Give us a sense right off the bat on how important a milestone this is?

Thank you so much for having me, Liz, and it's absolutely a really important milestone. In fact, it's historic. Circle was the very first digital assets company in American history to get a de novo federal trust charter. So what that basically means is it wasn't a conversion, but we literally built it from scratch. And what this allows us to do is essentially use the very gold standard for regulation around the world to, at some point, manage the USDC reserves, which is critically important because, as you know, USDC is the world's leading regulated stablecoin. Something like 70% of transactions involving dollar stablecoins involve USDC.

Circle, as I read, can open according to this designation on or after July 10th, which, of course, was last Friday. I mean, when does it actually open its doors?
 
We are open for business. Obviously, we have a business plan. We're moving forward. But we're going ahead. We're excited about the possibility of one of the things that we're going to be able to do is actually hold digital assets in custody. That's really important because folks that are out there that have their digital assets, they want to put them ultimately with a custodian that is subject to the highest quality regulation. So that's a service that we'll offer. And then in the long run, as I mentioned, this entity will oversee and manage the USDC reserves and as a result, will be subject to the Genius Act and making sure that we meet the highest standards that are here in the United States.

So give me your assessment of when the Clarity Act might really finally pass.
 
Well, we're hoping as soon as possible, because I think it's really important that people understand that this is more than just any old financial regulation. This whole area, starting with the Genius Act, is really an upgrade of the U.S. payment systems, and it allows us to win in the next generation of the Internet, which is the Internet of Value. And so in some ways, it's very important for economic and national security that the U.S. be able to lead. And right now, there are many financial institutions, traditional financial institutions, that really want to get into this space. They want to experiment. They want to be a part of it. They want to start moving value on chain. But the lack of legal certainty is holding them back. So it's a really important law.

Wilkins and others “gained unauthorized access to approximately 80 cryptocurrency wallets and stole cryptocurrencies worth at least $220,000″ from May 2024 to this February by “launch(ing) eight games embedded with malware and infect(ing) the devices of approximately 8,000 individual customers.”