Last July, we were just talking about
this. You actually sold out of some something
your holding, citing that regulatory uncertainty, given the widening
crackdown, would to some present an even bigger existential threat at the moment.
What kind of forms? The bull case for adding to that
position now for you? Yeah.
What we're seeing is that the judicial and legislative branches of our
government, you know, separation of powers are starting to weigh in on this
topic. And the regulator, the S.E.C., is part
of the more part of the executive branch appointed by the president.
And we're as we're seeing cases go through court in the judicial system.
The S.E.C., I mean, the the judicial system is questioning the S.E.C.
as decisions here. And so we think this is a good thing.
We actually think this is going to be in the the court sent in in legislation for
perhaps years. And what has happened in the meantime,
we have by now and so under increasing regulatory scrutiny for
more criminal activities and fraud being one of them.
And and therefore, we have the competition to Coinbase, really.
We think it's disappearing. And so that's a good thing longer term
for Coinbase. And Kathy, you're still maintaining your
confidence across crypto more broadly. Are you still confident in that one
million dollar target for bitcoins? For Bitcoin?
Yes. Actually, the more uncertainty and
volatility there is in the global economies, the more our confidence
increases in Bitcoin. And one of the reasons is we've just
been through an inflationary scare. We think it was very much supply chain
driven and and and Bitcoin was is a hedge against inflation.
We also believe now that the bigger risk is deflation, not inflation.
And why would Bitcoin do well in that circumstance?
It would do well because it's an antidote to counterparty risk in the
traditional financial system. On the Bitcoin block chain, everything
is transparent and maybe sue but suit anonymous.
But we can see all the transactions, all of the activity,
and therefore we have a much better understanding of how little counterparty
risk there is in the block chain world. Kathy?
So what you're saying is that you expect those accusations on finance to actually
prevail if you're expecting Coinbase to actually benefit from this?
And wouldn't that lead to actually more regulatory crackdown on Coinbase if it's
actually become a bigger player even in this industry?
It was interesting to see the S.E.C. suit finance on one day and then the
next day Coinbase and they were trying to put them in the same bucket.
They are not at all in the same bucket. We have two former officials of finance
U.S. coming forward.
And actually we now understand that they have been working with regulators and
the government generally to help the government understand how finance U.S.
was not separate and distinct from Finance International and how much
S.E.C. controlled finance U.S.
and how much of finance's data was in China and how much commingling of funds
there were. Coinbase is not accused of any of this.
And it is unfortunate that the S.E.C. took action against Coinbase the day
after by an answer and then seemed to muddy.
Chairman Gensler, as he was on one of the major news channels, was trying to
implicate Coinbase in the same way that he was implicating finance.
No, they're they're very different. There are questions about what the
security and about staking. Those are the two questions that going
bases is facing and finance is facing. But most of the other questions around
finance have nothing to do with this.
