There was a time when talk about crypto was pretty high-minded. The people in my world who were

talking about it really had these very noble goals for it. I have a friend who was a very moral

person and he was very concerned with social justice issues and issues of equality, especially

the differences between how people in the United States

get to live and how people in less stable and more corrupt countries get to live.

And he thought of crypto is one of these solutions.

He basically said, you know, I think the idea is that people in other countries should be

able to use this untraceable digital currency to access opportunities that typically

have only been reserved for countries that have stable economies like ours.

He really thought of it as this great sort of leveler.

But of course, that's not how we're thinking about crypto anymore, especially after this

dinner last Friday in which

President Trump took in millions and millions and millions of dollars in exchange for access

to him at his Virginia golf club from and access to him granted to people, most of whom seem to have been from other countries.

Now, we've known for a time, right, that crypto had the opportunity, you know, had the, sort of

offer the opportunity to people to launder money. I once spent some time in Humboldt County in

far northern California, which is a big marijuana growing place.

And I was doing a documentary about people trying to make the transition from illegal marijuana

to then legal marijuana. Could they make that jump? And one thing, you know, it's funny to go

spend time with people who do that for living because they live an entirely cash life.

They can't bank at all because their stuff has been illegal all this time.

And so the places, these places are just awash in stuff that they can buy in cash.

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