1/ I have been in crypto a long time now and I have never been as excited about our prospects. With GENIUS and stables behind us, the sprint is now on to get market structure done.  The House opened the door by passing CLARITY with strong bipartisan support.  We wouldn’t be here without that great work.   In August 2025 though, all eyes turn to the Senate Banking Committee to build on CLARITY and give us a practical, workable and, most importantly, understandable, market structure framework.  So what does the Senate Banking’s discussion draft of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act (RFIA) look like?     A 🧵.

🚨 New Publication 🚨 I am pleased to share a new essay co-authored with my brilliant friend @ChrisOdinet : "𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒔: 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒊𝑪𝑨𝑹 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝑬𝑵𝑰𝑼𝑺 𝑨𝒄𝒕" Available on SSRN here:

1/ Earlier this week, we submitted a letter on Senate Banking's Market Structure RFI. We're proud to work with our friends @danrobinson, @JBSDC & @AlexanderGrieve at @Paradigm, as well as our co-signatories at @Chainlink, @ElectricCapital, @GalaxyHQ, @RibbitCapital & @TribeCap.

We sent a letter this week to the Senate Banking Committee, in response to their draft of crypto market structure legislation. On the critical question of which tokens should be regulated as securities, the Senate's draft takes a very different approach from the CLARITY Act that was already passed in the House. We think the Senate's approach—"ancillary assets"—is better for crypto. While both bills are an improvement on the Howey-based regime—which is notoriously difficult to apply and creates toxic perverse incentives for issuers—the Senate draft is significantly simpler, and avoids forcing decentralized tokens and protocols to fit themselves into an inflexible legislative framework. Instead, it protects against abuse with a simple exclusion—assets that come with legal rights to specified financial interests do not qualify as ancillary assets. As we explain in the letter, we think this is the cleanest test that protects decentralized crypto assets while preventing traditional securities issuers from improperly taking advantage of this framework.

Code is (still) not illegal

A very wise man (@ohaiom) once told me #CodeIsNotIllegal.

Some thoughts on peanut butter, watermelon, and the importance of financial privacy:

The Biden-Garland DOJ went after Roman for writing neutral code that criminals used for their own criminal purposes - true of literally every product from cars to phones. This case is a serious threat to innovation. Time to shut down the Biden-Garland war on crypto.

Excellent thread from @CampbellJAustin per usual. Bookmark this for the next time you need to explain to someone why crypto solves problems that exist in today’s tradfi and that the SEC’s jurisdiction is not limitless — using staking as the example.

0/ On the topic of debunking factually incorrect takes, this thread from our friend Amanda Fischer at Bitter (a more accurate name these days, unfortunately) Markets hit my radar today. This... is a mess.