Question: Who is one of your top 10 Bitcoiners that no one talks about or discusses online. My choice is easy.
"Brian Brooks: Bitcoining Bad Ass"
By BR
August 21, 2023 (NOSTR only content)
I am shocked more people haven't listened to Brian Brooks about Bitcoin. Brian addressed Congress a couple years ago as he sat next to now shamed SBF. I remember thinking how Brian seemed to be a professional and how SBF answered questions as an amateur.
Further, in all the SEC/Binance filing, CZ (prounounced SLEA-ZY) shows how the previous two CEOs at Binance are known as Hostile CEO A and Hostile CEO B.
But who are these previous two CEOs at Binance?
1) Hostile CEO A is: Catherine Coley who is presumably still missing.
2) Hostile CEO B is: Brian Brooks
When Brian addressed Congress next to SBF:
Snippet 1:
"Can anyone explain, for example, why Fidelity Investments, one of America’s best known investment advisors, had to go to Canada to offer a Bitcoin ETF, or why physically settled crypto ETFs are safe and legal in Germany, Brazil, Singapore, and elsewhere, but somehow not in the United States?"
Snippet 2:
"The second point is lots of these decentralization protocols are designed to solve the exact problems that create the need for enforcement in the first place, because most enforcement in the securities and banking system is about some combination of human error, human negligence, human greed, or human bias. And the point of some of these decentralized systems is to take that out and have an open source piece of software everybody can look at and do those things algorithmically."
Snippet 3:
"Well, Mr. Huizenga, it’s good to see you again. I think the most important reason of many is international competitiveness. Other countries make this easier. Let me just make clear. Other companies make this easier, other countries. I just came yesterday from the Middle East, where in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, they have super clear derivatives regulations, super clear ETF regulation. They’re trying to lure Americans over there to build these products, and they’re moving there."
Snippet 4:
"Mr. Budd: (03:18:04)
I thank the chair. United States has a huge opportunity with crypto, but my fear is that this regulatory state is going to crack down on an industry that the regulators really don’t understand yet, and it’s going to force the next generation of financial tech to be created outside of our country. Well, we can’t let that happen. So Mr. Brooks, it’s good to see you again, where do companies draw the line and say that enough is enough with this anti-innovation “regulation by enforcement”, and then just decide to take their industry elsewhere to another country? Where’s the line?
Mr. Brooks: (03:18:47)
Well, Mr. Budd, it’s good to see you and thank you for that question. What I would say is in some aspects of the industry, the line is super clear. There are some products that are legal in other countries and are just not legal here. So I take some of the investment products we’ve talked about earlier today, for example exchange traded funds. One of the things that makes crypto risky is that consumers may not understand the difference between one token and another token. And so they may want to diversify much as I own an S&P 500 mutual fund. We don’t allow that in the United States, we do allow it in Canada. We allow it in Germany, Singapore, Portugal, and a number of other places. So if you’re a developer of those products, there’s no fuzzy line, it’s super clear. You can’t do that here. So you have to go abroad. Okay? There are some other places-
Mr. Budd: (03:19:29)
Can you say why we can’t do that here?
Mr. Brooks: (03:19:31)
Sure. It’s because the Securities and Exchange Commission has consistently refused to approve products that other G20 nations have approved.
Mr. Budd: (03:19:37)
So we’re behind the curve?
Mr. Brooks: (03:19:39)
Unquestionably."
Snippet 5:
"Mr. Brooks: (03:32:37)
Sure. Well, thank you for the question, Mr. Kustoff. I actually do this talk at local rotary clubs and things around the country all the time. So I think I can do that pretty well. I think the easiest way to understand it is let’s contrast blockchain transactions with normal banking transactions to see how much easier it is to trace them on a blockchain than it is in a banking transaction. So let’s imagine for a moment that… I would never do this because this would be flagrantly illegal, but let’s say I bought you lunch. Okay? And let’s say that afterwards you wanted to Venmo me your payment back, right? So you hit your Venmo button on your iPhone and you sent me money. What many people don’t understand is that there’s seven or eight different steps in the Venmo transaction.
So all Venmo does is send an instruction to your bank. Your bank then receives that instruction, they write it down in their books and records, and then they then send an instruction to an underlying transfer network. It could be the automated clearing house, it could be the Fedwire system or something else. That system then contacts my bank. It inquires whether my bank has enough money to pay you. Once that’s been done, then there’s a debit from my account. It’s very complicated. And in any one of those steps, information could be lost. There could be a breach, something bad could happen.
Versus in a blockchain, there are no intermediaries. I’m not sending instructions to a third party to send instructions to another third party, to eventually send you money. I’ve sent you money. And when the block is validated, I can see that my wallet address transferred that value to your wallet address, simple as that. The easiest way for people to understand how easy this is, because we’ve had a lot of talk of hacking and cyber security issues, the reason that we found the bad guys in the Colonial Pipeline hack, was because they asked for Bitcoin. If they had asked for diamonds, if they had asked for cash, if they’d asked for almost any other thing, we’d never have caught the bad guys. We caught the bad guys because, not in spite of, because they used Bitcoin and we could tell exactly where the money went.
Mr. Kustoff: (03:34:31)
So, because the blockchain was used, it was traceable?
Mr. Brooks: (03:34:36)
Correct."
Snippet 6:
"I love that question, and thank you for giving me a chance to address it. Couple of things. So first of all, let’s ask, why do we have so many underbanked people in the United States? And the answer is a combination of minimum balance fees, monthly account maintenance fees, and all kinds of other things that are a hallmark of the money center model that banking is built on. Right? If you talk to Mr. Allaire about his product, he would tell you they don’t have any minimum balance fees. They don’t have any monthly maintenance fees. You can keep your assets in a tokenized bank deposit for free. So that’s the first answer is there are no $10 a month fees. There are no $25 wire charges. Those things don’t exist that eat away at your life savings. A.
And B, the next most important thing about crypto is here you have an early stage asset, which unlike the IPO boom, unlike venture capital, doesn’t require that you know a guy or that you be well connected or that you be an accredited investor to participate. This is a chance for underrepresented communities to be in on the wealth creation stage of some new thing as opposed to coming in at the end. So what I always say is that’s the way you solve under representation is through wealth creation. This is an opportunity, and that is why there are more minority investors than white investors in crypto in the United States is because of this."
Mr. Brooks: (04:15:51)
It’s all incumbency protection. The big banks don’t like this. The big banks have been slow to adopt because they make a lot of money on those fees I just mentioned.
Snippet 7:
"Mr. Steil: (04:16:03)
… if I can, Mr. Brooks, in the time that we have. In your opening testimony, you talked about the do no harm approach, and that approach helped bring in a period of tremendous growth and opportunity in really Web One. You mentioned that some of the countries that U.S. crypto businesses are moving to. What are some of the examples of the positive approaches to digital asset regulation that you see in those countries if you had a put your finger on it?
Mr. Brooks: (04:16:21)
Well, I mean, for example, responding to market demand. If a whole bunch of customers want to buy a Bitcoin ETF, why is it our business to say they can’t do it? I mean, you see this domestically in New York versus the rest of the United States. Lots of investors like to buy certain tokens. New York won’t let New Yorkers buy tokens. So there’s safe in Nebraska, not safe in New York. Why would that be?"
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Me: A lot more content and links found here:
