Episode Title: Crypto policy and the CLARITY act w/ Perianne Boring

Perianne Boring founded the Digital Chamber twelve years ago to advocate for digital assets as a tool for monetary reform, a conviction shaped by studying the 2008 financial crisis, interning at the White House National Economic Council under Obama, and working as a House legislative aide where she first encountered Bitcoin around 2010. Her father, a software engineer, confirmed that Bitcoin's solution to the double-spend problem was a genuine technical advancement, which solidified her conviction. She became the first international broadcast journalist to cover Bitcoin as a regular beat and attended the first Bitcoin conference in San Jose in 2013 as the only person present with a camera.

The CLARITY Act is market structure legislation originating in the House Agriculture Committee over eight years ago that classifies Bitcoin and Ethereum as commodities rather than securities, making the CFTC the primary regulator. The Senate Banking Committee passed its version out of committee markup shortly before the recording, but that version still needs reconciliation with the Senate Agriculture Committee version before a floor vote, and differences between the House and Senate texts create risk of additional negotiation or another round through committees. President Trump has expressed a desire to sign the CLARITY Act on July 4th, though Boring noted that competing priorities such as a new war could distract congressional leadership, and she observed that only two percent of legislation introduced in Congress actually becomes law.

Boring described the Biden administration's approach as deliberately using regulatory ambiguity to create an untenable operating environment, pursuing enforcement against companies that guessed wrong about whether their asset was a security rather than providing clear rules. She said Operation Chokepoint 2.0 caused companies to be kicked out of the country and set the industry back significantly. She previously advised companies not to speak to the SEC because any conversation would be used against them, a posture she said is no longer necessary under the Trump administration, which she characterized as placing pro-crypto and crypto-fluent people in the most important regulatory offices, with both the CFTC and SEC already having put forward regulations clarifying their respective jurisdictions.

Boring argued that legislation is preferable to regulatory guidance because it is far harder to undo, requiring a bill to pass through all chambers and committees before reaching the president's desk, and that codifying clarity into statute future-proofs the current agency work against future administrations. She added that even if the CLARITY Act does not pass, getting more regulated products and companies to market makes the industry harder to unwind politically, and described this as her core strategy for building resilience against political risk.

On the banking industry, Boring identified JP Morgan as the largest correspondent bank in the world and described correspondent banking fees as approximately a two trillion dollar annual industry. She said blockchain technology enables trustless peer-to-peer transactions over a global open-source ledger, eliminating the need for an intermediary institution, and compared the threat to correspondent banking to what voice over internet protocol did to long-distance phone fees. She characterized Jamie Dimon's apprehension as predictable business behavior given the revenue at stake but said using political power to politicize the technology crosses a line. Her hypothetical advice to Dimon would be to broker acquisitions of large crypto companies and integrate the technology through the banking system. She noted that Fidelity is further ahead than peers because CEO Abby Johnson has been positive on Bitcoin for years, while banks that spent years opposing crypto rather than building infrastructure cannot quickly develop that capability now.

Boring said the GENIUS Act has already passed and the CLARITY Act is shortly behind, with Wall Street and brokerage firms now on board, leaving banks as the main holdouts. She expressed concern that the Democratic Party is still using crypto as a means to attack Trump and Republicans, which she said is harmful to the industry, and argued crypto should be a bipartisan issue because the technology allows anyone regardless of background to participate and transact freely. She predicted Bitcoin will inevitably reach one million dollars or more following the power law as a growing network, though she declined to specify a timeline.

With the policy battle largely won in her view, Boring said her next focus shifts to bringing Bitcoin, stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, and open-source permissionless systems to the people who need them most, an effort she acknowledged will require substantial education and outreach work.