From Resistance to Leadership? America’s Role in Crypto’s Future - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Hi everyone, Dan Murphy with you. I am an honest to God CNBC news anchor. Great to be with you this afternoon and thanks so much for spending some more time with us and joining in on this next conversation. We are going to take a deep dive into this next session which is called from resistance to leadership America's role in crypto's future. A few things to unpack here.

First of all, um, let's set the scene. I think it's fair to say that over the last decade, the US has kind of been at war with itself when it comes to crypto, right? On the one hand, it is the birthplace of Bitcoin, as you know, home to some of the greatest innovation that we have ever seen in this space. But at the same time, it's also been home to some of the harshest enforcement actions, lawsuits, and regulatory crackdowns that this sector has ever seen. I think our panel will be able to speak quite well to that issue.

So of course we have a new administration states side, a new mood in Washington and our panel is going try going to try and answer the question is America finally shifting from resistance to real leadership in crypto or just swapping one form of dysfunction for another. So David Marcus is here. He is a payments pioneer trying to rebuild Bitcoin's utility layer with Lightspark. Zuko Wilcox is of course the founder of Zcash which is making a big play in privacy and Matthew Rosac is a crypto OG. He's one of the earliest institutional investors in this space.

Looking forward to your insights as well Matthew. So welcome again. Uh my first question for our panel in one sharp sentence what is Washington's crypto strategy right now if any? David kick us off. Well, you know, I mean, I love the title of this panel because, you know, my claim to fame is actually that I probably had the the highest profile crypto project shut down by the US government uh only to be whiplashed into this new administration that is trying to make America lead uh the rewiring of our entire financial infrastructure on top of crypto rails.

And so it's amazing to see an administration that is actually supporting the industry, trying to push regulation through, trying to lead through uh a very competitive landscape with many other nations that are trying to attract the best founders, the best companies, the best technology the technologists uh and it's it's a very refreshing 180 change in America for that. Okay. Amazing. Refreshing. I'm picking up a theme.

Zuko, what's your take on Washington's strategy right now? Uh, what I like about American government is that the government is more limited in what it can do. And so, I'm not very enthusiastic about Trump or different senators or whoever supporting crypto or supporting Zcash because that'll probably change in a few years. I I can't really count on it, but I'm very enthusiastic about I can do things in America without asking permission and they can't stop me. And that's probably still going to be more or less true.

Um, they stopped him, but that was kind of a special case. It doesn't work every time. But in general, in America, you don't ask permission, right? Seek forgiveness instead. Matthew, what's your take?

Well, if you just kind of like take a snapshot uh of the picture in front of us and then kind of predict the movie ahead. Um, just a table set here. what's uh looking over the shoulder of what's happened in this industry, it's probably one of the most greatest assaults on an industry I've seen. And then you think of industrial organization like uh railroads or internet or any industry, it kind of goes through friction. Uh whether it's regulatory uh adoption, what have you.

This this was uh put through a crucible. So I also think that this industry is like um went through a Darwinian element that makes it stronger and more resilient and it's like it feels like a coiled spring now based on some of that artificial governmental uh invisible hand uh pushing on this space and um and so what that uh created was this demand uh by you know the Americans by the world to say this needs to change and you see that even now when the US uh says something a lot of other countries adopt that and So now we're uh we have the right people in the saddle. Uh Trump is amazing uh about uh innovation, technology, and specifically crypto. And then you look at who's uh surrounding him and who he's uh brought on his team. And you have David Saxs, you have Bo Hines, um you have Paul Atkins.

Uh so I I spent the last 11 years uh as chairman of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, large trade association. And so Paul has been on that board for 5 years. So we have like a true blue uh crypto believer uh setting the tone and the stage. And so you asked a simple question. Uh what's the one word?

Uh I don't know if it's one word, but it feels like let's go. That's that's the term. Let's go. Okay. So look, let's just dial the optimism back just a little bit.

I think it's fair to say that markets do love Trump, right? But love isn't going to protect investors from fraud, you know? I think that's another issue here. Um, we have a sitting US president who is pedalling a memecoin, which is obviously a major issue, offering dinner in exchange for token purchases. Is that a joke?

Is it a scam? Uh, does it completely undermine US credibility in this space on this issue? Uh, I want a thought from each of you on this. David, you first. So, look, I'm not a fan of meme coins in general, but you have to take things, you know, in the context of the brand, right?

Trump has a huge brand and he's been branding everything with his last name for for the longest time. And memecoins are like, you know, another way to brand things that happen to be digital collectibles that people can decide to own, trade, or do whatever they want with it. Do I love memecoins? No. But I think that, you know, many other meme coins exist.

So, you know, I'm, you know, uh just a spectator of of that and focus more on what we can do to advance the state of really reinventing and rewiring all of our financial system on crypto rails, which I think this administration is really prioritizing and focusing on. Zuko, does it undermine the US narrative on the pro crypto growth story that we've seen? Does it undermine the what? Does it undermine the US narrative when the president is trying to fogg a memecoin? I don't know.

I When the when the central government has too much power, then people spend too much time trying to analyze it. Kremlinology, reading the tea leaves. I don't care what Trump's doing. What I like about America is that it's full of creative builders. Um, and it's got a global brand.

America does, which is an even bigger brand than Trump, or at least a longerl lasting one. Fair point. Okay. Uh, Matthew, what's your take? I mean, let's let's uh whether we talk about memecoins or whether that's appropriate or not, I think memecoins, we're in the 1.

0 of memecoins. And so, uh, I do this TED talk on the tokenization of things in 2017. So, you know, the Chicago Bulls, Kim Kardashian, I I put all this out there. And you're starting to see little elements of that happening. And so does Kim Kardashian or does uh Marilyn Monroe have a market cap for their community and the people that are there?

Uh probably. And is that going to evolve? Are the economics of that and the participation that going to get better? Absolutely. So a lot of people throw me coins to the side, but this is a uh it's a test ground for a lot of these uh uh tokens that wind up, you know, being a part of our lives.

Uh uh the president did that. And um from a crypto standpoint uh it's like he's showing the way in a in a particular way to look through that lens and to say uh I want to exercise all these things and uh I was getting with uh one of my colleagues is like you know he's kind of eating the lunch of some people in this space and like getting everybody motivated. So, uh, appropriateness, uh, in terms of what he did in his position, you know, uh, don't know what that, uh, is legally from a, uh, industry, uh, true blue believer, I loved it. I loved every second of it. Okay.

An interesting take. Look, I think we can also talk a little bit about what regulation is needed in order to advance the sector forward and also from a consumer perspective as well to protect investors from not just hype but also harm. And I think that's important, too. Um, David, you and I had a conversation on CNBC earlier this morning about stable coin regulation, which could also potentially be coming by the summer. Um, could you repeat what you told me today about what that stable coin regulation could potentially look like and the opportunity that this opens up for players like yourself?

Well, look, I feel like stable coins have been living under a very unclear regulatory regime until this point. And with the stablecoin legislation, I think that we can actually make stablecoin real money, real digital money, dollars basically that travel natively on v variety of different blockchains. Um, and so for us, like, you know, we're in a LightSpark builds payments uh solutions like a an open money grid for all of the world's money that can travel 24/7 in real time, settle in any currency, and now we can support stable coins on top of this brand new layer 2 that we just released a mainet last night called Spark. Um and so for us like clarity of the regulatory clarity uh for stablecoin issuers for stable coins as an asset class uh is absolutely critical because it's going to enable a whole new category of issuers to come on the market and you know you can expect banks, wallets, anyone that holds a balance to wants to issue a stable coin because they can actually preserve the economics that they have within their walls when the money has left their walls. and and just for that reason, it it's a a total no-brainer, including some of the the the the the functionality that we heard from the previous panel uh of digitizing money.

So, I think it's a it's an absolute important step uh and it's going to unlock a lot of value for people, for businesses, for the entire industry. So, what's the biggest problem that you want to solve and is it necessarily on the institutional side, is it on the consumer side or somewhere else? So, as far as we're concerned, we're very focused on on people and enterprise money movement. Uh, and basically what we are doing is we're making money travel on the internet like any other piece of content. So, you can send money like you send an email or text message to anyone in the world 24/7.

It'll sell in real time to the endpoint, the bank account or the wallet you want. And so, you know, all of the the the the the nonlinear shifts we're seeing in regulatory clarity, the fact that we're not actually on on our back foot all the time as an industry, just, you know, waiting for something unexpected and at times unlawful to happen like chokepoint and and other other things that the the previous administration pursued is just going to enable that that transformation to happen. A lot of people in the room know you as a business builder, a founder, also an investor. I asked you this question earlier today as well, but if this succeeds and you achieve the goals that you're setting out to do, what does your business look like by 2030? Well, look, I think if you look at global money movement today, um, Swift correspondent banking, JP Morgan, global money movement, city global money movement, you're talking about 1015 trillion dollars a day of money that moves uh, globally.

Um, and you know, in one case, it's an extremely inefficient way of doing things. Swift is, you know, 50 plus years old. It doesn't settle in real time. It takes three to five days. It It's expensive.

Any no one can actually have access to the network to build on top of it. And all of the other large global money movement platforms are basically using the bank's liquidity or their client's liquidity to fake real-time money movement. And so if we can actually have real-time money movement as an open protocol built on Bitcoin in our case because it's the most neutral form of money ever created to move trillions of dollars a day, you know, we can we can build a a decent business providing tools and services for enterprises and and banks and and wallets to to get on the network. Okay. So watch this space.

And I think the reason I wanted to go down that track, that line of questioning is because this is all happening in the United States. Hold that thought because we'll come back to that. Zuko, over to you. a couple of questions because uh I have seen a viral Twitter exchange that I want your take on. Let's go straight to the horse's mouth on this.

Zcash dlistings uh rumors of irrelevance as well. What happened with Binance and why did the biggest player in the market float the idea of wanting to move on and delist Vcash? What happened? Uh what happened was that there's some regulatory pressure which I don't know from what government it is but I don't think it's the US government um which Binance mostly doesn't directly have to deal with. Um and so Binance put Zcash on a list called monitoring.

This is the the list of coins they want their users to know that those coins might suddenly get delisted or something. And uh this is a list of like 12 scams and Zcash. The other 12 are there because they're scams like FTT, the token from FTX that ZZ himself helped uh uh uh justly destroy. Um anyway, and Zcash is there not because it's a scam or sketchy or unreliable in any way, but because some government out there insists that Binance treated as monitoring. So, I took them to task for that because it's it's just wrong.

I uh it offends me for Zcash to be associated on the same list as those scam coins. So, when it comes to privacy coins, as you've called them, do you trust CZ and Binance to support the privacy coin ideology, or is this a war of thinking here? Are you taking a different track to how they're thinking? Do you have beef with with CZ? I don't know.

I haven't talked to CZ in years. Um, I think of CZMself and of Binance as like high integrity, valuesoriented people. Like they want to make a ton of money, but they want to do it the right way. That's how I've always seen Binance and CZ. And so I think they would support Zcash if they thought it through.

I think and I think they do think it through. I think they're just under pressure from some government or other. uh which is why we have that whole issue. On the question of privacy coins though, can you offer privacy without actually becoming a tool for criminals and illicit use? Because I think this also comes back to ideology, right?

On the one hand, you need this as a utility for privacy, but on the other hand, you need to avoid this being exploited by nefarious actors, right? Yeah. There's the immediate term. There's the current situation. Then there's the theoretical future.

In theory, can you offer privacy without becoming a tool for illicit actors? No. You also can't offer cars, knives, you can't offer anything that's of widespread use without becoming a tool for criminals. But in practice, the Zcash community has the rallying cry of privacy is normal. Privacy is just something you should expect when you go to buy an ice cream.

You should just assume that that's between you and the ice cream seller, nobody else's business. Expand on that. What's that? Expand on that. Um, well, what is not used for illicit?

Here's a better way to ask the question. If I'm the end user, how can you protect my privacy and my safety? Um, well, you install Zcash on your phone. As soon as this panel's over, you get some Zcash in your phone and then it's end to-end encrypted using the same sort of technology as like the signal instant messenger. So that when you send that Zcash to someone else, there's only your phone and that person's phone are the only two devices that can see the transaction.

Same as your signal instant messages. So Zcash is like the signal of money. Okay. Hey, can I say something else? Tell me.

It has to do with United States regulation. The most important regulation if the United States wants to encourage innovation is to establish a legal precedent that software developers cannot be held criminally responsible for the use that people have put their software to. And that requires for the Department of Justice to end the prosecutions of Roman Storm and of the Wasabi Wallet developers. In both cases, the prosecutors have already admitted that the software developers had no engagement in the actual crimes. They just wrote the software, which some criminals later used for crimes.

And yet, they're prosecuting the software developers. That's a very very important precedent if they want builders to build in the United States. So, that's that's your message to the Trump administration. Say that again. That's your message to the Trump administration then.

That's my message to the Trump administration. Get this done. Okay. Seems like he got some support here for for that as well. Um, interesting.

Thank you, Zuko. My next victim at the end of the stage is Matthew joining us now. Matthew, um, look, you've been in crypto since uh, Mount Gaus and and Silk Road. And obviously, uh, from the CNBC lens, you know, we look at this really closely because this plays directly to what's happening with the investor. What separates the winners from the losers in 2025?

and what are you betting on now that others may not? Um, that's a great question. I think the um uh obviously the the discussion right now and everybody's whiteboard around everybody's table is AI and crypto and how is that going to uh marry up and uh crypto is made for AI. It is AI money. It's internet money.

It's uh uh it's built for that. And so us trading NFTs and moving tokens around is is kind of fun, but it's not what it's going to do at scale. And so I think AI is going to um lead certain things and then pull a lot of crypto with it. So you'll have applications or you know smart agent on a node with a cash register and a bunch of other things uh and it does a certain thing and that's um going to pull a lot of crypto and a lot of DeFi, a lot of other things because of that engine. And so I think a lot of AI will uh benefit um crypto and and now the the task is where's that ultimate intersection and then you're kind of developing on a scaffold of crypto which is you know gone through its kind of 15-year uh growth path and then AI which is still kind of new uh but growing uh like crazy and so you have these two catalysts that are going to be uh uh create probably the most fascinating outcomes in this space.

I speak to a lot of global investors about what's happening in the Gulf region in particular. There's deep pulls of public and private capital in this part of the world and so many international investors see the UAE, they see Saudi Arabia as a place to draw finance from, not necessarily as a place to invest. Why do you think that is? Historically, uh Abu Dhabi Investment Authority was an LP of mine. So, so I'm I'm pretty familiar coming here.

Um and and I think a lot of people have a a u a misnomer about what you do here that there's just capital here. Uh there's smart capital here. That's a big difference. And I think historically um I think investors here are are very open to like series you know CD& uh just generally. So market leaders uh growth capital recapitalizations um large financings.

uh for our space uh I think it's a little different where they're still keeping that discipline but they're leaning into this space in new and I would say um more powerful ways with big miners and infrastructure providers uh building um uh treasuries uh in this region and so they're they're going about it a different way in their style but in a very powerful way and I and I think they you know obviously they have a lot of investments in AI and crypto and they're betting on some of those interdependencies as well. So I I think this region has uh shown that it is uh looking at the future all the time looking what's around the corner. This is obviously a big part of uh their future and and this industry's future. So that's why we're here today and that's why uh there's a lot of crypto companies uh building and uh kicking off here. Well said.

And I think there's a lot of um very sophisticated sovereign wealth fund capital in the region as well making very strategic bets on a number of uh crypto and and digital infrastructure plays. What would you say is the biggest barrier to the growth of this industry in this region because of course we're talking about this in the context of what's happening in the United States visav the rest of the world. What is the pathway forward for the Gulf region? Um, I think it's it's uh definitely accumulating more assets and I I think there's also so that's the uh maybe the easy part or the more more intuitive part. The harder part is how do you bet on certain horses technologies uh the pitch decks that come through their offices that's a little bit more nuanced but I think just the the amount of capital that's here the inertia for what they want to create in terms of these cities these ecosystems these networks and they are some of the largest financiers of every AI uh project out there whether they're accumulating you know warehouse loads of uh of gear or they're investing directly in those uh projects and so the uh the direction of capital uh has been concentrated out of this region uh pretty significantly and that's going to have amazing outcomes for this region and so that then reflects on other places are we investing enough are we uh doing enough in this space and so I think that's starting to become a responsibility for a lot of countries in terms of how do we adopt use and invest in AI we've spoken quite a lot about this corridor between the US and the UAE the US and the Gulf more broadly let's talk about what's happening outside uh of these two domains.

And and David, I want to go back over to you on this. If you were forced to bet your entire company on another jurisdiction outside of the United States, what would it be? None other really. I I mean, look, I I tried for a very very long time to get Libra DM off the ground in the US. Ultimately, it failed there because it was shut down, but uh I'm, you know, deeply rooted now in America and I wouldn't go anywhere else.

Singapore. No, I mean Singapore would be a great uh regional hub for us because I think the the regulatory landscape is very forward uh forward leaning on uh crypto assets and crypto capabilities like very sophisticated players and regulator in Singapore. Um but you know I'm uh I'm a a build America or die kind of guy. UAE. Yeah.

You know again same same answer. China definitely not. Why? just because I don't share the values. What type of values?

You know, freedom of speech, like you know, civil liberties, uh, small things like that, important things. Um, Zuko, I'll put the same question to you. Um, do you see any jurisdiction outside of the United States worthy of investment right now in this space? Well, building that business building in in this Oh, um, I'm not much of a business builder. I I'm the uh the spokesperson for the Zcash underground global decentralized, you know, rebel network.

Um, and I don't even know what country those guys live in. Does it matter? Uh, you know, it does matter. Those things are important. Sometimes they tell me there's some in Russia.

Um, I I like like David, I like the United States. I like the United States's uh values and I like its dynamism. If I just have to pick one, I want the most dynamic and diverse with competition and um all this focus on what's going on in Washington DC detracts from that. The the more people are paying attention to Washington DC, the less we can all create uh independently. But if I have to pick one, I still like the United States above all because of values and because of dynamism.

Matthew, would you agree with that? Uh, absolutely. It's uh one of one. It's the US and uh uh that curtain has been ripped off and so it's the uh uh singular place. Outside of that uh over the last five, seven years, tons of smart regulators around the world played the regulatory arbitrage game.

So Singapore, Switzerland, and certainly the UAE. And I think the UAE is uh just given a lot of capital and the inertia here of what they want to do. uh this would be the second place uh to do that uh in my opinion. To wrap up our conversation, I think we only have about five minutes left and I I hope it's been a value ad for for your day. I I've certainly found it entertaining and interesting.

I I wanted to wrap up by by asking each of our panelists, what is the single most disruptive force or idea or regulation that you're going to be watching out for in the crypto space this year and why? David, the most disruptive thing to crypto or or on behalf of crypto. Yeah, let's say on behalf of crypto. I mean, I think you know, stable coin regulation is one. Market structure bill is another one.

Like those are two staple pieces of regulation that I think are going to come out that are going to enable lots of use cases that were held back before. So, I think those two suka, I want to take back everything I said before. I think it's really great that Washington DC and Trump are experimenting with crypto because of the competition between nations and the US was like sitting on the sidelines this whole time. Now that they're doing something almost anything, it's going to force everyone else to up their game. I love competition.

Very interesting. Matthew, I think the uh the big question uh is it happening or is it going to happen? it is happening 100%. And so, you know, all the stuff that's um in front of us, whether it's the market structure, stablecoin, uh anything else, um there's enough inertia and desire by Wall Street, Main Street, uh big tech, uh everybody, uh involved wants this. And so, I think the table is going to be set well.

it probably it won't be perfect and will evolve over time but there just the sheer inertia of demand of people wanting this uh asset class and wanting to build in this again a lot of people were just you know frozen over the last half decade uh that's going to all open up and uh it doesn't take a lot of complexity I think the the simplicity of like this is happening and it's happening in the US I I would add just one thing to that which is I think the government setting up a strategic bitcoin reserve curve and starting to accumulate Bitcoin and putting it in a whole different category with all of the other assets um is going to create a lot of a lot of legitimacy and many more countries will will want to do that and I think you know for us as a business and just generally speaking for the status of Bitcoin and the the prominence of Bitcoin I think it's just going to do wonders. Hey, just to add add to that, just the uh the vibration of that a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the US. Uh you're seeing that with states, you're seeing that with other countries, you're seeing that uh just the catalyst for the psyches of public boards. And so all this stuff, if you kind of add it up rough math, it's a big outcome of just what's on the table. Uh let alone the I just read today that like the big wirehouses by the end of this year, we're going to are going to be able to offer ETFs in some uh material way.

um that's you know that's 6 months from now and so you add all this inertia uh you see how much Bitcoin is coming out of the protocol on an annual basis it's like the math is going to show um some some pretty amazing outcomes and really catalyze this industry into its next chapter so excited for it and you know that could very well be the catalyst that pushes Bitcoin to the price target that Standard Charted is calling 125,000 in in this quarter Let's keep it spicy and wrap it up with the last two minutes. Bitcoin by year end, what is it going to be, David? I hate making those price predictions. I'm always wrong. Um, but if you twist my arm, I'll say, you know, in the next 12 months within, you know, 200kish, 200k in 12 months.

Yeah, Zuko, I like Bitcoin and I like when the price of Bitcoin goes up. Uh, but I don't pay that much attention to it because I just I'm all about Zcash. You can ask me about the price of Zcash at the end of the year. Do it. What is it?

What is it going to be? Uh I don't know that either actually. I was I don't do prices. But you mentioned Standard Chartered and I I was in Singapore getting interviewed by uh a CNBC anchor and the the gentleman before me was the CEO or the CFO of Standard Chartered and he gave me a zinger. He was like um you know the Standard Chartered guy uh just before you said that uh Bitcoin's a Ponzi.

How do you respond to that? This was like I don't know 15 16 17 and uh you know I went through the whole you know if you you know you won't understand something that you won't spend the time on so you gota lock your door and research this uh technology uh but it's fascinating now all I hear is standard charter making price predictions on bitcoin which I love uh my uh price prediction again all this inertia all the things we know uh that's happening in bitcoin it's going to go up massively and where is it subtle um you know by the end of the year definitely over 200 100 in my mind. Uh but it's on an upward trajectory because it's an adoption curve. People don't have Bitcoin and so this industry has concentrated that figured out a bunch of shoots and ladders and now we're ready to kind of go into Wall Street, Main Street and beyond. Really fascinating insights, guys.

I want to say thanks so much for joining me for this session. Token 249. I hope that was useful for you. Thank you so much for joining in today. Enjoy the rest of your evenings.

David, Zuko, and Matthew. Thanks again.