Transcript 0:00 Could Arizona be the first US state to pass a strategic Bitcoin reserve? It sure looks like it. Arizona jumps into first and second place in the race to get an SBR bill out and on the governor's desk. We talk about it. 0:15 We talk about all the states, where they are, and how the race is heating up this May. Bitcoin Season Two is brought to you by Arch Network, the platform building bridgeless apps on Bitcoin. 0:24 More on Arch later on the show. Let's kick it off. [upbeat music] Arizona jumps into first place. 0:35 The checkered flag has been waved, Colin, and Arizona screams past on the final lap. 0:42 Arizona passes two bills, and all they have to do is be signed by the governor, and then Arizona can hold and buy Bitcoin and other digital assets. We are actually... It's, it's gonna happen by this point. 0:55 It's actually gonna happen. Do you think so? There's not gonna be a veto by Arizona's governor? 1:01 Well, I mean- This is something you wrote about in, um, the newsletter for this week, was that it's not a guarantee because to get that signature would mean 1:10 the Democratic governor of Arizona would have to side with an expressively conservative bill. I mean, it doesn't have to be, but at this point- When I say it's gon-... 1:20 Bitcoin is pretty right-coded by, according to a lot of people, you know? When I say it's gonna happen, I'm talking about, like, we've got now multiple states, like, closing in on the finish line, the final lap. 1:32 So, like, you've got to think that one of these is gonna work. And for the listener who's not in the weeds, Colin and I will explain. 1:40 We'll explain what the current, uh, lineup is, who is in the lead, and explain some of the details around why, um, a state, say like Texas, has three simultaneous strategic Bitcoin reserve bills currently going through and why Arizona is currently in the lead. 1:57 As we record this on Thursday, May 1st, we have in the final vote in the, uh, I believe, House of New Hampshire, another SBR, which, uh, is favorable to pass. 2:13 So, like, we are now gonna possibly get multiple of these bills on governors' desks this May to see if they'll sign or not. Colin, how do you want to start breaking this down for the listener? 2:27 Yeah, so I think that let's just hop into where the current landscape stands. And just a, a quick correction for the New Hampshire bill. It will be... 2:37 It passed in committee in the Senate, and it'll be put to a vote in the Senate because it's a House bill, so it originated there. And I don't know whether or not people are hopeful this one will pass. 2:49 Doesn't seem like there is too much opposition to it. But perhaps to start, we could just pull up this nifty little tracker from our friends at Bitcoin Laws. Shout out to the guys building that. 3:01 And we will take a look at where the current race stands. 3:06 So as Charlie mentioned, Arizona in first and second place with two bills that originated in the Senate that passed via the House most recently, and now all they have to get is a signature from the governor. 3:20 One of these probably w-will die, the other one will take its place. At least I think. 3:25 Someone could probably correct me who's more informed on political matters, but it seems kind of redundant to have two of these bills exist. Well- But they're... Go ahead. 3:33 I can, I can actually, if we want to, I can explain the, the distinguishing between these two bills in Arizona. So- I think that's important because there's, there are a few differences between them. 3:45 The most interesting thing to me, though, is that it allows for a pretty aggressive allocation to Bitcoin. 3:50 It's on the higher end in terms of what states are proposing for their strategic Bitcoin reserve in terms of total percentage of public funding for something like this. Yeah. 4:00 A general observation is, like, most of the language of most of these bills is actually pretty gracious. 4:05 Like, um, we, we see a common, like, denomination of an up, up to ten percent of, like, various large, like, components of treasuries. 4:17 So it's really interesting because you see BlackRock, you see Larry Fink saying, um, "You should probably have, like, one to two percent of your portfolio allocated towards Bitcoin." 4:25 And yet we see the most conservative, uh, capital allocators, the states themselves, governments, like, put a... possibly be looking to, like, put a, a head limit on t- of, like, you know, a-around ten percent. 4:39 Okay, so Arizona, we have two bills, and it's actually pretty simple to make this analogy. 4:44 Just like in the, at the national level, you have the strategic stockpile, which is what the executive order that Trump signed, which prevented the, uh, US government from selling any seized assets. 4:58 That is what one of the Az- Arizona bills, uh, would accomplish. 5:02 Basically, it says y-the seized, uh, assets or confiscated assets, digital assets, um, those can be put into a special fund which, uh, you know, is allocated as more of an investment, versus the active strategy, which you might compare to the Cynthia Lummis bill, which would be, we're going to, um, buy... 5:24 we're going to allow the state to buy Bitcoin, similar to how Cynthia Lummis and her bill would allow the US government to actively buy and acquire Bitcoin. 5:34 So those are the two bills that both passed in Arizona this past week, um, and they both passed, like, um, not by really a narrow margin, but, you know, a decent margin. 5:44 And in the case of one of them, uh, [clears throat] this was Senate Bill one zero two five. Uh, it passed thirty-one to twenty-five with four not voting. 5:58 You know, if we go back to our how a bill becomes a law-Um, like little cartoon, you know, demonstration that you would watch back in middle school. Schoolhouse Rock. Bitcoin edition. Yeah. 6:10 So the bill, they argue about it, goes through a process, but then it's gotta be signed, and this is the one as you did push back. 6:19 Arizona's a little unique because there is, uh, tension, really not just tension, it's just basically a brawl, a big between, uh, the governor and the, the Democratic governor and the largely Republican-denominated legislature. 6:36 As I'm not super in the weeds, I understand she could just veto one or both of these bills and... or just not sign them. And, uh, that's kind of... But, but that's all that stands in between these being enacted. 6:53 Katie Hobbs is the governor of Arizona, and she's a member of the Democratic Party. TBD whether or not she actually wants to veto this. I mean, it's pretty, 7:05 it's pretty rare that a governor will out or a president will outright veto a bill if it's passed both chambers, right? Yeah. Uh, but it could happen. 7:14 I wanna revert back to some of the distinguishing factors between these two, to your point, Charlie, 'cause I think this is really interesting. 7:21 Uh, both of the Arizona bills allow for up to ten percent allocation in Bitcoin secured in a custodian or through an exchange-traded product. 7:29 But they, both of them, as far as I can tell from reading the description, have kind of two key differentiators that are unique to both. 7:37 So for the one, like you said, it allows for seized Bitcoin and civil asset forfeiture, things of that nature, to be subsumed within that reserve, but also includes that ten percent, uh, stipulation where, uh, it says here, um, the state treasurer is limited to investing no more than ten percent of the fund's total monies in any fiscal year and may loan digital assets to generate additional returns if no financial risks are increased. 8:04 This is another interesting thing. A lot of these bills include clauses where the treasurer can actually use these bitcoins for yield, whatever that may be. 8:13 They can lend them out into the private market or however else they're going to, uh, generate yield from that. The sec- the other one, so that is Senate Bill, uh, one three seven three in Arizona. 8:26 The other one, Senate Bill one zero two five, includes that ten percent stipulation. Let me see. And I'm trying to see if it has... It doesn't have a clause for, uh, lending the Bitcoin out. 8:43 But one of the things that I do find interesting is it stipulates that if the federal government passes a similar reserve, then Arizona may be allow-- or will be allowed to store their Bitcoin in the federal government via the Treasury. 8:57 Oh, I missed that. Which like the anti-Federalist in me, you know, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson is looming over this conversation. 9:04 I find that to be kind of interesting because, I mean, it makes sense from a de-risk, uh, from, from a, uh, de-risking the whole position standpoint. 9:13 I mean, I would personally rather probably have a custodian who knows what they're doing to hold my funds like a professional, you know, maybe like a Bitwise or something like that, right? Or a Coinbase. 9:23 But I find that clause interesting because to me, one of the benefits for the state as well is to have... I mean, if we're really game theorizing this, right? 9:31 And looking at Bitcoin as a digital bearer asset that is highly inconfiscatable if you store it correctly, I don't know why you would give your keys to the king, right? 9:40 And to me, it seems like you would be better suited as a state, especially in a highly polarized political environment, to hold your Bitcoin yourself rather than to relinquish the keys to the Treasury. 9:51 But- Or, or j- or I mean, like, there's... This is also, uh, this is a sliding scale of, of counterparty trust assumptions. Like, um, sorry, Coinbase, I don't think it would... 10:02 Like, we're talking about it might not make sense to put your Bitcoin alongside everyone else who's been custoding at Coinbase, the BlackRocks, the Microstrategies, everybody. 10:11 Um, maybe you go for, uh, an AnchorWatch, who I had Rob on the show on, uh, a couple of months ago. 10:17 But AnchorWatch, you know, it's-- you do, uh, it's an interesting signing scheme where you can, like, have incremental counterparty signers for things, and it's, uh, it's you have a little more control over how your stuff is custodian. 10:32 But it's interesting because, like, I mean, these are, these are US states. Like, these are entities with lots of resources. Why don't they just do it themselves? 10:40 Like, the whole purpose of these is to accomplish, like, states having a little bit, um, more autonomy. 10:48 Like, uh, you know, for their other treasury assets, they tend to prefer to have certain lim- levels of control over those as well. Why wouldn't it also be with their Bitcoin? 11:00 I do like this idea, though, Colin, you brought up that, you know, they can go pursue, you know, one of these bills have language that they can go to pursue, like, yield or something. 11:07 I'm imagining, like, the state of Arizona, um, wrapping, like, their Bitcoin, uh, you know, put, you know, getting wrapped Bitcoin on, like, Eth and doing, like, DeFi lending shenanigans, uh, and maybe, like, blowing out the, uh, the APYs of some of these, uh, [chuckles] 11:26 of some of these other DeFi protocols. [chuckles] Yeah, like wrapping their Bitcoin and then yield farming PP token. Exactly, yeah. 11:33 And so eventually- Honestly, like, the Far- Fart Coin got blown out because the state of Arizona, uh, bought a bunch of the governance token with, uh, their state treasury and- Imagine how much the, the state of Arizona could fund all of their pension plans if they had just aped into Fart Coin a year or two ago. 11:50 [upbeat music] Let me tell you about one of the most slept-on opportunities in crypto. Arch is building fast composable DeFi apps on Bitcoin. 11:59 Arch apps tap into the OG blockchain with by far the most liquidity and best brand in crypto.I've known the team for over a year. The tech they're building is solid, and they are racing towards mainnet. 12:10 There's DEXs like Saturn, meme coins on funkybit.fun, instant loans on Cha-Ching, and so much more. Plus, they're rewarding testnet users, so join me in trying out Arch while it's still early. 12:22 G-going back to the custody thing, AnchorWatch is great, also insured by Lloyd's of London up to a certain point, depending on your plan. 12:33 Obviously, something like that would be good, especially if it's a company that is, uh, uh, let's say, a little closer to the Bitcoin cyberpunk ethos or just generally kind of good actors. 12:42 I do think when you're asking why do states not just do that themselves, I feel like governments are very keen to just offload any responsibility like this onto professionals in the private sector because it's either a combination of laziness or just kind of humility, saying, "This isn't really our domain. 13:00 Why don't we just contract someone out for this?" 13:03 But then there's the other scenario where they decide to not go with a custodian, and the treasurer of the State of Arizona is sleeping with a cold card under his mattress or something [chuckles] like that. 13:13 Or you have some sort of... I'm imagining all of these hair-brained schemes where it's like you have maybe, like, four different representatives who memorize three words of a seed phrase each. 13:24 [chuckles] That's called multi-party computations, MPC. We split the seed up. [chuckles] You know, um- Yeah A-anyway, all that being said, that... I think that's kind of an unanswered piece to this, or pr- an unexplored 13:37 part of this, and an unknown until one of these passes. It will be really interesting, and I think you're right. 13:42 We will get at least one bill that is enacted into law, and it will be fascinating to see which states decide to custody with certain custodians or which states decide to take self-custody. 13:55 If the United States government ends up actually passing an active Bitcoin reserve, if they will decide to relinquish their keys to the Treasury for safekeeping. 14:03 There are so many different ways that they could skin this cat, and I think it'll be interesting and really telling w- the ways in which they decide to go with it. 14:11 You know, I would imagine that the un- a lot of custodians would probably be chomping at the bit for a government contract like this, maybe not from Arizona as much as, like, a Texas or a California that have massive GDPs, right? 14:26 But business is business, right? So it's ripe for the spoils. Should we move on to- Yeah, let's, let's- Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Uh, yeah. We- let's we- let's move on. So, uh, we... 14:37 Uh, just for the listener, for context, uh, this, uh, Bitcoin laws, uh, tracks, um, 40 bills of the, in the SBR class, 40 SBR-type bills having been filed, um, from US states over the past year. 14:54 Some of these were filed last legislative session. Most are currently in the, like, current active legislative session. 15:01 Of those 40 bills, six are dead, and, uh, multiple are, like, duplicates in the case of North Carolina, Ohio, uh, Montana, Missouri, Iowa, and Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Arizona. 15:16 And in one case, there's three bills, and that's in Texas. We'll talk about that. Um, uh, which state do you wanna go to next, Colin? I think let's, like, give a quick overview, [clicks tongue] um, of the ones that are 15:34 just neck and neck with Arizona. Yeah. So we already mentioned, and I'm gonna confirm this right now by looking on the website, the New Hampshire bill. 15:43 Yes, the, it has, uh, the New Hampshire bill will be taken to the Senate floor today, so we should know probably within the day whether or not that one is going to pass both chambers and then go to the governor's desk for a signature. 16:01 There's also the North Carolina bill, where it passed its first reading in the Senate, and now it has been referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations of the Senate, if I'm reading this correctly. 16:15 [sighs] TBD when there will be an actual vote on that. I'm not totally certain what the legislative process is for North Carolina. 16:25 But it passed its second reading in the House just yesterday, so I, I assume maybe if we, um, are looking at the House and the Senate of North Carolina having similar processes, and there's probably someone who's more legally informed than I am, who's like, "That's not how this works, but maybe it has to have two readings in the Senate." 16:44 But needless to say, this one should have a resolution, or we should have more clarity on it sometime soon. And then let's move on to the Texas bill for what you were saying- Yeah... 16:55 Charlie, 'cause this is the other one that is kind of neck and neck with Arizona. 17:01 Outside of the Arizona bills, there's a North Carolina bill from the House, there's a New Hampshire bill, and there's a Texas bill from the Senate that, that are close in, in the sense of, if they pass their next reading and they end up getting voted in, then they will go to the governor's desk for a vote. 17:19 And the Texas bill that we have currently here, and let me just read the update on it. Um, the last 17:28 action item on the Texas, uh, website, on the, on the government of, uh, the Texas legislator website, is that it was left pending in committee on 4/23. 17:40 It passed, um, its vote in the Senate, but it's sitting in committee, and I'm not totally sure whether or not it will advance to the second chamber. Um, that, that one's kind of up in the air. 17:54 But Charlie, maybe you can give us a quick rundown on this bill- Yeah... because, as you said, there are three in Texas, and they're all pretty different. 18:02 What's notable about this particular bill, which is the, uh, favored one for Texas-Uh, of the three is, I'll just first say that it's, uh, that the three sponsors... No, there's four sponsors of the bill. 18:20 Um, Charles Schwett- Schwertner is the [chuckles] uh, the primary sponsor, and there's three co-sponsors, and it is bipartisan, so three Rs and one D, uh, sponsoring this, which is great. 18:34 You do love to see some bipartisan, uh, support for these, which is usually a good sign, um, get- given that anything bipartisan, you know, seems incrementally more likely of being, of, uh, being successful. 18:49 So, um, this Senate Bill, uh, 21, this particular bill is interesting because instead of, um, like saying you can allocate part, part of your treasury as many of the other bills and languages do, um, this bill actually creates, um, a whole new fund outside of the treasury with a lot more, uh, like powers, uh, and flexibility on the investment side, and it's controlled by the comptroller and a, uh, 19:26 five-member, quote, expert advisory cr- uh, committee from reps in the private sec- private Bitcoin and crypto sector. 19:35 So this is interesting because this allows Texas to kind of operate almost like a liquid fund, like a liquid venture fund, uh, in how it's structured, and it, um... 19:47 So those of us who are in Bitcoin, like we go, "Oh, yeah, it's probably the more optimal way to do it, I guess." 19:54 But at the same time, like this would represent a more active, active role as opposed to like, um, defensive role that I think the language has been positioning a lot of these state bills in. 20:07 So this would be more like Texas gets to operate like Multicoin than, uh [chuckles] which is also lo- headquartered in Austin, Texas, by the way. 20:19 Uh, and uh, more like Multicoin than, uh, an actual like strategic reserve. So that's a very in-interesting kind of like dimension of this, uh, Senate Bill 21 in Texas. 20:32 Is that a contention with the provision that it ha- the cryptocurrency invested in it has to have a five hundred billion dollar market cap? I don't know. The, um, 20:45 I can-- Some of the, I-- My head is swimming from trying to read through all these bills, but, um, the summary on Bitcoin laws does have Senate Bill 21 in Texas as the five hundred billion minimum market cap, which for the listener would mean that only Bitcoin qualifies to be invested in. 21:04 It's an interesting provision because what that essentially does is it guarantees that you're only going to get the cream of the crop outright, right? 21:12 But it opens up the potential in the future to invest in other crypto assets should they transcend that barrier. 21:19 I think it's pretty smart and prudent, because what it's basically saying is we're going to do Bitcoin first, 'cause that's the only one that meets this requirement. 21:26 It's the least risky of all of the cryptocurrencies, and if people are uncomfortable with some of those other ones, then if they end up passing that half a billion dollar market cap, then maybe the risk or the perceived risk is lowered in people's eyes. 21:40 I, I think that's pretty judicious wording on the part of the legislators who draft this bill. Yeah, it's great because, you know, it's hard. These, these bills have to be like asset neutral. Um, Bitcoin-only bills, 21:56 I've, as much as I love them, 'cause I'm a Bitcoiner, it's just the kind of thing like you have to have as neutral language as possible. 22:04 Um, and, uh, the way you can get an effectively Bitcoin-only bill, and it actually demonstrates like a good like rule of thumb high watermark for these assets, they just have to be big enough. 22:18 And it's also just generally good from a treasury standpoint. You don't want to be investing in illiquid small cap shitcoins. Um, it-- we don't want, as much as I joke about, we don't want Texas buying Farcoin. 22:31 Um, we want them [chuckles] uh, buying Bitcoin, uh, so that, uh, us Bitcoiners can roll some of our profits into Farcoin. That's, that's the whole point. 22:41 And the original bill that was proposed in Texas, I believe this was the first one or it was one of the first, was pretty underwhelming, um, when you consider the, uh, actual text of the bill. 22:55 What it originally stated was that the government of Texas could accept donations in Bitcoin, and it would allow Texas to hold Bitcoin, effectively establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve. 23:09 But it didn't originally stipulate that the government could actually actively purchase Bitcoin. 23:14 I believe it was amended later, and now I quote from Bitcoin laws, "The bill limits Bitcoin purchases to no more than one percent of the unencumbered general revenue fund balance per biennial cycle and requires the Comptroller to produce a biennial report detailing the reserve's total Bitcoin holdings." 23:31 Now compare that again to the Arizona bill, which allows up to ten percent of the fund, m- uh, that is allocated towards buying Bitcoin. 23:40 One percent, I mean, again, again, Texas versus Arizona, Texas has a much larger GDP, so maybe this is a larger slice of the pie, but it's still a much more conservative allocation when you factor in what percentage of the state budget is going towards something like Bitcoin. 23:56 And we could probably go on and on for an entire other episode dissecting the differences between all of these. Yeah. But it's just funny considering Texas has been one of the lodestars of many a Bitcoin business, right? 24:13 Whether that beUh, a company like Unchained, I believe they're headquartered in Austin or it's the- Yeah, a lot of people in Austin, a lot of miners in Austin, a lot of finance now- Yeah, Bitcoin miner. 24:22 Like, like Texas is the heart of the Bitcoin mining industry in the US, and they have one of the more conservative bills. But that's not the one that's currently advancing through the Senate. 24:32 Maybe that there's some signal there. Well, yeah, I mean, because Texas, uh, you know, my-- as I talk to Texans and people in the space, you know, you look at the Texas Blockchain Council, which has led 24:44 pr-pretty much acted almost more like a national organization, national leader in the, uh, like advocacy for domestic embrasure of digital assets in the US. 24:55 Like, uh, even then, even though Texas is kind of this titan in both industry and policy, uh, it's like the, the, the state is like not fully sold on it from a legislator standpoint. 25:09 Like, um, I understand it's like still a lot of this is still pretty contentious. 25:14 And you have issues like, you have simultaneously like a whole, a whole kind of challenge with Bitcoin miners, uh, both helping the grid and creating a lot of problems and getting a lot of pushback, um, in their respective judicial or in, uh, uh, districts. 25:30 So, uh, the next one that we can talk about is the an interesting dynamic where we have Alabama here, who has two bills, identic- basically identical language, and each bill, one is starting in the House and one is starting in the Senate. 25:47 So they're i- pretty much identical bills sponsored by two, well a senator and a house rep, and they start in one of the houses, and the strategy is to basically increase the likelihood that one or both of these would pass. 26:03 Because, um, the way the process works, you start in one of the, um, uh, in one of e-either the House or Senate, then you go to the other. 26:14 And so, um, sometimes if you just present more opportunities for people to vote and talk about it, it incre- it increases your hits, um, on target. So, uh, I was not aware that this is like a strategy. 26:28 Maybe this is common in [chuckles] like in, uh, government and bureaucracy. Uh, this seems, again, kind of hilarious and inefficient. But you see this, this, uh, meta emerge in Alabama. 26:43 Both of these are in, um, committee for House and Senate in their respective, uh, sides of the legislature. Yeah, and a lot of bills currently in committee, so I think that there will be, 26:57 uh, many fruits for discussion over the next few months as some of these advance or get killed. Charlie, maybe we can close on some of the ones that have failed. Yeah. 27:07 We can focus specifically on one from your home state, the beautiful Oklahoma. Yeah. And then also touch on Pennsylvania to show kind of two different ways in which some of these bills are getting struck down. Yeah. 27:20 So, uh, I can offer a look behind the curtain. I think we-- I talked a bit, a bit about it, um, on previous episodes of Bitcoin Season two. [clears throat] But, uh, I'm in Oklahoma. 27:32 I'm on the board of the Oklahoma Bitcoin Association, and we were pushing the SBR in Oklahoma, and it looked like a lot of these. 27:40 It was, uh, just take some of the state treasury, uh, put into an asset, uh, like Bitcoin, gotta be over five hundred billion. And, uh, 27:51 and, um, you know, some language about like what you can do, what, you know, what, what stable coins are okay to touch, that kind of thing. Well, the bill passed overwhelmingly in the House, 28:03 and then it went, uh, then it was going on to the Senate. And [clears throat] before it goes to the Senate, it's got to go to a Senate committee. 28:11 In this case, it went to the Revenue and Taxation Committee in the Senate, where the chair of that committee is also head of the Senate. Uh, uh, he's, uh, works, you know, for, for banks. 28:23 And, um, members of the Oklahoma Bitcoin Association had done a lot of legwork talking to all the members of this committee, explaining how it worked, talking to them, getting, uh, you know, a feel for what we thought the vote might go. 28:36 Um, our lobbyists are talking to them. We all felt pretty confident about it, which is great because, like, um, w-we were, you know, a little uncertain. 28:45 We were kind of maybe fifty percent that it would actually pass a Senate vote. But as it was going through committee and as more states around the US start adding these bills, um, we began to feel more confident. 28:57 So the week of that it was in committee, uh, we were pretty confident that it actually passed committee, uh, overwhelmingly. 29:04 But, um, as it would happen, that same week, even though we had touched base with, uh, many of the members of this committee, 29:13 you had, uh, other senators in these, uh, other senators like hold special meetings advocating against this specific bill. 29:25 The, uh, the language was that this is very similar to the, um, the tech, the internet boom of the 2000s. This is kind of like, uh, you know, again, it's a bubble. 29:40 It's the same kind of arguments you've, you've heard a million times before. And, uh, they-- and so, uh, we had several yeses switch to nos. 29:50 What's interesting, um, and, and the, and the bill failed in committee six to five, unfortunately. 29:57 What's funny is we actually had a no switch to yes, um, because, uh, somebody from like our lo- one of our local meetups called their senator and was like, "Hey, you're, you're in committee for this." 30:07 [laughs] And so they actually switched, [chuckles] a single call, switched a no from yes. 30:11 So it actually would have been seven to five, um, because there was such coordinated campaigning against this, and we were not aware of it just 'cause it kinda happened. 30:20 I mean-You don't know what you don't know, and it's like so much work to stay, like, to see, to like follow every single meeting and every single conversation that's happening. And this is the kind of like dynamic. 30:32 This is the-- what it looks like from a tactical view of like how these, uh, bills go and get into law. 30:42 So it's not like, um, everyone is on Twitter, and they browse through and they go, "Oh, look, Dennis Porter is retweeting, uh, that, um, Arizona's about to buy Bitcoin. That seems like a great idea." 30:54 No, they don't evaluate the actual... There's not a whole lot of like real evaluation of the language of these bills. Uh, it's really just how they feel about it. 31:03 It-- this is quite frankly, it's just how they feel about it. It's about vibe, and it's about, um, does it augment their chances for re-election next year? 31:12 Vibe voting, and it's a good example again of the ways in which senators and Congress members, both on the federal and state level, are pulled in so many different directions. 31:24 It's like they're being quartered every day by different political interests and business interests. 31:30 The fact of the matter is their staffers end up doing most of the legwork to figure out the details of specific bills or policy and lobbying rules, how they view that, and lobbyists are always at their ear. 31:44 And so all of these bills obviously have had many champions and many detractors. And sometimes, as with the Oklahoma bill, the chips don't fall in the favor of those who would like to see a strategic Bitcoin reserve. 31:57 And the Oklahoma one is a good example of one that failed in committee, was-- p-people were pretty hopeful about it, as, as were you, Charlie, and obviously it's not going to materialize now. 32:09 There's another one, and we'll close on this because it shows kind of the opposite end of the spectrum of, you know, a baby that was, you know, smothered in the cradle, so to speak. 32:17 [laughs] You know, there was a bill from Pennsylvania that was, I believe, one of the first ones for a strategic Bitcoin reserve to be introduced. 32:26 It was introduced by one Michael Cable last year right before the election, I think in October. And it was a good bill. It was a good bill. 32:33 It would have allowed for investing up to ten percent, ten percent of key state funds, including the general fund, budget stabilization fund and others under the treasurer. 32:43 But, uh, Representative Cable did not get reelected, and if you sponsor a bill and you don't get reelected, your bill is done, and that one was shoved to the wayside pretty quickly after he lost his seat last election. 32:57 Many ways for these to fail, few ways for them to succeed. 33:01 So I-- just needless to say, should we get one of these or a few of them, I think it'll be a massive win for those who have been pushing for these bills because it's really hard to get something like this passed. 33:11 I mean, most of these states are worried about employment, cost of living, a host of other issues that were front and center during the election cycle last year. 33:20 Honestly, Bitcoin is probably the last thing on their mind, and the fact that these have advanced to the state that they have is pretty impressive in its own right. Yep. 33:28 Um, [clears throat] but as we know in Bitcoin, things happen really fast. 33:31 So, um, I will be doing a little informal tracking of how much the state of Oklahoma would have made or lost on, um, a, what an expected, uh, uh, investment size would be. So I'll be doing this quarterly. 33:47 I'll be making sure to tag the relevant, uh, senators and, uh, people who, uh, voted for and against it just so they can get updates, because sure would, you know, be nice to be able to have some actual real back testing data next legis- next legislative session, um, in twenty twenty-six, when we represent perhaps a similar SBR type bill with, um, updated language for the modern era of next year. 34:17 You've heard of the Oracle of Omaha, but you've not heard of the Oracle of Oklahoma, and he is going to keep tabs and receipts on all of the money that Oklahoma could have won or lost. [clears throat] Yep. 34:30 So anyway, that's, that is the States. If you're listening to this, we write about this topic a lot. We cover the SBR story. 34:39 We cover how, uh, the US, uh, important like beats in Bitcoin and crypto in the US, um, in our newsletter. So make sure to check out, uh, blockspace.media for more deep dives on our newsletter. 34:53 And other than that, Paul and I will see you all next week for Writer's Room. Uh, uh, w- I don't know what we're gonna talk about, but you, if you have an opinion- Oh, we know what we're gonna talk about. Oh, yeah. 35:06 Little teaser. There is blood in the streets. We are currently staring down another developer war in Bitcoin. Oh. Some people wanna r- increase the op return limit. If you don't know what that is, don't worry. 35:17 We will cover what it is next week, why some people love it, why others fear it, and will Bitcoin fork from this? Probably not, but for the sake of the episode, almost certainly. [laughs] Yeah. 35:30 So, uh, come, we'll explain the boogeyman, uh, next week, and see you all later. [outro music]
