Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 134 – Can crypto companies get bank accounts?

Can crypto companies get bank accounts? – Crypto Critics' Corner

Bennett and Cas discuss the evolving banking situation in the cryptocurrency industry, and how hard it is for companies to maintain banking relationships. Read more: https://cryptocriticscorner.com/2023/10/13/episode-134-can-crypto-companies-get-bank-accounts/ Additional resources: CoinDesk article about Bitstamp https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/10/09/bitstamp-courts-european-banks-as-regions-incoming-crypto-rules-boost-confidence/ Protos article about Prager Metis https://protos.com/accounting-apocalypse-ftx-auditor-prager-metis-sued-by-the-sec/ Protos coverage of Moonstone https://protos.com/tag/moonstone/ This episode was recorded on October 9th, 2023.

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss the challenges for cryptocurrency companies trying to get banking.

This episode was recorded on October 9th, 2023.

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00:00:05:06 - 00:00:10:23
Cas Piancey
Welcome back, everyone. I am Cas Piancey. I'm joined, as usual, by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?

00:00:10:23 - 00:00:12:12
Bennett Tomlin
I'm doing pretty good. How are you, Cas?

00:00:12:12 - 00:00:14:17
Cas Piancey
Good. I wanted to talk about something

00:00:14:17 - 00:00:16:23
Cas Piancey
that seemed kind of random when I brought it up,

00:00:16:23 - 00:00:18:08
Cas Piancey
banking and cryptocurrency.

00:00:18:08 - 00:00:21:10
Cas Piancey
We've talked about specific banks before. We've talked about Silvergate.

00:00:21:10 - 00:00:26:18
Cas Piancey
I think we've talked about Moonstone. to some extent. We've talked about a few other banks,

00:00:26:18 - 00:00:29:20
Cas Piancey
We've talked about cryptocurrencies struggling to get

00:00:29:20 - 00:00:31:07
Cas Piancey
banking for any

00:00:31:07 - 00:00:32:07
Cas Piancey
amount of time.

00:00:32:07 - 00:00:33:00
Cas Piancey
However,

00:00:33:00 - 00:00:36:11
Cas Piancey
lo and behold, as we were about to jump on to discuss this,

00:00:36:11 - 00:00:39:18
Cas Piancey
a new article came out from Coindesk by Ian Allison.

00:00:39:18 - 00:00:42:21
Cas Piancey
It says Bitstamp courts European banks as regions.

00:00:42:21 - 00:00:45:12
Cas Piancey
Incoming crypto rules boost confidence

00:00:45:12 - 00:00:46:20
Cas Piancey
and the

00:00:46:20 - 00:01:05:09
Cas Piancey
article goes into detail just kind of about how Bitstamp seems to be in talks with a bunch of banks to offer cryptocurrency, which if they're going to be offering cryptocurrency, you would think they would be partnering with the bank so that they could onboard clients do deposits and withdrawals of Fiat or whatever.

00:01:05:09 - 00:01:07:07
Cas Piancey
So it looks like at least in Europe,

00:01:07:07 - 00:01:16:08
Cas Piancey
banks are starting to embrace this stuff. But part of the point of the article is also that the United States is on the other end of this and doesn't seem to be

00:01:16:08 - 00:01:22:01
Cas Piancey
keen to move quickly and start accepting cryptocurrency exchanges

00:01:22:01 - 00:01:23:01
Cas Piancey
as

00:01:23:01 - 00:01:23:19
Cas Piancey
a client.

00:01:23:19 - 00:01:41:01
Bennett Tomlin
What's interesting to me about this article is that it's about Bitstamp potentially having banks in the future. Maybe in 3 to 6 months, Bitstamp says, will be able to announce at least one of the three banks that we're currently in

00:01:41:01 - 00:01:42:10
Bennett Tomlin
talks with

00:01:42:10 - 00:02:12:01
Bennett Tomlin
about them serving us. It is not a super immediate or super positive piece of news when you take it that way, like the fact that an entire article is dedicated to an executive from one cryptocurrency firm saying, We're talking to three banks and maybe in 3 to 6 months we'll be able to announce something. The fact that that's news is itself a terrifying reflection of the current status of the cryptocurrency industry.

00:02:12:01 - 00:02:14:14
Cas Piancey
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's probably true.

00:02:14:14 - 00:02:15:09
Cas Piancey
However,

00:02:15:09 - 00:02:18:11
Cas Piancey
at least Bitstamp sounds optimistic.

00:02:18:11 - 00:02:19:23
Cas Piancey
We do know, for instance, that,

00:02:19:23 - 00:02:23:21
Cas Piancey
Coinbase, it seems like, at least to some degree, has never had

00:02:23:21 - 00:02:28:20
Cas Piancey
banking issues, the likes of which some of the other exchanges have seen.

00:02:28:22 - 00:02:37:04
Cas Piancey
I don't know about Kraken. We know. We know that Kraken in Coinbase have worked with some terrifying partners, for instance Bitfinex and Crypto Capital Corp.

00:02:37:04 - 00:02:39:19
Cas Piancey
My point here is there still seem to be some

00:02:39:19 - 00:02:44:17
Cas Piancey
crypto exchanges that are able to get banking and not lose it immediately.

00:02:44:17 - 00:03:00:13
Bennett Tomlin
So I think that's an interesting question. Right. And we talked about that a little bit when Leo Schwartz was on in the context of Circle, because Circle is the largest U.S. domiciled stablecoin and over the last couple of months has gone from like eight banking partners down to two.

00:03:00:14 - 00:03:31:09
Bennett Tomlin
And during that same period, Coinbase is now taking their equity stake in Circle and Coinbase themselves have had issues in the past, but they've generally been able to find new banking partners to replace those they lose pretty quickly. What I think is interesting and something we haven't talked about much because the FTX news has been dominating so much, is that Coinbase is still facing that S.E.C. lawsuit that alleges they're an unregistered securities exchange, as does Binance face their own SEC lawsuit, CFTC lawsuit on these other things.

00:03:31:11 - 00:03:46:07
Bennett Tomlin
And so one of the things you wanted to discuss was where this is going to go in the future, especially in the United States. And so I think in the United States, we've seen a large number of banks stop servicing cryptocurrency companies

00:03:46:07 - 00:03:52:12
Bennett Tomlin
since we started to see that they've been given additional indications that this is a high risk industry.

00:03:52:16 - 00:04:12:14
Bennett Tomlin
Right. Since they started doing that, FTX's collapse and Bankman-Fried was arrested. Multiple executives have pled guilty to multiple felonies each. Coinbase has been sued by the SEC. Binance has been sued by the SEC. There has been additional reporting and charges waiting in the wings for Binance, etc. and Bitstamp,

00:04:12:14 - 00:04:20:14
Bennett Tomlin
who represents what one and a quarter percent of total global volume, may be optimistic that they've got new banking partners coming on in 3 to 6 months.

00:04:20:18 - 00:04:29:07
Bennett Tomlin
But Binance, who is 68% of global volume, has been banned from basically all of their European banking partners over the last couple of months.

00:04:29:07 - 00:04:31:20
Cas Piancey
Right now that's that's fair to say.

00:04:31:20 - 00:04:35:18
Cas Piancey
I do want to say that like when you when you talk about the SEC you're talking about

00:04:35:18 - 00:04:38:22
Cas Piancey
civil lawsuits. You're talking about a

00:04:38:22 - 00:04:45:16
Cas Piancey
regulatory regime that is not not the one that people are necessarily super scared of anymore.

00:04:45:16 - 00:04:51:01
Bennett Tomlin
it's the one that makes bank compliance and risk officers go, this is not worth it.

00:04:51:01 - 00:04:51:20
Cas Piancey
I understand that.

00:04:51:20 - 00:04:55:01
Cas Piancey
Here's some examples that I'm just going to quickly name off, because I think

00:04:55:01 - 00:04:59:00
Cas Piancey
it's a good frame of reference here, right? So we have BTC-E

00:04:59:00 - 00:05:00:07
Cas Piancey
we have Mt. Gox,

00:05:00:07 - 00:05:04:00
Cas Piancey
have QuadrigaCX we have the hack from Bitfinex, we have

00:05:04:00 - 00:05:05:05
Cas Piancey
the collapse of FTX.

00:05:05:06 - 00:05:06:01
Cas Piancey
We have

00:05:06:01 - 00:05:11:02
Cas Piancey
and probably missing two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, 15, 20 more.

00:05:11:02 - 00:05:13:20
Cas Piancey
Off the top of my head. But all of the ones that I'm mentioning

00:05:13:20 - 00:05:25:04
Cas Piancey
were either criminal or close to criminal. Like criminal adjacent where I think people are going, Oh, this isn't just a civil matter. This isn't just securities or unregistered securities or

00:05:25:04 - 00:05:28:08
Cas Piancey
a civil regulatory regime coming down and saying something to you.

00:05:28:11 - 00:05:32:11
Cas Piancey
This is far greater than that. This is the Department of Justice

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:41:16
Cas Piancey
or an exchange owner possibly faking his death or you know what I mean? Like, these are things that are just so much grander than the SEC saying you're being fine for $1,000,000.

00:05:41:18 - 00:05:57:12
Bennett Tomlin
Sure. But I think broadly so like if we take it from its very beginning, we've got the OCC, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board of President statements from almost a year ago at this point, which really sort of changed the way banks started to view the risk cryptocurrencies.

00:05:57:14 - 00:06:22:13
Bennett Tomlin
Since that time we've had this entire series of collapses, that has made cryptocurrency increasingly unappealing. We had bank failures in the United States, many of which were banks that serviced a disproportionately greater than average portion of cryptocurrency as part of their business. And so each and every single one of these things make it harder and harder for these banks to continue justifying servicing cryptocurrency.

00:06:22:15 - 00:06:48:00
Bennett Tomlin
And the other kind of undercurrent to this is Coinbase, and many of that type of firm have spent a lot of time advertising themselves as the legitimate alternative to places like FTX and Binance. And so regulators coming in and treating Coinbase as if it is not regulated or a serious alternative to those means when banks are trying to decide whether or not to service cryptocurrency companies.

00:06:48:04 - 00:06:52:20
Bennett Tomlin
And even the one that was previously considered one of the most legitimate is now

00:06:52:20 - 00:06:59:07
Bennett Tomlin
under this lawsuit. It becomes harder and harder to justify banking sub Coinbase level crypto firms.

00:06:59:07 - 00:07:01:10
Cas Piancey
Well, okay, So the my pushback here

00:07:01:10 - 00:07:02:01
Cas Piancey
Protos

00:07:02:01 - 00:07:03:12
Cas Piancey
published a piece about

00:07:03:12 - 00:07:12:16
Cas Piancey
the SEC suing Prager Metis, which is the auditor that helped audit FTX US or FTX,

00:07:12:16 - 00:07:23:18
Cas Piancey
they aren't getting sued for that. They're not getting sued in relation to this is not related to that, but it is related to their SPACs, which a special special purpose acquisition companies.

00:07:23:18 - 00:07:25:17
Cas Piancey
These were super popular. They're still

00:07:25:17 - 00:07:27:23
Cas Piancey
happening, not to the degree that they were.

00:07:27:23 - 00:07:29:23
Cas Piancey
And basically

00:07:29:23 - 00:07:32:12
Cas Piancey
Francine McKenna had the perspective of

00:07:32:12 - 00:07:35:10
Cas Piancey
we're seeing a similar problem in both

00:07:35:10 - 00:07:57:11
Cas Piancey
the banking industry and the auditing industry, where what you have is you have the big major industry players and they obviously can take on more risk than super duper small players because they have larger balance sheets and they and paying fines and paying regulators comes with a part of doing business.

00:07:57:13 - 00:08:07:06
Cas Piancey
But the issue that she's seen and I tend to agree with this and we saw it play out with the Silicon Valley Bank and with First Republic and in other regional banking banking services

00:08:07:06 - 00:08:08:00
Cas Piancey
is that

00:08:08:00 - 00:08:17:19
Cas Piancey
these smaller providers also have to take more risk, it turns out. Right, because to even compete with the larger guys now, well, it means that you have to do the same kind of thing.

00:08:17:19 - 00:08:18:11
Cas Piancey
So

00:08:18:11 - 00:08:39:12
Cas Piancey
perhaps there is actually a willingness in these very small banks to take on smaller than Coinbase style exchanges or to take on Coinbase, take on Gemini, take on Kraken. Right, right. Like, I don't I don't know why, but it does seem like the risk profile is accepting of some of the stuff for these smaller community banks.

00:08:39:12 - 00:08:59:19
Bennett Tomlin
Well. And I think that makes a bit of sense, right? We've talked about in our coverage of Farmington elsewhere that like one of the big things that Hanover envisioned for the bank was that by taking on some of this activity, which they perceived as not as risky as their competitors did, they would be able to grow disproportionately fast.

00:09:00:01 - 00:09:19:05
Bennett Tomlin
And it was working and maybe could have continued working if, you know, they had told the Fed they were planning and doing this or, you know, not been getting all their deposits from the same people who gave them the money to buy it, whatever. That's not the point. I think you're right. The smaller banks are probably more likely to do that because that's their path towards no longer being a small bank.

00:09:19:07 - 00:09:49:06
Bennett Tomlin
More broadly, though, what I think is interesting in a minute how this backed FTX and Alameda Research is that the period where many cryptocurrency companies were able to get banking accounts seems kind of anomalous, right? Even 2019 2020, FTX was not able to get a bank account. It wasn't really until 2021 right, that FTC's digital markets fund, they got their bank account at Silvergate and by 2022 Silvergate is gone, FTX is gone, Alameda Research is gone.

00:09:49:06 - 00:10:13:12
Bennett Tomlin
Signature Bank is gone, Moonstone Bank is gone. Like there was a 18 month period where it was reasonable for many of these large firms to actually get banking and not have to rely on shady payment processors, shadow banks or money launderers. And that window seems to have kind of aggressively closed. There are still U.S. firms that have banking in firms that are going to continue to be able to access banking.

00:10:13:16 - 00:10:37:03
Bennett Tomlin
And maybe Bitstamp is right that firms that have like gone through serious licensure will be able to continue to get bank accounts in Europe. I just want people to remember that that type of firm is a vanishingly small portion of the industry. Like I said, Bitstamp is like somewhere between like one in 3% of total spot volume. It is 1/20 or less of Binance.

00:10:37:08 - 00:10:40:00
Bennett Tomlin
And so they kind of don't matter.

00:10:40:00 - 00:10:41:01
Cas Piancey
it's funny that you bring that up

00:10:41:01 - 00:10:51:02
Cas Piancey
I think part of the reason why I wanted to discuss this is yesterday I listen I listened to the one single time where I was able to ask Sam Bankman-Fried a handful of questions

00:10:51:02 - 00:10:51:18
Cas Piancey
and

00:10:51:18 - 00:10:56:23
Cas Piancey
the last question I was able to ask him was basically, Can you help me understand

00:10:56:23 - 00:10:58:16
Cas Piancey
how you moving money,

00:10:58:16 - 00:11:04:01
Cas Piancey
accepting customer funds that are destined for FTX and you just send them to Alameda?

00:11:04:03 - 00:11:09:18
Cas Piancey
Can you help me understand how that isn't wire fraud? And he goes,

00:11:09:18 - 00:11:27:07
Cas Piancey
Yeah, I find like we have our back and forth. He gets very mad. He says, he's not going to answer any more of my questions, whatever. But like, what I what I realized having relisten to this is that he actually his actual explanation was, Well, yes, at the beginning we were committing wire fraud.

00:11:27:12 - 00:11:29:05
Cas Piancey
And I'm just like, Oh, he admits

00:11:29:05 - 00:11:30:10
Bennett Tomlin
Yes,

00:11:30:10 - 00:11:43:05
Cas Piancey
I forgot to listen to that part when I was I was so pumped up on adrenaline asking him questions and him refusing to respond that I failed to hear that. He goes, Well, in 2019 and 2020, you know,

00:11:43:05 - 00:11:51:23
Cas Piancey
he didn't have banks and so that's we would move money into Alameda and make a ledger account for them on FTX.

00:11:51:23 - 00:11:53:15
Cas Piancey
It was like a just a ledger number

00:11:53:15 - 00:11:58:01
Cas Piancey
which tells me so you never move the money over to period. And

00:11:58:01 - 00:12:00:05
Cas Piancey
you say you did it with the customers like

00:12:00:05 - 00:12:05:05
Cas Piancey
tacit acceptance. But I don't think a bunch of these customers knew what was actually. They were like, Oh,

00:12:05:05 - 00:12:08:15
Cas Piancey
wire it to Alameda? I mean, okay, they didn't think about it after that.

00:12:08:15 - 00:12:18:02
Cas Piancey
There was no like, Oh, I'm wiring it to Alameda because it's going to show up as a ledger number on it. No one was thinking this stuff. Hardly anyone, hardly

00:12:18:02 - 00:12:37:05
Bennett Tomlin
I think many I think many of the people wiring the money did have some suspicion that it was less than wholly kosher when we had Jason Bral to talk about like the end of online poker in the United States. One of the things he talked about was how for many of these payment processors, you had to do extraordinarily strange things to get your money on to them.

00:12:37:09 - 00:12:58:00
Bennett Tomlin
You had to like buy a fake diamond necklace and that money would then get deposited in your account. And cryptocurrency has a long history, that same kind of thing with Linden dollars and stuff like that, with money going to Global Trade Solutions AG and then somehow ending up credited to your Bitfinex account, right? That's typical for crypto. It's not typical for things that aren't crypto

00:12:58:00 - 00:13:10:21
Cas Piancey
No, no, no. So hold on. Here's here's here's my pushback on that. My pushback on that is and I urge everyone to listen. I think that's a really underrated episode, actually, of ours is the Jason Bral episode where we talk about Poker's Black Friday and

00:13:10:21 - 00:13:12:06
Cas Piancey
it's just crazy How many

00:13:12:06 - 00:13:18:07
Cas Piancey
things end up coinciding and co-mingling between the two industries of cryptocurrency and poker.

00:13:18:07 - 00:13:19:07
Cas Piancey
But I will say this

00:13:19:07 - 00:13:24:12
Cas Piancey
poker at least you know, at least back then you knew what you were doing was

00:13:24:12 - 00:13:31:13
Cas Piancey
highly gray and or illegal. You knew that this was not something that most people were doing. People who were gambling online,

00:13:31:13 - 00:13:42:09
Cas Piancey
they're pretty aware of the risk because these are people who are like really, really into gambling. And you could argue many of them are probably just addicts of gambling.

00:13:42:09 - 00:13:54:17
Cas Piancey
And I think they're very, very aware of the risk in in the run up rate of 20 2019 and stuff like this When you when you had irrational exuberance,

00:13:54:17 - 00:14:01:02
Cas Piancey
I think you had more retail consumers and more normal people who genuinely were not understand. They were like,

00:14:01:02 - 00:14:03:07
Cas Piancey
wire it to Alameda? I mean, okay.

00:14:03:07 - 00:14:05:10
Cas Piancey
There was no secondary part of that thought.

00:14:05:13 - 00:14:13:11
Cas Piancey
Whereas I think you're right in poker or maybe even in 2017, 2018, people who were buying cryptocurrencies and stuff were like, Oh, you

00:14:13:11 - 00:14:19:11
Cas Piancey
okay, you want me to, I'm wiring this to BAM Trading or whatever. Okay, I see what's going on here.

00:14:19:11 - 00:14:39:15
Bennett Tomlin
I will concede you get a different audience of consumer when you start like using Giselle and Tom Brady to do your marketing instead of, you know, hey, you used to be able to trade your magic cards here. Now you can trade fake money here. I will concede those are two distinct, mostly non overlap ing audiences.

00:14:39:15 - 00:14:42:23
Cas Piancey
that's that's my main point. And that, that is part of why I'm like,

00:14:42:23 - 00:14:43:08
Cas Piancey
I don't know.

00:14:43:08 - 00:14:45:16
Cas Piancey
It is interesting. I think banking has

00:14:45:16 - 00:14:48:00
Cas Piancey
a lot of cryptocurrency advocates would argue

00:14:48:00 - 00:14:58:21
Cas Piancey
the problem is that they can't get the banking. If they could get the banking, then many of the issues that have been seen over the past five, six, seven years would not be seen because

00:14:58:21 - 00:15:04:00
Cas Piancey
they wouldn't be struggling and jumping through hoops to try to find banking.

00:15:04:00 - 00:15:09:20
Cas Piancey
I mean, when we talked about Bitfinex and Tether's early days, you know, if we go back to what episode one and two,

00:15:09:20 - 00:15:13:03
Cas Piancey
the stuff they were doing to try to keep bank accounts open

00:15:13:03 - 00:15:19:03
Cas Piancey
was insane. I don't even know. I mean, I assume they're still doing similar stuff because they're changing banks every

00:15:19:03 - 00:15:21:05
Cas Piancey
four months or whatever or whatever.

00:15:21:05 - 00:15:32:15
Cas Piancey
Like you don't do that if you have a normal operational business. So clearly they're still struggling. Clearly, that has not changed. But what to what you the argument now that if more

00:15:32:15 - 00:15:38:10
Cas Piancey
banks that could do the due diligence on these companies started accepting them, perhaps

00:15:38:10 - 00:15:41:00
Cas Piancey
customers would get hurt less?

00:15:41:00 - 00:15:52:02
Cas Piancey
Kind of I guess I'm kind of giving the ETF James Seyffart argument of this where it's like, why not just accept it so that you can at least track it and and ensure that customers aren't hurt?

00:15:52:02 - 00:15:56:01
Bennett Tomlin
Well, have you considered the possibility

00:15:56:01 - 00:15:58:23
Bennett Tomlin
that cryptocurrency companies,

00:15:58:23 - 00:16:07:06
Bennett Tomlin
financial transactions very often include a disproportionate amount of crime or other risk that banks don't want to carry?

00:16:07:10 - 00:16:11:13
Cas Piancey
Well, then what's the difference for Coinbase and

00:16:11:20 - 00:16:17:14
Bennett Tomlin
Coinbase invests significantly more into like monitoring

00:16:17:14 - 00:16:21:11
Bennett Tomlin
of their customers than Binance. You know,

00:16:21:14 - 00:16:22:01
Cas Piancey
Right

00:16:22:01 - 00:16:23:17
Cas Piancey
so then is the conclusion that

00:16:23:17 - 00:16:24:19
Cas Piancey
in reality

00:16:24:19 - 00:16:27:02
Cas Piancey
exchanges playing by the rules

00:16:27:02 - 00:16:27:23
Cas Piancey
can get banking

00:16:27:23 - 00:16:32:00
Cas Piancey
and the ones not playing by the rules are the ones struggling? I mean, is that the real answer here?

00:16:32:00 - 00:16:49:12
Bennett Tomlin
I think there's still times that exchanges that are commonly believed to be playing by the rules still have struggled with banking. Coinbase has at times struggled to maintain banking. There've been a couple of close calls where like they switched shortly as they were like getting cut off and things like that.

00:16:49:14 - 00:16:50:07
Bennett Tomlin
But then,

00:16:50:07 - 00:16:58:05
Bennett Tomlin
as I'm saying this, there's the counter argument that maybe Coinbase isn't as legitimate as people think. That's the SEC stance on the issue, right?

00:16:58:05 - 00:16:59:11
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Yeah.

00:16:59:11 - 00:17:03:10
Cas Piancey
without predicting anything because I think predicting isn't worth much.

00:17:03:10 - 00:17:06:07
Cas Piancey
But do you think this will get resolved

00:17:06:07 - 00:17:07:15
Cas Piancey
at least temporarily,

00:17:07:15 - 00:17:09:00
Cas Piancey
in the near future? Because

00:17:09:00 - 00:17:17:23
Cas Piancey
something's going to happen with Binance. I don't think anyone's sure what that something is going to be. Maybe it's very, very small compared to what people are expecting. Maybe it is

00:17:17:23 - 00:17:20:12
Cas Piancey
the kind of crazy things that people are indeed expecting.

00:17:20:12 - 00:17:21:01
Cas Piancey
Who knows?

00:17:21:01 - 00:17:27:20
Cas Piancey
But do you think, let's say hypothetically, that something happens to Binance and that volume diminishes significantly?

00:17:27:20 - 00:17:28:17
Cas Piancey
Do you think that would

00:17:28:17 - 00:17:33:17
Cas Piancey
help legitimize a lot of these other exchanges and their abilities to

00:17:33:17 - 00:17:37:02
Cas Piancey
acquire consistent regular banking services?

00:17:37:02 - 00:17:50:21
Bennett Tomlin
No. Absolutely not. For the reason that I just said Binance's is 70% of the fucking market. You can't have 70% of the market be declared criminal and suddenly people are like, Oh yes, the remaining 30%.

00:17:51:00 - 00:18:08:14
Bennett Tomlin
I bet most of that's things we want to have, right? That's not what's going to happen. And like I will make predictions and make predictions right now. A whole series of them clip this. People come at me in a year, it'll be harder for cryptocurrency companies to get a banking account than it is today in the United States.

00:18:08:14 - 00:18:12:15
Bennett Tomlin
By that point, Sam Bankman-fried will almost certainly have been

00:18:12:15 - 00:18:32:11
Bennett Tomlin
tried and the results of that trial will be known. It is, I think, likely there will be additional indictments of key criminal figures in the cryptocurrency space and we will have seen additional progress on some of these key civil suits which affect the vast majority of the actual economic activity in the industry.

00:18:32:13 - 00:18:55:05
Bennett Tomlin
I do not see a clear path towards an easier ability for cryptocurrency companies to get banking, especially when Congress is teetering on the verge of a government shutdown. The Speaker of the House just got ousted by his own caucus and there's no real way to bring any kind of like regulatory exclusion or anything that would make it so banks would want to reconsider

00:18:55:05 - 00:18:56:19
Bennett Tomlin
their stance towards crypto.

00:18:56:23 - 00:19:01:06
Bennett Tomlin
So there I'll make predictions. Don't listen to Cas and his fear of predictions. I'll make him all day.

00:19:01:06 - 00:19:03:15
Cas Piancey
I know you said a lot there, but I do want to quickly say,

00:19:03:15 - 00:19:07:17
Cas Piancey
even if something catastrophic happened to Binance

00:19:07:17 - 00:19:08:20
Cas Piancey
and

00:19:08:20 - 00:19:12:10
Cas Piancey
like I don't think that the whole market at Binance is criminal.

00:19:12:10 - 00:19:21:12
Cas Piancey
And I and I want to be specific here because I think the whole idea of money laundering, the concept, the wording is that you're mixing good money with bad money

00:19:21:12 - 00:19:30:05
Cas Piancey
and the people who are sending you the good money don't know or don't care or don't realize that it's getting mixed with the bad money.

00:19:30:05 - 00:19:37:21
Bennett Tomlin
The better way for me to phrase it would have been people will react negatively when they find out 70% of the volume was facilitated by a criminal enterprise.

00:19:37:21 - 00:19:39:03
Cas Piancey
Sure. Okay, sure. Yeah.

00:19:39:03 - 00:19:41:10
Cas Piancey
Okay. Sorry. I just want to clarify that. That's cool.

00:19:41:10 - 00:19:45:04
Cas Piancey
I mean, I think that's that's it for this. I unless you have anything else you want to add.

00:19:45:04 - 00:19:51:15
Bennett Tomlin
Well, I just want to tell people to get their deposits into CasCoin Bank as soon as possible. I mean, really as soon as possible.

00:19:51:15 - 00:19:55:13
Bennett Tomlin
Get your deposits in. Listen, I just that's all I'm going to say.

00:19:55:13 - 00:20:05:11
Cas Piancey
Yeah. And wallet is called CasCoin Bank. I do want to make sure that everyone understands it isn't actually a bank. We don't have a banking license. We don't have a charter like we are a we're not even a money.

00:20:05:12 - 00:20:17:23
Cas Piancey
We're not even a money services provider like we have no licensing whatsoever, but we do accept donations. That's what we're classifying them as. It's complicated, but obviously your money is safe.

00:20:17:23 - 00:20:21:16
Cas Piancey
I can't. I honestly can't think of a safer counterparty than

00:20:21:16 - 00:20:22:12
Cas Piancey
me.

00:20:22:12 - 00:20:23:17
Bennett Tomlin
It’s SAFU at least.

00:20:23:17 - 00:20:25:10
Bennett Tomlin
It's SAFU if it's not safe.

00:20:25:10 - 00:20:27:19
Cas Piancey
have an insurance fund, guys. We do have the cascoin Insurance fund.

00:20:27:19 - 00:20:37:14
Cas Piancey
Thanks for, uh, thanks for tuning in. Tuning in, everyone. And remember, each time you hit the like button or give us a good review, you get 150,000 cast coin. It's amazing.
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