Then there was a chance for a hearing, and I got the call, and yeah, it was a really nice moment. I mean, to be honest, I was instantaneously incredibly nervous.
Yeah, no, of course.
I’d never done it before.
One of the observations that I have made many times around congressional testimony of this nature is that when it’s anything technology-related, you sit and you watch and you listen and you look at the lawmakers who are listening, and you hear their questions and you sort of think to yourself: Oh my God, how are we ever gonna get anywhere? I say that with all respect to some of the political leaders of this country. Some of them, not all of them. But there is a troubling disconnect between often what is said and what is understood, and then what is done. When you walked out of that room that day, did you feel like anything would materially change? Do you feel like they actually understood what was happening and sort of what the stakes were?
I think some of them did.
Sure, I mean, it’s not a monolith.
As to whether I felt like things were gonna change, I can’t remember what I felt at the time.
It felt good to clear the air. It felt necessary. I went hard.
Yeah.
I did not mess around. I remember asking my wife, “Do I use ‘biggest Ponzi scheme in history’? Is that too simplistic?” She’s like, “No, you have to say that. Because that’s how people understand these things, popularly. You can be nuanced in a 300-page book. But in five minutes on Capitol Hill, and in a specific clip that you’re gonna be clipped for, you need to be as direct and as hard-hitting as possible.”
So I wrote my remarks, and the good part about being an actor, and a writer, is that you specialize in communications, and I think I knew how to hit my marks.
Then what was so fascinating about actually testifying is how similar to showbiz it was. Like, you’re up there, you’re giving your speech, you’re on camera. But off-camera you’re seeing people milling about. The hearing was two crypto skeptics, me and this wonderful professor of law at American University, Hilary Allen, and a couple of pro-crypto people, including Kevin O’Leary.
Oh, fantastic. So glad Kevin was able to be there.
It wasn’t a debate. It was sort of like a performative thing where we were just gonna hit our marks, and I get that, but that obviously is not a real conversation.
I can’t remember what I felt at the time, but I definitely remember other skeptics saying, “Yeah, it’s over.”
It’s over in 2022.
Yeah. Or, you know, it’s gonna die out. Not all of them, but some of them. I just remember thinking, I don’t think that’s true.
I have to ask you about President Trump, because crypto was sort of bouncing along. There would be these spectacular moments of catastrophe—SBF being a great example. Then you have the president of the United States come back into office for a second term and become a crypto evangelist, who vowed to make the United States the crypto capital of the world.