I'm here with Ron Hammond. He is the head of policy and advocacy over at Wintermute. Ron,

welcome to the show. David, it's been a while. I hope everything's going well and looking forward

getting to all of it, man. There's a lot to talk cover it right now. Yeah, there has been a growing

history of crypto in DC. Maybe., maybe just for back context,

95% of our time together has been in just signal chat asking you about, like,

what does this mean, what's going on?

What's the truth here when it comes to, like, me and Ryan trying to figure out what the

hell is going on in Capitol Hill?

Because there's the version of Capitol Hill, crypto in Capitol Hill, that they want you to see.

And then there's the version that's like kind of going on under the hood. And those two things

don't really line up. Maybe to set the table, just how long have you been in D.C.? So it's been 10 years, and actually for this new job... It feels like all of them. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, like, since crypto policy was a thing, like, it's been like me and like three other people who have been on the staff side involved in this stuff. And like, for example, he's on Capitol Hill when I worked there. So I started working there in 2015, left in 2019 to go, we're going to ripple and cover that later on. But I worked for Warren Davidson from Ohio. And he was a freshman member. And everyone's kind of like high school. Everyone's trying to find their own certain lane and policy. And he was trying to be more venture capital issues. But then he had a whole conversation with the leadership, a couple hours.

And I'm like 24 at the time. But apparently, like, it's like, hey, you're a freshman. You're kind of getting the bomb rung in the issues. Just do crypto or something. And he really took that to heart. He went over to me and said, hey, Ron, like, do you know anything about crypto? I'm like, well, you know, I may and may have not bought an epic ID on the Silk Road in college,

but like that's pretty much all I know about crypto.

And goes, congratulations.

You're the guy that is now in charge of crypto policy. So like that's like how it happened. Me at 24 like dumped that on my desk. But the same time it's like it's kind of cool because it's like the most brand new territory. Like there's no like left versus right. There's no like policy lines. There in general. So, so, like, that's kind of how I got in this space. I worked with a couple Democrats and Republicans on the Token Taxonomy Act, which is, like, the first crypto-regulatory market structure bill. You know, back then it was, like, what, about 20 pages or so. And the Clarity Act is, like, 309 pages or whatever. but like the kind of the early stage of clarity act that we're going to talk about probably pretty soon.

That was the token tax on me act and several other bills down the road. But like that's what I worked on. It was the first bipartisan bill on market structure, which is I was really adamant about like making sure we had keep this bipartisan because of the first of its kind. And then after that, deciding to go over to in-house. So I can give it more in-depth of kind of like, you know, everything we're going to end up at,

including the blockchain association, partisan because of the first of its kind. And then after that, decided to go over to in-house.

So I can give it more in-depth kind of like, you know, everything we're going to end up at, including the blockchain association, now at Waird mute. But it's been a fun right, man. I've been kind of seen it from all angles here. It's been exciting. Trading is changing. Not gradually right now. OKX just launched trading buzz directly inside the OkX app. Grid trading,

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