hi this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado always warm always sunny sometimes colorado so we have ourselves a bit of a standoff in washington dc you have two amendments to this leviathan of an infrastructure bill you have the warner portman cinema amendment and the toomey widen loomis amendment so yesterday when loomis and friends posted an amendment it seems like we were in a position where this infrastructure bill would do economic harm and other things but at the very least it would not necessarily create an untenable situation for the cryptocurrency business because it carved out an exemption for reporting to software developers validators and miners in a way that we could continue as an industry relatively business as normal obviously where we need to pay taxes we pay taxes today a new amendment just came out of damn nowhere from portman and company and apparently this amendment says well we'll do that for mining but not for anything else so i have absolutely no idea what compliance looks like in this scenario i'll have to get some legal memos and clarity but let's be clear here if this leviathan of an infrastructure bill is to pass we as an industry go from analogies and trying to figure things out to negative clarity where there may be a burden to do something but it's not possible to do the thing that's being asked for if you're running a stake pool and someone delegates to you nothing in the protocol has any notion of kyc there so how does a stake pool operator then report to the irs on some form who that person delegating to them is it's a pseudonymous transaction it's just not in the protocol unless the suggestion is that if you're a minor in a proof of work system contributing hash rate with a asic at home to a mining pool that's fine and okay no registration but in a proof-of-stake system 100 of the users of the system have to be kyc before they can delegate this is the madness i don't understand what it means for wallet software i don't understand what it means for any defy application look at everything in ethereum all the d5 there unit swap chain link all of these things any of those components may at some inverting point or people who work on them have a kyc component for the users if you're a chain link user you may have a kyc component if you are a unit swap user there there might be some reporting requirement now because of this amendment and inconceivably to me apparently the white house thinks this is a better idea than the other amendment that came out yesterday that did not create this anti-clarity this is not going to kill our industry but what it will do is it will offshore big chunks of the cryptocurrency industry if these types of things come to other countries if the united states of america wants to bow out of continuing to be the world financial superpower and letting that go to other countries like china europe and the developing world i guess that's the prerogative of the current lawmakers but this in no way will slow down the crypto revolution or accomplish their end goal of better tax compliance or whatever the hell they're actually saying it's going to do rather all it does is it hurts american entrepreneurs trying to compete in a global marketplace for no reason we didn't start this fight we didn't pick this fight no one here in our industry did anything to provoke an attack of this magnitude just lawmakers thought it was clever well we need to pay for this leviathan of a bill it's a trillion dollars so let's just go pick on those cryptocurrency guys they probably don't have a very strong lobby relative to the pharmaceutical industry relative to the banking industry well you know what we have a long [ __ ] memory we really do and we will hold the politicians who vote for these things accountable we're not going to forget the whole point of the blockchain industry is we write everything down it's immutable it's time stamped it's auditable and that includes votes and i'm very tired of people brutalizing and attacking our industry that's creating jobs and creating value and revolutionizing things for the sake because we don't have a strong enough lobby to protect ourselves and this is just another in a long line of counterproductive things that comes down the pipe that just hurts everybody here enhance those jobs hands that economic output and the future of finance to other countries people often ask me why are we so invested in africa in the developing world and south america and eastern europe and southeast asia because at least there the governments are willing to work with us and pass legislation that benefits job creation and embraces our industry at least there the same for the state of wyoming then we see this monstrosity being proposed today and backed up by a white house that asserts it's environmentally friendly yet backs the single dirtiest most energy consuming industry within our industry the mining industry over the guys who use no energy the green validators why because they have no [ __ ] clue what they're doing zero zilch none they're just idiot children barking into the wind claiming that they're doing something productive while they harm the very entrepreneurs that they should be embracing to revolutionize and reform the government to get us out of all these things i will remind you our deficit is huge our debt's in the tens of trillions of dollars there's zero plan to pay back any of the debt that we have there's zero plan to ever have a balanced budget again how does our gdp grow us out of this when inflation is now sitting at six percent if not more when historically was that three percent how do you plan for retirement when inflation's going to get to a point where it grows faster than the roi of stocks historically we've had seven to nine percent you need to invent new industries or embrace new industries if you're going to do this and right here right now there is a bill in congress working its way through that has every intention to catastrophically damage and create in ambiguity in our industry for no other reason than just because can anyone please explain this to me honestly the vast majority of money laundering and attacks avoidance is done with cash that's going to remain true for a long time not our industry and how do all of these new millionaires and billionaires our industries created evade taxes please explain that to me because when they go and buy their yachts and their private jets and their million dollar watches and their big houses don't you think that leaves a legacy world fingerprint that any decent auditor can track and be able to put all the dots together and figure out all you're going to do is just go hurt small stake pool operators who are trying to build small businesses and tell them to do something they have no technology to be able to do or people who are open source contributors to software for the first time ever open source software now has regulatory components to it that are impossible to comply with how do i know when i write software and release it who's using it when there's there's no financial relationship there's no commercial relationship there's no custodial relationship but apparently we might have a reporting requirement now who knows i don't know the text is so goddamn ambiguous that some regulators somewhere might just decide that we do because they don't like us why not that is literally what is happening here and there was a carved out exemption yesterday that had a high probability of passing and now that carved out exemption has been modified in a way that's bizarre counterproductive and is antithetical to everything every party that's apparently on it has to say and i'm either have to say they're cynical or incompetent or malicious i don't know i honestly don't know you know it's so remarkable that after all the abuse and the trauma and just the sick twisted [ __ ] up behavior that washington dc has inflicted upon the american people for so long that i could actually be surprised by something and today i am i'm surprised i didn't think that they would be so crazy to go down this particular road and cause this kind of damage and you know what every person who votes for it should lose their jobs every single one the authors of this amendment have clearly demonstrated they're either malicious or incompetent and the people who vote for it have demonstrated the same thing and i cannot wait for reform to come at the ballot box and reform to come with the way we vote reform to come with the way we elect people and term limits because these people have violated the public trust again and again and again and now they're hurting our industry tomorrow it'll be another industry we're running out of money we're running out of time as a nation the only way we're going to get out of this is by embracing the future cryptocurrencies aren't the only component there's emerging things like metamaterials and nanotechnology and synthetic biology and so forth but if this is how we treat our nascent emerging entrepreneurs why would anybody want to start a company here if this is how we punish those who create jobs and open up economic opportunity for our country why in god's name would you want to come here to start a business go to switzerland go to leechenstein go to england go to germany hell go to cape town south africa it's actually better there now if this monstrosity passes and it's just the beginning it seems it's just going to keep going it's just going to keep continuing you have bickering between the cftc and the sec i have absolutely no clue what's going on anymore on the us regulatory side i hear a one day and b the other day everybody seems to be contradicting each other i have absolutely no clue who's in charge anymore or who makes policy anymore or what's coming down the pipe anymore all i know is that every time we try to get somewhere and make some real progress on something pay your taxes okay i do sure i'm okay with that let's do it then all of a sudden well we're okay with proof of work but [ __ ] proof of stake and those software developers let's make their life hard now we have to go to supreme court i guess that's where we go with this type of stuff is this garbage passes immediately a lawsuit immediately something who knows maybe it's an unenforced regulation that might be where we're at actually who knows we might wake up one day and say well you know there's this thing on the books but nobody's going to enforce it prosecutorial discretion it's like our industry in the united states in colorado we have marijuana business the state of colorado says it's legal federal government says you're a world's worst criminal technically the federal government has mechanisms and methods to come in and arrest the growers doesn't do it and they say we're not going to enforce it but sometimes they do is there any rhyme or reason behind it no and they're a lawful legitimate business taxed operating with licenses that can't get bank accounts they're on bank why because well the federal government says something and the standards are different everywhere else cbd is legal here it's not legal there hemp is legal here it's not legal there why do this to our people and our society and have this [ __ ] madness about commercial regulation and yet again we're here yet again we're here at what point do we rise up and say we've had enough and vote these [ __ ] out and change the way that things work i'm entirely convinced that the federal government is not going to change itself at this point we need a constitutional convention people we honestly do and it doesn't take too much two-thirds of the states every single person don't go lobby your congress they're they're either tone-deaf or corrupt or so [ __ ] nepotistic at this point that they don't care about any of us in any capacity they think we're stupid so ignore them transcend them let's go rewrite the constitution and change this forever get rid of gerrymandering and change the way we do elections and put in term limits and balance budget amendments change the way the executive branch works change the checks and balances in the system because the public trust is over our job as citizens is to bail the [ __ ] government out of their damn incompetence over the fact that they've spent too much for too long we went from year two thousand a four trillion dollar debt to debt and dozens of trillions and the only way we can do that is through entrepreneurship and embracing and building new industries and if they go and start attacking the new industries america's dead it's over pack up shop will be one of the poorest countries in the world a collapsed empire in 20 years or 30 years that's just a fact it's just a fact and this right here is a shot we should all hear this is the bunker hill telling you clearly and concisely this senate in this congress and this white house just simply does not care and wants to destroy this country if this passes if this amendment passes so take notice of it every single person who votes for it donate money to the person primarying them and vote against them in the election remember the name run against them yourself if you think you have a shot at winning hell i might even back you if you happen to be in my backyard and then for the rest of this we have to fundamentally change the dna of the country and so we can get rid of this entire mechanism of governance and our nascent industries aren't destroyed and if we don't do it fast enough they will be and when they are guess what happens all of the good companies here they get bought out and acquired by foreign entities and all the jobs leave and we wake up and we're a proxy state of someone else and we fall into a depression and that massive national debt well guess what 10 percent interest on it now and we have to keep printing money to service things so 15 inflation 20 inflation 30 inflation can't happen here well it happened elsewhere why are we immune to the laws of monetary physics oh because of modern monetary theory wake up honestly wake up don't pass laws where no one knows how to comply with them and even the people in enforcement don't know how to use enforcement properly for them don't attack nissan industries that are here to help and innovate and grow and build things and don't believe that we are just going to roll over and [ __ ] take it understand that people remember these things this is our industry this is my life every day i wake up and i get reports on prism and cardano and all the other products and things we do and every other person in this industry is the same they wake up and they get reports the same way this is their life's work millions of people and what you're doing is pissing in the pool for all those people you think we're all just gonna forget about it you think we're all just gonna roll over and die like obedient dogs waiting to be butchered no absolutely not we're gonna vote people out we're gonna donate money to people who are opposing this we're going to push for legislation every single day and it might take five years and 10 years and 15 years but we're not going to let this go and the millions of people that happen to believe in the products that we build will feel the same way because you're taking money out of their pockets you're taking opportunities away from them you're taking jobs away from them you're hurting an industry they believe in when people tattoo logos on their bodies when people volunteer day and day again and again and again they're real passionate they're a tireless minority and you know what one day they'll be the majority of the country this doesn't disrupt anything on cardano and us we operate mostly africa and other places now you guys are starting to get it the cynicism that i've had for a long time will always persevere and survive but what it does mean is i hire less people in wyoming what it does mean is i hire less people in colorado i do less software development here we don't pursue relationships with u.s companies we downsize things here that's what that means that's what that means the tax compliance will have no difference because we pay our taxes our tax rate is unchanged here the amount we give to the irs will be identical brought a u.s regulated company in that respect so well nothing has been gained but jobs have been destroyed and it'll be the same for every other member of our industry as more and more of this garbage gets passed you know i saw the other day this timeline of the great empires of the world from 2000 bc to today and it had the assyrians and the egyptians and the minoans and the greek empire and the roman empire it shows how long they lasted and the strength and power of the empire was proportional to its size on the chart and so you go through and scroll through the whole thing and you see china and egypt and rome big things long part of the scroll get to america just the last 200 years and went from something not so big to something larger and the question is will that continue to grow or will it contract the only reason you get the right to be on the scroll is you have to lead with wisdom and you have to listen to people and embrace people you have to actually engage with people and understand where the future is going we are currently led by people in their 70s 80s and some in their 90s who have been around for decades who don't understand how the internet works how cell phones work who wish the world worked the way it did when they were kids riding their bicycles in the 1950s and 60s when they were watching on black and white television the moon landing it doesn't work that way anymore and the only way we get to stay on the scroll and stay wide on that scroll is if we're willing to accept that the next generation has something to say to and listen to them and embrace the good ideas the last generation has some wisdom some caution some foresight they have a lot to say too and that's the point of a conversation and a dialogue right now we're being lectured and told how the world is going to work meanwhile it doesn't work that way anymore it doesn't move this way anymore it's changing rapidly we all feel it we all see it and the price of lumber we all feel it we all see it in the way that when we say things from the bully pulpit nobody has any respect for it before when i was a kid regardless of your political party if somebody said i'm invited to go to the white house and be in the oval office with the president there was a moment of awe about that nowadays depending on your political affiliation most people half or more will say how dare you that's a bad idea don't do that that's a crooked and corrupt institution and that's the head of state the same for the capital the same for all of our government institutions did anybody take a moment to take a step back and ask yourself why do people feel this way because trust has been violated we've been repeatedly lied to we've been talked down no one is listening and entrepreneurs are trying to do things to make things better whether it be spacex trying to take us to mars compensating for the bureaucracy of nasa or a dozen others that are trying to do things that are compensating for the fact that things aren't working as the way they should and lo and behold now we're here at this precipice so all i can ask each and every one of you listening to do is watch and let's see what happens let's see if it's loomis or portman and we'll have our answer there about what government we shall have and we'll also have our answer about what we should do moving forward if we lose this battle here it's going to be a slow methodical decline and march towards oblivion for the cryptocurrency industry in the united states the industry cannot survive with ambiguity the industry cannot survive being regulated out of existence or persecuted we can't be the convenient place to go and find 28 billion dollars when you want to go and buy things you can't afford it's almost like we're the uncle whose children go and visit because we're deaf and blind and so then they go to steal money out of the wallet so they can buy pot that's literally what how we're being treated here as a piggy bank we created all this wealth and now the us government wants to go and grab it they have every right to get their tax revenue but they don't have the right to destroy our businesses and complicate our industry for the sake of doing it and not at least owe us an a call so let's see what happens until next time thank you for listening for the rest of the world welcome to american politics and i firmly believe that our best days are ahead of us i firmly believe that the industry as a whole will survive i'm just deeply sad that maybe the capital of the industry won't be wyoming won't be the united states of america it might be somewhere else but you know what it's ours to lose and by doing things like this chips away at the chance of it being here as an american entrepreneur i always like the idea of things being my backyard i'd imagine you'd like it to be in yours regardless i'm here to change the systems of the world that's the point of our company for everyone everywhere not just americans and this won't change the work we do in ethiopia this won't change what we do in africa this won't change the way we write code or how we think about things but it sure as hell does complicate things for us at home and we just have to work our way through it and figure it out night
