Tracy Hoyos-López - The Woman Who Orange-Pilled President Donald J. Trump & Changed Bitcoin & Crypto Forever

Full transcript: Tracy Hoyos-López on London Real

3:12 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Tracy Hoyos-López, the attorney, Bitcoin advocate, and crypto policy expert.

3:33 You are the chief of staff of strategic initiatives at Kraken, where you advance Bitcoin integration into mainstream finance and politics. You worked as a prosecutor at the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, specializing in domestic violence and crimes against children, and have earned awards for your contributions to public service and your expertise in criminal law. In the Bitcoin space, you are known for orange pilling President Donald Trump, leading to his massive policy shift regarding cryptocurrency.

4:01 You then played a key role in his epic keynote appearance at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, and ultimately raised $25 million in just six weeks for his election campaign. You’ve said that Bitcoin is the future of finance, offering freedom from a broken financial system. You believe it empowers individuals, challenges government overreach, and reclaims financial sovereignty. Ultimately, you believe Donald Trump is the man to lead the crypto movement, protect Bitcoin, and reshape blockchain policy.

4:29 Tracy, welcome to London Real in Dubai.

4:31 Tracy Hoyos-López: Thank you for having me.

4:33 Brian Rose: Great having you here. I say we just jump in.

4:36 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah, I should hire you as my PR person.

4:38 Brian Rose: Right? I, we can talk after. Um, so how does a DA from LA orange pill the most famous man in the world, Donald Trump?

4:46 Tracy Hoyos-López: So, it was San Bernardino County. Okay.

4:48 I started in LA, and then I went over to San Bernardino. Um, how do you orange pill Donald Trump? I mean, this was a wild ride. Um, okay. So, David Bailey, who owns uh BTC Inc., who has the Bitcoin conference, he’s run Bitcoin Magazine for many years.

5:09 Brian Rose: Correct. So, BTC Inc. has Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin Conference, and I believe a part of U, um, UTXO. Okay. So, uh, I’m a big fan obviously of the, of the Bitcoin conference. Um, I was also orange pilled by David and his wife, Emily.

5:25 Tracy Hoyos-López: Emily is my best friend. So, this is how we’re all connected.

5:29 Brian Rose: When did they orange pill you?

5:31 Tracy Hoyos-López: In 2022. Okay.

5:32 All right. They gave me a ticket to the conference, and they said, “Come check it out and just hear it out.” And I was like, “Okay, all right.” Um, so that’s when the process started. What actually got me orange pilled was not the conference per se, but it was understanding what Bitcoin was and how it could operate.

5:51 And um, because I was a prosecutor and my specialty was domestic violence and crimes against children. So what people don’t understand in these cases is that in order for, so most women, right, are the victims of domestic violence. A lot of the women that are in these particular situations don’t control their finances. They don’t have access to their own money, cuz their husbands or partners take their money from them. In order for you to escape a terrible situation, you need money.

6:17 You need money to plan. Um, if you don’t have access to your finances, you have no money. And this is where I saw that Bitcoin is like a huge thing, because you can open a wallet on your phone, hide it, and a community can help you. So, you have a way of planning. And that to me was the thing that got it.

6:36 That, that was that was it. I was sold. I was just like, I want to do this. I was the DA and ASA that everybody thought was completely insane, cuz I’m just like, we just have to have a Bitcoin fund. We need a victim’s, like a vict, a Bitcoin victim fund, and like everyone’s like, this person is crazy.

6:54 Brian Rose: That was in ’22, you were telling them that?

6:57 Tracy Hoyos-López: Uh, that was in part of ’22, definitely ’23. Okay. I mean, and in ’23 my office in Miami was decorated with Bitcoin everything. I had a Bitcoin astronaut, Bitcoin coasters, Bitcoin artwork, and everyone came to my office and they’re like, I don’t understand this Bitcoin thing.

7:14 And I’m like, well, sit down.

7:16 Brian Rose: Wow. So it was the domestic violence, or the solution, potential solution to the domestic violence issue, by giving these women financial freedom that actually orange pilled you?

7:26 Tracy Hoyos-López: That was the thing that got me. Wild.

7:28 And then you have these case studies from, I can’t remember her name. Um, I believe she’s Iranian. She escaped, or Afghani, and I apologize, but she escaped and then she created this Bitcoin community by hiring women in the Middle East, in places where they’re not allowed to, like, go out or work or do any of these things, you know, under the Afghani regime, under the Iranian regime. And so now these women who can’t work but need to work, because they have families to support, are able to earn Bitcoin and, you know, provide for their family.

8:03 So I was just like, okay. So my idea has a use case, and that’s it. So that was the thing that got me. Wow. Okay.

8:12 Brian Rose: So you got orange pilled in ’22?

8:14 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yep.

8:15 Brian Rose: How does this President Trump orange pilling happen, because it’s a big deal? Some people say the crypto vote won the election. I don’t know if that’s true.

8:25 Tracy Hoyos-López: It is true, and I’ve seen the data. Okay. Well, there you go. It is very true, especially in the swing states. So if it hadn’t of orange pilled Donald Trump, then we would uh, be saluting to President Harris right now.

8:37 Brian Rose: Imagine we’d be, we’d be trans.

8:40 Tracy Hoyos-López: Um, so this, this thing started with what is the thing that motivates you? There’s everybody has like a precipitator, right? Like, what is the thing that broke the camel’s back? So, you know, I was a Democrat for a very long time, but in 2020, I became a Republican for, you know, for the 2020 um incoming uh presidency.

9:11 And um, my perspective and everything changed, obviously, because I was a prosecutor, and so I see like crime, who’s coming across the border, what are the crimes that they are committing. So, I became more involved with the Republican Party. I became more involved, um, and more outspoken about the Republicans and what, you know, they were going to do and everything. What really was the precipitator for me on going out and actually doing something about it, and actually getting involved in this, was the government coming after me.

9:42 And so I’m like, okay, the government’s coming after me as a prosecutor for something I didn’t do, which we’ll get into later. Then the government’s also coming after Jesse Powell. The government’s going after, um, a significant number of other people in the industry for absolutely no reason. They’re coming after exchanges. People can’t work.

10:05 Um, I am a big, big proponent of the US Constitution. I am an originalist, and I believe in the Constitution as it was written. So when you see the abuses the government is doing, there comes a point where you sit down and you’re just like, I can’t take this anymore. Like, this is not what the United States Constitution stands for. And I swore an oath to protect the US Constitution from enemies abroad and enemies within.

10:34 So when this all happens, when you’re being persecuted, I was upset. Obviously very upset, and I was just like, there’s just something we have to do. I have to do something. I don’t know what it is, but it’ll come to me. So one night we’re at David Bailey’s house, and David and I are just, you know, outside shooting the s*** having a conversation, and he’d be like, man, like, I would love Trump as like the speaker in Nashville.

10:58 And I was like, I can actually help you with this. And he’s like, no, stop it. And I’m like, no, no, I can actually help you with this.

11:07 Brian Rose: And when was this? What month was it in ’24?

11:10 Tracy Hoyos-López: This was in March, and this and the conference was in May.

11:14 Brian Rose: Mhm. So two months out, you guys are hanging out in Puerto Rico.

11:19 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yep. And he says, “I’d love to make this happen.”

11:22 He’s like, “I just want this.” And it was just, you know, like, it’s just friends. We talk about so many things. And this is one of the things, I mean, I just love this. Before this, Trump had never really publicly said anything pro Bitcoin or pro crypto.

11:34 All we had publicly from his statements were like the anti, you know, his anti-crypto stance, anti- Bitcoin. Um, from years earlier. From years earlier. Exactly. Okay.

11:43 And, you know, we thought it’s a long shot, but let’s, let’s, like, what’s the worst they can say? No. Okay, then. No. So, I called my dad’s best friend, Paul Manafort.

11:56 Um, and I was like, “Hey, do you know what the Bitcoin conference is?” He’s like, “I have no idea what we’re talking about.”

12:05 Brian Rose: Really? And I was just like, “Okay.”

12:07 Brian Rose: And Manafort is close in the Trump circle.

12:10 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yes. Yes. He’s been friends with Trump for years before he ran his campaign in 2016.

12:15 Brian Rose: Okay. So, they’re friends.

12:17 Tracy Hoyos-López: Um, and he’s like, “No idea what I’m talking about. He does know Bitcoin. I won’t tell that story. That’s a him story. He needs to talk about that.

12:29 That’s a wild story.” Um, and he goes, “I don’t know where the Bitcoin conference is. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I’m just like, “Okay.” So, the first try, cuz I’m telling you, this is a wild, right?

12:42 Right. To get to Trump, we have to convince Paul, right, that this is a legitimate thing. This is real. And at first, we were thinking small, but understand, we’re in unchartered waters. We have no.

12:56 We also, this is not what we do, right? Here’s like an ex-prosecutor, a media guy, and like we’re just like trying to figure out like what do we do? How do we, how do we sell this? How do we take this? How do we convince him?

13:10 That wasn’t even the thought at the time. The thought was only how do we get them to Nashville. So the first thing, it’s like, okay, this is the conference. This is how many people come to the conference. This is how much is streamed.

13:22 This is the social media presence. This is the global presence of it. And it didn’t click for any anyone, not in the campaign, not for Paul at that time. It clicked on when he was on Nashville on stage giving the speech, the amount of people. And then when we saw what the uh the media presence became, the social media impressions globally.

13:50 I think it was something on the first day like um, oh my god, I think it was like 18.4 billion impressions. It was, it was insane.

13:58 Brian Rose: It was insane, right? Front page New York Times, front page BBC. I, I joked, I didn’t know you at the time, that if you had to pay Donald to say these things, it would cost you a hundred million for that endorsement.

14:10 Tracy Hoyos-López: That’s probably low. It was that big. And I think that the ad value of it when we got the numbers back, it was something atrocious. It was something like $286 million worth of ad value, right? So they, we know this obviously because we’re on the conference side.

14:28 My friends own the conference, so I’m privy to information, and but they weren’t getting it before. They had no idea what they were signing up for. And so we first do this, and then he’s like, “All right, we built all of these decks.” And it’s funny, because the thing that got us through wasn’t these decks. It was a two-page PDF of us summarizing and distilling, like, why Bitcoin is important.

15:02 Okay. And David was in Japan, um, when he was, he had just finished Bitcoin Asia, and he was in Japan afterwards, and I had gotten the call from Paul. I had just hung up with David. Paul says David has to be, David has to meet with the president in like three days. And I’m like, “All right.”

15:35 So, I called David. He’s not responding. Emily is, I just hung up with him. He won’t pick up my call. Emily is not responding.

15:43 No one’s responding. And I’m like, I am not going to text these news. These are like major news. So, they don’t respond. I text them, and I was like, “Well, I was hoping to give you this news, like, over the telephone, but since you guys are not responding to me, you have to be with the president on Thursday, I think it was.”

16:03 They don’t respond to me all night. I’m like, “What’s happening?” In the morning, I call Emily, and I’m like, “Hey.” Oh, before I called her, I get a text from her. She reads what I sent, and she goes, “Holy s*** Oh my god, David.”

16:22 Then they call me, and they’re like, oh my god. And I’m like, get your asses here. We have to ship David over to meet the president. And so it just gets funnier and funnier and funnier, and lets you know like we’re, we were definitely amateurs at this and had like no idea. Like, you know, David, typical Bitcoiner, has like one suit, right?

16:46 And he has to meet the president in a suit. Yeah. And so this is the one suit he has that he wore in Asia. He’s bringing back. We can’t find in Puerto Rico.

16:57 There are like no, no 24-hour cleaners. This does not exist. Like, because power is so expensive that they will turn on the machines maybe once or twice a week. So like your dry, clean isn’t going to be ready for like a week, right? And so we’re like, we have to clean David’s suit.

17:14 How are we going to get him there? So we’re like airing the suit. We’re breezing the suit. We’re just like, “All right, well, we’ve done the best that we could. Um, we shipped.”

17:23 He’s, I mean, and he has a grin from here to here. He’s so excited. He’s nervous. He has no idea like what he’s walking into, what’s going to happen. Um, and then he met with the president, and, you know, they asked us for our help, and how are we going to say no?

17:39 So, there were a lot of really tough conversations that I don’t think people understand what it was like. So for me, I’m like an all-in person, and David is like that too. Like, when we do something, we’re all in. We’re doing it all. But we were like, you know, we have to succeed.

18:01 There is no turning back. And that’s when we understood that we weren’t only bringing Trump to Nashville, but we had to help him understand the space. We had to advocate for the space, because if he didn’t win, the industry would die in the United States, and everybody that we knew would be out of work. We would be out of work. At this point, I was living in Puerto Rico.

18:31 Um, so like this became my job. And so we had a sit-down where we’re having a very honest conversation of like, there is no, we can’t fail. This is not an option. If we do, they will come after us.

18:48 Brian Rose: Because you helped Trump, right?

18:51 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah. A lot of people would have been gone after, including him. And we had a, we had a dinner at one point with, um, I think it was like the head of policy for Trump, and we’re like, “Well, we better win, or we’re all going to go to prison.” And he’s like, “Yep.” It’s like, I mean, and I don’t want to say we were terrified, cuz that’s not true.

19:12 You know, we’re, we’re Americans. We’re cowboys. We’re wild. We’re crazy. You know, we’re like, you know, f*** it.

19:19 We’re going all in. We’re doing this. And we didn’t care about whatever happened. We were just like, there’s no room for failure. We’re not going to fail.

19:28 We’re not going. This was not a thought. We just, we didn’t even have the ability to think about it. We didn’t allow ourselves to think about it. And I think that that was very big for us, because it allowed us to work from a space where we just executed constantly.

19:43 Um, so the first thing that we had to do after David’s meeting with the president,

19:48 Brian Rose: and how did that go?

19:49 Tracy Hoyos-López: It went really, really well.

19:51 Brian Rose: What happened?

19:52 Tracy Hoyos-López: You know, that’s a story for David to tell. There are so many things in this process that we can share, and there are so many other things that we can’t share.

20:02 So I don’t want to overshare things that I can’t. Um, but it went really, really well. He was very happy. He wanted us to come on board and assist them, and he, if I remember correctly, he told David that he would be supportive of the community, and that he would help us. He would help us save the industry.

20:23 And of course, one of the main things, so they asked us, you know, to put together like, what are the major issues in the industry? What are the major issues in the space that you’re seeing? And of course, the number one thing for us was Ross. So, I mean, and there’s been a lot of talk on Twitter about, oh, we were the ones that freed Ross. I want to be super clear about that.

20:46 Angela McCurel from the Libertarian Party in the United States was the one who did the heavy lifting on that. Like, she was the one that got that done.

20:56 Brian Rose: And for people that don’t know, who is Ross?

20:59 Tracy Hoyos-López: So Ross Ulbricht is the creator of Silk Road, which was a marketplace on the dark web where you could buy anything from alpaca socks to hardcore drugs. Um, and Ross was, using Bitcoin because it was an anonymous payment.

21:14 Exactly. Formal payment. And so this was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. This was what 2016, 2017 when he got arrested, I believe it was. No, a little.

21:24 No, way before. Way before that. Hang on. 2013. Yeah.

21:28 It was running. It was running in 10, 11, 12, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

21:33 Cuz he was in prison for what? 11 years. 12 years almost. Um, Ross was very important to us. You know, whatever.

21:42 As a former prosecutor, you know, yes, Ross, Ross did something that was bad, but incarcerating someone at that age for the rest of their life is completely inappropriate.

21:54 Brian Rose: What was he charged with, and then what sentence did he get, just so people know?

21:59 Tracy Hoyos-López: So he was charged with a number of drug-related crimes, and, um, I would have to look at the charging document, cuz it’s been a while since I look at it, but like I read the transcripts of the trial. I mean, it was the sentencing is the portion of the trial that was just really egregious.

22:19 Um, they gave Ross two life sentences in 40 years for a non-violent offense. And everybody will come and say, like, well, the murder for hire, okay, the murder for hire charges were dismissed with prejudice, so you can’t even consider that, right? Um, and to put someone at that age for a non-violent offense in prison for the rest of their life is to me a travesty.

22:43 Brian Rose: How old was he at the time? Ross, at the time when he was caught, was what?

22:48 Tracy Hoyos-López: 26 years old.

22:49 Brian Rose: Okay. Okay. Around that age. Okay.

22:50 Tracy Hoyos-López: I think by the time he went into prison, was what? 29. Okay. 29, 30, around that age. Right.

22:57 Um, and Trump pardoned him the first day or the second day. Right. So it was, so in theory it was the second day, but we see it as the first day, because the first day is like that half day. Okay. He’s like getting inaugurated, and then all that stuff is happening.

23:11 Um, so David and I agree that this is day one.

23:14 Brian Rose: And was Ross mentioned in that first meeting, or did it kind of come up?

23:19 Tracy Hoyos-López: Ross was mentioned in the first meeting.

23:21 Brian Rose: Interesting.

23:22 Tracy Hoyos-López: And uh, but Angela had already done all the work.

23:25 Brian Rose: Okay. But but that resonated with Trump because perhaps he was being unfairly prosecuted, even by, was it FBI that came after Ross?

23:34 Tracy Hoyos-López: So I wouldn’t say that he was being unfairly prosecuted. What I think it is, is that there was such an You build a marketplace, people are doing these things. You don’t control what people do.

23:46 And we can argue all day long about that. And we can argue all day long about, you know, the things that were written and said. That’s not really, like, I don’t really care about that. Like, my whole point is like the way that he was sentenced. I mean, Ross admitted that what he did was wrong, but the issue is the sentence.

24:03 It’s a sentencing. You’re destroying a person. Punishment in criminal cases should not be, I mean, listen, we’re not talking about a rapist and a murderer here. So that, put you know, pedophiles, rapists, murderers, put them away forever. Go for it.

24:22 But with other types of crimes, there has to be a balance between accountability but also rehabilitation. I want you to learn your lesson and never do it again, but I also want you to use this experience and the positive, and like go help other people that are going through a similar situation than you. Right? Um, and his, you know, his sentence was just like absolutely horrible. And we do believe, and I wholeheartedly believe that, you know, the Obama administration, um, had something to do with that type of sentencing, the way that it happened.

24:58 I mean, I know a lot of things that I can’t talk about, but we do believe that. And also it was done, we believe, for, and when I say we, I mean like, you know, like me and my friends and the in the industry, in the space, and I believe that it was done to deter people from utilizing Bitcoin. Ross gave us our first use case. Ross is the reason Bitcoin works. We wouldn’t have known that Bitcoin worked had it not been for him.

25:28 So, you know, he is, by whatever, however you want to see him, he is the Godfather of Bitcoin. He, he gave us this.

25:36 Brian Rose: Wow. I used a Silk Road back in the day. Oh, yeah.

25:40 Which alpaca socks. I’ll go into that later. It was the subject of one of my episodes on London Real.

25:47 Tracy Hoyos-López: Uh, so yeah, but it was really important for us that the president understood that, you know, we love Ross and that we really wanted to get him out. They would, what happened to him was a complete travesty, and it shouldn’t happen to anybody.

26:02 Um, and of course we’re good friends with his mom. Um, I love his mom very, very much. And so she is the rock star here. I mean, Lynn is unstoppable. Lynn has spent the last 12 years of her life making sure no one forgets about her son.

26:21 It’s amazing. And, um, I mean, only a mother’s love, right? Yeah. Can accomplish that. But she did.

26:28 Brian Rose: So Ross was part of that initial meeting that came up, and then you explained the community, and Trump wanted to move to the next step, and that meant you both getting involved. All three of you getting involved.

26:42 Tracy Hoyos-López: So he wanted us to do a round, I can’t remember if it was, I can’t remember how it went about, but we needed to put together a round table, and, you know, one of the things that we discussed was there are certain perceptions about the industry that we, let’s just be real here, the crypto industry is seen as debaucherous, crazy people, uh, tons of drugs.

27:05 So we had to think about what the perception is, and then be like, listen, yes, this exists, but it exists in every industry. I mean, the finance bros, my god, I’ve never seen more cocaine in my life than when I’ve been around like people in finance. So we, we sat down, we thought about how do we show that this industry is a legitimate industry. So we need legitimate people in legitimate businesses. So Peter McCormack had come to visit us in Puerto Rico, and we went out to dinner.

27:54 We actually, we actually took over Amanda Fabiano’s dinner with her sister, and I think like 15 of us showed up, and Amanda was there, and David told her, “Hey, we’re doing this thing. We need to talk.”

28:09 Brian Rose: And who is Amanda for?

28:11 Tracy Hoyos-López: So Amanda Fabiano is the mining queen in the space. Amanda is who built the arm, the mining arm of Galaxy, which I believe is like the only profitable arm that Galaxy has.

28:24 Okay. Um, she’s worked at Fidelity. She now runs her own consulting business, but she’s incredibly respected by the miners. She is an expert in mining. And so, what is more legitimate in this industry and professional looking, right, than Bitcoin mining?

28:48 These guys are all, have phenomenal backgrounds, come from Ivy League schools, former Wall Street. We have to speak Trump language. Okay. All right. So Trump is the money man.

29:00 We have to explain him in the language that he understands. Money. So we get the most legitimate people. We got CleanSpark, um, Marathon, Riot, um, Exacore, Core Scientific, TeraWulf. We got all of these guys for this round table, and we sat down with the president.

29:29 And here’s the really cool thing about Donald Trump that I don’t think anybody knows. I mean, the people that have dealt with him know, but the world doesn’t know, is this man is such a good listener. He will listen to everything that you have to say, and he will ask you, and if he has a question, he’ll just ask you. And I thought that that was really interesting and wonderful, because that is not how he’s portrayed in the media to us. So we sat down, we explained mining, we explained what was happening in the mining industry, especially with, you know, uh, energy prices of energy, and then the Democrats wanted to pass an additional tax on energy.

30:14 So Bitcoin mining is taxed at two levels. One, when the Bitcoin is generated, and second, when the Bitcoin is sold. Well, they wanted to add a 30% taxation on the energy costs. So at that point, the miners can’t operate in the United States, because you’re making them completely unprofitable, right? Right.

30:31 So the president really took issue with that. He was just like, “Wait, what? There’s three taxes on this thing?” We’re like, “Well, two, but three.” He’s like, “Yeah, but they want to add another one.”

30:43 And we’re like, “This is what’s happening.” And like, if we don’t do something, these companies are going to leave. And the cool thing about mining is that, you know, these companies are going out, they’re looking for these places that have been abandoned. They go to the middle of nowhere, where, like, there are communities that have very little. So they go in, they, like, develop the infrastructure.

31:07 They take also, like, displaced energy workers, for example, like former coal miners, and they retrain them to come into Bitcoin mining. So this is something that the president really liked. Oh, okay. Right. Cuz he’s so big on the, uh, like, technical institutes, and like, not, you know, like not everybody can afford to go to a 4-year institution.

31:28 So this is something that caught his attention as well. Um, and we had a super successful meeting with him, where he was like, okay, I’m on board with this thing. So after the mining roundtable, we, this is like April at Mar-a-Lago, something like that. This was a month before the conference, or two months before, somewhere. When was the conference?

31:56 Brian Rose: July.

31:56 Tracy Hoyos-López: Was it July? Okay. I think that the mining roundtable was either May, May, or June, somewhere around those lines. Yeah.

32:05 Um, and after that, we started to prep Nashville, but we didn’t get confirmation for Nashville until like, I mean, it, it just got wilder and wilder, right? So this is the former president of the United States. This is the one thing, like, people think, oh yeah, he’s just a candidate. He’s not just a candidate. This is the former president of the United States, soon to be the president of the United States again.

32:37 So it’s not like, hey, do you want to come to our conference thing? It’s like we have to lay out a plan. We have to, you know, do all these things. So we’re, we’re planning, we are, we’re trying to do, like, trying to set all of this, and we just, we didn’t know at one point, like, is he going to come or is he not going to come, cuz he’s like so overs subscribed with everything. Yeah.

33:03 Brian Rose: And so, did he go to any other trade conference the entire year?

33:06 Tracy Hoyos-López: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. This is when I was talking about this, I was like, “This guy doesn’t go to the home improvement conference. He doesn’t go to the finance conference.”

33:16 Like, this was such a huge deal on so many levels.

33:19 Brian Rose: Huge deal. But he’s the money guy, right? If there’s anything that he’s going to do is the thing that has to do with money. Yeah.

33:27 Tracy Hoyos-López: In retrospect, you can say that. But before that, this is a big deal. I mean, yeah.

33:32 Brian Rose: Okay. And at the same time, you’re also raising money for the campaign like simultaneously.

33:37 Tracy Hoyos-López: Simultaneously, we assisted with the fundraising efforts. Correct. But this is the wildest thing. So, they give us confirmation, and then I think it was like a day or two later where the assassination attempt on the president happened. My gosh.

33:51 And we were all freaking out, cuz we’re just like, at first we’re like, is he dead? Like, what’s happening? And so we get confirmation that he’s okay. This man is so cool that he made sure to have his team call us and let us know that it didn’t matter, come hell or high water, he was coming to the conference. Here we are trying to see, like, are you okay?

34:23 Can we help in any, you know, we’re just concerned, and he’s just like, we’re, we’re coming. Like, don’t worry about it. I am coming to the conference.

34:32 Brian Rose: Cuz it was a couple weeks later, right? Wasn’t that far off.

34:36 Tracy Hoyos-López: Right, it was, that the Republican convention, and then you guys it was the Republican convention, and the weekend after was the Bitcoin, or I think like two weeks after was the Bitcoin convention, the Bitcoin conference, yeah. So we’re like, you know, this guy is a rock star. Here you are dodging bull bullets and you think to just call us to let us know that you’re coming. Well, we’re just trying to find out if you’re okay. So we ramp things up there, ramped it up, and we started then aggressively fundraising.

35:09 So Amanda and David obviously led with that, because they were so well known in the space. So, like, everybody trusted them. I was like the bossy Latina coming in and telling everybody, like, this is what you need to do, and this is where you need to be, and like, this is what we’re going to do, and this is going to be the format, and these are the topics, and everyone was like, who is this person? And I’m just like, I’m the person that made this happen, so please, please just follow lead.

35:34 I promise it’s all going to be good. And then Nashville happened. We raised $25 million. Honestly, we raised that in, it was less than 2 months.

35:47 Brian Rose: And you told me that was the single biggest individual industry donation of his campaign.

35:55 Tracy Hoyos-López: So I don’t, or right up there. So it’s right up there, and I don’t I would have to look at that. Um, but I think, like, pro is like one of the largest, but we were by far we were a significant part of the donations, right? $25 million is not chump change. It’s a lot of money. Yeah.

36:12 Brian Rose: Um, and where did it come from?

36:14 Tracy Hoyos-López: Companies, companies, individuals. It was a combination of everybody. I mean, everybody wanted to come on board and help us. Everybody wanted to make this happen.

36:22 Everybody had a catastrophic story to tell about what has, what was happening to their companies, miners. Um, JP Richardson from Exodus, who just went public. I mean, DP sat down with the president and told him the story of everything that had happened to his company, and the president was shocked. Like nobody understands how horrible the regulation and these agencies have been to the industry. They’ve been extremely, extremely hostile.

36:58 I mean, these companies are spending upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation alone. So everybody jumped on board. Everybody, I mean, and not there were definitely some people that played like both sides of the field, which, like, whatever. I get it. I’m not for it, but I get it from a business standpoint.

37:20 Brian Rose: That donated to both parties.

37:22 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah. That donated to both parties. But then there were a lot of people that were like, “Nope, we’re balls deep on Trump, right? Like, we know what they’re going to do to us.

37:31 We know what he’s going to do for us.” And so, I was on stage, um, mediating a panel at Future Blockchain Summit in October, and there was some CEOs there, and they gave me this line like, “Well, whoever wins, at least we’re going to have more clarity.” And I just said, “Let’s hold on a second, guys.” Like, seriously, did your PR telly tell you that if she wins, we’re all f***ed. If he wins, we have liberation.

37:56 And let’s just be super clear about this. 100%. But yeah, a lot of people were either saying that publicly because they were hedging themselves. They were hedging themselves. And I, I mean, I don’t get it, because and maybe this sounds naive, or maybe this is just like too much out there, like in the dream world, but if you want to make the world a better place, be f***ing honest and stop bullshitting people.

38:24 You’ve got the team that wants to just destroy every company out there with regulation by enforcement, who wants to come in and establish a CBDC. And now I understand the CBDC argument from different countries and different people. But this is the thing that I’ll say. We’re Americans. F*** CBDC’s.

38:45 We do not want to be tracked or controlled by our government. And they don’t have a right to do so. They also don’t have a right to curtail the Fourth Amendment by utilizing a CBDC. If you want my information, you get a warrant. You go to court, and you get a warrant.

39:01 You make your case. Why would we, why would we allow them to do this to, oh, yes, please come check out my stuff. No, by all means, yes. Yes. This is how I move.

39:12 No, screw you. I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m not a terrorist. I’m not a drug dealer. Like, we’re just people trying to buy things, pay things, move things around.

39:22 So this is what they wanted to do. This is what that team wanted to do. And for you to come out and say, “No, they’re, they’re open.” I mean, and I won’t name the companies, because I have friends in every company, but when you’re posting, oh, we had a very positive meeting with the Harris team. B******t.

39:48 It wasn’t a positive meeting. You didn’t talk about anything. She never showed up. She was extremely disrespectful to the industry. You’re, you’re a presidential candidate and you don’t want to come and sit with these people.

39:58 Do you have any idea how much power we have as an industry? Well, if you didn’t know then, you know now, because every single person, every single person, regardless of their party affiliation, who ran on a Bitcoin and or crypto platform, won their seats. Every single one of them, the president, in Congress, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Every single person. And what’s cool about that is when we were putting together the crypto ball, a lot of, you know, we talked about, like, what is the meaning behind this?

40:35 So it was Nick Carr and I who started with the idea of the crypto ball.

40:39 Brian Rose: This is, uh, during the president’s inauguration. It was this big event you guys hosted. Yeah. Looked amazing.

40:45 Tracy Hoyos-López: And thank you. And big as well. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

40:47 We had way more people show up. Like, I think it was 1,700 total. My gosh. Okay. And we had like capacity for like 1,200.

40:54 Okay. So, it was like, it was very big. Um, and our, the whole point of that was like what is the message that we want to convey? Why are we doing this? Why are we throwing a party?

41:06 Some people will tell you parties are vanity. That’s so stupid. Oh, you guys are throwing a party because you guys are like the new rich people who have to, like, you know, and like, in a way it’s kind of funny, cuz we’re in the 20s, and it’s similar to kind of like the 20s in that sense, but, the Roaring 20s. The Roaring 20s, right? But when Nick and I sat down to discuss this, he’s like, “Okay, we’re like, what is the intent that we’re putting behind all of this?”

41:33 And I was like, “This is easy. Our intent is to show every single politician that if you f*** with us, we will destroy you as an industry. The industry will band together, and we will come after your seat, and we will put someone that is helpful to us, because at the end of the day, all we want to do is work. We’re not asking for special favors. We are not asking for, for special treatment.

42:00 We just want to work, and we just want to continue employing the people that are in our companies, which, by the way, would be displaced if the industry would have to, like, leave the United States. And that’s thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of employees that these companies have. And so, and I was like, and they need our money, so they’re going to want to come to our party. And if they want our money, they can [expletive] come and grovel. Cuz how many times did we have to go and grovel to them?

42:31 How many times did we have to go plead to them, be like, “Please, this is what’s happening. Like, our companies are under attack.” And to what extent? And that’s not to say that we don’t have champions. I mean, Senator Lummis is a champion.

42:43 Senator Blackburn, Ted Cruz, like, we have people there that are visionaries. I mean, Ted Cruz minds Bitcoin. Um, so the whole point around this was, we’re here. We made it. We made it with despite every attack, every hostile thing you’ve ever said about us.

43:05 And I was just like, and wouldn’t this be the biggest f*** you to Elizabeth Warren? It’s like, we’re going to have the hottest ticket in town when it comes to events during inauguration week for Donald J. Trump, the 47th president of the United States. And screw you, cuz you’ve come against us every single time. And guess what?

43:28 We won. You’ve tried to destroy Bitcoin all these years. We won. You’ve tried to destroy an entire industry, and guess what? We know how to put our differences like aside and work together to accomplish the common good for what we need.

43:43 And that was something that the president complimented us on when we were at the Nashville round table. Um, this was one of the things that he said. He’s like, you know, I’ve worked with many people and many industries, and I’ve never seen like the cohesiveness, the, the, the working together despite the fact that you’re competitors. This is great. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been a wild ride, but here we are.

44:11 In Nashville was, I mean, I still so like when you’re on the other side of things, it’s, it’s so stressful, right? Like, we work with their team, by the way, the president’s team, the people that work for this man, are the most extraordinary people on the planet. They are so sweet. They are so diligent, super responsive, and I mean, we have wonderful relationships, ship with them, because we’ve spent a whole year working with them, and they were blown away by Nashville.

44:47 So we’re working with their team. We’re all stressed out. I have no idea what happened at Bitcoin 2024. I have no idea. I wanted to go see Russell Brand, cuz I’m like, love him, and I missed that.

45:03 I want to go see Malor speak. I missed that. I missed everything. I missed the food at the Whale area. I missed everything, cuz I was like in the back room, like, dealing with what was about to come.

45:15 The logistics of him speaking, the logistics of him, I was dealing with the finances for all the fundraising and then I was working together with his team for just, you know, making sure that everything was looking good, that all the transfers had gone through, um, so that we could get the final numbers for um, for, for the announcement for him to announce. Right? And so it was, I mean, it was mayhem, and that energy, that, that like thing that everybody saw.

45:48 I have, like, I have no idea. I have no idea. What I know is that everybody was going wild, and I, we were backstage, and like, you couldn’t hear anything, and so I know there’s all this energy, and I wish I was part of it. I wish I would have gone to the front to hear, like, the speech, but I was, um, I was in the back with, you know, part of his, some of his family members were there, and then with our own team, and then TJ Miller was there too, which was really funny.

46:14 He was, he was way too funny. Um.

46:16 Brian Rose: So you made things happen behind the scenes, and even to the last couple days, we didn’t know if he was going to come for sure. At least that’s what we were being told.

46:23 Tracy Hoyos-López: Oh no, we were.

46:24 Brian Rose: Okay. And then he was late. He was late to come on, and then I think it was checking security and double-checking security.

46:30 Tracy Hoyos-López: Jordi Montes. Who’s that?

46:31 Jordi Montes. Jordi Montes was the reason for the delay.

46:36 Brian Rose: Oh, who’s that?

46:37 Tracy Hoyos-López: So, Jordi Montes was a visitor of the conference that decided to, like, bypass security, cuz he just wanted to, like, see the president speak. Okay.

46:50 So, like, Secret Service had to make sure that, you know, he wasn’t harmed or anything along those lines. Okay.

46:55 Brian Rose: There’s a guy named Shibtoshi, who I think owns a huge chunk of the Shiba coin, and he always wears a mask. Oh yeah, he wears a mask, and I met him at Consensus in, um, in Texas, and he’s a pretty cool guy. I did a little round table with him, but I saw a video of him getting walked out by the Secret Service before Trump came on, and I was like, yeah, Secret Service probably is going to look you, I mean, it’s not like a.

47:15 Tracy Hoyos-López: No, it’s because of the anonymity. So you know, they have to have eyes on everybody to make sure it’s, it’s, president of the United States. No, like you said, there’s a whole another level of everything. And then what the other thing is, like, so there are different levels to the process, right, of sec, in security, to the, the process of becoming, like, okay, so you’re a candidate. Okay, now you are the candidate.

47:40 Okay, and now you are the president. So like his security protocol increases in, like, different stages. So he went from being a regular candidate to, two weekends prior, the RNC confirmed him as the Republican candidate. Okay. So now his security is ramped up significantly.

48:01 Okay. But not only that, he’s not only now the Republican candidate, he’s also the former president of the United States. So that’s why we had to have, like, TSA there, Secret Service. Um, you know, and no masks, no handbags, no large items, no lighters, no vapes, no, none of that stuff. Okay, so this was all happen.

48:26 I mean, the round table was so fun. And he, I’ll tell you, when Tucker Carlson says that he is one of the funniest people you’ll meet, he is one of the funniest people you will meet. Trump is he is so funny.

48:41 Brian Rose: How so?

48:41 Tracy Hoyos-López: He just, like, he, there’s something about his persona.

48:45 He is very charismatic, even though that’s not what’s portrayed in the media. He’s actually very charismatic, very charming. He walks in with jokes. Um, I can’t tell him, because you know, these are, these are some of the things that we can’t talk about. But he walks into this room.

49:04 So this is a setting, right? We walk into, we have a fundraising event. We then leave. We walk into the room where we’re having the round table, and it’s not what we expected. All of a sudden, I walk in, there’s Billy Ray Cyrus serenading Amanda with his guitar, and he’s like, I want to write a song about Bitcoin.

49:25 And Amanda is like, proof of work works. And he’s like, I like that. Proof of work works. Sweetest man. Right.

49:32 Then you have Kid Rock on the other side. His son was there. Um, and senators and House representatives, and every CEO of every publicly traded company in the space, and every CEO of any company that’s leg, you know, a big company in the space. And the, I’ll tell you a funny story. I am giving everybody instructions.

50:03 So when the president comes in, your phones have to be put in these bags that intercept, right? So you can’t, like, message or record or do anything. So these bags are being passed around, and everyone’s just a little rowdy and excited. It’s a big room. There’s about, like, 40 people here.

50:18 And the, one of the campaign, uh, girls, Abby, who I adore, um, asks me to help her to get, you know, these phones, and the, I was like, “Sure, let’s go.” So, I start giving everybody instructions, and I’m turning around, giving everybody instructions. I think Gary Cardone was terrified of me. He’s like, told David at one point, he’s like, “My bag is closed. I don’t, I can’t ask Tracy to, like, open it.”

50:41 And David’s like, “Just hide it. Don’t worry.” So, um, there’s that. And then, you know, I turn around, and I hear, “Marry me. Just marry me.”

50:52 And I’m like, “Who’s proposing to me?” And it’s Kid Rock. Kid Rock is proposing to me. And he’s like, “I’ve never met anybody like you, and you’re just smoking hot. Just marry me.”

51:04 And I was just like, “Well, you know, I don’t like prenups.” Um, everyone starts laughing, and, you know, he said some other stuff that I won’t repeat, but it was, it was comedic relief and a half, right? This guy is so funny, um, and inappropriate, but very funny. And I think at one point I was just like, “Kid, why, why would I want to marry you?” He’s like, “You get to tell anybody that you ban Kid Rock?”

51:36 And I’m like, why are you saying this in a room full of senators and CEOs? I’m like, oh my god. David goes, guys, this is the presidential roundtable. Act presidential. And Kid Rock just turns over to him and goes, “The president ain’t here, so this can’t be the presidential roundtable, can it?”

52:00 I mean, and we’re just cracking up, cuz his comedic timing is just impeccable. But then the president walks in, and I gotta tell you, I’ve never seen anything like this. Like, you know, when Rocky Balboa is walking into the ring and everyone’s behind him, and the lights are on, this is exactly what this feels like. And this is exactly what it looks like. He’s got, I mean, Jake Paul is there.

52:29 Kid Rock is there. Um, I can’t even remember the rest of the people, like Senator Hagerty, Senator Lummis, Senator Blackburn, like all these people are there, and he walks in, and he’s got like 10 people with him, and they’re recording, and he’s walking in, and it’s just like, oh my god, he’s a rock star. Like, he, he has rockstar energy, and you’re just like this, cuz the last setting we saw him was at Mar-a-Lago, and it was just him and his Diet Coke, and it’s just, you know, like more, you know, like more chill.

53:09 Everyone’s like, you know, cool vibes, and all of a sudden we see this posse behind him, following him and just clinging on to like every word he says. And you, everybody in the room, we’re all clinging, hang on to every single word that he says. And so he told us at the round table what he was about to announce, and we were all like beyond thrilled, you know, like, these are, this is exactly what we’ve been in conversations with them about. This is exactly what we wanted.

53:38 This is what the industry needs. And he, he just, he couldn’t have been better at it than just, like, giving us everything and any everything we wanted.

53:48 Brian Rose: Wow. Wow. What were some of the things he told you he was going to do?

53:52 Tracy Hoyos-López: He told us that he was going to ban CBDC’s. He told us that he was going to make Bitcoin, and he’s sorry, the United States, the Bitcoin and crypto capital of the world. Um, that he wanted all the Bitcoin mined in the United States, which is what he means when he says, you know, made in the USA. He wants it mined in the USA. Yeah.

54:12 You know, and we just hear this, and, like, you have to understand, like, when David, Amanda, and I started all of this, like, we’ve been advocating for all of, like, we’re not, we’re not advocating for ourselves, right? Like, there’s, there’s really nothing in it for us in the sense of, like, a business per se, right? Maybe David with the conference, obviously, but so we’re, but we’re not advocating the conference. We’re advocating for the miners. We’re advocating for the exchanges.

54:44 We’re advocating for every single part of our industry that needs help. So to have heard him say that, it was like, oh wow, he really did take the time to listen to each individual thing that we’ve talked to him about, that we’ve, like, you know, we’ve, we’ve built decks, presentations. Um, he asked us questions, and it was just really wonderful to be like, “Oh wow, he, he hurt us.” And you know, we were expecting that maybe he would say, like, one or two things.

55:21 We were not expecting for him to go down that whole list and address every single, single thing that we had spoken to him about. And so that was pretty wild.

55:30 Brian Rose: And he said some bold things in that speech. I guess you watched it back later.

55:35 Tracy Hoyos-López: Oh yeah.

55:35 I mean, and I was in the back, and I was watching it on the screen. Um, but like, I know he diverted to, like, all these other things, and I’m just like, “Come on, Don. Let’s get back to Bitcoin.” But he. Yeah, the weave.

55:50 But that’s who he is. Yeah. That’s who he is. It’s part of his personality. Yeah.

55:54 And I can’t blame him. I mean, like, I think as a woman, me and my best friend have a million conversations where, like, we have one conversation and that turns into 15 different conversations. So like, I have zero critique over that. That’s how normal people talk. It’s just speeches.

56:10 We’re used to being a certain way, or, you know, like those of us who are neurodivergent, yeah, that too.

56:16 Brian Rose: And he said, I’m going to fire Gary Gensler.

56:18 Tracy Hoyos-López: Gary Gensler. So he had told us that beforehand, and then, the what, I remember, I remember a lot of things about that day, but he was shocked by the reaction of the crowd when he said that, and I think that the reason why he was shocked was because, so he told us beforehand, but, you know, there’s a certain level of decorum that we’re trying to keep at the round table in the back, um, because this is the President of the United States, and, like, this is also a room full of senators and a room full of CEOs.

56:45 So, like me, I’m like, “Woo, Gary Ger’s getting fired.” Everybody else is like, and I’m just like, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I’m like, “Yes, yes, Mr. President.” Yes. Um, so he didn’t get, like, a cheer in the room in the back.

57:00 So, that’s why I think he went in there thinking, or, or not expecting that reaction from the crowd.

57:06 Brian Rose: Got it. Okay. Because the round table didn’t respond the same way.

57:09 Tracy Hoyos-López: The round table didn’t respond.

57:11 Exactly. I’m like, and then everyone’s like, “Look at me,” like. Sorry.

57:15 Brian Rose: And so that’s one thing that I noticed when I watched that speech is that I felt like the conference was important for Trump, because I think maybe for the first time ever he had that direct feedback loop, and he was like, “Oh my gosh, here’s a bunch of people here that are super passionate about this.” And I felt if anything it it made him even more sure that he wanted to continue this path based on that reaction.

57:38 At least that’s what I was.

57:40 Tracy Hoyos-López: They were not expecting that size of a room. Okay. They were also not expecting how many people were going to be listening to this, because here’s the thing, you know, when you have, so obviously everybody in the world wants to know what Trump is doing and how he’s moving and everything, right? Like, um, they want to, cuz this is how they’ve decided, well, this is how they decide how they’re going to operate.

58:02 Brian Rose: Yeah. And he’s the most famous person in the world.

58:06 Tracy Hoyos-López: Exactly. Basically. But then you have Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is such a global phenomena, especially in countries with devalued currencies.

58:18 So, not only every Bitcoiner in the world is listening to him, but I’m sorry, not every Bitcoiner in the United States is listening to him, but every Bitcoiner around the world is listening to him, because they know that if he endorses this thing, then that is going to unlock everything in these, in the, in the industry worldwide, cuz other people are going to have to follow suit. Yeah. And I mean, he’s a very powerful man, and I don’t, they were, they were not expecting that level of audience, or that size audience, both in person and then everything globally.

59:01 Brian Rose: Right? I mean, people were talking about this for weeks.

59:04 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah, it was incredible.

59:05 Brian Rose: And then again, back to what he said. He said, I mean, the President of the United States said never sell your Bitcoin.

59:11 That’s crazy. Again. That alone would have been a hundred million, $200 million endorsement, just as a pay-per-view. And then he said, “I’m going to fire Gary Gensler twice.” He said it again.

59:21 Tracy Hoyos-López: And it was amazing to see how he can do that in real time.

59:23 Brian Rose: Oh, I love the way he’s, I think he said something along the lines of, like, “I didn’t know I was going to get this reaction. I’m going to say it again. I’m going to fire Gary, against.”

59:30 Tracy Hoyos-López: Exactly.

59:30 He’s like, “Yeah, he even says he’s going to say it again.”

59:33 Brian Rose: Yeah. It was epic. Did he say he was going to pardon Ross as well?

59:36 Tracy Hoyos-López: He did.

59:36 Brian Rose: Right. So he’s literally going through your wish list.

59:39 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah. And he had announced that already at the Libertarian conference. But you know, the Libertarian Conference is very small.

59:46 Brian Rose: Right? So nobody heard it. And the Bitcoin conference is just mass.

59:49 Tracy Hoyos-López: Well, everybody heard it, because it was later on announced. But everybody, meaning the world.

59:52 Brian Rose: Yeah. But you you’re hearing real time that not only you shouldn’t sell your Bitcoin, but he’s going to fire Gary Gensler, he’s going to save our industry, he’s going to help us put a regulatory framework that makes sense for us,

1:00:50 Tracy Hoyos-López: How much, I mean, Lynn has been at this for 12 years, trying to get her son out. It’s wild. Wow. So, and yeah.

1:01:17 Brian Rose: So, epic speech. You’re there. I guess everybody’s happy afterwards. And then,

1:01:24 Tracy Hoyos-López: I, I think so. I have very little recollection of what happened in Nashville.

1:01:31 And I think I cried for, like, three days straight, just because of the stress release. And I’m just like, “Oh, okay. I’m done with that.” And then we had to jump on the next thing, which was the getting out the vote movement. Okay.

1:01:44 So, for getting out the vote movement, we, you know, we raised all of this money for Trump and none for ourselves. And, like, when you’re running a movement, you need money.

1:01:55 Brian Rose: And so, you got him at the conference, and now you’re thinking, “Okay, now we have to get people to vote.”

1:02:02 Tracy Hoyos-López: And that was a separate issue. And there’s also the stand with crypto people as well.

1:02:07 So I’m just. So, and here’s what happened. So you know, we talked to the, the campaign people, our relationships with them. Um, and we asked them, okay, how can we help you now? So we’ve done fundraising, we did Nashville.

1:02:23 What comes next? Remember, we don’t know. This is the first time in our lives that we’ve been involved in something like this. So, so they, they help us and they guide us into understanding, like, what comes next. Okay.

1:02:34 Well, the next part is getting voters, and we go, okay, a get out the vote movement. So, the amazing Nick Carr from Stand with Crypto, um, we get on a call with him, and we’re like, “Hey, Nick, could, would you be amenable to us, like, jumping on board with you guys on this?” Cuz they had a bigger budget than we did.

1:03:01 Brian Rose: And can you explain what they are?

1:03:03 Tracy Hoyos-López: So, Stand with Crypto is a, a 501c4 organization that, I mean, is started by, um, Coinbase.

1:03:11 Brian Rose: Yeah, and they do a lot of policy work, and you know, that’s pretty much it. It’s all policy, and, like, educational. Right? Trying to support pro-crypto politicians and trying to support the opponents of non-crypto politicians. Maybe that’s not a remit.

1:03:28 Tracy Hoyos-López: Well, and you know, so they can’t, so C4s cannot endorse politicians just because of, of how C4s function, and what the, uh, legal um, parameters are on that. But they did something really cool, is that they built a scorecard for each candidate and how they scored on crypto. Okay. And I remember, I can’t remember specifically what happened, because this was so while back now, but at some point something happened, and the scorecards, the scoring system was like a little wonky, and they were actually really good at listening to what people were saying on Twitter, and they fixed it.

1:04:13 So they were very on board with, like, you know, working with the community and, um, and getting them educated about each individual candidate and what each individual candidate stood for within the space, so that everybody could make, you know, the best decision, based on whatever their views were. Then they also needed the Bitcoiners to come on board. And so that’s where we came in, and then they let us come on board with them to run the get out the vote movement.

1:04:40 Okay. So George Male and Lana Miles from Bitcoin Magazine. Um, I kind of stole them from Bitcoin Magazine for, like, a period of time in so that they could run this get out the vote movement, because George, George runs all the Bitcoin meetups. So George is the GM of Bitcoin Magazine, and he runs all the Bitcoin meetups. And so George, you know, has this incredible ability of just getting activating every single meetup across the nation for this.

1:05:18 So, and he did a phenomenal job. I mean, Lana and George completely outdid themselves. They, we rallied together with Stand with Crypto, and we did everything through, you know, um, without question. We have our own C4 called the Bitcoin Advocacy Project. And so we, we got together with their C4, and we took on educating voters.

1:06:35 We focused on swing states and educating voters. Like, for example, a lot of voters in Wisconsin didn’t know that if you had a specific pension plan, like, did you know that Bitcoin is one of your investments? So you need to know about this, because Bitcoin affects you, and so it was a lot of educating people on understanding, like, hey, you may be an investor in Bitcoin and not even know about it. So let us, like, let us let you know what this is about, and let us give you the best information available so that you can make the best decision when you go into the polls and vote.

1:07:11 Okay? Cuz again, like, we can’t advocate for a particular party just because of the, um, the regulations. But we got out so many people from across the country to come and talk at these things. So Dom, oh, what’s his last name? Awesome guy, Dominique.

1:07:31 He is a Los Angeles firefighter in Santa Monica. He’s the guy that convinces the pension plans in California to put Bitcoin, um, to add Bitcoin as, like, an investment. And then he did the same in Wisconsin. So he came out in to Wisconsin to, like, talk about this. And I mean, he’s done amazing work in California for, like, all the Bitcoin stuff, especially in the Santa Monica area.

1:07:59 And um, so we had him, we had a ton of other people. I mean, in the Stand with Crypto guys, just like, did a phenomenal job at getting more people out there to be, like, more speakers about the space, about what it means. What is crypto? What is Bitcoin? What are you, you know, what’s going on?

1:08:13 And then they did an awesome uh thing. They had the setup for getting everyone registered to vote, which is, like, a big part of things. Yeah. So, the data that came out was that the Bitcoiners and crypto holders in swing states were more than the number of voters necessary for the Democrats to win. And you know, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your ideological preferences are and what you hold.

1:08:55 When you touch people’s money, that’s when people are going to be activated. That’s when they’re going to get angry. So now people are coming out, and they’re listening to what these guys are saying, because, oh wow, I’m invested in Bitcoin. I don’t even know about this. Or, this is what crypto is.

1:09:16 These are tools, you know, that we have against censorship, or, for how I see it, it’s Bitcoin is the ultimate protector of the United States Constitution. And so now you’re getting everyone rallied up. And when we had the data of voters, when, you know, like, all that data came in, like, we, our voters, our industry, the crypto and Bitcoiners, it looks like they were a big, big impact in the swing states and voting. Really? And so that’s what I, that’s what I say, like, when I was, when Nick and I were talking about the crypto ball, I’m like, they can’t f*** with us anymore.

1:09:59 They can try, but they just, they won’t win. They won’t win.

1:10:05 Brian Rose: Do they know that? Does DC know that?

1:10:09 Tracy Hoyos-López: You know, I would say that they do, because at our crypto ball, you saw, I mean, who was there?

1:10:18 Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, was there. Um, Mayor Suarez was there. You had, I think, Roana was also there, but I don’t recall specifically. Um, I mean, there were a ton of politicians in the room, and of course, why are they in the room? Cuz they want our money, and influence, right?

1:10:46 And our money. They want our money. These people are always fundraising, right? Always fundraising, and they want our money. So great.

1:10:57 If you want my money, dance, monkey. I mean, it’s the reality of it. Like, it’s sad. It’s sad. I wish that I could.

1:11:08 I wish that I could tell you all of these politicians, they care. Like, they care. And that’s not to say that there’s not some that do, right? Like Bobby Kennedy clearly cares about this stuff. Uh, Senator Lummis cares about this stuff.

1:11:24 But the majority of them, they don’t necessarily care. They have to start caring or at least give the appearance that they’re caring, because this is an industry that has a lot of money. And so they want that money. This is another way of them to raise money. Yeah.

1:11:37 So for me, it’s just like very simple. You want money, dance. And if you’re not on our side, great. Now we know. Now we know what we need to do.

1:11:48 Next time the elections come, we’ll make sure to fund your opposing candidate. I mean, Bernie Moreno was one of the most awesome success stories in the, in the election. Bernie was like seriously losing and then all of a sudden, after the Trump speech, after, like, all this stuff, he, like, flipped the numbers and won.

1:12:14 Brian Rose: Which state was that?

1:12:16 Tracy Hoyos-López: Bernie Moreno was.

1:12:17 So, Kryp got him elected.

1:12:19 Brian Rose: Yeah. Okay. All right. And so now that you’ve seen Trump come in, and he’s a few weeks in, and you’ve seen, obviously, he pardons Ross, um, brings in David Sachs, you know, crypto and AISR, got the committee, the task force looking at it.

1:12:35 Like, what, what would you say are some of the notable things he’s done? Did things surprise you how fast he acted? What, what would you say is the current state of the Union?

1:12:44 Tracy Hoyos-López: So, it definitely surprised me how quickly he acted. Did it surprise you that he did what he said?

1:12:49 Because a lot of people are like, “Oh, wow. He did what he said.” No, because you, he did what he said the last time. Yeah. Whether you agreed with him or not, whether you were on the same page with him or not, he stuck to his promises.

1:13:01 Um, so that didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was when he did it. I thought this was very early. You see a lot of the maxis, a lot of the people in the industry, they tend to think, well, this is the most important thing, and this needs to be done day one. Everybody needs to calm down.

1:13:23 Our country is in a crisis. We’ve had four years of absolute insanity with illegal immigration, with DEI, with all these gender ideological issues. Um, there is a lot to clean up, corruption. I mean, you see what DOGE has been doing. You have all of these issues, and to be very fair, Bitcoin is not going to be a priority.

1:13:50 I would love for it to be the priority. Yeah. But it’s not going to be the priority. There’s way too many things happening. The southern border has to be closed down.

1:13:57 You know, like, uh, we need to clean up the FBI, or we need to clean up, you know, law enforcement agencies across um, all agencies. There’s so much work that needs to be done. And he actually took the time to do this, this early. I thought this was going to be done, like, maybe, maybe 6 months in, or maybe a year in. Wow.

1:14:19 Okay.

1:14:19 Tracy Hoyos-López: I never expected it to be this fast.

1:14:22 Brian Rose: Okay. And what is this so far? What do you see?

1:14:25 Tracy Hoyos-López: So what I see is, you know, a president that has taken interest in educating the members of Congress in why this is important, and why we need a regulatory framework that helps not inhibit what these companies are trying to do. And I think that that’s part of this, like, six-month study that has been ordered as part of the executive order, right? Like, you still have a portion of Congress that doesn’t understand what is crypto, what is Bitcoin. I mean, and there’s a, there’s a chunk that really does, because the guys at the Bitcoin Policy Institute have been at this since day one, and they started, how many years ago?

1:15:22 I mean, and they are the ones that have gotten everybody, like, pretty much educated. If you were in Congress, um, you’ve definitely had interactions with BPI, and these are the guys that have been doing this since, I mean, I don’t even know when they started, but they’ve been amazing at it, right? But there still is a big portion of other people that don’t know what this is. The hard part is, you know, everything’s, like, politically so polarized, and I don’t know.

1:15:49 I think, like, the Democratic Party is just, like, I don’t even know what to say about them. Like, everything that comes out of their mouths is just, like, more b******t by the day. And so you, you did, you see, yesterday they were having the golden age digital asset, golden age hearings in, uh, Congress, and you had Jonathan Yakim from Kraken as a head of policy. You had the head of PayPal. You had, I can’t remember, what the attorney was from this law firm, and there’s another person that I can’t remember, was nameless, but they’re, everything that they’re seeing is educational.

1:16:31 It’s like, this is why this is important, and also, by the way, this is how things actually work. This is what AML means. This is how it works. These are our procedures in an exchange of how things work. You think, I mean, there is this one point where I can’t remember, he was clearly a Democratic um, senator, I can’t remember from where or his name or anything, but my god, he kept he was asking Jonathan to explain, basically, AML and, and KYC, right?

1:17:01 It’s like, well, how do you guys deal with terrorism? Okay, listen, exchanges have, like, ways of dealing with this. It’s like banks, not very different, right? There are tools that you utilize in order to, like, see what’s going on with transactions, right? To make sure that you’re not assisting terrorism groups.

1:17:17 And this guy just kept going, but because you can use crypto to buy nuclear missiles for the Koreans, the North Koreans, and he kept repeating this, and I was just, I mean, you have to laugh. You have to laugh. But you’re just like, are the North Koreans buying missiles with crypto, and we just don’t know about it? Like, what is happening here? And it’s such unhinged behavior and such unhinged statements.

1:17:44 And you had Maxine Waters part of this group as well. And you’re just like, “This woman clearly doesn’t even know how to send an email. How is she in this group? I don’t know.” And she kept saying, like, me coins, me coin, me coin.

1:18:00 I mean, and you’re, and they’re reading, and so it’s like, you have no idea what you’re saying. Clearly, somebody wrote this out for you, and there’s clearly an agenda. And it’s an agenda of actually not listening. Right? And that’s a problem.

1:18:14 The country has spoken. Donald Trump won the popular vote. So, if you continue down this path of doing the insane thing, it’s not going to work. But you have an opportunity right now. The Democratic Party has an opportunity right now to take the position and say, “Okay, clearly what we did for the last four years is not working.

1:18:37 So, let’s take a deep breath and a step back and kind of examine what’s going on. Let’s see. Clearly, this is important to these people. So, let’s just, let’s just look at it from an, an objective point of view. Oh, they’re not going to do that.

1:18:50 They’re not going to do that.” And that is what lets you to believe, or to know, or you know, to see with confidence that they are an organized group of people with one particular agenda, and someone specifically has to be pulling the strings, whether that is the banks, who knows, whether that is a specific person, who knows, or that’s Warren, who knows, but somebody’s pulling the strings there, because their messaging is exactly the same. Okay. Yeah. But then you see the Republicans having actual conversations with the people that are sitting there from all of these different companies, and you’re just like, this isn’t, listen, I get it.

1:19:29 It’s not the easiest thing to understand, but just, like, take a moment, sit down, and just, just listen. Ask, ask actual questions. Ask question about things that really worry you, or that you don’t understand. You have some of the best people here from the best companies. Like, use them.

1:19:48 They are experts. That’s not what they want to do. So our choice was right. Donald Trump is the man. They still, I mean, what’s the guy from whoever, the whoever the Democratic expert was for them.

1:20:06 I mean, they went on about CBDC’s for a minute, and they’re like, well, and they don’t want to talk about the president is passing regulation against CBDC, and I don’t know why he’s doing that. Well, I’ll tell you why he’s doing that, [expletive]. Because you guys want to use this to control the population and to monitor what we’re doing, and we’re not going to [expletive] let you, because this isn’t China. You don’t get to shut down our accounts. We don’t have a social credit system.

1:20:29 So, like, no. No. And hopefully that was clear from what they were saying. Hopefully people understand what that is. And I don’t mean the people in the space, but hopefully people that are outside the space understand that, because that is a broader message that’s beyond that goes beyond crypto, right?

1:20:46 Bitcoin exists because we believe in in sovereign, in self-sovereignty. We believe in freedom, freedom of speech. Um, you know, this is our way of, like, saying bye, we’re exiting the matrix. We don’t want to be a part of this circus that’s going on here. Um, and then you have these group of people that are saying this thing, but what they’re really telling you is, “We want this tool because we want to monitor you, and we want to control you.”

1:21:17 And that is not a crypto thought. That is not a Bitcoin thought. That is a thought that encompasses everyone in every industry, and every single US citizen across the country and across the world. Your government, if they were the ones in power, your government wants to control you. They want to tell you what you can and cannot do, what you can and cannot say, and where you spend your money, and how you spend your money, and who you send money to.

1:21:47 That’s the most unAmerican thing. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It’s why it’s important to fight for this.

1:21:55 Brian Rose: What do you think’s going to happen over the next 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, four year? What do you think is actually going to get passed? What do you think the regulations are going to be?

1:22:09 Tracy Hoyos-López: I think that we are going to have a regulatory framework that gives clear guidelines as to what can be done, how to go about things. And I think that companies will be able to go public again.

1:22:23 I think that at some point ICOs are going to be able to happen again. Um, I think we’re going to see really a golden age of technology, because what people are forgetting also is, like, you’re, you’re thinking this is money. Bitcoin is a technology. Ethereum is a technology. Solana is a technology.

1:22:45 These things are technologies. And in the race of what this means, we’re behind. Look at the regulatory framework here in the, in the UAE. It’s amazing. Companies are coming here.

1:22:57 They’re able to operate. They’re able to do things. They just passed regulation here, where, um, you can, uh, trade, um, what is it? Uh, tokenized, uh, shares. They, this, this stuff is, we’re, we’re in the dinosaur ages in the US, and, like, UAE is leading the way in this stuff.

1:23:18 So I think that it’s going to take a little bit. It’s, it’s, I’ll say that if we’re super bullish about it, maybe in the next 6 months. If not, maybe in the next year, but we’re going to see a lot of growth in that area, because regulations, we’re going to have, like, reregulations of, like, what we actually need. And the government is going to want, I don’t want to say, like, work together, cuz that makes it sound like too spook, but they’re, we’re going to have a positive relationship in the sense of, like, we’re going to turn around this idea that Bitcoin and crypto holders are criminals.

1:24:02 No, this is a technology that facilitates the exchange of money. Why would you send a wire through your bank when I can pay you with Bitcoin? Or a stable coin, or a stable coin, or Ethereum, or Solana, or a memecoin? Who cares? I can do this.

1:24:21 This, I can send you a million dollars, and it’ll be quicker, safer, and it’ll be, what, what do you wait? 10 minutes, maybe, at the most, with the Bitcoin network. Okay. Use a stable coin, probably a little faster. Like, this is easy.

1:24:40 Instead, I don’t have to pay a percentage to the bank, where, like, remittances. You want to send your family money? Why do I have to give 10% to, like, f***ing Western Union? Why do I have to, like, spend all this money to send my, my family money? Like, it’s crazy.

1:24:52 You can send it with crypto. You can send a stable coin, or, like, for Kraken, for example, like we have fiat to fiat exchange. So like, you can just send fiat through, through your wallet. But, you know, it’s like, there’s all of these things that this facilitates, and they’re ignoring the technology because they’re focused on, like, the criminality. Well, if you want to talk about the criminality about it, we can talk about Enron, how no one went to prison after Enron, didn’t prosecute a single person, or banks laundering hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

1:25:20 Banks laundering hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, the majority of, like, crimes, like drug-related crimes, cartels still utilize, for the most part, cash. Like, this is the other thing. They’re like, “Oh, and the drug dealers and the cartels.” These people aren’t using crypto.

1:25:37 They’re not. They’re not using Monero, as you think. They’re using cash. Okay. Okay.

1:25:43 So, are we going to ban cash now? I mean, some countries are doing that little by little, but you, I mean, you’re being [expletive] if this is your idea. You think that this is only a thing for crime? Then you’re just missing the point.

1:25:57 Brian Rose: In the meantime, is industry advancing rapidly in America, or are they still a little cautious as to what’s going to happen next?

1:26:05 Tracy Hoyos-López: I think, I think everyone is cautiously optimistic. Yeah. We are in completely unchartered territories here. We had no idea that it was going to lead to this. I was, uh, listening to the testimony last night, cuz it’s daylight, daytime there, but night here.

1:26:22 And I took a screenshot, and I sent it to David, and I was like, “Yo, we did this.” And it’s wild, because if you understand where we started, which is in David’s terrace, in the middle of the night, having a conversation about wanting Trump to come to Nashville, and where we are now, talking about a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it’s wild. We never in a million years did we think we were going to be here. We, it, it wasn’t even a thought in our minds. It’s amazing.

1:26:56 Brian Rose: I know. Thank you.

1:26:57 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah. You’re welcome.

1:26:58 Brian Rose: No, seriously, thank you.

1:26:59 I mean, I watched that speech in London, and I was just blown away, and I looked at the media, you know, out outpour the next couple days, and it was just absolutely incredible. I mean, honestly, I felt like all of 24 was clearly a simulation, you know, from the assassination attempt. But that conference, I just couldn’t believe it. When Trump says never sell your Bitcoin, I was like, is this actually happening? You know, it was a big deal that Bobby Kennedy was going to be there.

1:27:22 I know he was there the previous year, and then senators were going to be there, but then when Trump came there and he said that stuff, I was just like, this is absolutely incredible. I know. Something we’ve been dreaming of and hoping for, for years and years and years. And like you said, it’s, it’s, it is purely American. This, this, it is, embodies freedom.

1:27:40 And the CB, CBDC’s are the opposite of freedom. And this is such a critical juncture. You know, I had, um, uh, I think his name, his nickname is Crypto Dab, but he’s the former head of the CFTC on my show. I forgot his name, but, um, he said, “This is like the one chance that you could instill American values in the future in a form of technology, is, is banning CBDC’s and allowing these instruments.”

1:28:06 Tracy Hoyos-López: And it’s funny that you say that, because when we talked to the president and when we talked to his team, one of the things that we told them is like, Bitcoin is an instrument to distribute the American dream to the rest of the world without having them come here.

1:28:23 If you can give financial freedom to people, they don’t have to risk their lives to come to the United States to work and make a penny. Wow. They can do that from wherever they are in the world. And they can do it with Bitcoin. Bitcoin literally is all American values.

1:28:42 Brian Rose: That’s heavy.

1:28:43 Tracy Hoyos-López: It is.

1:28:43 Brian Rose: Yeah. Forget orange pilling them. You’re red, white, and blue pilling them.

1:28:46 Tracy Hoyos-López: And it’s real, because if you do that to people in China, if you do that to people in Africa that maybe have influence from that state of mind, then from the ground up, you can fight back against these totalitarian values. You know, in Alana Media Vija’s, um, documentary Dirty Coin, one of the things with one of the people she interviewed in Africa, she said, this woman from Africa said, you know, when we talk about my currency, we’re not on the same page, because my currency is so incredibly devalued that it doesn’t make sense. She goes, “But when we talk about Bitcoin, we’re both on the same page about what the value of things are.”

1:29:29 And that’s something very powerful that people in different parts of the world, where their currencies are, you know, crap, are able to use Bitcoin as a thing that brings them as part of the rest of the world. So now you don’t, you’re not like, “Oh, well, the poor Africans over there.” No, no, no, no, no, no. They’re here.

1:29:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, they’re here, and they’re living their American dream because they have Bitcoin.

1:29:59 I always say that, like, as humans, we’ve never experienced such a sound currency in our lives. That imagine, for most of your life, you’re showing up to this world where you know the money’s kind of fake. And so guess what that means? That means your work, it’s kind of fake. Your time is kind of fake.

1:30:19 And imagine that in a massively devaluated currency, but imagine that even with dollars and with pounds that got printed massively in the last few years. I argue that you stop actually showing up, because it’s all kind of BS at the end of the day. Your savings is BS. You’re compensated with BS. And that when you actually start experiencing sound money, I think you actually show up differently as a human being.

1:30:39 Tracy Hoyos-López: Well, that, and also, like, I mean, people don’t, I don’t think most people understand that, how the government steals money from you. Yeah. Right. Taxation, inflation. I mean, inflation is the biggest thief.

1:30:54 Yeah. And most people don’t understand that. They’re just like, well, it’s because of this, or, well, it’s because of that. No, it’s because your government is stealing money from you. And now we have the Department of Government.

1:31:09 Uh, what is it? Efficiency. Efficiency. Yeah. And they’re finding all of the money that has been stolen from the American people, via tax.

1:31:20 Taxation is literal theft. And we are taxed at so many different levels. Like, we can’t breathe anymore. America isn’t what it used to be. You know, you could come in, you could, you know, be scrappy and build something great.

1:31:34 I mean, you still can, but everything’s so expensive. And if you want to build a business, you have so many levels of taxes, and depends on what state you want to build that business in. If you want to build a business in California, get out of here. The chances of you succeeding are dimminimous, you know. So, but, but again, like, it has to do with educa, like, you know, our education system sucks, and so people don’t understand money.

1:32:01 They don’t understand what inflation is. They don’t understand that when you print money, it causes inflation. The, if you ask a regular American what is the dollar backed by, they won’t be able to answer you. Or they’ll tell you, well, gold, and you’ll be like, well, it’s not 1970 something. Like, calm down.

1:32:20 And it’s part of that, and I think that what this industry does so beautifully is that when you come into it, and that may be, by, maybe you buy like $10 worth of Bitcoin or ETH, or maybe you buy memecoin, who knows, but as a result, you’re now learning new things about money and how it works. And I mean, doing is the best teacher of things, right? So like, you won’t learn this stuff in school, and god knows if you Google it what will come up. But like, you can buy a memecoin and you can start seeing what this is, how it works, how it functions, and be like, okay, well, maybe not a meme coin, cuz a memecoin is kind of casino, but, you know, you buy a little bit of Bitcoin and you’ll see, like, how it works.

1:33:05 Why does the value of it keep going up? What happens at halving? Um, why is Michael Saylor so crazy about buying so much Bitcoin? Right? What is this new financial system that he has uh, uncovered with Bitcoin?

1:33:20 Brian Rose: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say even to that person that doesn’t understand the intricacies of money, part of them subconsciously feels, over decades of their lives, that that’s, that just this, this, this is a construct somehow when you’re living in a fiat currency world. And I think as you start showing them the Bitcoin, and they’re like, “Oh, wow. Really?

1:33:40 Wow.” You might get reactions like that woman in Africa, where all of a sudden, okay, life changes, because human relationships are built on human transactions, and this is an instrument of transaction that’s maybe the soundest money we’ve ever seen. I think it really changes the human experience, and I think we’re going to see that more.

1:33:55 Tracy Hoyos-López: And not only that, like, what do you do with people that, like, don’t have banks nearby? There’s, like, I think, like, what is it?

1:34:01 It’s like 20 or 40%. I could be wrong, but either 20 or 40% of, like, the world population is debanked. Like, they don’t have a banking system, right? In Puerto Rico. So, I’ve been debanked by every single bank in Puerto Rico.

1:34:13 Crazy. If I want to send a wire in Puerto Rico from one of the banks, right? If I want to do it at Chase Bank, my, the bank I bank with, I just go to my phone, I open my app, right? And I send you a wire transfer. If I do that in Puerto Rico, I have to physically go to the bank, fill out paperwork, explain to them why I’m sending a wire and for what purpose.

1:34:41 It’s insane. Yeah. And I’m like, what do you mean you want to know why I’m sending a wire? I’m sending a wire, cuz it’s my money, and I’ll send it wherever the hell I want. Not anymore.

1:34:50 Exactly. I know. And it’s gotten worse now with banks. Not giving you cash if you ask for it, and then giving you 20 questions on anything you want to do with what I thought was your money. Banco Popular in Puerto Rico debanked me solely because the company paying me, the name is Bitcoin Conference.

1:35:15 Do you understand that I’m explaining to them that I don’t get paid in crypto? that I am a consultant, that what I do is build relationships. And they go, “Yeah, but the company’s named Bitcoin.” And I go, “This is a media company.” Yeah, it doesn’t matter, cuz you get paid in crypto.

1:35:32 I’m sorry. Do you see me depositing crypto in this bank? Crazy. I mean, and they shut down my account. Wow.

1:35:40 Brian Rose: Wow. It’s wild. That’s the legacy of the last four years of the administration. And now we’re seeing all the FDIC stuff come out, and what they were doing to the banks, and the, and everyone’s like, “Well, we didn’t know this was happening.”

1:35:54 Tracy Hoyos-López: What are you saying?

1:35:55 We’ve been telling you that this is happening for the last four years. What do you mean that you didn’t know that this was happening? We’re not that special. You’re in Congress. How did you know?

1:36:08 Brian Rose: And so what do you do next? You’re here in the UAE uh, with Kraken. You’re then going to DC, I think, after this. How does your relationship continue with, you know, the Trump administration, with promoting crypto? How does that work?

1:36:22 Tracy Hoyos-López: So, with the Trump administration, my, my, I’m a Kraken now, obviously. So, we’re just here. I’m, I’m here at my personal capacity to assist them with anything that they need. Okay? If that is understanding something, understanding who’s something, understanding what a company, you know, different companies are different things.

1:36:43 So, you know, I’ll take those calls, and I’ll help them out. And then, of course, from a professional standpoint, not only this, you know, Kraken, but also Coinbase and Gemini, like, everyone’s involved in the space at the policy level. And so, we will all assist the, the administration with whatever they need at that point. So, I will be, yeah, I’ll be spending some time in DC, and then I’ll be traveling because Kraken’s, Kraken’s doing some cool stuff, and so I will be assisting my boss in, um, his, uh, very aggressive and awesome ambitions.

1:37:21 Brian Rose: Okay. And you, you hit on it a little bit, but, um, what are you doing here now in the UAE, and what’s it been like to work with, you know, a government that is pro crypto?

1:37:36 Tracy Hoyos-López: Oh man, I love the UAE. So they are very pro. Okay, so the Emiratis are some of the most fascinating people you’ll ever meet, right?

1:37:48 And they are visionaries. I think this is the best way of describing Emiratis. And if you don’t believe me, all you need to do is look at what the UAE was 30, 50 years ago, and then look at what the UAE is now. I mean, none of the stuff that you’re seeing here existed. It’s younger than me, the UAE.

1:38:08 Think about that.

1:38:09 Brian Rose: It is. It’s definitely not younger than me. Thank God.

1:38:11 Tracy Hoyos-López: Okay.

1:38:11 By a few months.

1:38:12 Brian Rose: By a few months. And I’ve built something pretty impressive in my life, but this is pretty impressive as well. I mean, this place was sand.

1:38:19 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yeah.

1:38:19 In the desert. That’s it. There was nothing else to it. And they had this vision. And I mean, I mean, you, you, you see what Dubai is.

1:38:31 You go to Abu Dhabi. You go to the Grand Mosque, and you’re like, my god, this is breathtaking, you know. So they are visionaries. And I think that they understand and they see the value of learning what these emerging technologies mean. And they also have groups of young people.

1:38:59 So there is the blockchain center in Abu Dhabi, and they do a lot of work in, um, like, you know, the policy side and, like, a regulatory side, and they, you, they have a government that is like, let’s invest in the youth, let’s invest in these things that they are talking to us about. Like, clearly they’re seeing something that we don’t see. So let’s work with them. That’s a beautiful government to have. Like, you know, I wish our, our country could be like that, but we only support the youth if they’re Democrats, but they’re Republicans.

1:39:35 We won’t support them, which is why everyone’s obsessed with big balls now, right? Like, you’re saying a 19-year-old kid can do this? What are you talking about? Our founders were like 1920, 22, 23. I think the oldest one was like 28.

1:39:48 The founders of America. The founders of America. You know, like these were guys in their 20s that had this, like, amazing vision. I mean, and the UAE is kind of like that. I mean, not guys in their 20s, but, you know, at some point they were in their 20s when they had the vision, and they’re building all this stuff.

1:40:05 So, it’s like that. And I think that’s really beautiful. Like, youth is there will always be one step ahead of us, because they’re so young, and these are things that they’re growing up with. So, why not take a chance and, like, see what this is all about? So, they’re doing that, and they’re doing a phenomenal job at it.

1:40:23 Brian Rose: I find it really refreshing here. I, it was like a month after I got here. I, I pulled out my phone. I was in the Dubai Mall, and I, I recorded this vlog video, and I said, um, I titled it, Dubai is what America used to be.

1:40:35 Tracy Hoyos-López: Yes.

1:40:35 And I thought about my grandpa, great grandpa, when they got to America. All they had to do was go west and build something, create something, and the government was going to leave you alone. They weren’t going to tax you. You could have land for free. Just go build something.

1:40:49 And it was a bunch of people coming there to hustle for a better life. And that’s what this place reminds me of. You can come here, and the government’s not only going to not mess with you, they’re going to support you. They’re not going to tax you. And you get to build your dreams.

1:41:03 And I feel that here.

1:41:04 Brian Rose: And I agree. There’s some of the most amazing, incredible, fascinating people in the world with big dreams and deadlines. And they run this government.

1:41:13 Tracy Hoyos-López: Oh yeah.

1:41:13 They run this government like a business. You know, you’ll get fired if you don’t stay on task. It’s, it which is an incredible concept, because now with DOGE, we’re, we’re figuring out that there’s not even an accounting system in the United States government. There’s not even a way of, of, you know, of checking these transactions and even labeling them. I mean, and that’s at, like, a, at the, at the large-scale level, right?

1:41:37 Like, you’re dealing with federal entities, federal organizations. I’m telling you, like, at the local level, how things are run are way more disastrous. How district attorney’s offices are run, or you know, state attorney’s offices, or I mean, Miami is a great example of corruption and disaster. So, like, we can definitely DOGE Miami. Right?

1:42:01 Brian Rose: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, we’ll probably have to do another episode for a deep dive into you, but you’ve had experience of, well, you’re right. We’re seeing the federal level, but on the local level, there’s layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy, corruption, bureaucracy, government going after people.

1:42:20 Tracy Hoyos-López: I mean, I’ll tell you from my own personal experience, like, I was a devout prosecutor.

1:42:25 I thought I was going to be a careerong prosecutor, and when my office turned against me, cuz the Miami Dade County State Attorney’s Office is the largest criminal organization in the state of Florida. And when I uncovered that and I raised the flag, silly me, right? Doing the right thing, they came after me. And the thing is, if they’re coming after me, I’m one of them. If they’re coming after me, oh, they’re coming after everybody.

1:42:56 Victims, defendants. I mean, the Constitution to these people, it’s toilet paper. They don’t care about anybody’s rights. I mean, I am eternally grateful to them, cuz had they not done to me the horrible thing that they did to me, I wouldn’t have been here. Maybe the industry wouldn’t have had this shift.

1:43:18 Like, maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn’t. Um, we wouldn’t have met Donald Trump and had this, like, wild ride. I would definitely not be a Kraken, and I love being a Kraken. So, like, like, kudos to them, but, like, also, screw them.

1:43:34 Brian Rose: How are they a criminal organization?

1:43:37 Tracy Hoyos-López: The Miami Dade County State Attorney’s Office does not follow the rule of law. They hide evidence. They penalize attorneys for turning over Brady evidence, which is a legal obligation. They will come after you if you say something. So for me, for example, I uncovered in one of my attempt murder cases, I uncovered that my victim was bribed to not assist the state in the prosecution of the case.

1:44:10 This is an attempt murder case. When I did the full investigation, I found out that it was the defense attorney who bribed my victim personally to not assist the state in the prosecution of the case. So when I took that to my office, I got yelled at. I got called a [expletive], and I was told why I investigated it. Well, because it’s my job.

1:44:31 That’s literally what you pay me to do. And so they turned around, and they accused me of committing a crime. They accused me of practicing law without a license. These people are so insane. They were the ones who petitioned the State of Florida for my permission to work while my bar number was being given to me, cuz I had already passed the bar.

1:44:51 And they are accusing me of practicing without a license. I mean, the level of incompetence and stupidity. Like, these people are so stupid, but this is also what happens when you want power. Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who is the State Attorney in Miami, has been in power for, like, 32 years. How do you think you stay in power for 32 years?

1:45:10 Ask Putin. Ask the Castro family. Ask Maduro. Ask all of the dictators around the world how they were able to do that. And Miami is chaos.

1:45:21 There’s a ton of crime. There is, they can’t even, they can’t get guilty in their cases, and guilty verdicts in their cases. And that’s not to say that every case you take, you’re going to get a guilty, cuz the truth is, like, the jury needs to evaluate that. But the jury in Miami is correct and not holding anyone guilty, because they have such a distrust of this office and how corrupt it is, that why are they going to send someone to prison when these are the biggest criminals, and they can’t trust what’s being presented to them in court for them to make a judgment against this particular individual?

1:45:59 No, they’re not going to do that. But then what about the victims? Who speaks out for them? I have one of my close friends in Miami is a victim of domestic violence, and, like, I hate to say this, but, like, her husband’s going to kill her one day. Her ex-husband, he’s going to kill her one day, and no one’s doing anything about it.

1:46:21 Prosecutor isn’t doing anything about it. The police isn’t doing anything about it. The Department of Child Services isn’t doing anything about it. I mean, the prosecutor is supposed to intervene on behalf of the victim. They’re not doing anything.

1:46:34 And at the same time, defendants, these people have constitutional rights. And now they find themselves also in a financial situation. You’ve accused them of a crime. They don’t have the funds to fight it. So what are they going to do?

1:46:50 Well, their attorney is going to advise them to take a plea, because it’s going to be the easiest thing to get out of it. So now they have a criminal record, because you’re so corrupt, stupid, incompetent, and lazy that you won’t do your job to make sure if that person, or if the state of the evidence that that case has, is enough to hold them guilty by proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They won’t do that. They hire incompetent attorneys. They don’t train them.

1:47:25 They remain incompetent because they’re not trained. They, I mean, the stories I could tell you from that office are just wild. From, like, one of the heads of the office, like singing Bee Gees in a presentation, and telling everyone you could meet your significant other in this office, and you’re just like, what is happening right now? They don’t, like, when I was in San Bernardino, my office used to send me to trainings all over California all the time, and they used to do trainings in our office.

1:47:56 I didn’t see a single training in the time I was there. They don’t send anyone. And when I asked, “Hey, can I get a training schedule of, like, where the response was, no trainings are, like, a prize we give certain people?” And you’re just like, “Oh my god, educating attorneys is a prize. No wonder this place is a mess.”

1:48:15 Brian Rose: It’s amazing to see that, like, America, who we held, held our pride with, you know, democracy and transparency and freedom of speech and the lack of corruption, and we point our fingers at the Putins and, uh, the Chinese, and, but, like, we’re starting to see that all of those practices are happening in America. Do you think things will start to change or trickle down with Trump and DOGE and all these things that we’re seeing?

1:48:39 Tracy Hoyos-López: The thing is, that because we have separation of powers, right?

1:48:42 We have a federal government and we have state governments, and the truth is that unless the state government is doing something that is, like, illegal at the federal level, then it wouldn’t be getting investigated, and the question is, is there, you know, does the federal agencies have the bandwidth, have the manpower, and have, like, you know, the time to actually put things, you know, start investigating these things, or do they even know that this is going on? Like, there’s so much crime that like, do they know what’s going on internally? Do they understand, like, what the corruption is?

1:49:14 Um, and then really this falls on attorney generals and governors at the state level. But then you have a guy like DeSantis, who, like, god bless him, doesn’t give a s*** about the state of Florida, because if you cared about your state, and not to pinpoint him, cuz, like, Gavin Newsom is the same thing in California, but if you cared about your state, and you see everything that’s coming out of Miami, for example, I mean, the corrections department in Miami, there’s this guy by the name of, uh, I think his last name was Rainey, and he was, um, a Black male with a mental illness, and he was being held in custody. Well, the corrections officers locked this man in the shower room.

1:50:04 They turned on hot scalding water, and they cooked him alive. This man died, and he was, he was cooked alive. Not a single person got prosecuted for that. And that’s just one story of thousands of stories. So, you know that this is going on because the Miami Herald is reporting on it.

1:50:30 You also know it’s going on because Billy Corbin is reporting on it, and everybody in Miami knows who Billy Corbin is. And you’re not doing anything about it. You’re not investigating it. You’re not looking into it. You’re not calling your attorney general and being like, “Hey, there’s clearly something going on there.

1:50:46 Take a look.” No, we’re going to give the death penalty to pedophiles. Well, that’s great. We’re all on board there. Except that if you can’t successfully prosecute them, they’re going to get out and rape more children.

1:50:58 So, how about we just get our priorities straight? And so there’s all these, like, big ideas that people shoot out, but they just do it because they know that that’s what voters want to hear, and that’s what’s going to get their attention. But then you go to these, like, cities, you live in them, and you’re just like, my god, the corrupt, I mean, Miami is something else. I have never seen anything like Miami. You know, corruption exists everywhere, but I have never seen anything like what I saw in Miami.

1:51:28 And I’m from Puerto Rico. Like, there’s a lot of corruption in Puerto Rico. I lived in LA. There’s a lot of corruption in LA. I have never seen what I saw in Miami, like ever in my life.

1:51:38 And just, like, the sheer stupidity of the majority of the attorneys in the office is astounding to me.

1:51:45 Brian Rose: Wow. Well, you went from probably one of the worst years of your life in ’23 to probably one of the best years of your life in ’24.

1:51:55 Tracy Hoyos-López: I know. That is wild.

1:51:56 I know.

1:51:57 Brian Rose: And then now you’re in ’25, and the future looks kind of bright, you know, going through all of that. What do you make of that?

1:52:08 Tracy Hoyos-López: I mean, God is wild. He’s just so wild.

1:52:12 What do I make of it? I think that life is awesome, and sometimes things get really, really hard, and you just don’t understand why. But you know, the way that I see it is, like, God is a God of suddenly, right? He doesn’t. He’s a sovereign God.

1:52:34 He doesn’t need anybody’s permission to do things. He just wants you to endure so that you can get to the promised land that he has for you on the other side of things. And so, like, when I see my story, I mean, when Miami did to me what they did to me, like I was suicidal. And they came after my job, my licenses, my, I had to cash out all my Bitcoin to cover, like, my legal expenses, my rent. So I’m, like, still bitter about that.

1:52:59 But, like, I see where I was at the lowest of the low, and then I start this thing with David, and all of a sudden we’re with the president, and all of a sudden we’re running a get out the vote campaign, and then all of a sudden we’re in election night. The president wins. We’re in inauguration, and I’m at Kraken, and it’s just like, God, you’re good. So where do I see it going? I don’t know.

1:53:29 I think God’s awesome. He loves to surprise us. And I think that he’s just going to keep surprising me. I don’t have any plans. All I have is, like, a vibe.

1:53:42 Like, this is what we’re doing now. And it’s great. And so we’re going to make it successful, and then once we’re done with that, we’ll see what comes next. I have, like, the AA approach, right? Like, the, uh, one day at a time.

1:53:56 Brian Rose: I like that. Serving you well. Um, last question is for someone out there, like my dad, or someone out there like maybe some of these members of Congress, or someone out there who just doesn’t get Bitcoin, or they don’t get crypto, or they’ve heard that it’s going to zero, or they heard it was created by the CIA, or they heard that it doesn’t mean anything and it’s not backed by anything, and all these things. What would you say to them? How would you try to get them to maybe open their mind, or to learn more about it, or to see if they can maybe see it the way you see it?

1:54:36 How do you orange pill more people?

1:54:39 Tracy Hoyos-López: So I would start with, do you like the government? Because I don’t think anybody can answer that in a positive. Like, a lot of people don’t see that Bitcoin is has anything to do with the government when, in fact, it does. Well, I would say, you know, Bitcoin Magazine did, they covered the Canadian truckers when all of that was going on.

1:55:05 I would say check this story out. And then, do you know how, like, when they accuse you of allegedly doing something wrong, and all of a sudden your assets are frozen and you can’t touch anything? Well, that’s the same thing. So in that case, peaceful, went, people went to a peaceful protest, and later found out their bank accounts were frozen for executing or exercising what they thought was their human right, constitutional right?

1:55:32 Brian Rose: Right, you have the right to.

1:55:34 In a G7 country.

1:55:35 Tracy Hoyos-López: Exactly. You have the right to speak up and tell your government we don’t agree with what you’re doing, and then you’re penalizing them, taking money away from them, shutting down their accounts or exchanges. I mean, like, just craziness. I think you know, I’ll tell you, like, I think that the way that you do it with men and women are different.

1:55:55 I think that men buy more the freedom route. I certainly went down this route, but again, I was a prosecutor, so, and I’m a, I love the Constitution, so, like, that was easy for me. But I think that generally speaking, like, for women, and I, you know, my best friend and I talk about this quite a bit, women, they love their families. They love their homes. They want to make sure their children are okay.

1:56:21 They want to make sure their children are taken care of, their families taken care of. And so to them, what I would say is, like, okay, listen, this is like a tiny, this is like a piggy bank. And you just put little by little what you can. And it doesn’t mean that, you know, like everybody likes to say, “Oh, if you do Bitcoin now, you’ll be a millionaire and like this.” Don’t think about it that way.

1:56:42 Think of it as money that’s growing. Like you’re putting your money to work, and it’s going to continue growing over time, so that one day if your kid wants to go to college or, god forbid, you get sick or your kid gets sick, you have this little rainy day fund available to you that you didn’t have before. It’s just another tool for you to have. Okay. So, I think that’s the route that I would take more on the female side.

1:57:08 And on the male side, it’s just like, you know, unless you’re a comma man, um, then the whole, like, American, like, you know, like cowboy kind of touting thing won’t work. But it’s just a way of more secure transactions, like, okay, if you, if you have a bank account, and let’s say that there’s two banks, and then in one institution you have pure transparency. You see every transaction, how money is moving, what’s being done with the money in your account, what the bank is doing.

1:57:44 And then on the other side, you have an institution in which you put your money in, and you have no clue what’s going on behind closed doors. There’s zero transparency. Your information is shared. You have no idea what’s going on with your money or the bank’s money, or how they invest their money and what they do. Like, which one would you choose?

1:58:03 And I would say this one is Bitcoin. This is what we offer you. Full transparency so you know what your money is doing and where it’s going. And I think that that’s pretty cool.

1:58:20 Brian Rose: Well, I hope my dad’s listening.

1:58:23 Tracy Hoyos-López: I hope so, too. I hope my dad’s listening. Maybe he can finally, like, get on board.

1:58:27 Brian Rose: Well, look, uh, Tracy, I want to say thank you for everything you’ve done. You know, I know you had a lot of help and a lot of support, but you all, and including you, made something historic happen.

1:58:38 And I think, you know, definitely changed the course of history, or at least accelerated it. And it’s been incredible to watch. And, uh, I was watching from London with our entire community that is learning about crypto and investing in crypto. And I was calling that Nashville speech in real time. I was telling everybody how huge it was before.

1:58:56 I was analyzing what he said during, and then talking about the media footprint later, and just talking about how epic that was. I didn’t know you. Um, but thank you for making that happen.

1:59:07 Tracy Hoyos-López: And, you’re welcome. It was my pleasure.

1:59:09 I mean, it’s amazing, like, you know, when you have friends and you love them and you believe in their vision, and when you get the right friends together, crazy night, having a crazy combo of a possibility, and it turns like this, but you know, teamwork makes the dream work. And I mean, David Bailey, God, I’ll love that guy, and Amanda, I love her. I mean, like, this was the cool one, of the coolest things that we will probably ever do in our lives. Yeah.

1:59:33 Brian Rose: And it’s, it’s very American, like you said. Very American. Bunch of cowboys. We’re just going to do this. We’re just a bunch of cowboys telling the system, “Fuck you.

1:59:44 We refuse.” And hey, you know who we’re picking? The guy you hate. All right. And on that note, I’m going to say all the best to you, Kraken.

1:59:54 Keep doing great things. Keep, you know, orange filling the world. And, uh, thanks for coming on. Really great.

1:59:59 Tracy Hoyos-López: Thank you for having me so much.

2:00:00 Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks. And also, I just want to thank Web3T for having us. We’ll see you next time.