Stand With Crypto: The World's Largest Pro Crypto Movement | Hannah Laut, Taylor K, Tyler A, Dylan G

movement in the world these are historic times for the crypto community and stand with crypto is leading the way stand with crypto is the largest Pro crypto movement in the world we are more than 2.1 million organized crypto Advocates hungry for change in 2024 our election Hub helped more than 600,000 people prepare to vote and generated more than 715,000 lawmaker contacts our swing state tour brought together thousands of crypto users and we held hundreds of Grassroots events across the country and on Election Day we demonstrated the undeniable strength of our movement propelling 270 Pro crypto candidates to office helping to elect the most Pro crypto Congress ever 2025 will be our best year yet as we continue to work hand in hand hand with a newly Pro crypto government we are the voice of innovation making history today we are crypto sweet hello e Denver I'm going to sit over here thank you all for coming my name is Mason I am the community director of stand of crypto the I think that video explained a lot of what we do but in brief we are a nonprofit that creates an advocacy Hub and we want to be your voice on Capitol Hill so we want every everybody at eth Denver to have everyone eth Denver every conference every every crypto Builder user founder to have the ability to make sure that their representatives represent their interests and we we have tools for emailing calling we have a database of All American politicians what they've said about crypto and what their score is from a to F and one of the things that we do is work with great Founders and advocates in different states so I've brought our Colorado crew up here I'll let them ruce themselves in a second but just some context on what they've done with stand of crypto they got involved with stand of crypto a bit over a year ago and there was a point in time in which we needed to go talk to some Colorado lawmakers and they they took the Trek to DC and had some really productive meetings so I'm excited to have them on stage again and I guess you guys want to introduce yourselves yeah thank you Mason uh my name is Hannah oreskovich I am on the founding Board of stewards for eth Denver so welcome we're happy to have you here this year I'm also serving as their adviser for all marketing Communications and PR and then I also am an emerging Tech adviser working with various teams within web 3 and the AI space uh I'm Dylan Grabowski I wear a ton of hats in the blockchain space but mostly I cover the Neo ecosystem uh in OG chain over at Neo news today and I'm also the host of the smart economy podcast I'm Tyler Adams with a team called coz um we're one of the validators in the Neo ecosystem um we also build a bunch of other tools like a self- custodial wallet um as well as some infrastructure like smart contract compilers and things like that hello all and thanks Mason Taylor Kendall I uh have been a longtime Steward with e Denver and also a president of a nonprofit called learning economy foundation and do a lot of just local community work uh in Denver already see a lot of familiar faces so yeah good to see some some friendly folks in the awesome just a quick pull do you want me to pause this video I meant to have it not Loop but do you want it the the exciting Loop or do you want me to put it on pause okay I'm going to move it to the end so we get everybody in the audience to sign up with s crypto all right thank you for introducing yourselves guys the first question I have is pretty simple it's how did you guys get involved with stand of crypto why did you think it was important to get involved with advocacy and like tell us a little about your experience on Capital and what you learned um what surprised you and what your takeaways were sure I'll start uh you know I chose to get involved with stand with crypto on behalf of eth Denver and spor DOW because we have such an incredible local and state presence within government uh relationships if you came to Opening Ceremonies I'm sure you saw our governor Jared pulus give uh you know kind of a welcome to everyone so it's been wonderful to have that support rep and I thought it was really important that we take that conversation to the National stage and meet with policy makers who are affecting change Nationwide um you know we have a really friendly government here in Colorado when it comes to web3 Tech and so it was so fun to have those conversations with policy makers in DC I'll keep it brief I have a lot of reasons but we're a validator note in the Neo ecosystem and there were two times during the Biden Administration where wording that might have passed a bill would have made uh what we do illegal because we couldn't collect kyc information on people who transacted on a block we would have validated so it was kind of my duty our duty to go to DC and let legislators know that anti crypto legislation is going to run businesses out of the us out of Colorado and we just went there to talk to a Colorado legislators and say we earn money we we pay state and federal taxes I employ people locally and by you not having a position or even worse taking a position of someone who has a negative stance on this industry and this technology is going to harm you and the state's bottom line yeah for me um pretty much echoing Dylan's um concern um also as a self- custodial wallet um that's open source there have been a lot of issues with attacks from policy makers towards just in general the open source Community um specifically within the blockchain space um so providing some education on that and what it's actually doing to the us as innovators um in technology was kind of a a motivating topic for me we're just rolling down the line uh I'll be quick as well I I mean for me it was one I think being a little bit of a cheerleader for other folks I know doing amazing work in Colorado so that just felt important uh and it's also just the human ing layer I think i' I'd spent a little time in DC uh at the US Department of Education and it was very obvious to me that I had created a perspective on what it meant to do that work and what policy makers are that was pretty far separated from that role actually and so uh yeah for me it was just about humanizing meeting people and you realize really quick that these are are mostly good folks trying to like do well for the American people um that's not always the case uh I don't know how spicy we'll get but uh yeah for me it was just a humanizing layer making sure you know I understood that these are real real humans that I can trust yeah and I want to I want to touch on that a little bit more because just to inform y'all as far as the way the strategy Works in in this specific instance is that a lot of lawmakers at the time and even even now uh there's a certain lack of Education that makes them think that you know crypto is full of Bad actors crypto is used for nefarious activities and and the goal with highlighting folks like the panelists here is to show them well here's the face of someone that works in crypto here is someone specifically in your District that you know might vote for you probably might vote for you might not vote for you you know and they might have a company that you know you might want to stay in your District so these these guys were really really helpful with that and one thing and I have I can go to the next question but I was curious if any of you guys have any anecdotes from your meetings or like any like fun things that you think about in retrospect that you you you were like like a fun story you would share with your friends after you did your your trip yeah I'll just jump in we we met with uh Senator hicken Looper who was also the former Governor of Colorado and the first thing he said he was the first meeting we had that day the first thing he said is you need to realize that the people you're going to be talking to today are just like the people that you went to high school with this is basically just a bunch of grown-up high schoolers who play games and get into clicks and you need to keep that in mind when you're talking to everybody and and he also pissed off his staffers cuz he rolled like five or 10 minutes over and if you know the schedules of folks like that so yeah it felt felt Justified that's really funny no it's oh do you have something Hannah oh no okay it's funny like uh what do you say like youone was in model UN in high school it's called model for real R I don't know model Congress I don't know but uh cool so one of the things that is really exciting about this coming coming year is and I've been telling people at the booth all all week we have never been in a better position for crypto in America we have an entire government that is you know pretty interested in crypto the like the Congress is very like there's a serious bipartison uh alignment that we should do some stuff and make sure crypto stays in America and that we are able to maximize The Innovation and make sure that it it delivers value to our our population um and you you might have seen like stable coin is something that people are looking at but last year there was something called fit21 it's a market structured bill that would assign responsibility across different Regulators help Define different definitions of decentralization and that was something that passed the house by with a bipartisan majority and so now this year where we have a even more proc crypto government we expect that legislation will come to the floor and that's where that's where everybody here will will will play a good role because in those moments we need all the adoc kits all the folks at these conferences all the folks that you know own crypto and and are interested at home to send emails to the representatives and they can use standof crypto.com legislation and let's let's assume we make it happen and we we get these these rules of the roads implemented what is exciting to you about a pro crypto future where regulation is established and what do you think you could see um like what do what do you what do you hope to see in that world one you want to kick it off this time um I'll go I think just breathing space um and being able to sleep soundly at night um at least for a little while not being concerned that my company is going to get debanked or that my friends are going to end up in prison that's kind of what I want at least I'm not I don't have very high expectations but that's kind of where where I set my bar for being excited I think that's a pretty reasonable uh expectation let's keep let's keep uh good Builders building and not not in prison in the US in the US well let's get every good Builder to build in the US you know let's make us this the crypto crypto capital of the world right yeah um I'll I'll just add that I think you know obviously we need regulation in place to prevent a lot of Bad actors um crypto's been known to have those and and people have had bad experiences and so I'm excited for there to be regulation that prevents those Bad actors but doesn't stifle innovation we have a real Innovation Hub here in Colorado and um you know more broadly in the US as well and and web 2 has certainly built its rails here in our country and so I'm excited to see the potential of the innovation in web 3 have Roots here in the US I'll I'll be quick uh I think just a level of transparency and that comes with some sort of guidelines to know like when it does make sense or not uh to work in this industry and and innovate in a way that's ultimately beneficial to people I struggle because without that it also opens up opportunities for those in power be it the president or anyone else uh to you know sort of take advantage of the lack of clarity or the lack of transparency and I know this gets complicated and it gets uh political I don't think we want to go there necessarily uh but without anything without some sort of like stance as a country uh how to work with this stuff it opens doors for everybody good and bad so it's complicated obviously but uh yeah just you know guard rails are important we got to make sure that folks feel safe doing good work and we all know that amazing people that we're around them all all day and all week uh are doing really amazing things for the benefit of of uh citizens here so guard rails matter I think I'm mostly looking forward to uh seeing a a Rejuvenation in project tokens and projects being able to fund themselves and build themselves here in the US we could argue that the whole mem coin Mania last year was spurred by the SEC pushing off real Builders and real projects from launching here and that really fueled the fire for tokens that have just speculative value and no teams really behind them so I'm kind of excited to have maybe a Renaissance in equity being built here again maybe even icos I don't know but yeah a new SEC and stopping to to force people into like speculative play uh coins and tokens I'm really excited to see what's going to happen in the next year or two yeah and it's it's really exciting to see that a lot of the folks that are getting involved at the government level from those like in those agencies actually understand crypto because I mean that's that's what you really want you want people to that in good faith will try and understand what's good and um we do really want people to get protected as well I mean I'm speaking for myself right here but uh is you know watching people get wrecked has been pretty brutal um so I'm hoping hoping for a good future as well um next question would be and I guess it it ties into the conversations you guys had on the hill but it also ties into like the next few years hopefully we see real businesses real use cases manifest themselves now that there is uh backing of the the government theoretically what are some of the use cases that resonated with the lawmakers and what are some of the use cases you hope to see take hold now that we have are you know free to build in a way I think the coolest part was seeing some of the use cases that you guys brought to the policy makers so let's hear a little bit about that so uh one of the subsidiaries that we work together on is called item systems and it's a non-fungible item it's a physical good that has a digital twin on chain so you can have a physical good that has an nft that represents ownership ship over it and so we brought uh Apparel in bags that had these chips embedded into them and so as we're talking with legislators and they're just trying to figure out what a crypto token is or whatever we're like no let's take a step back and realize that you can actually use this for real world value you can have a piece a backpack that if it gets stolen you have a chip that's embedded into it that says onchain this is this wallet's nft and this belongs to this person so if your backpack gets stol and you can demonstrably prove that it's yours and to walk into a senator or a congress person's office and just show them that you can tap scan the Chip And that you can see the nft on chain that represents ownership over that physical good um it was kind of like a mind-blowing way to show them how blockchain can be used and not just for hyp speculative you know number go up value yeah make make it real that's all I'm going to say because I know we're short on time got to make it real for people that doesn't always mean Tech sometimes it's just investing in community and good people shout out there are there are strange humans in the world and and they matter just as much shout out cyborg yeah so another thing that I at least to me really seemed to resonate with um some of these these um Regulators is the the engagement in local industry and kind of boot bootstrapping that and supporting them I know like in the blockchain industry there's a lot of push for these large institutions to come in and get involved but for a lot of these um these Representatives what they really want to see is how it directly represents their constituents especially the small businesses within their districts um so anything that kind of enables them um or enables these local markets to to engage with higher liquidity um is pretty appealing to them yeah and just out of that we had the policy Summit yesterday so we brought in you know staffers from various offices who we had met with they were able to tour eth Denver be on site thanks to Taylor for some of some of those relationships and bringing those people together uh it was just really incredible to watch them in real time start to play with and wander around and get a better feel for this being so much more than what the markets are doing awesome well we're running out of time here um I had a final question which we may have already covered but we could do rapid fire is it was what are you most excited for about the future of crypto do you guys think you've answered that do you want to take a quick one sentence answer um I'm just going to go ahead and shill stand with crypto for the ability that they they were able to bring us out there and I think that a lot of us felt like we got to participate in democracy and actually make a change uh when Sab 121 was put to the floor we actually spoke with two Democrats that cross party lines so thank you for for bringing us out there I really do think that we got to make a positive impact and we could see that with with the vote that that got people to go against their party yeah um one thing I do want to say did you guys want to say anything else okay gratitude as well yeah you guys are awesome it it's a it's a team effort um I want to impress on everybody in the crowd I can I'll wake my laptop up again so you can see but see go to standwithpp dog right now everybody in the audience and sign up because it's very this is the this is a Mak or break year in a lot of ways this is this is the year when we uh we make crypto in America reality so when you sign up on this link you're raising your hand to to take small action right when when something comes to the floor we'll send out a text or an email and say hey click this button we'll generate an email for your for you to send your Congress people your senators and that type of very quick very low effort very low effort work is very impactful because these people care about what they see thank you thank you