Is CBDC a Bigger Threat to the Dollar Than Bitcoin (Uncut) 01-28-2025

Trump’s Crypto Order: Is CBDC a Bigger Threat to the Dollar Than Bitcoin? Deven Soni

Hey everyone, welcome back to Kitco News. I’m Jeremy Safran. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button.

Well, a major development from Washington, President Donald Trump has signed a long-awaited executive order on cryptocurrency. It’s titled Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology. Now the order establishes the creation of a working group that will advise the White House on digital asset policies.

Notably, while Bitcoin wasn’t mentioned directly, the executive order tasked the working group with exploring the idea of a national digital asset stockpile. Such a stockpile could be composed of cryptocurrencies lawfully obtained by federal law enforcement. This is different than the proposals floated by figures like Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who suggested that the U.S. might consider using Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

The executive order also bans central bank digital currencies. It’s a big one here. And to help us break it down, what this order means for digital assets and what to expect next from Trump is Devin Soni.

Devin, of course, is the CEO of Matador. He’s also a seasoned investor with a background in private equity and technology investment. Devin worked at Goldman Sachs and Highland Capital Partners as a technology investor before moving into the blockchain space back in 2016.

Great to have you back on the show, Devin. Nice to see you. Great to be here.

Thank you. OK, we’ve got plenty to get to. Every day is so fast paced with some of these executive orders coming down.

And I’d like to start by breaking down the one that we are currently talking about and what it will mean for digital assets. I mean, a key feature of the order is the establishment of a presidential task force on digital asset markets chaired by David Sachs, a special advisor on AI and cryptocurrency. Other members will include top officials like the Secretary of Treasury, Attorney General, SEC Chair and the CFTC Chair.

And many experts in the field have pointed out that it is not oversight. The working group excludes the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Under Trump’s directive, the president’s working group must review all prior cryptocurrency policies and submit updated recommendations within 60 days.

And within six months, the task force is required to present a comprehensive report with proposals for a regulatory framework covering digital assets and more importantly, stablecoins. So I want to first get your your thoughts on this, Devin. Let’s talk about the executive order and what you what stood out for you.

Well, you know, I think the two things that stood out to me is, you know, the timeline. You know, obviously, Bitcoin’s been around since 2009 and, you know, in the popular mind since, you know, 2014, 2015, 2016. So I think what we’re going to see is more progress in the U.S. and crypto in the next six months than we’ve seen in the last 10 years, at least from a definitive stance.

You know, historically, crypto had been kind of the, you know, the realm of sort of the SEC who’d been sort of a what I call they really hadn’t, you know, released official guidance. So we’ve kind of been sitting around waiting a whole bunch of, you know, serious companies have not been able to take action because there’s not real regulatory clarity. So I think the biggest thing I’m seeing is just the fact that there’s going to be, you know, a lot more clarity in the space and that’s going to let people kind of build more.

Yeah, yeah. And it’s as you mentioned, Trump moving fast here. And of course, you know, what Bitcoiners have been keeping a close eye on is the group, you know, tasked to evaluate the feasibility of a national digital asset reserve, which would be built using cryptocurrencies legally seized by the feds, by the federal government.

I mean, it doesn’t go as far as many wanted in terms of creating a national Bitcoin reserve. What’s your take on this? Why do you think that there was no mention of Bitcoin? Well, I think the big part of it is, you know, there’s a whole bunch of people that need to kind of rally behind the project and the product. I, you know, I’ll put it this way.

I feel that the strongest statement that’s come out of the administration regarding this point is that, you know, Trump doesn’t see, you know, America as the place of Bitcoin, but sort of the world leader in crypto. So we’re building a safe haven for his crypto. And I think that is the bigger theme that his, you know, advisers and lobbies have been pushing towards.

Obviously, Bitcoin is, you know, the number one cryptocurrency, both by market cap and mindshare. But I think there’s a whole bunch of innovation happening in other areas. And I think if you think about, you know, sort of the lobbyists in this space and the folks that are trying to push for it, it’s not just Bitcoin, which is obviously a very big part of it.

But, you know, there’s, you know, tokenized securities and tokenized assets, stable coins. These are all really important parts of the policy, which is why I think, you know, maybe Bitcoin wasn’t singled out just yet. But I do think it’s clearly a very important part of the overall mindshare.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve been hearing the narrative, right? So many analysts, so many people expecting that this will come out from Trump. I mean, you know, without the mention of Bitcoin, how do you see the community responding to the executive order here, especially in the short term? I mean, the price of Bitcoin is still really stable.

Well, I think it’s good enough for the Bitcoiners, right? I mean, I think, you know, we probably hit over 100k US based on some of these rumors. We’re still obviously above that. And I think we are there’s a whole lot more confidence.

In this in this space. And, you know, I think what we’re going to see and to me, the most exciting part of this is the fact that the US is, you know, I feel like that the stockpile at the very least is almost a foregone conclusion at this point. So now, you know, all these other kind of countries are kind of looking around each other being like, what should we do and what can we do? And once it had, you know, a little more support are probably going to be actually stockpiling and acquiring as well.

So I think this is kind of the, you know, the US is one of the first dominoes in sort of a global kind of rush here, which I think will be is what the market is saying. And maybe those announcements haven’t come yet, but I think they’re at least being expected. OK, I mean, another key aspect of the order is that it bans federal agencies from promoting or issuing central bank digital currencies, aligning with the Republicans party’s longstanding opposition to CBDCs.

Huge news here. Tell me what this kind of ensures here, Devin. Well, you know, to me, what it ensures more than anything else is that the biggest obstacle, you know, for crypto, you know, in the US at least, has been maintaining the strength of the dollar.

And I think what they’re what they’re saying very clearly is that the CBDCs that are not necessarily based on a dollar, but maybe backed on a basket of goods or something else, are a lot more of a threat than Bitcoin is to the dollar. Bitcoin can be an ally where these CBDCs are not. What they’re really trying to do more than anything else is establish, you know, the US dollar as, you know, sort of, you know, the current global reserve currency.

And by stable, you know, sort of backing that dollar in a sense by Bitcoin, I think that also sort of furthers the argument that Bitcoin is a really important part of this, this kind of ecosystem narrative. But what they don’t want is sort of this arms race for CBDCs globally where, you know, the, you know, the digital dollar from 35 different countries are all competing against each other. Yeah.

Not only that, I mean, there’s this I like the word financial liberty. You know, the fact that we’re going to not have to worry about the privacy concerns about the CBDCs, too. Why is this so important? I mean, explain to our viewers, because this was a big commitment that Trump just passed yesterday.

Well, I think, again, you know, the great part about the current administration is that they’re very quick acting. Things are moving very quickly. You know, at the same time, what we’re seeing is, you know, some of the things like the tariff announcements, what they’re really doing in many ways.

Right. Is promoting U.S. interests over kind of global interests, which I think is good in many ways as well. But what that’s going to do is put a whole lot of pressure on countries that are sort of at odds with U.S. policies.

You know, I think China and Russia, you know, those folks have been, you know, they’ve got the 100 year plan here to subvert the U.S. dollar, which is kind of the reason one of the main reasons why the U.S. has so much sort of global authority. So I think by subverting some of the innovation here, by not sort of allowing it in the U.S. at the very least, what we’re doing is kind of, you know, kind of knocking off some of these innovations at the knees and instead driving innovation towards kind of broader cryptocurrencies, digital securities, some of the things that are more kind of privatized and not as public. Yeah.

And to your point, I mean, an interesting part of the executive order was a paragraph specifying promotion and the protection of the sovereignty of the U.S. dollar. And I think the quote here, I do have it. It says, including through actions to promote and develop the growth of lawful and legitimate dollar backed stable coins worldwide.

So can you give our viewers the latest on how stable coins have been doing and also how they’ve been promoting the use of the U.S. dollar? Absolutely. So I think when you think about, you know, Tether and USDC and these products like this, right, they’ve historically been used, you know, by cryptocurrency traders for liquidity purposes, for trading purposes. I think what we’re seeing now with some of these discussions is they’re going to be seen also as a store of value similar to how real dollars and banking accounts are.

Right. I mean, I think this is such a market shift from, you know, four or five years ago. And anyone kind of blockchain world knows that, you know, people were getting, you know, accounts, you know, bank accounts shut down because you held a bunch of USDC on Coinbase or something.

And now the government, you know, straight out saying that these are actually helping the dollar, not harming, you know, the banking system just shows that I think you’re going to see a whole lot more people utilizing these assets. And the other part of that is going to say, OK, well, that means that the products built on top of stable coins, you know, products that generate yield, give bridges into cryptocurrency are all going to be much more popularized and I think much more mainstream, which I think is really interesting. Yeah.

I mean, you mentioned Tether there. I mean, how might the executive order that we saw yesterday happen influence private stable coin issues like Tether or Circle? Well, you know, it’s it’s so funny, like, you know, with Tether specifically, I think there’s kind of been this, you know, giant history of when is Tether the first domino to collapse because of the lack of transparency and obviously USDC and the other kind of, you know, stable coins got created because people, you know, for many reasons may not have trust Tether. But but I think where we are today is that when you see capital inflows, these companies make tremendous investments.

And I think when you’ve seen, you know, with Tether specifically has been sort of this kind of defy reserve currency in many ways. So I believe that, you know, they’re in a very, very strong position if they choose to sort of play ball. And that’s kind of a question that, you know, I think that company has to answer on their own, which is do we want to sort of stay outside of the sort of this like regulated ecosystem and maybe have different rules about how we invest our capital or do we stay outside and, you know, kind of run business as usual? I think that’ll be a really relevant question we see in the coming months.

Right. Yeah. And it’ll be fascinating to watch that.

I mean, another big development was Senator Cynthia Lummis getting confirmed as first ever chair of a new Senate panel on digital assets. I mean, she’s been the leading proponent of creating a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve, even proposing to sell the gold that the U.S. owns for Bitcoin. I want to talk to you a little bit about this.

I mean, what impact do you see her having in this new role? Well, I think she has a whole lot of people’s ear at this point. And the fact that this role has kind of legitimate, legitimatized a lot of her kind of pushing over the last several years. I think the broader theme here is that the folks being put into positions of authority around setting policy have almost exclusively been folks that are pro Bitcoin, whether that’s David Sachs or that’s Hester Pierce and whether that’s Lummis.

I think all these folks are in the right position here. And who’s on the outs? Well, it’s the Treasury and the Fed, which have been historically the biggest sort of blockers of any sort of innovation space. So I think what we’re going to see is something really, really friendly.

Obviously, you’ve always got politicians that sort of push the agenda further than the U.S. government is going to take it. And I think in some cases, I don’t necessarily see the U.S. selling a bunch of gold here. But but I do think that the sentiment of Bitcoin being a digital gold proxy and being treated the same way is quite interesting.

You know, another piece of breaking news for the cryptocurrency industry is the Securities and Exchange Commission rescinding a key roadblock that kept banks from offering crypto services. The SEC has officially repealed the controversial staff accounting bulletin one to one, which had effectively restricted traditional financial institutions from getting into digital assets. The new directive announced through staff account bulletin 122 explicitly withdraws the earlier guidance that forced banks to include crypto holdings on their balance sheets.

I want to get your comment on why the crypto industry has been waiting for this and why it is so significant that this was signed. Or repealed, I suppose. Absolutely.

I mean, I feel like that, you know, having myself at least been in the blockchain world for nearly a decade at this point. It you would not, you know, could not believe how much of a pain this concept of custody for crypto has been. And what do auditors accept? What do, you know, financial institutions accept? And, you know, audit, you know, things like this.

So when we think about, you know, 122, which is repealing the fact that custodians now can treat crypto on their balance sheet like a liability that can kind of go to zero. I think what this shows is that a whole host of people that have been custodians for dollars and securities and other commodities can now, you know, onboard clients on crypto without having a major adverse risk to their balance sheet and their credit rating. So I think what this is going to do is have, you know, crypto custodians, cryptos and balance sheet companies all flourish much more significantly because you’ve really taken what I’d call is the biggest hurdle.

Right. What you used to have is that now every dollar of upside you had in crypto just came with a dollar of downside as a liability. Now, you know, not having that repealed rather just means that, you know, people that are bullish on crypto as an asset class can do so in the same manner they hold dollars or other marketable securities.

How, you know, how crazy is the timing of all of these changes taking place? I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s a sell the news type of event. It’s just more upside for the space. Absolutely.

Well, I mean, I think if you were, you know, sitting here betting on, you know, you know, 3X Bitcoin because the US is going to announce that they’re buying, you know, a million Bitcoin, sure, but but I think what you’re seeing is every, you know, sort of direction is sort of up and to the right. It might not be sort of like up and to the right this way, but I think what we’re seeing is, you know, a whole lot of, you know, dams being broken with regards to kind of these things that people thought would never happen are happening in really, really quick succession. So I think there’s a whole lot more, you know, sort of like, you know, rumor and happening in the positive direction than the negative.

Like, I don’t think I’ve heard one negative sentiment come out of, you know, kind of Washington over the past couple of weeks. Yeah, the industry is certainly maturing quickly. You know, another word that’s gaining more and more attention in 2025 is tokenization.

The head of the world’s largest asset manager is calling for swift regulatory approval of tokenized assets. Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO, has urged the SEC to move quickly on green lighting the tokenization of bonds and even stocks. In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Fink reiterated his belief in crypto’s potential and highlighted tokenization.

Let’s take a quick listen here. You know, as a huge believer of crypto and and and blockchain and tokenization, I mean, I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks. Yeah, Devin, big one here, especially coming out of Larry Fink’s mouth.

Talk to me about tokenization and talk to us about this trend. Absolutely. Well, I think, you know, the maybe to take half a step back on the why around tokenization.

You know, what we’ve seen with with crypto and digital assets and blockchains has been, you know, the two main benefits have been, you know, reducing costs and increasing speed and increasing sort of trackability and verifiability. So these are all things that obviously work great with with ledgers. But I think when you think about securities and things like that, historically, and especially since, you know, kind of the last couple of years and Sarbanes-Oxley, it’s been really, really, really hard for assets to get liquidity.

And, you know, the cost of an increasingly high, the timelines have been increasingly high. And I think the opportunity for digital assets to create liquidity in markets that have not been liquid before is extremely powerful. And, you know, when you’re talking about BlackRock and Larry Fink, I think what they’re saying is, hey, we’ve got a whole bunch of financial products.

We’ve got hedge funds. We’ve got real estate funds. We’ve got real estate.

We’ve got bonds, you know, like all these products. And liquidity increases valuations. And if, you know, we’re able to use blockchains and tokenized securities to streamline the path to liquidity, we’re going to see a whole lot more products get created in the market for institutional investors and retail investors.

So I think that’s why this is so exciting. And I think the fact that, you know, BlackRock has been, you know, early innovators in the space even before the regulatory frameworks were kind of well-defined. And what we see is a whole bunch of people, you know, trillions of dollars on the sidelines waiting for these sort of regulatory clarities because you don’t want to pay the legal fees and you want to take the risk if you don’t know if you’re going to succeed.

So now that you know you’re going to succeed, you’re going to see a whole lot of stuff on the sidelines that used to kind of be waiting for liquidity and waiting for, you know, tokens and things like that to really kind of come to the forefront. So it’s not just Wall Street benefiting from this, right? There used to be a little bit of a flex in the industry where it’s like we can keep them out. I mean, who stands to gain from this? Well, I think it’s asset owners and asset creators stand to gain the most, because when you have a liquid market for something, valuations just go up, right? The liquidity premium goes down.

So, you know, like think about any product that’s been innovated in the last couple of decades, right? Venture capital through the Jobs Act and crowdfunding or peer-to-peer lending, consumer loans, all these things that are currently consumer to enterprise now have the ability to become consumer to consumer, which, again, I think creates more financial inclusion for consumers, not just financial institutions. So I think you’re going to see a lot more financial products that are kind of custom built, right? I think you’re, you know, not to go on too much of a tangent, but, you know, lots of talk about, you know, the insurance industry these days because of, you know, kind of the weather patterns and things like that. Well, this could be something that sorts that out as well, because now consumers can self-insure their own homes using tokens and things like that.

Right. So obviously a whole lot of products can be created once a stable framework of legality and technology is kind of built. Yeah.

Fascinating to watch. OK, well, on the other side of alternative assets, we have gold, of course, a hard asset trading at around three months. Highs basically approaching record levels here.

I mean, at the time of filming, I think we’re spots trading around twenty seven seventy. So let’s talk about what’s driving gold higher here. I mean, it’s been quite fascinating to watch the resilience of it this year.

Absolutely. Well, you know, I think that what this is showing more than anything else is people really do believe that the tariffs that have been kind of promised during the selection cycle are coming. I think nearly historically, every time you’ve seen a global tariff, whether that’s electronics from Japan or whether that’s steel or whether that’s, you know, sort of precious metals, all these things, you know, increased pricing, increased inflation.

And that’s where gold is kind of reacting. And I think historically, the vast majority of times you’ve seen tariffs announced, you’ve had five to ten percent increases in precious metals prices. I think here you’re seeing you’re seeing and you’re going to see a lot more of that.

But I think that’s because just the nature of these tariffs are not, hey, we’re targeting one small sector for some political reason. I think it’s just a broad based approach to saying, you know, we want America first. And that’s going to mean that, you know, people are going to pay a lot more for everything.

And frankly, you can’t change that supply chain very quickly. So you’re going to see a whole lot more price increases. And that’s what we’re seeing with gold is people just expecting that.

Yeah, I mean, all year last year, I was talking about record highs on the gold front. It could reach another record high. I mean, is it going to be policy? Is it going to be rates? Is it going to be, you know, debt tariffs? What do you think? What’s what’s going to take gold to a new record high this year? Well, I think it’s going to again, I think it’s going to be inflation and more than anything else.

And I feel like the tax impacts, you know, the offsets here from the taxation changes are not going to offset the increase in tariffs. Right. And I think you’re seeing these near immediate tariffs in Mexico and, you know, in Canada, you’re seeing increased tariffs in China.

And I think when you think about the global supply chain, prices are going up and that’s inflation. And that’s kind of the number one reason people flock to assets like gold. And it’s going to be the number one reason gold goes up.

Yeah. Devin, let’s switch over here. I mean, your company, Matador Technologies, is a leader in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

I know that you went public last year on the TSX Venture. I mean, has it been? What projects are you focusing on right now? Absolutely. Well, it’s been amazing because, you know, two parts of building a product like Matador and Matador is building a digital gold product on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that lets users, you know, hold gold in their digital wallets, the same way they hold Bitcoin.

So I think the really interesting part of this is, is that the technology is buildable, it’s readily available, but the regulatory landscape has been the biggest bottleneck to innovation in the space. And as we get clarity in the coming weeks and months, I think the types of products that companies like us are going to be building are going to be much more innovative, much more, you know, sort of distributed. And I think you’re going to see a lot more users, right? Like when people have pure certainty that what you’re buying and what you’re selling has a legal basis, has liquidity, that’s going to drive the industry.

And I think that’s what these regulations are showing. Not to mention the fact that, you know, people think gold’s going up and Bitcoin’s going up. It’s great for people that, you know, sort of work in gold and Bitcoin.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense.

I mean, you know, we’re talking about this regulatory clarity that’s coming in fast in the U.S. I mean, you know, it gives you a little bit of a smoother runway, obviously. How big is this going to be for you getting this type of regulated clarity? Well, you know, I think if you think about, you know, what we talked about earlier, which is Tether, right, you’ve got, you know, 140 billion dollars of Tether floating out there. You’ve got, you know, 50 billion dollars of USDC out there today.

And I think those numbers are going to go up. And you compare that to the, you know, one or two billion dollars today of, you know, digital precious metals, digital gold. I feel like that there’s going to be sort of a catch up period over a period of time where people that are holding these types of assets are going to, you know, basically be moving towards digital representations of gold and silver and other assets.

So we think that there’s a very, very big opportunity for, you know, multiple billion dollars to get created here of these types of assets like the ones in metal upgrades. Yeah, yeah. And a much bigger audience, as you mentioned.

Devin Soni is the CEO of Matador Technologies. Thanks for joining us today, Devin. Big news for the industry here.

No, absolutely. Excited to be here. Appreciate it.

I’m Jerry Safran. For all of us here at KUKO News, thank you for watching. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button.

We’ve got some great content coming up all week long. We’ll see you next time.