Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big-picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, August 12th, and today we're talking about the Dems gearing up for a fight on the market structure bill. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes. We're going to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, today we are talking about the latest political machinations around the crypto regulatory agenda. However, we have to start quickly with a 2022 closeout sort of story. TLDR, Doquan appears to be pleading guilty to fraud. On Monday, the judge overseeing Doe Kwan's criminal case

arranged a hearing for Tuesday. He placed a note on the docket stating,

The court has been advised that the defendant may enter a change of plea. The defendant should

be prepared to give a narrative allocution that incorporates all elements of the offenses

to which the defendant is pleading guilty. After over two years of fighting extradition, Kwan was returned to the U.S. to face charges over the collapse of Luna in January. He entered a not-guilty plea on nine fraud charges shortly after landing in New York. It appeared we were set for another lengthy crypto trial as Kwan defended his actions. Now, I am recording this before the case conference has wrapped up, but every indication is that Kwan will give up on fighting the charges and take a plea deal.

It's unclear what kind of sentencing Kwan will see. The charges carry a maximum of 120 years

in prison, but many of the charges are alternative, so in practice the likely sentencing is

much less. In previous court filings, Kwan's legal team applied to delay the case moving forward, stating that, quote, productive discussions were taking place with prosecutors. By way of comparison, Alex Mishinsky, the CEO of Celsius, received 12 years for similar fraud charges in May. The court heard that Mishinsky's crimes led to $4.7 billion in consumer funds being inaccessible on the failed platform.

Sam Bangman-Fried, of course, received a 25-year sentence, connected to around $9 billion in customer and investor losses. In contrast, prosecutors are alleging that the collapse of Luna,

quote, erased over $40 billion in investor assets, causing devastating losses to countless

investors in the United States and around the world. Now, that's roughly the total market cap of Luna and UST at the time of collapse, so is pretty

inflated. But Kwan will still be framed as causing much more harm than either Mishinsky or even

SBF. Sentencing won't take place until later, but there is the potential, at least, that

Kwan will face a tougher punishment than even his contemporaries.

For most observers, this is a book-closing moment on the endemic fraud that brought down the last cycle.

Meanwhile, in this cycle, it's all about actual legitimate political battles.

Over in the Senate, Democrats are setting up to fight the crypto market structure bill when Congress returns in September.

On Sunday, Elizabeth Warren launched her new set of talking points during an interview on MSNBC.

She said, look, we need crypto regulation, but we don't need the regulation written by the

crypto industry. We need regulation that limits the corruption and the ability of elected officials

...