Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a 5 star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, as you all may know, Gary Gensler testified before the House Financial Services Committee today. He got grilled. He got a lot of pressure questions and things that he was shaking and unable to answer. It's the same old nonsense. And I'm sure many of you saw the clips, so I'm not going to play a whole bunch of clips for you, but I'm going to give you the big takeaways. What can we expect next? And McHenry, Patrick out of the gate, started grilling Gary Gensler. He asked him, is Bitcoin a security? And Gary was like stumbling, like he couldn't even answer it. And of course, you know, Patrick McHenry was like, what are you doing, man? I'm giving you softball questions. You can't answer me. Is Bitcoin a security? So Gary Gensler continued his clown show. This guy's a scumbag regulator, as I've been saying for a long time, and needs to be fired. But the big takeaway from what Patrick McHenry said, folks, he threatened Gary Gensler and said, don't make me have to send a subpoena. And he highlighted that Gary has not sent documents about FTX. He highlighted Gary's losses in court and much more. So I think the next step, you know, I haven't seen this level of threat about a subpoena from these folks. So I think we're getting there, folks. And I'm actually going to be interviewing Congressman Warren Davidson, who also did a great job grilling Gary tomorrow. And he's going to I'm going to ask him about the subpoena and what are the next steps. And of course, he highlighted his SEC Stabilization Act, which essentially fires Gary Gensler and replaces that chair seat, adds another commissioner and an executive director. So it makes the SEC less political and more balanced. And he has some great questions to Gary. You know, he even alluded to the EITH Ethereum free pass. Some of you may have seen the clip. So he did a great job. And once again, I'm interviewing him tomorrow. So be sure you're subscribed on the podcast as well as the YouTube channel. And Tom Emmer also brought some heat on Gary Gensler saying, I'm convinced you are not an impartial regulator. And he went on and did a press conference about this. And Gary Gensler is a bureaucrat who does not answer to Congress and much more. So, you know, similar types of comments that we've seen historically. But I think the subpoena threat was the big takeaway for me. The other stuff was, you could argue, was said historically and said before and other hearings with Gary Gensler. Now, Democrat Richie Torres did a great job of talking to Gary and getting specific, like he highlighted, is buying a Pokemon card a security? Gary said no. So he said, well, what if that Pokemon card got tokenized on the blockchain? It's a den of security. And that's where Gary was going back and forth and saying he needs more details and yada, yada. But great questions by Representative Richie Torres, very laser targeted in detail where Gary is just like caught off guard and he's trying to dodge the questions. So Gary continues to get exposed. And I like what happened today. I think the clips and all the news that are coming out of it, while they may not be very much actionable, where Gary is getting kicked out tomorrow, right? They do paint Gary Gensler in a very bad light. And remember, I've said many times, a lot of politics is simply optics. And if you have bipartisan support against Gary Gensler, that's not good. He's not going to be in that seat for very long. So it's great to see Democrats coming out against Gary Gensler. Now, quick word from our sponsor folks, and that is Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been a user of Uphold since twenty eighteen. They have ten plus million users, two hundred and fifty plus crypto currencies, and they're available in one hundred and fifty countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on Uphold. If you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. Also, a great comment from Representative Andy Barr to Gary Gensler on capital markets. He said, if the U .S. capital markets are a gold medalist, you are the Tonya Harding of securities regulation because you are kneecapping the United States capital markets with the avalanche of red tape coming out of your commission. Wow. That is a pretty strong remark there. Many of you know about the Tonya Harding story. If you don't look it up, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harden and someone who was sitting behind Gary Gensler started flashing the Coinbase stand with crypto NFT shield. Many of you have seen that. And someone also highlighted the stand with crypto logo on a piece of paper. So this is similar to what happened with the guy who did the buy Bitcoin behind Janet Yellen years ago. So they put this right behind Gary. So it's pretty funny. This is another one that's going to go in the record books. And on that note, the SEC did acknowledge that the 1 .5 trillion dollar asset manager, Franklin Templeton, spot Bitcoin ETF application. Now, that doesn't mean anything because we need an approval. But things are moving ahead for these new applicants. Now, as all this was happening, guess who was in D .C.? Brian Armstrong and the Coinbase folks. Pretty incredible. And they did this whole campaign where they're at the Hill and a Brian Armstrong tweet out here at our nation's capital for a stand with crypto day with 40 founders from across the country. It's time for America to join the rest of the G20 and get some clear rules on the books. So great move here by Coinbase because the juxtaposition of what Gary is saying and what a big publicly traded crypto company is doing with a whole bunch of founders in D .C., educating and providing advocacy is really, really great. So I love this. And you hear you see Brian posted some photos, he said a great meeting with Speaker Pelosi. Now, all feelings about Nancy Pelosi aside, this she's a Democrat, folks, and I think this is a very smart move, Brian. Very, very smart move, because today even Maxine Waters was praising Gary Gensler. Oh, he's the knight in shining armor. And Gary, you know, you've been doing your thing, protecting Americans from these crypto scammers. Right. So remember, just like two years ago, she was hugging up FTX saying she loves Sam Beckman Fried, blowing kisses, taking campaign donations from FTX. So she's can be bought and sold right pretty easily. And I really like this. Coinbase is playing chess here while Gary Gensler is getting grilled. I love it, love it, love it. And they took a whole bunch of photos here at the Capitol Hill. So smart move by Brian. Really, really smart move. Now, finally, Kraken sets sight on stock trading. So Kraken, the crypto exchange, they're looking to expand their services. And, you know, this makes sense. If you're ordering already an exchange where you sell crypto, you can easily move to stocks. And then I know some other folks have been looking to tokenize stocks and sell those. So this is a pretty big move. And we're going to see that these crypto exchanges are going to expand to other markets. And with the advent of tokenization, you know, they're going to tokenize a lot of the traditional financial markets and assets and commodities and much more. And allow people to easily get access to them globally, 24 seven trading and much more. So obviously this would put them up against like Robinhood, essentially right where you have stocks and you've got crypto in the mix. So I think it absolutely makes sense. Well, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. What did you think about Gary today in the hearing? And once again, I'll be interviewing Congressman Warren Davidson tomorrow. So be sure to check out that interview once it's published on Friday. And I'll talk to you all later.