very definitional and it’s not necessarily this sort of sea change regulation. It’s a great step in the right direction, though. So what the Democrats are doing is trying to get a little bit more clarity on the Clarity Act. See what I did there? So spot market oversight.

Moish Peltz [00:27:19]:
That’s a genius point you just made.

Kyle Lawrence [00:27:21]:
Oh, snap, look at us. We’re on fire here. They want to define the SEC scope of its authority along with the cftc. They want to have ethics and corruption planks to have limits on what people can and can’t do. We’ll touch upon that in a second. And of course, resourcing and bipartisan, bipartisanship requirements, to name a few. So Moishe, you know, without you Know, delving, you know, too into the minutia of this. How do you feel about what the Senate Democrats are proposing here? And do you think that this will get solved before end of this upcoming session?

Moish Peltz [00:28:01]:
Yeah, I, to take the last question first. I’ve been skeptical that market structure is going to get solved before midterms. I just, it seems like there’s too many different people that want too many different things. There’s not any unified vision or voice that the Democrats have now, you know, brought in, you know, some new concepts, including the corruption, abuse prevention, limits on officials, crypto dealings, you know, things, things of that nature which are probably fairly targeting some of the more public officials that are involved in crypto. But I don’t think that’s a recipe to actually getting a bill signed.

Kyle Lawrence [00:28:51]:
Yeah, I agree.

Moish Peltz [00:28:51]:
So, yeah, so I mean that, that’s, that’s the reality, I think any, and then like also just like the, the AML stuff, the, the KYC stuff, the, the financial privacy stuff, I think is, it’s just like these are issues where I don’t think there’s really a clear vision as to how it gets solved in a bipartisan way. Maybe I’m wrong. I just haven’t really seen it. And so I’m just skeptical that this is going to be the path. I mean, we got the Genius act done. I think that was a good success. We got the house fit 21 that passed the House and got stuck in the Senate. And now the Senate’s kind of meandering around and like you’re seeing it now, right? There’s just not a great, like, okay, like where do we go now? Right.

Moish Peltz [00:29:41]:
So I guess we’ll see if we can rally around some of the Democratic pushback and come out with a, with a bill that’s going to make sense. I just don’t, I haven’t seen it. In a way that makes me optimistic that’s going to happen.

Kyle Lawrence [00:29:53]:
Yeah, I think you’re, you hit some really salient points there. And I largely agree with everything you said and specifically about the ethics and corruption point. You know, we were talking about this a little bit before the show, before we were recording. Obviously we need ethics and corruption guardrails just like we need water to live. It’s, it’s, it’s obvious. And when they mention Trump by name, listen, love him or hate him, you got to understand the political ramifications of that. And you have a Republican controlled Senate that anytime you go in there and say, you know, anything negative about him, they’re going to stop you in your tracks, even if they don’t agree with you, because they know the political blowback that they will face. So I feel like the Democrats almost did this.

Kyle Lawrence [00:30:37]:
I mean, are they doing it knowing that they’re not going to agree to it, or do they, they put this forward and the Republicans say no, and Democrats can say, you guys want corruption. You know, this is what you people are voting for. That didn’t work in the last election cycle and it’s not going to work here. I just, I don’t love the idea of letting you know, perfect be the enemy of the good. We’re close here on getting something done, whether it’s a panacea or not, you know, we’ll see. It’s not, but who knows? But just to kill this thing by doing that, which they know will get shot down, just, I don’t know, has me scratching my head a little bit. I don’t know what they’re.

Moish Peltz [00:31:10]:
Well, it’s politics. I mean, that’s what it is. They’re, they’re saying, here is a political dog whistle that we can stand up and say, these people are corrupt. And they’re corrupt because they’re using, investing, running crypto companies, whatever it is, let’s go after them. And they’re trying to earn brownie points with Democratic voters by doing that. And I, I agree with you. It just, it didn’t work in the last election. It’s just, I don’t think it’s an issue that people really resonate with anymore.

Moish Peltz [00:31:38]:
Like, all right, he’s corrupt, his kids, like, who cares? Like that. That seemed to be the, the outcome in the last election. Now maybe it’s different now. Who knows, Maybe that’s the place where they can earn some points. It didn’t seem to work last time around. I’m not sure it’s really going to work out the way that you just described.

Kyle Lawrence [00:31:57]:
Yeah, so, you know, I don’t know, man. I think I was 4 years old when I put my hand on the stove and it burned. And my mom said, don’t ever do that again. And guess what? I haven’t done it again. Maybe the Senate Democrats need to learn the same lesson.

Moish Peltz [00:32:10]:
Well, that’s why they have six year terms, right?

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:14]:
Well, I’m 46 and I’m holding on strong. Well, that wraps it up for this edition of Block and Order. Very special thanks to producer Moishe. Look at him wearing all these hats. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe and follow us on all our different platforms. Where podcasts are available. If you have any topics you would like us to cover. If you have any questions, please drop a a comment down below.

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:36]:
We do read them all and take them all very seriously. Even the spam ones, which are obviously spam ones. We do get those.

Moish Peltz [00:32:42]:
Can you send money to my metamask?

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:45]:
One of them asked me to reveal my seed phrase a couple times and I kept saying no and he’s like, come on, I work with support. I was like no, appreciate you don’t. But thanks. Thanks but no thanks.

Moish Peltz [00:32:55]:
Yes, a little nicer next time maybe.

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:59]:
So while nothing that we say on Block and Order is meant to be legal and or financial advice, we do encourage everybody to not disclose your seed phrase to anybody. Nobody from Coinbase or any of the other exchanges will ever call you legitimately. If that happens, do not give them your seed phrase. That’s the end of our legal advice for the show. Everything is meant for informational purposes only, and the fact that Moishe and I may discuss specific assets is in no way, shape or form meant to be construed as an endorsement of said assets. Please consult your own representatives if you’re going to take the plunge down the rabbit hole. So, on behalf of Moishe Peltz, I’m Kyle Lawrence signing off.

Moish Peltz [00:33:36]:
See you next time.