Q+A: Why big investors are taking Bitcoin seriously

Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more. I'm Sean Aylmer. Crypto markets have been on quite a ride after a long downturn. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana all rallied strongly. But politics is still capable of shaking the market, as we saw when the US Senate failed to pass the Clarity Act, a major piece of legislation designed to establish clearer rules for digital assets. So what are the big institutional investors making of all this? Today's the third in our series of interviews with the team at crypto platform Coinbase, looking at the market and what investors need to understand about it. Remember, this is general information only. You should seek advice tailored to your circumstances before making investment decisions. John D'Agostino is a veteran. Well, that's been unfair. John, you're too young to be a veteran, but I'm going to say a veteran of Wall Street. Also head of institutional strategy at Coinbase, John D'Agostino. Welcome to Fearing Greed Q&A. Thanks so much for having me, Sean. Let's start with the Clarity Act. Exactly what it was and how important is it that it, at least in a couple of weeks ago, didn't get through Senate?

Sure. So the Clarity Act is what we call a market structure bill. And I think it's very important to discern what market structure is versus, say, something like the Genius Act, which was a narrowly tailored act that became law. that will be then interpreted into rules by the regulatory agencies that was covering a very narrow element of this market, which was stablecoins. Market structure bills are very rare. Can't speak to other countries, but in the US, we do them every 25 to 50 years. And they tend to be around extremely important elements of market infrastructure or when there's been some huge catastrophe that has caused a great financial crisis or has affected hundreds of millions of Americans. So I think the good news, if there is any, is that the mere fact that an asset like crypto which technically has existed since the Satoshi White Paper was written, so call it 16 years or so, but in all real practice has existed in its modern form, certainly from an institutional perspective, for roughly, I'd say, six or seven years, maybe eight generously. The fact that We reached a point where a market structure bill was even being considered, much less reached the floor of the U.S. Senate, is actually pretty extraordinary. So for those who are bullish on constructive on crypto like myself, we should be proud of the fact that this nascent technology even justified consideration for market structure bill. Now, its failing was not good. I'm not going to be one of those people who pretends that everything is good for crypto. But the good news is that, one, it reached that level, which showcases the importance of the asset class. Two is the regulatory agencies in the US, upon its failure, moved extremely quickly. I mean, they pressed send on those emails within minutes of the vote coming in negative. And we have this flurry of... Not just strong rulemaking by the regulators, but I think what's lost on people is they're doing it in a