 Everyone, it's Rachel Wolfson here at Consensus 2022 in Austin. Today I'm interviewing a very special guest, Caitlin Long. Caitlin Long is a 22-year Wall Street veteran and she has been a Bitcoiner since 2012. She is now the CEO of Custodia Bank, which aims to provide a unique suite of services tailored specifically toward digital assets. Can you give a little bit of background about Custodia? It's a bank, obviously, but just a little more detail there for our listeners. Custodia got a bank charter in October 2020 and we're in the process of getting ready to launch to get what's called our Certificate of Authority to operate from the Wyoming Division of Banking. We applied for a Fed MasterCount in October 2020. It's now 19 months and counting on that. And then we also applied to become a Fed member bank. We complied with every rule applicable to us under the Federal Reserve's requirements, but we went even further than that and also applied to become a Fed member bank which would make us directly regulated by the Fed and we did that in August 2021. Got it, okay, wonderful. Caitlin, obviously you have a lot of knowledge with the regulatory landscape. So I also wanted to ask you a little bit about the bipartisan crypto bill that was just kind of announced. What are your thoughts there? Is it good? Is it bad for the crypto space? Well, it's so interesting because it's split the industry and some folks are really supportive of it and others are not. And I think that probably suggests that it's striking the right tone. I'm not an expert at it. It's a long bill and there are a lot of things that are not directly pertaining to topics that I've been working on. But generally speaking, I think it stands, it's an important advancement because it's bipartisan. That's the bill to watch in Washington. There are I think now 50 different crypto bills that have been introduced in Congress and there's only one that's bipartisan and it's got the powerful senator from New York State as well as the powerful senator on Senate banking from Wyoming, which is the state that's leading in digital assets. That's quite a combination. Right, in terms of innovation in Wyoming because Wyoming is one of the leaders in digital assets and innovation, what else can we expect to see moving forward? Well, the select committee is gearing up again in fact next week the Wyoming select committee on which I'm a non-voting member is gearing up for legislative ideas for the next legislative session that's coming up in early 2023. And these are open public hearings. There will be at least three committee meetings. I know one of the things they're focused on is digital identity. And then of course Wyoming was the first to adopt the Dow LLC legislation to allow a Dow to register if it wants to be not truly decentralized but wants to be able to get a bank account or open a brokerage account at a securities firm, et cetera. You need a control person involved. So it's not truly decentralized if there's a control person, but that's what enables the organization to be able to get bank accounts. Again, like it or not, it is, that's the law. So the fact that the Dow can register as an LLC in Wyoming is significant. And there have been, I knew there were 50 that had filed to register in Wyoming in the first few months of that. So we'll get an update from that next week. But I know there are some tweaks that they wanna do to that law as well. And then really it's an open book. I think Wyoming has proven that it's a state that moves fast and supports this industry generally for the good actors, of course, not the fraudsters. But if you've got ideas, come show up at the committee hearings. This is how the legislation, the ideas bubble up from the industry and it turns into laws. Right. And I know there are a lot of Dow's now being established in Wyoming, which is amazing because it seems like Dow's, this is the year of Dow's I think. So what Wyoming is doing is wonderful there. Yeah, I'm not part of those. I love the fact that I'm not a gatekeeper. This is part of the design. There's no centralized authority in all this, right? We just, as an industry, just gang tackled this. It crowdsourced the ideas, made them happen. And I'm just thrilled that people are using the laws. It's so interesting because it's taken a couple of years for the big wave to hit, but it's really hitting. And I see it also in the special purpose depository institutions. There's a line formed to apply for those charters. And in the beginning, we built it and no one came. And now a few years later, here they're coming. Right. It's interesting because I think that we're seeing new trends now. I mean, you and I have been in the industry, especially you, for a very long time. What other trends do you see happening moving forward besides Dow's and like NFTs? Do you see anything with stable coins or CBDCs or just in general, what do you see? Well, the big topic, of course, is gonna be stable coins. And I don't believe the US is going to end up doing a CBDC. They're gonna, the Fed's gonna put Fed now out apparently next year. Although next year's only six months away and none of the rules have been revealed yet. So we don't really know what it's going to look like. But I think stable coins definitely, this is a place where the regulators are gonna play. And obviously the Lummis Gillibrand Bill, it was interesting to see how the Wyoming special purposes depository institution regime is in that bill. But also New York of course cares a lot because it's got the special purpose, that the limited purpose trust companies of which there are some that are stable coin issuers. And basically that regime is what is being proposed in that bill. What will happen in terms of the law that actually passes? It's gonna be a couple years realistically. And of course the sausage making process is not pretty. And lots of lobbyists will get their hands on it. And the banking industry of course, I was very interested to see a long article about it in American Banker. Very critical because the banks are very worried about non-banks being able to get access to Fed master accounts and to do things like this. And again, I put my hand up, we're the one who is a bank, who's been waiting for that for, the Fed has had our business plan for more than two years now. Wow. And I think there are more scams unfortunately. And one of the things that is interesting about the regulatory backdrop is the regulators have had the opportunity to create regulated versions of these now. They've had custodians applications since October, 2020. And we're not the only one who's proposing to do this. Why haven't they acted? I do believe there is culpability for the regulators who have sat on the legitimate applications of parties who have sought permission while the scams have proliferated in this industry. And it's really tough. But I firmly believe the regulators bear some degree of culpability in that. They could have acted sooner. And a lot of people would not have been hurt had they done so. Interesting. Caitlin, any final thoughts before we end our interview today? We're at consensus yet again, it's in Austin, not New York, that speaks volumes. Because obviously New York really sent a lot of this industry fleeing to Austin and to Wyoming and Miami. And within the United States for sure. It'll be interesting to see if New York gets it back. But it's crazy, its consensus is always fun. I don't see any Lambo's parked outside here. But maybe I just haven't seen them yet. I agree that's a good thing, right? We don't need a Lambo. Some of the craziness of this industry. It's fun, but boy the outsiders look at it and say, oh no. And in a world where we're definitely going to have to, we're a little on defense because we're more than a little as an industry on defense because of the Ponzi scheme that Taraluna turned out to be. And there are others out there. And frankly, good riddance to them all. I hope that innocent people don't get hurt. Not your keys, not your coins. Everybody needs to understand that. If you're holding your crypto at a third party and especially if they don't tell you how solvent they are, it's dangerous folks. Just there's a leverage flush coming just like we had with Taraluna. There's more coming. We are in crypto winter. I don't mind that as a long-term hodler, but I know what it's like to have bought into the top and then sat with losses for a few years. That happened to me back in 2013, 2012, 2013, 2014, but I held on. And here we are and I think the same is going to be repeated again. So here we are, enjoy Consensus. It's crypto winter though. I hope some of the craziness calms down. Thank you so much, Caitlin. Thank you.