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⌐◪-◪ → A Crypto Czar at the White House?

President-elect Donald Trump’s team is actively discussing the possibility of a full-time White House position focused on crypto policy, according to Bloomberg. If approved, it would be the first-ever White House job dedicated entirely to crypto — bullish.

This comes after Trump met with former Binance.US CEO, Brian Brooks, and current Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong. I reckon both of them played a role in advocating for this new position.

Haters can say Trump only flipped pro-crypto for votes, but since he won the election, he’s continued to advocate for the space: meeting with industry leaders, appointing pro-crypto Lutnick as Commerce Secretary, considering pro-crypto lawyers as Gensler’s replacement, and even thinking of acquiring crypto exchange Bakkt.

Anyways, back to the White House role, the real question is, who will Trump pick?

To the members of the Trump team I know read this newsletter, I’d like to formally submit my application as Chief of Staff to the incoming Crypto Czar. I humbly swear to follow through on all of Trump’s crypto promises with every ounce of my body, mind, and soul. I won’t let you down.

👉 Hivemind, now is our chance. Send me to the White House.

⌐◪-◪ → Wall Street wants Solana.

Bitwise, one of the leading Bitcoin ETF providers, just registered a new statutory trust in Delaware for its proposed Solana ETF — joining VanEck and Canary Capital in the race for SEC approval of a spot Solana ETF. If approved, it would make Solana the 3rd cryptocurrency on Wall Street after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It’s pretty crazy to think that just a year ago, we were all crossing our fingers in hopes for a Bitcoin ETF, which felt like a pipe dream at the time, and now we’re about to approve a Solana ETF. Life hits ya fast.

As for next steps, Bitwise must submit a 19b-4 filing and S-1 registration with the SEC to officially join the race with VanEck and Canary Capital. I can’t imagine Gary will be too happy about this, but his power is waning fast.

There’s no indication of what exchange the proposed ETF would live on, but for context, Bitwise’s BTC and ETH ETFs are on the New York Stock Exchange — so it will probably live there.

As for how likely approval is, Polymarket gives it a 4% chance of approval in 2024, while VanEck’s head of Digital Asset Research, Matthew Sigel, says the odds of approval in 2025 are “overwhelmingly high.”

So, like it or not, crypto’s biggest casino and home to memecoin mania, Solana, is about to make its debut on Wall Street. The real question is, will BlackRock be joining the Solana ETF race, or is that not their style?

👉 Let me know what you think in Specs.Chat!

⌐◪-◪ → Chill Guy isn’t chill.

The creator of Chill Guy, one of the hottest new memecoins, just threatened legal action against anyone trying to profit off the Chill Guy IP (copyright).

This gets back to the age-old debate of commercial IP rights vs. creative commons (CC0) in web3.

I’m certainly not anti-IP, but I do think Creative Commons is more aligned with the web3 ethos of decentralization, permissionless access, and trustless commerce.

The idea of relying on courts (a 3rd party) to enforce what is ultimately a legal construct (intellectual property) feels pretty backward in a world where trustlessness and “code is law” is the norm.

Again, I’m not saying we should “CC0 all the things,” as it ultimately depends on the use case, but I do think using courts (humans, paperwork, fax machines) to enforce IP on a global scale, with different countries/jurisdictions, is a pretty archaic thing given the level of efficiency, automation, and trustlessness blockchain enables. It just feels like backward progress.

👉 Dive deeper with a thread I wrote last January on the topic.

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