Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1507
A trip to the dermatologist and parsing the rancor over the GENIUS act, which makes no sense to me.
Good morning good morning good morning. Sorry I’m late. Went to the dermatologist after dropping Jane off from school. I am (probably) cancer free! I got four parts of my body removed. Shit that’s been bugging me for decades. Just… gone. In seconds. Crazy.
Dermatologists rule. Very comsumer-focused. Didn’t throw a hissy-fit that I wanted to email ‘em a PDF of my insurance card. Didn’t keep me waiting.
Also it seems like the attic work is maybe killing me. Well, not really but it is doing weird shit to my toes (my work shoes are too small??) and my head. Crazy.
Anyway now I love dermatologists so much I am going to get like botox and shit. Also the nurse had a winnie the pooh tattoo. Well, she had a ton of tattoos. And they were all all black and faded and blurry and that was the only one I would really make out. I wanted to ask her about tattoos: how many patients have them, the worst she ever saw. But I refrained.
I am such a jolly patient, though. Years ago, my dear friend Rachel worked at a clinic and she said that dudes were so bad about doctor’s visits. They would only come in when something got real bad or it was related to their junk. And they never wanted to tell the nurses or admins anything, only talk to their doctors. And it wasn’t like the nurses couldn’t see their charts. But just all surly and secretive. Her anecdotes about that really stuck with me. I resolved to be a different sort of patient. So I am jolly and friendly and talkative. It usually works. Worked on this doctor/nurse duo, anyway. Dudes. Give it a shot.
(And I don’t think Rachel reads GMHHAY but if she does: hi Rachel, love you, miss you).
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We are listening to the new Nilüfer Yanya single at the moment: “Where to Look.” I love it. I liked Nilüfer enough to have purchased her last album, but, you know, that was in 2024 where I purchased (checks Discogs)… eighty-two records. So, you know.
But I like this one.
Finally got around to reading the GENIUS act, so, here we go. If you don’t care about crypto you are going to absolutely hate this next section. I’m not, like, a crypto lover or anything. But I find it all something that is necessary to keep track of, both from a work-related, technology point of view and a macroeconomic point of view. And, I suppose, increasingly from a kleptocracy/political (politico-kletocratic? New word for our times?) point of view.
This bill has been confusing to me because of the heated political debate about its passage. As far as I could tell without reading it, it was simply a bill placing a regulatory framework around stablecoins. A stablecoin is a type of crypto asset that is, basically, pegged to a dollar. So, like, you can buy one Circle Coin and it means you bought one dollar of crypto. And Circle (the people who make Circle Coins), keep one dollar in a bank for you so when you want your dollar back, you can get it back.
It is important to note that stable coins are already perfectly legal, and there are a bunch of them.
And it is important to note that the thing most people are worried about with stablecoins is the obvious potential for graft: you just say you’re keeping a dollar in a bank account to back that one Dollarcoin, but you don’t really keep a dollar in a bank account. You lie, or, more commonly, you invest that dollar in something not safe. Like, you know, you give it to a VC or a PE firm and they invest it in something sketchy. Or you just steal it.
And, this being crypto, which is generally shady AF, this happens. All the time! There are two largest stablecoins in the world and one of them, to this day, doesn’t really tell anyone how much money it has in the bank or what it does with the money or let a reputable auditor audit them. It is shady AF.
SO, it does not seem unreasonable to me that someone pass a law that says “hey so okay if you issue a stablecoin, this should be regulated and you should actually keep the money in a safe thing like banks or T-Bills (yeah yeah let’s just put the impending doom of the US Gov’t aside. If T-Bills go, we have bigger problems than stablecoins). This seems… like a good law? Like people are already doing this shit with far less regulation.
It would seem to me that even if you thought stablecoins should be banned, this law is still a step in the right direction.
BUT.
OH MY GOD has some segment of the Democratic party, the Bluesky left, and the global liberals decided they fucking HATE this bill. Just hate it. And they are so pissed at Dems like Adam Schiff who are in support of it.
(Bluesky left is a great term. I am a proud member).
Now, I, too, kinda think large swaths of crypto is graft, and a lot of crypto is stupid as fuck and dumb and people lose their money.
And, thus, I think the graft parts should be prosecuted?
And… they kind of are? Mostly? Or were, anyway, till we elected Trump. But even now, a good portion of the scams are prosecuted, and certainly the rest of the world prosecutes them and in any case, Trump didn’t change the laws to make the scams legal, he’s just a putz.
But these people — most notably Elizabeth Warren — fucking hate this bill.
And I have been very curious why. Because they never say anything about the bill itself. It’s all about Trump’s very obvious crypto scams, which of course suck, and are numerous. But so are Trump’s non-crypto scams. And his crypto scams have not, as of yet, involved stablecoins. But they keep telling me if we pass this law, Trump will, like, I guess make a stablecoin and take over the dollar or something. I don’t know.
I am trying in good faith here to understand their arguments because I try to be a good progressive.
So I started by reading the bill.
It is… fucking fine!
There are one or two spots where one could quibble about how strict the rules are. For example, there’s a passage that says something like “A permitted payment stablecoin issuer may… undertake other fucntions that directly suppoert the work of issuing and redeeming payment stablecoins,” where you could see someone pulling something and doing some activity that they should not. But even then, you could throw em at the courts.
But… so? Right now these things are essentially unregulated. I mean the SEC is sorta involved. The largest US stablecoin issuer is, this very day, doing an IPO, so, you know, they can’t lie. But, you know, the largest stablecoin in the world is held by tons of Americans and not public and not subject to the SEC or anyone else and does not tell people where their money is and it is all completely de facto legal at the moment.
This bill puts a regulatory framework around something that currently has none. If you don’t like that thing, you are absolutely better off having this bill exist than not. This bill requires stablecoin issuers to absolutely keep the currency to back the coins, and keep it in safe places and subject themselves to audits and exposes the CEO and CFO to crimes if they lie about it. That is so much better than where we are now.
Warren used the term “writing stablecoins into the law” essentially accusing the bill of legalizing stablecoins. Except they’re already legal! They’re already written into the law!
So, upon reading the bill, I mean, man. I was more confused than ever.
BUT, conveniently, a gentleman named Yanis Varoufakis whom I love love love, just wrote an op-ed about the bill. I mean, I love Yanis. I wrote a song that name-checked him. How many former Greek finance ministers have you written songs about?
So, here is his op-ed. I read it last night.
And I gotta tell you, man. As a dude with an economics degree, a stanning relationship with Yanis, and a deep interest and understanding of crypto and a decently solid understanding of international finance (which was literally my major), this shit makes no sense.
(Also there is one point where Yanis says the bill is still in draft form and no one knows the final bill and that is totally not true but Ima gonna chalk that up to publishing delays).
I do not understand how anyone thinks this helps Trump at all. Trump could make a stablecoin RIGHT NOW. Trump could blackmail everyone into using his stablecoin RIGHT NOW. And, RIGHT NOW, he could do all of this without actually backing the stablecoin with anything. He could lie about it, avoid audits and just do his own thing. And no court would even theoretically stop him, any more than they have stopped Tether.
This bill, now, I mean, poltico-kletpocratic concerns aside, makes all of that harder for him. The courts could at least, after the passage of this bill, find him to be breaking the law. Will they in this day and age? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the odds are absolutely, unequivocally improved with the bill.
Varoufakis also goes on a lot about the global competition between currencies, and this all makes some sense. And there is a complication in the normal push-and-pull calculus over which currency is supreme in the world. Because, right now, Trump, maybe against the will of the majority of Americans, and somewhat irregularly, seems to have a boner for devaluing the dollar.
So Varoufakis seems to be implying here, Trumpcoin graft potential aside, that the combination of the US legitimizing stablecoins (as opposed to, say, China, who banned them), combined with his eagerness to devalue the dollar will, I guess, a) make the US dollar more dominant than ever, but also b) turn the US dollar over to private companies.
Now, I don’t really see how both could happen.
I do see why if you don’t know anything about crypto this bill makes it seem like, as Elizabeth Warren has said, would bring us back to that weird-ass era in the 1800’s where there was no single US dollar and all sorts of banks were issuing silver certificates.
Except it wouldn’t? Because two things:
1) The problem with that era was that the banks (and the US government for that matter) issued way more dollars than they had silver, which this bill specifically bans.
2) These (newly regulated) stablecoins are all still backed by the dollar. That’s the whole point! These are dollars! That’s why they invented stablecoins, so you could rely on the supremacy of the underlying currency.
SO. Some things rattling around my head from all this. I don’t have answers. I have theories. Possible explanations:
1) Maybe people are dumb?
2) Maybe people are panderpoliticking?
3) Maybe people have an absolutely expert handle on how the world of international finance works and can predict exactly how this bill will impact the supremacy of assorted currencies? It does not seem a stretch to assume that the former finance minister of Greece has a better handle on that than I. And, him being European, he would presumably care a lot more about the dollar maintaining supremacy and is potentially a lot more likely to see this as a bad thing. This would explain the concerns about the bill for certain non-Americans. But it would be weird if, like, Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want to maintain dollar supremacy.
4) Maybe they have wind of some Trumpist plot that requires this bill, but nah, he doesn’t care about laws. I don’t think. But maybe. He IS prepping a bill to legalize Elon’s illegal cuts, after all. Wouldn’t bother if he cared about the law not at all.
5) Maybe I’m dumb. I mean, I am dumb.
6) Maybe people are conflating what they hate with what should be illegal? They hate crypo, so think all of it should be illegal. Personally I put a lot of effort into separating these out. Lots of things I hate I believe should stay legal. Like mayo.
7) Maybe it is an intramural regulatory turf fight and people liked Gary Gensler’s Biden-era SEC approach to crypto regulation and don’t want to give it to the FDIC/Fed, whom they view as ill-equipped or regulatorily (how is that not a word, Apple) captured. WHICH WOULD MAKE PERFECT SENSE, so maybe just tell me that, maan.
Anyway, that’s all I got.
You guys, the GMHHAY readership, told me some absolute gems of spelling-bee horror stories over the last day. I guess everyone who reads GMHHAY came in second in a spelling bee, because not a single spelling bee champion wrote in but boy do people remember the word they misspelled to get second place. Some of these words are absolutely unhinged, and my misspelling of anonymous seems rudimentary by comparison. You guys had some mean-ass schooling.
One more day of waking up at 6:20 AM. Jane and I are both very excited. It sucks it’s gonna rain for the next week, though. Not enough playground time. But in seven days we are off to Alaska and, you know. Never rains in Alaska. Right? Right?
Ambient playlist for you today. I am leaving two different Pan·American songs on here because their collaborators are different. That counts, right? Also, Kramer doing ambient is so weird. Far cry from Bongwater or Ween.
Okay! Talk to you tomorrow. You have a lovely day.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.