00:00Senators from both parties blocked a landmark digital asset market structure bill in a
00:05procedural vote, sending crypto stocks tumbling. So this bill would have handed the CFTC the
00:11primary authority to regulate the digital assets industry, but it failed to advance with a vote of
00:1749 to 50, a major blow for crypto industry players. Here to discuss is Summer Mersinger,
00:23CEO of the Blockchain Association, a DC-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting a pro-innovation
00:30policy environment for the digital asset economy. And whether this piece of legislation was pro-innovation
00:37or not, right now it's not proceeding. Just on behalf of the industry, summarize your response to
00:44how or not how this is passed through Congress. Yeah. Legislation is rarely a linear process.
00:51You're always going to have two steps forward, you know, three steps back. That's not unusual at
00:56all. And so I don't see it as a major blow. You know, this isn't over. There was a procedural
01:03step taken so that this bill could potentially come back up on the floor. And, you know, we've
01:09got a lot of great things going on at the SEC and the CFTC. At the end of the day,
01:13we're going to get
01:14clarity for this industry. So this is why the market reaction is so interesting, the market reaction being
01:19to the downside, right? The Clarity Act would basically empower the CFTC. But if you read
01:25Bloomberg's reporting, what happens next is that it goes back into the hands of the regulators anyway,
01:31both the CFTC and the SEC to make rules. Like, why is that being perceived through the markets as a
01:37negative thing? Well, I think anytime you are dealing with just using the regulatory process versus
01:45having something in law, it's a little bit less durable. That's not to say that they can't come
01:53up with a framework. The SEC and the CFTC have already been working on some ways to do that. So
02:00I think we're going to get the framework that we need. But it is always difficult to, you know,
02:07recognize how does this last across future administrations. I do think that there are ways
02:12to do it. And I'm confident that they're headed in the right direction. We're just showing the
02:17members of your association, by the way, you know, Kraken, Coinbase, Circle, etc. Did they want the
02:23Clarity Act to pass? Yeah. Industry wanted it to pass. We still would like to see it pass. I don't
02:31think anyone's giving up yet. But again, we can't wait for this to happen. You know, digital asset users
02:39deserve some protections that were going to be in this bill that just are not in place right now yet.
02:45So using the regulatory efforts to do so, I think, is important. You know, we need to make sure that
02:50we don't have another FTX situation. You know, you never want Congress to legislate in a crisis.
02:56So we're going to work closely with the regulators, but also we're not giving up on Congress. Again,
03:03you know, these are setbacks. They're not unusual and something that, you know, I've seen many,
03:09many times in my many years on Capitol Hill. I appreciate that.
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