Hello and welcome to the readback. I'm Robert O'Shaughnessy filling in for Max Cohen, who is on a much-deserved holiday this week.

Joining me today is Punch Bowl News Financial Services reporter, Brendan Peterson.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for joining us, Brendan. So I understand you've had quite a week.

It's a happy Crypto Week to all who celebrate.

And Brendan, you certainly have been celebrating in a unique way.

Tell me, how has it been?

I would not use the word Celebrate.

I would say I am surviving Crypto Week because it's been kind of a disaster up until

what is arguably the final day of Crypto Week. This is, we're recording this on a Thursday,

and the House has just passed three major crypto bills. It's a big deal for everyone involved.

This includes a stable coin bill that came from the Senate, which means it is going straight to President Donald Trump's desk. That's going to be the first piece of crypto legislation ever signed by the president. That's really a big deal. The House also advanced major reforms to the market structure of crypto, which is a fancy way of saying the responsibilities

of different federal financial regulators and markets regulators. But the path to get here

was absolutely horrendous because we had basically two very long and painful fall starts

in the house where on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week,

the House Freedom Caucus decided to buck the proceedings and vote down the rules that set up

these crypto votes plus defense appropriations. It was really a mess that as far as I'm concerned and

other folks watching this space, kind of came out of nowhere. What were their concerns,

Brendan? Yeah. So they got really concerned about the idea of a central bank digital currency, which is a long title that we often

shorten to CBDC, which isn't that helpful. But suffice to say, it is a instrument, a theoretical

instrument that could one day be owned by the Federal Reserve that is basically just a literal

digital dollar.

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