You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,
Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
Ken, it's great to have you on the show.
Thank you for joining me.
Marty, finally.
You've been kicking us around for a few weeks.
I'm glad we were apparently able to make it work.
As I was telling you, in the middle of a move, conference in the middle of that move,
it's been a hectic week, so I think I'm finally settling in.
As you can see, no bookshelf, but we have stacked books behind me.
Hopefully they will be on shelves soon.
No, there are definitely ways in the world to get credits on, you know, what do you call it?
We're good Catholics.
You know, when you pass, they'll go to heaven.
Come on.
Purgatory.
Thank you.
Well, moving is purgatory credit.
So I've done it many times in my life.
I feel for you.
Well, thank you.
But I'm really excited for this conversation and the event in a few weeks, the BPI event down in D.C., the summit.
We met about a month ago, two months ago now at this point in Austin during the takeover.
And Zach was very eager to introduce you to me considering the history of the show, topics we covered.
And I think I'm excited for this because I'm infinitely curious to learn how somebody with your pedigree and your resume got into Bitcoin is now working for the Bitcoin Policy Institute as the director of government affairs.
So for anybody listening who was unaware of Ken's resume, he did 20 years in government, culminating as deputy chief of operations at the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence.
You've worked overseas for the U.S. State Department.
And now you're advocating on behalf of Bitcoin on Capitol Hill.
So how does somebody with that resume go from statecraft to cypherpunk sort of ideals?
Yeah, no, so I, like everybody else, my Bitcoin journey is a little bit, everybody has a unique journey, right?
Mine actually started at CIA, believe it or not.
It was for purely professional reasons.
So I was an operations officer.
I spent most of my career overseas, as most of us do.
But my last two years, my last two tours at CIA, I was at the Center for Cyber Intelligence, which is CIA's cyber unit.
In my first job there, I was an operations chief for a group that worked on cyber threat issues.
And this was in 2018.
So you remember, this was when Lazarus Group and North Koreans figured out that stealing crypto was a lot easier than trying to rob banks.
This is when ransomware broke out as a serious problem, which preceded, you may remember, the Colonial Pipeline hack to shut down gasoline shipments to the East Coast.
So in 2018, and it's kind of funny, people say, did the CIA create Bitcoin?
I can tell you in 2018, when policymakers first had to confront it, it's used by actors as an issue.
Nobody was ready for it.
If they created it, it was tucked away and hidden in the basement.
Because the bench for people with crypto knowledge in general, digital assets, certainly Bitcoin was really, really, really shallow.
I remember we had two guys who kind of had background in it.
And then they became superstars because all of a sudden we were calling upon them to teach us about Bitcoin and digital assets in general.
um but yeah so i learned like everything else i learned about it because i had to because people
we cared about people we cared about were using it um but like everything else there was sort of
a mind virus to it um and i i admit you know i uh during covet i was in the uh i was in the alt
coin casino i was defying and meme coining and it was it was fun you know no i i i don't hold any
hate for the uh for the alt corners people that they want with their money um but i you know that
That was when, it was during COVID, I had been sort of buying it in 2018, but during COVID when I really started learning, because this is what everybody learned, right?
And, you know, for me, Bitcoin was what really attracted me to it.
And I was sort of inspired by, I mean, the COVID, the Kenny Trucker protest was something really important to me.
I saw it was being used.
but also sort of in my day job, you know, I had a pretty good understanding of how the government uses
financial tools as a weapon, freezing bank accounts, OFAC sanctions, that kind of thing.
And if you're on the, you know, on the giving end of that, that's great. Those are great tools to have
if you're the government. Not so great if you're on the other end of it. And, you know, watching these
Canadian truckers the first time, you know, you'll be able to, it's very easy to say, yeah, sanction the
Iranian, sanctioned North Korea, whatever.
You know, I'm not Iranian.
But when you see all of a sudden kidding truckers,
people you had some sympathy with being targets of financial,
you know, webization of the financial system,
you know, it struck a nerve,
like a really, really profound stinging shot
to my consciousness, my conscience about this issue.
So for me, for the first thing about Bitcoin
was permissionless transactions.
That's what got me into it.
And then, of course, you go from there.
And by the time I left the government in 2022, I was full bore.
I was attending meetups.
And that's when I started doing some advocacy stuff on Capitol Hill and messing around with David and Granite PPI doing some advocacy stuff.
But yeah, but it comes from my time at CIA.
And I think what might surprise some people is there are a lot of Bitcoiners, not just at CIA, but across the whole national security establishment.
and I think they're into it for the same reason
that most of your listeners are.
You see what's happening in the world.
You see the challenges we're facing.
You see how governments use financial tools
to weaponize them against opposition.
It's very natural that if you have that kind of insight
that you look for things to protect yourself
and Bitcoin is obvious.
I tell a funny story.
When I was first into it,
there was a cubicle, one of the guys,
and he had a bumper sticker that said,
we are all Satoshi.
This is in one of the offices.
I know what that means.
The guy's like, oh, you're a Bitcoiner?
Yeah, dude, me too, me too, me too.
And they come out, and like everything else,
when you're into it, you learn, you meet people.
I was in Europe at a dinner with the chief of station,
and he busts out his BlockFi card to pay for dinner.
And I was like, wait a minute.
He's like, no, no, I take it in Bitcoin, man.
I take my rewards at Bitcoin.
And there's two examples, but there are a lot of Bitcoiners
across the national security establishment,
which to me makes perfect sense.
I think a lot of listeners will find that surprising
but they're there and they're in it for the exact same reasons
as everybody else's.
I think the latter part there is what would be surprising
to a lot of people and I think that's
one of the reasons why I'm very excited to speak with you today
is to get better insight into
how the government, particularly
the intelligence apparatus, is approaching
Bitcoin and crypto more broadly, especially as it pertains to sort of civil liberties and the right
to transact permissionlessly. Because I think that's one thing as we look out at the industry
now, particularly what's going on with tornado cash and samurai wallet. Those cases, I think
there's a lot of questions that Bitcoiners have, particularly around the attempt by the government
to form fit laws that were written 50 years ago onto this new nation, unique asset in Bitcoin.
And I think I would imagine Bitcoin existing and people using it in a peer-to-peer distributed
fashion has to incite some uncomfortable questions of, hey, are we going to be able to continue
to leverage these financial tools the way we have over the last 50 years, maybe further
back than that? And are we simply just going to have to concede that Bitcoin is this unique animal
and reorient the way we approach enforcement of the laws? We've been saying it on this show.
And Rabinol recap for many years, I truly believe that Bitcoin, instead of trying to force it down
the road of form fitting into Bank Secrecy Act and a lot of the regulations and laws that have
stem from that. It's simply going to come down to law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies
having to do better sort of detective work. Because the big worry is that you throw the
baby out with the bathwater by trying to put the incumbent regulations on a system like Bitcoin.
Yeah, no, I think I think it's first it's important to realize that like the national
security establishment is not a monolith, right? It's big. It's as big as everyone thinks it is.
but it encompasses whether it's the intelligence community, CIA, FBI,
which, despite what people think, is culturally very different from CIA.
DOD, the Department of Defense, the vast sort of octopus that is the military.
So all these different units, these different pieces of it,
have different perspectives on what they look at.
And I think these are also institutions that have been around a long time.
I think the idea that being able to transact freely,
self-sovereignty is new, is a little bit of recency bias.
I mean, I think it, my view is that it all sort of,
things went bad for September 11th for a lot of reasons.
I'm from New York.
I took it very personally.
But if you think to the evolution of the surveillance state
and what's happened in government since 9-11,
you get a flavor for how things went off the rails
and how we can actually bring them back in a way that still,
you know, America was a perfectly fine country in 1999.
We survived perfectly well without all these tools of surveillance that were built in the aftermath of 9-11.
And again, I understand, I get what happened.
But I think the story of 9-11 and the evolution of not only surveillance state, but also global politics since 9-11,
sort of creates a sense among people, certainly younger people that maybe don't remember the pre-times,
that these institutions are inherently anti-basic ideas of sovereignty,
basic ideas of the ability to transact,
all the things that we care about in Bitcoin.
But I do think now with President Trump and the sort of cultural shift,
and I think that that's peaked during the Biden years.
I remember just last year, I did a couple panels at the Bitcoin's Policy Summit last year
before I was an employee, and we were really, it was like,
we were fighting on our backs, you know, just struggling, you know,
I keep trying to stay in the fight.
The tone shift in D.C. is remarkable.
And I think a lot, and that's not just about Bitcoin.
I think Bitcoin is part of the general tone shift away from sort of this sort of model, this Goliath of a surveillance state that I think, you know, reasonable thinking people would agree was abused over the past couple of years.
not just against people in digital access space,
but if you're at a school board meeting
and all of a sudden you're on FBI terrorist list
because you spoke out of the school board meeting,
that's problematic, right?
And I think we've arrived at a sea change.
Bitcoin's going to benefit from that.
And I think it's actually part of one of the bigger wins
in the sales behind that.
But I think the idea that sort of these institutions
are inherently, certainly the national security sector,
inherently against these things,
is, again, it reflects a little bit of recency bias.
Yeah, I think that's encouraging to hear.
It's like how, in your mind, what do you think needs to happen
within these four years to really cement that mindset
into the minds of not only yourself and Bitcoiners,
but the American people more broadly?
Yeah, I think on some level, I mean, it's going to be also
on these institutions to prove it.
Right. Like there was no like I'll give you an example.
Like the the letter that like these former CIA officers signed, you know, saying that Trump there was a you know, it was it was Russian propaganda.
Did no favors. And then, you know, I feel bad. I mean, I'll be honest.
Like I one of the people signed that letter. I had worked for him early in my career and knew him.
And he was very good to me. Right. So it was really sort of disappointing.
And I felt I didn't like seeing him on that letter.
And even though that wasn't CIA's letter, right, these are former officers who are entitled to speak their mind,
they wrote in such a way that gave the impression that it was sort of their official opinion.
And I think that things like that erode a lot of trust.
And I think the best thing that, for example, CIA, but the entire National Security establishment can do is just to deal fairly with people, speak the truth, and also don't abuse your powers.
I think a lot of what happened, and I have a lot of friends at FBI, and there are really good people at FBI, good Americans who honor their oaths to the Constitution.
But when you become a fixture in Washington, D.C., I have to say that I think CIA benefits from being across the river in Virginia in ways that FBI does not benefit being stuck on Pennsylvania Avenue right between Congress and the White House.
I think it's important these institutions
the leadership of these institutions
hold themselves accountable
for some of the things that have happened in the past
just do your job well
I think people understand that these institutions are important
but just do your job well
do it honestly
don't mess around
don't get cute
with people's rights
and I think all of a sudden you'll see a sea change
I think for example
we have Deputy Director of CIA
coming to our summit
on June 25th, you know, and I don't know exactly what he's going to say, but he's not coming to
talk about censorship or censoring, you know, OFAC compliant blocks. He's going to come and talk
about why Bitcoin is important for the future of the United States. And I think things like this,
gestures like this from the national security establishment to not just Bitcoin community,
but to the country will go a long way in reestablishing trust.
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cia created bitcoin and that when you hear when you hear that theory it's often
sort of uh it's sort of set up with the idea that like back in the early 2000s post 9-11
And the CIA was running war games at the Pentagon, looking at the debt, looking at the money that was going to need to be printed, especially considering what happened in 2008.
And they launched Bitcoin as a way to create a strategic advantage for the U.S. in the long run.
That was often that's one of the theories that's put out there.
If you are one of the ones like Catherine Austin Fitz, who believes that the CIA created Bitcoin.
But even if that's debunked, is that sort of how the CIA views Bitcoin as a strategic economic asset that could play into the massive benefit of American citizens in the United States overall?
I do. And I think it's important to remember that, you know, CIA is not a policy organization, right?
It's an intelligence organization. Its job is to to know the truth, right? And report that to policymakers.
I think a lot of what I think most people at CIA, if you if they're if they're involved with Bitcoin, it's because there are foreign actors using it to do things.
I mean, that's just the reality. Right. Like it's foreign actors use Bitcoin to move money, to do all sorts of things that we have to accept that.
You know, that that's part of having your freedom protocol. Everybody can use it.
But I think that there's a there's a larger and the natural security establishment is ahead of the rest.
certainly they're head of Congress on this,
the basic idea of the impossibility of the current monetary system
continuing as it has been since, we'll call it 1971,
but maybe possibly longer, is a threat to national security.
And what options are available that fit within sort of a core plateau
of American values to help get us out of the situation?
And this is why I think, I'll be honest with you, I haven't met a lot of gold bugs in CIA.
I'm sure they're there.
If not, but if you're looking for solutions in a world where dollar dominance slides,
our adversaries aren't holding treasuries like they used to.
Maybe the rest of the world has decided that they want to de-risk a little bit from their U.S. holdings
and don't want to have their national wealth stored in a bank in New York City.
what are the options?
And this is the kinds of things CIO will think about.
What are the options?
Where do these actors go?
Where do we go?
Bitcoin is a natural option.
It's digital.
It fits in the modern world.
You can self-custody it.
It's permissionless.
These are the sorts of things when you
game out and red team,
where will the world go?
Or for example, how do we compete with
China, which is building
their sort of parallel system in the world.
What are our options for building a backdrop,
building a set of options to deal with that?
Bitcoin's a natural option.
Yeah, I mean, I think when I think about it,
there's three things that really stand out.
Number one, how young Bitcoin is
and if it does truly compete with global currencies,
reserve assets, and we're still at the beginning stages of adoption. You have this incredible
upside asymmetric opportunity to get an early benefit from the adoption wave. Two, I think River
posted a report just last month or a few weeks ago, basically highlighting that American
hold the most Bitcoin per capita, the most businesses focused on Bitcoin are started in
the United States, we have the largest percentage of hash rate in any individual country here in the
United States. And so in the private sector, we have an incredible advantage already just in the
first 16 years. And then three, if you think about this playing out, adoption does continue at the
pace that it has over the first 16 years since the protocol launched. And it does become a
formidable reserve asset that competes, like does having a neutral reserve asset that cannot
be controlled by any individual country, company, group of people, does that change the game
theory of geopolitics in a positive way? Yeah, I think it does. And I think you have to look at
where, you know, what offers us competitive advantage, comfortable advantage, right? Do we
have, compared to China or Russia, do we have a comparable advantage in gold? No, I don't think
So we have no natural advantages in gold.
Do we have, does Bitcoin speak to our comparable advantages?
We do hope that, you know, as we look at where we can go,
are we going to look at options that speak to what I think still remain core U.S., core American principles, right?
Freedom, private property.
Bitcoin, in my mind, and I think in the mind of a lot of people in the national security sector,
Bitcoin hits all those points, right?
We have a natural advantage in it because of mining.
It is, on some level, it's a technical protocol in which we excel.
And, most importantly, it does not undermine U.S. values.
It actually strengthens U.S. values.
One of the reasons why I think China can never become a superpower, a Bitcoin superpower,
is because at the end of the day, Bitcoin undermines the authority of the Chinese Communist Party.
If you're a dictatorship, you don't want people having sovereign wealth.
Thus, Bitcoin is not a good option for China, which is why they're looking to build their alternate system in their cross-border payment systems and some of the other, in Belt and Road, some of the things that they're working on.
Conversely, for the United States, a protocol that encourages self-sovereignty, that allows people to control their wealth, permissionless, speaks to what I still think, I still hope there's a basic consensus in the United States that these are American values.
and Bitcoin understates all those.
Yeah.
I really hope those values still exist at some level.
Yeah.
I think so.
And I think you're seeing it.
So again, it's interesting, Marty.
I think back to last year,
talking about politics a little bit,
where we were in Capitol Hill
and sort of the environment about,
about, you know, the policy establishment still doesn't look, they're learning that
Bitcoin and crypto are different.
I think Trump's executive order went a long, long way in establishing that fact, that Bitcoin
is different than everything else.
Because people sort of get that conceptually now.
But the reception that we get on Capitol Hill among policymakers, there's no longer discussions
about is this just criminal money um can is it fake can it be stolen all the things you talk about
is it you know is it only for buying drugs all the sorts of discussions we had uh just not that long
ago a year ago about bitcoin now the questions we get are talking through what's good for national
security talk me talk to me why this will not undermine the u.s global monetary dominance
walk me through how this encourages other countries
not to join the Belt and Road or China's parallel systems
these are the kind of discussions we're having now
but the basic premise is they're not questioning
whether Bitcoin's going to exist or whether it should exist
they're asking about the kinds of things it can do
there's a huge, huge shift from where we were a year ago
where basic questions about will this thing be around in 10 years
and can it be stolen and what if Satoshi comes back
and hits reboot.
What happens?
Basic education, we're way past that now
where you have,
and it is largely a bipartisan consensus,
not entirely, but more and more.
The Bitcoin's here to stay
and they're asking really smart, educated questions
about how Bitcoin can address
these certain policy challenges
that no longer include
is it just for buying drugs on Silk Road,
which is a huge, huge policy shift
just in a matter of a couple of months.
US now has a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
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And with that in mind, I mean, as the director of government affairs at BPI, I think it's become pretty clear in the last two years, specifically leading up to last year's election, that a bunch of individuals in the industry sort of became privy to the fact that you may not care about political power, but political power cares about you.
And if you accept that, it makes sense to interact with politicians no matter, despite the fact that you may be an anarcho-capitalist that is in this for the cypherpunk ideals that Bitcoin was founded on.
But you can either ignore the reality of political power or engage with it.
And I think with that in mind, what have Bitcoiners been doing right?
What have they been doing wrong?
And how should the industry be interacting with the government as it tries to wrap its head around Bitcoin?
How it can impact the U.S. government or excuse me, the U.S. economy?
Yeah. So to speak to your earlier point.
So when you're like involved in Bitcoin clouds, BitDevs in D.C. area, it's a little bit different than the rest of the country because a lot of government people, a lot of military people.
Right.
So it was a lot easier when you're growing out with your Bitcoin friends.
A lot of people in this area have similar frames of reference.
I'll tell you where I had some great discussions, though, was in Austin at the Mining Summit.
Because these are people that don't live in D.C.
Most of them just want the federal government to leave them alone.
They had these kinds of discussions.
And my point to people like that is always Bitcoin is resistance money,
but you don't want to have to put that to the test.
I think people that use Bitcoin as resistance money would much rather be in a situation where Bitcoin is a savings tool for them.
It's a way to store wealth.
All the other reasons where people like us look at, you know, the advantages that we enjoy Bitcoin.
We don't have to worry about it being resistance money.
And if you neglect the political process, you could find yourself in a situation where Bitcoin becomes resistance money.
And I don't want to live in a country where it becomes resistance money.
It's a bad scene.
So I think people accept the basic fact that the government can't stop it.
But, you know, you really want to be positioned where you're putting yourself in legal jeopardy to be able to use Bitcoin.
When had you thought about this a couple of years ago, you could have participated in the process, called your congressman, gone to summits, all the things we're doing.
And instead of letting it get to that point, Bitcoin becomes a legal, accepted, widely traded, widely used tool in the United States.
so yeah my point is always
let's not test the resistance money thesis
in the United States, it plays that role in a lot of countries
and thank God it's there for those people
but really if we could
not get there in America, that'd be much better
to your other point
I think to your other
the second part of your question
what we're doing right
I think the industry
and I've had the chance to see this
in my new job
there are a lot of big brains
in the Bitcoin business a lot.
And I think that they are,
and I think there's been a growing,
and it has a lot to do with the fact
that DC is no longer hostile.
But I think there's been a growing acceptance
of leaders in this industry,
people, whether they're building protocols,
long-term holders, sort of Bitcoin OGs.
But the willingness of people like that
to actually talk to policymakers
is going a long, long way
because there's no longer
this sort of adversarial view of the government.
and the government has been adversarial.
I'm not discounting their experiences.
Last year, the government was an adversary.
It just was.
That's just the way it is.
That's changed.
And I've been impressed that industry leaders
have pivoted really quickly
and are actually taking on the challenge
of coming to D.C., meeting with members of Congress,
sitting through discussions.
That's great.
Again, some people were doing it,
but across the board,
I know to the people that the BPI supports
a lot of people that you know, you included
when they come here and have these discussions with policy people
it makes you part of the process
and all of a sudden through that you do find
that you actually have some natural allies
not just in the administration
but also on Capitol Hill
and that has been, I mean I think that showed
a certain maturity of the
Bitcoin culture
where industry leaders are willing to come here
and not just leaders but we have a day on the hill
on the second day of our summit
and we have great sign ups
people from all over the country coming. They want to go meet the representatives, talk to them about Bitcoin.
That goes a long, long way. And I think people are skeptical that if I call my congressman,
is he really going to care? But if you call a congressman and you say, we have a Bitcoin
meeting, if we meet every month and we get 50, 60 people, they start to care.
It starts to matter, right? When most campaigns in this country are decided by
a couple thousand votes. But that basic cultural shift in Bitcoiners
from plebs to industry, being able
and able and willing to engage with DC policymakers
has gone a long, long way.
Because at the end of the day,
even if they want to support you,
you have to help them get there.
They have to know that someone's got their back.
If they're going to step out and allege,
they need to know that there are supporters out there
that will have their back if there's
political disagreements about this.
So that, for me, has been a radical shift.
And it happened really, really quickly.
And I think that Bitcoin, the community in general, is definitely benefiting from that.
And it seems like it was very wise to start that initiative or to change mind on the approach to interacting with the government years ago.
Because, I mean, there are big battles.
I mentioned them earlier.
The Tornado Cash developers and the Samurai developers are going through some cases.
And I think we have the Blockchain Digital Clarity Act that is potentially going to be presented to the House.
And I believe over the weekend there was an amendment made to a bill that's already on the floor that sort of integrates a lot of the language of the Blockchain Clarity Act.
And at the same time you had the Secret Service last week tweeting out a conflation of centralized mixers and CoinJoin transactions which I said on Rabidol Recap is a red line that we need to defend that you can really be throwing people in jail for writing software
that allows people to use Bitcoin in a self-sovereign fashion without having control.
As the person who wrote that software, I think it's pretty clear that in both the Tornado Cash
and Samurai cases that the software they built made it so they never had control of funds.
And obviously, the DOJ under Biden went to FinCEN and asked, do you think these are money transmitters?
They said no.
They went forward with the case anyway.
And then fast forward to last week, you had the Secret Service come out and sort of doubling down on this.
So as it pertains to this idea of the ability of open source software developers to write code that allows Bitcoin or Bitcoiners to use the protocol in a way that preserves their privacy.
How do you see this playing out?
Yeah, so we're lucky.
Secret Service is a law enforcement entity.
They don't make laws.
They enforce laws.
so their guidance is
I think it was
it's kind of interesting to me how that got out
and why they put it out
at BPI our job is to
be there and refute these sorts of things
from our perspective
it's unclear what happened in the Secret Service
why that happened but
just because they say it doesn't make it law
doesn't make it the rule
the larger point though
or tornado cash and samurai
I mean, I think you're familiar with, as you referenced, the DOJ's just blatant decision to ignore guidance from FinCEN about the status of these protocols.
But I think at the end of the day, this is the remnants.
And my personal opinion, I'm confident that this is going to work itself out in the courts.
But this was the Biden administration wanting to set precedent.
They couldn't get Damla through.
Elizabeth Warren couldn't get her bills through Congress.
so they're looking to set precedent through the legal system,
which, frankly, is not the way it's supposed to work,
but happens all the time.
So we think a lot about that.
I think the BRCA, the Blockchain Regulatory Clarity Act,
Certainty Act, rather, I'm sorry,
and even now the big, beautiful bill,
which you referenced, Senator Lemus has added
essentially some components of BRCA into that bill.
We'll see.
We're working on that to see what happens
if we can get that through the process.
There's a very deliberate policy move right now
to make sure that using the legal system to set precedent
when law hasn't caught up is avoided.
And BRCA is an important part of that.
And if, you know, whatever, BRCA is just, you know,
it's some of its parts, right?
If we can get those components into the tax bill,
all the better, if not.
you know, come next Congress, well, come the fall, rather, we'll take up BRCA and work with
Congressman Amber and Congressman Torres to get that through the House and into the Senate.
Yeah, well, pulling on this thread, there's a lot of people in the industry think there's,
there needs to be a sense of urgency to get bills passed within this administration specifically.
Obviously, we had the executive order for the Strategic Reserve quickly after Trump was inaugurated.
We've had a sort of vocal, verbalized agreement
Or not even agreement
The Trump administration has said
We're ending Operation Chokepoint 2.0
We're not going to attack you
And many people are very excited about these developments
However, cognizant of the fact that
Due to the nature of politics in the United States
in 2025 and the 21st century, things tend to flip-flop a lot unless something is enshrined
into law.
We could just have a temporary sort of lull in the attacks on the industry here until
the next administration gets in, whether that's another Republican administration or a Democrat
administration that wants to be more combative with the industry.
You have to be determined.
But I think we're all in agreement that it would make sense just to not have to worry about who's going to be president or which party is going to be in control four years from now.
Yeah. And there's there's the reality of like working in D.C. is there's a billion priorities.
And, you know, our industry gets, I don't know, 0.5 percent of their brainpower.
Right. To to to pay attention to our priorities.
And this is why what we discussed earlier about how the industry's changed, that's why it's important.
Because the loudest voices really are the ones that get heard.
And loudest can be numbers of activists, loudest can be the most money contributed.
But the loudest voices get heard in D.C.
And this is what BPI's core mission is, right?
Is to stay in these people's faces and let them know we have a very active, committed group of Bitcoiners
who will either support you or oppose you,
depending on how you treat this industry.
And you're constantly fighting for attention.
And this is why things like the Bitcoin conference,
having Jade Advance, the Bitcoin conference, for example,
sends a message to the Republican Party, right?
This administration is pro-Bitcoin,
so you may or may not care about it,
but we need you on board.
And then the Bitcoin Policy Summit on June 25th.
These are really, really important
because this is how D.C. talks to itself,
through conferences, getting in front of people,
watching different policymakers looking for signals.
Oh, this senator was here.
Oh, the deputy director of CIA, he said this.
Maybe we care.
You know what I mean?
And so it's a flywheel effect of always being in people's faces
and not just talking to Treasury, right?
Bitcoin, I think one of the sort of the unfortunate events,
the unfortunate sort of inevitable,
was that Bitcoin, thinking about Bitcoin policy was regulated,
was a relegated, a better word, to FinCEN and Treasury and finance people.
So Bitcoin's a lot bigger than that.
And I think the fact now you have the intelligence community,
Department of Defense, I mean, there are some people, Marty,
at the DoD thinking really deeply and smartly about this,
what it means for global competition, what does mining mean,
how do we use mining for energy resilience.
There are people thinking, even the Department of Energy,
some of them will be at our conference,
thinking really deeply about everything this ecosystem has to offer
and how we can apply it to sort of a comprehensive national security strategy.
But at the end of the day, though, we remain competing for limited attention.
There's a lot going on.
We accept that we're not the only thing in town.
It's very important to us, but other people have other priorities.
It's always being in people's faces.
It's constantly letting people know that this community is out there.
And, again, we'll be your best friend or we'll be the biggest pain in the ass.
if you propose things that we think are right.
And at some point, it does come down to that, right?
Like, there are people we disagree with.
Sometimes it doesn't matter.
But sometimes it does, and the Bitcoin community needs to be up there ready to fight,
to fight for what they believe in, and to be part of the process.
And I think, you know, right now, we are front and center.
We have all the minimum.
Again, you have the vice president at a Bitcoin conference
talking about how this is a national priority.
You don't get much better than that when you're signaling to your party.
The challenge we have, of course, is we don't want Bitcoin to be, it's not a partisan issue, right?
I heard people say Bitcoin's not political.
I disagree.
I think it is political, but it's not partisan.
It's not the same thing.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm going to suit today because after this, I'm going to Capitol Hill to meet with an office of a Democrat senator who kind of wants to be supportive of this industry, right?
But, you know, they live in their own universe as well.
they don't want to be seen as
aligned with White House priorities
so our job is to give them space
and find a way to express that support
we have to be realistic
we can't expect
members of different parties to get up and align
it's just not the way DC works
you have to accept that
but we need to give people space
these members space who want to engage
and that starts
I'll be honest with you
there's no litmus test here
we have some really basic core principles
I think BRCA kind of outlines those.
But if you don't want to support the SBR, I mean, okay, that's fine.
Like there are big corners that don't like it, right?
We can, you know, that doesn't mean this industry has to be your enemy.
But we're looking for sort of, we do have a core set of principles that we're looking for people to abide by.
I think BRCA is a good example.
We need to give these sort of middle people space to support the industry.
Because that's how you get an enduring majority.
That's how you make sure next time the White House flips and eventually will flip.
Congress will flip.
Then we have friends that see Bitcoin as being sort of in their interest.
And also they've built relationships with the community.
They know who to talk to.
And, you know, we can we continue to get the treatment that we think that the industry deserves.
Does your pitch change depending on who you're speaking with?
I find personally when I'm pitching Bitcoin to people who are in finance or more right-leaning, it's hard money.
Only it would be $21 million.
Government can't mess with it.
And then left-leaning, just point to Alex Gladstein, the Human Rights Foundation.
If you're for activism and building up the global south and giving people financial freedom and access to tools that they don't have access to, this is a great protocol for that as well.
Yeah, 100%. And that's the beauty of this thing, right? If the most important thing on your agenda is energy resilience, well, I've got a great story for you, right? What Bitcoin money can do for you.
If you're the most important thing you care about are human rights or bringing disenfranchised people into the financial system, I've got a great story for you.
And then, of course, you know, you're sort of our traditional sort of, you know, like you said, you know, crypto anarchic libertarians.
Yeah, they're already our friends, right?
They get the story.
But you have to because, again, I mean, these members are human, right?
They have their own personal interests.
They can't be interested in everything.
You need to meet them where they are.
and if therein my concern is making sure
that people who don't have access to the banking system
have access to financial services,
yeah, well, that's what we'll talk about.
And it's not disingenuous about that, right?
Bitcoin does that, for example.
Human rights, my goal is to support human rights activists
around the world.
Bitcoin does that.
You can have an honest conversation
and let people know how Bitcoin can serve that purpose.
So, yeah, you have to meet them where they are.
Because, again, if you go to a progressive and you're like $20 million, no inflation, the government can't control it.
Like, eh, give me something else, right?
I'm not sure about that.
I don't care about that.
Let's talk about these other things.
Yeah, you meet people where they are.
That's the important thing.
And then the idea being, again, and I subscribe to this.
I think there's been a lot of discussion.
We were actually going back and forth on Twitter yesterday.
I don't think at the end of the day, I don't think there will be either institutions are going to capture Bitcoin or Bitcoin is going to capture institutions.
I really, really believe that.
And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Right.
I'm at BPI because I believe that.
And I think that Bitcoin and its incentives are powerful enough that if it is, it is, if it is granted entering these institutions, it will affect it will.
It will affect how they're how they're ultimately formed and built and function.
the alternative is
it's captured by institutions which we don't want
I really really believe that
and I
think that the best way to do that
again you have to get in the door
and so you speak to people where they are
but at the end of the day
at it's sort of base core level
for me that this is the ultimate thing
BPI is working on right either institutions capture
Bitcoin or Bitcoin captures institutions
and you know our perspective
is that Bitcoin will win
will capture institutions to the benefit of all of us.
But, you know, it's a battle.
And, you know, this is what we do here.
Well, let's paint that picture.
What does it look like when Bitcoin captures the institutions?
So even when the dog catches the car, it's kind of like,
just to tell you a story, but it's funny.
When I started here back in February,
we had all these plans about this is what we're going to do with BPI
and we're going to do the SBR.
and all of a sudden we got in and then Trump completely front ran us
and did it.
Good problem to have.
But I think right now, to answer your question,
I think Doge, if you look at what Doge did,
and we can quibble whether Doge was successful or not,
but certainly it did shine a spotlight on some of the,
how twisted and perverted the incentives the institutions have become.
The primary incentive is just to continue status quo
and do nothing.
There's been a gross reliance
across the government.
And I actually think that
the national security sector
is probably the most responsible
in this regard.
But certainly the incentives
across federal agencies
have been to continue business as usual,
not to challenge the status quo,
no concern with efficiency,
and just to continue spending money.
When all of a sudden you bring Bitcoin,
and Bitcoin is not just
you can't print it, right?
It brings more to it.
It brings a sense of responsibility.
It brings value back to dollars.
Because right now, a lot of federal agencies, I'll give you an example.
If you're in a federal agency, the fiscal years are October 1st through September, the end of September.
That's the government fiscal year.
Everybody gets it.
Come July, it's like, what's your spending rate?
Oh, you're spending too slow.
Spend, spend, spend, spend, spend.
There's no incentive not to spend.
The incentive is to spend and protect your budgets.
So you get the same next year or the requisite 5% increase that everybody wants.
You know, you bring you you you bring sort of the basic principles of Bitcoin into that discussion and it simply changes the way people view the world.
Right now, money is that there's no there's no real there's no real appreciation for people.
Money is just a way to in government.
It's about continuity, right?
It's about doing what you're doing, continuing your programs.
The results be damned when you bring different incentives into that,
where the money they spend is actually valued,
I think you'll get better outcomes.
I also think that there's a general,
this is across the Western world,
there's a general sort of drift toward statism,
sort of soft authoritarianism,
whether it's censorship or well-trod territory, right?
When you bring Bitcoin into discussion
and Bitcoin becomes part of a natural strategy,
those things are incompatible.
And I think that when people understand when they see the benefits Bitcoin does bring it makes these other things that they been interested in the past untenable
So again, I hear it a lot from Bitcoiners,
you know, Bitcoin has no role in the government.
Why are you doing this?
I go back to the fact that one side is going to win.
Either institutions are going to win or Bitcoin is going to win.
But we do fundamentally on some level need institutions to make the country run.
We want those institutions to be properly incentivized.
I think Bitcoin does that.
Yeah, and I don't know if it's a brain-dead theory or a pipe dream,
but if somebody who prefers small government, small federal government,
allocate everything to the states, let states' rights lead the way,
when it comes to the topic of something like a strategic Bitcoin reserve
and how to acquire it via a mechanism like BitBonds,
That excites me because to your point about individual agency budgets and just the unfettered access to increasing amounts of money.
Endless.
I think there could be a way to get smaller government, but it has to be via Bitcoin where you take care of the debt problem over the long term.
will take decades to do it, but ultimately the government grows at the rate that it is because
of the debt problem itself to a certain extent. And if you really truly care about manifesting a
smaller government, the best way to do that is to help them take care of their debt problem
so that they don't, they're not forced to expand at the rate that they have been
in recent decades. And that's something that really excites me. And then you mentioned
Department of Defense, Department of Energy, thinking about mining and its implications.
And we've already seen it in Texas, Tennessee, many states like the mining industry has become
critical parts of their energy infrastructure has allowed them to expand capacity and made
them more individually resilient as states and grid systems.
And if you begin implementing it in all these different ways, that's the beauty of it, too.
It's so multifaceted.
It can be plugged into many different areas of the economy that you can, again, might be a pipe dream, but I'm an idealist, optimistic person, I guess.
And when you think when you look at the problems and think of the ways to solve them, like Bitcoin, to me, is honestly one of the only ways to actually solve these problems in the long term.
Yeah. And for me, people also ask me, like, was it done for you?
I mean, at the end of the day, for me, Bitcoin has made it easy not to be cynical, especially when you work in government, especially with my line of work.
I mean, it's easy to become cynical because things are just constantly breaking.
But when you do see something that offers a path, maybe it's a bit of a return to normal.
It can't help, but it can't help.
If you have any sort of optimism inside you, it can't help but erase cynicism.
I think one of the goofiest things early Bitcoiners, like save the money, save the world, that sounds really goofy when you first get into Bitcoin.
What does that mean?
But the longer you're into it, it starts to make sense.
Because again, you see all the destructive incentives that the basement has allowed to fester in Washington, D.C.
Again, whatever, I feel about Doge, but Doge showed some of it, and there's a lot more of it.
when you find something, call it a tool,
that can reverse that rot,
can reincentivize people to be productive
with both their time and their resources,
how do you not be optimistic?
This for me is, I think in 10 years,
Bitcoin's either at a million dollars or it's zero dollars.
It can't not do with one or the other,
my personal opinion, either a million or zero,
or higher and higher and higher.
because of all the things Bitcoiners know.
But when you do get a basic consensus among policy people,
and not just policy people, but also sort of the body politic,
when you get a basic consensus about something that people think is regenerative,
they're going to flock to it.
Yeah, I say one of the controversial things I've told my Bitcoin friends,
like the Bitcoiner of 2024, Gary Ford, was Larry Fink.
The guy, regardless of what you thought of where he was before,
whether it's disingenuous or not
he did some serious thinking
and he changed and he opened the door for
normies to get into this line of work
and he you know when I hear him
talk about Bitcoin whether it's fake or not
but he gets it he's clearly done some big
thinking and it's not easy for a guy to have to change
his mind do it publicly still waiting on
Jamie Dimon
but I think that when you see someone like Larry
Fink literally a pillow of the financial system
flip and not just flip
okay fine we'll sell it because we can make money off of it
but like no we're going to allocate to this because we believe in its properties and we believe in what it offers
not just our company but the financial system that's a huge huge shift and I think people like my father
was a Wall Street guy grew up in New York my father was a Wall Street guy
and you know he's 83 years old and I try to kind of walk him through this and he gets the basic
incentives but when Larry Fink's swath switched you know I heard it from him like oh my god
had that happen, I told you.
It's those, and the good thing,
I think the community is generally speaking,
opening toward people, you know,
people, you know, penance, right?
You oppose it, now you like it.
And at one point, we all opposed it, right?
If you asked me 10 years ago,
would you buy Bitcoin?
Like, you're talking about,
it's fake internet money.
You know, the community has been,
is welcoming to, you know,
to converts and to penance.
but we see these major, major shifts
and I think Larry Fink was a pivotal shift
just like I think when you have the
deputy director of CIA coming to talk to a Bitcoin conference about Bitcoin policy
that's a huge shift, right? These send signals to the world
that there are important parts of the US establishment
institutions that see this for what it is and they're adopting it
and they're thinking about it and they see its power
and we better too because
why else would these institutions
be doing that? Would BlackRock really
sink that much cash, that much
capital, that much credibility
into something they didn't believe in just for money? I don't think so.
Would Michael Ellis
spend half his day going to a Bitcoin policy summit
because he just thought
it was cool and trendy and the White House liked it?
I don't think so.
It's almost
as if everybody finally
found the 2017
meme from
Bitstein, Bitcoin, the only winning move
is to play.
Especially if you think it's that binary.
Marty, you're a husband and a parent.
You know it's not often you get to be right, so I'd save for it.
I savor it.
I completely agree.
I think it's completely binary.
And I
wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't
believe that the binary outcome
was going to be the successful one.
And if that's true, it's going to be massive, not only for us individually as Bitcoiners, but for society at large.
And it is really exciting.
And I've been extremely pleasantly surprised with, pleasantly over surprised with the work that BPI has done and the effect that it has had on policy discussions.
I mean, you're mentioning J.D. Vance and his appearance at the conference being very humble.
I mean, he mentioned Bitcoin Policy Institute.
That was cool.
That's one thing I'm curious, and I won't pretend to be some sort of DC sleuth that's very privy to the inner workings of all these different think tanks and their influence on policy.
But you hear them, the Brookings Institute, Rand, Hoover, Cato, you hear a lot.
And behind the scenes, they basically get lambasted and made fun of as just academic people who put things out there and never actually change things, at least for the most part.
Maybe every once in a while they do have some influence that gets implemented into policy.
but it seems like BPI to me has been outpunching its weight class as an early institution.
And obviously you're biased as the director of government affairs,
but as somebody who's been engrossed in DC culture for many decades,
is that a correct characterization in your mind?
I mean, it helps when you're like, when you're shilling a good product, right?
Like that, that does help.
No, yeah, it does.
And I think, you know, there's some of these institutions like you've been to D.C., like you drive down K Street, you've got these massive buildings, you know, full of hundreds of people.
You mentioned Brookings, our heritage, you know, full of former generals and former deputy secretaries of this and that sort of.
But, you know, but I think a lot of what BPI's appeal has been a lot of these institutions, these sort of stalwarts of the D.C. policy scene.
You know, they're they've been sort of they're not challenging any core narratives.
Yes, Brookings is a little bit left and Heritage is a little bit right.
And they have different opinions about health care.
They have different opinions about tax policy.
Right.
But all sort of within that sort of traditional Overton window of what has been sort of accepted and polite cocktail company in Washington for the past how many years?
You know, DPI is a little different.
You know, there's, what are we, 11, 12 employees now?
You know, I think part of it is we're just telling a different story.
and we're lucky and I joke it was shilling a good product
but when people think back to
and everybody has a story about when they first started Bitcoin
it's actually cool when you talk to staffers and they tell you
no, some of my friends told me I should have bought it back in 2018
and I didn't, I'm stupid
but our story is completely different
I don't know that BPI would be as successful as it has been
five years ago because
the culture just wasn't ready for it
Right. There was there was no talk like you hear now.
And on basic regular trade fire, right? Fiat debasement.
That's a word you never heard five years ago.
I follow a lot of financial people on Twitter. I think there's some smart people out there.
You never heard about, you know, fiat debasement. It's never talked about.
Maybe because, you know, we weren't forced to confront it as a sort of political culture that we are now.
So I think BPI definitely benefits from a change in the zeitgeist about where people see the fiscal situation is.
And clearly they look for options, right?
Okay, we're in deep shit here.
What do we do?
What's an option?
No, well, there's this thing called Bitcoin that these people are talking about.
Let's hear them out and listen to them.
And the message resonates.
So I do think there's timing.
Like everything else in the world, good timing helps.
Shilling a good product helps.
But I think we hit it at the right time with the right message as a solution to some of what I think there is nothing else in D.C.
There's a consensus that that we can't continue the same path.
Does everybody believe that Bitcoin is an option?
No.
To a lot of people?
Yeah.
And, you know, our job is to make that, you know, that second group bigger and bigger and bigger.
Yeah.
And apologies, it looks like my camera and mic switch.
So the audio sounds a bit different. But on that note, what can we expect in 16 days of the Policy Institute?
What would you like to get out of this great gathering in D.C. this year?
So I think, you know, we did we did BFA back in March and that was sort of to mark the new administration.
That was to mark the establishment in the SBR.
I think now we're the idea is to set now that we've got these basic wins.
And I think we've sort of the sort of the turn to our Bitcoin in D.C., at least temporarily, has been solidified.
You know, the idea is to set the policy agenda for the next for the next this year into the next year for the end of this Congress.
And a lot of our focus is going to be on national security.
We have a couple of panels of people, Michael Ellis, I've mentioned before, but some others will talk about about Bitcoin and changing global order, which is you read like Matt Bynes, you know, our executive director writes prolifically about that.
he'll be on stage a lot
as well I
talking to people
about this sort of thing
the idea
we want to let
we want to
we want to give
part of being a think tank
is to put policies
out there right
we want to give DC
the agenda
for Bitcoin future
and that's what we're
going to do on June 25th
well
Ken thank you
for all that you do
and for joining me
for this conversation
it was fascinating
yeah it was great
again even though
hand up
I've been highly skeptical
of the CIA
on the show for many years.
I've never had anybody who's worked for the CIA on,
so thank you for coming on.
And maybe over some drinks,
we can talk about some of my deeper theories on the CIA.
But I think as it pertains to Bitcoin policy,
I think that's the beauty of it, as we discussed.
It's binary.
The only winning move is to play.
And you may not care about political power,
but political power cares about you.
And I think it's incredibly important that we have
people like yourself in positions advocating for Bitcoin as a protocol, developers as individuals
building on the protocol, and really putting the case forward for Bitcoin as a economic and
geopolitical strategic asset that Americans need to dominate. And as an American citizen,
and somebody cares deeply about Bitcoin and the future of America as an individual who has
a small but growing family with young children uh i think this is important work that for a long time
in my bitcoin career uh i'd say like the first five or six years uh you know i was
i was one of those people said don't even talk to the government it's not worth it they hate you
and maybe they did but i'll leave i'll leave with one thought i tell people this all the time
don't underestimate your voice
every time I talk I leave them with this thought
call your congressman
if you have a Bitcoin meetup call your member of congress
and invite them to come
they may send a staff member
and then they'll come once or twice
they may show it themselves
don't be afraid to engage, be polite
tell them you're a Bitcoiner
tell them you want them to support legislation that's pro-Bitcoin
and you'd be surprised if they get enough phone calls
they start sending people to your events
and they start listening
so I can't emphasize enough the importance of doing that
It seems like you're sort of yelling at the clouds.
Believe me, you know, enough voices, keep those phones ringing.
It's hard to listen.
So if people have any questions about who the representatives are or how to find them,
feel free to reach out to BPI.
We're happy to help you with that.
But I really, really encourage people to do that.
It's very, very important.
And actually, at the end of the day, if people do it enough, it actually does work.
Yeah, and as it pertains to the summit, right,
if you're in the industry and you're interested in going,
you should still reach out there's still time correct there's still time yes um
You want to feel free to hit me up on Twitter.
I'm at Bayman11771.
Feel free to hit me up on Twitter.
Or you can visit the summit website.
Marty can post that in the notes.
It is btcpolicysummit.org.
Awesome.
We will link to that, Ken.
Good luck on the hill today.
Thanks, Marty.
You look good.
You look confident.
I think it's going to be a good conversation.
I'm going to change some minds.
And I'll see you in D.C. in a few weeks.
Appreciate you.
You know it.
All right.
Have a good one.
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