Remy Blaire: A new trading week is underway at the corner of Wall and Broad, and the very nature of how global capital moves is facing a systemic rewrite. While [unclear: “no widely”] across markets, Crypto Dad Chris Giancarlo believes the world is racing into what he calls the internet of value. And in his upcoming book, The New Adventures of Crypto Dad, he maps out a future where money, contracts, and property move across the web as instantly as sending an email. Well, joining us live is Chris Giancarlo. Great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Great to be here. Great to be here on a day when it’s all green on the screen. Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful to be on the floor.
Remy Blaire: Well, this is the final full trading week of October, and we know all eyes are on earnings, in particular artificial intelligence, as well as rates from the central bank. But when it comes to the internet of value, tell us why you’re focused on this right now.
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Yeah. You know, the internet has been through several phases. The very first phase, the internet of information, made information available to all of us, right at our fingertips, right on our mobile devices and on our laptop computers. Well, in this wave of the internet, it’s almost as if the internet, having revolutionized the way we gather information and the way that we share information, is now coming for banking and finance, and ultimately money itself. And it’s going to make those things of value, what I call the internet of value, as readily accessible as photos, as readily accessible as information is.
Remy Blaire: And of course, we are in the final quarter of 2026, and it has been quite the year across all asset classes, in particular digital assets. We’ve seen a lot of progress when it comes to the infrastructure, and also in what we’re seeing here on Wall Street in terms of digital assets. But where do you see the real growth coming when it comes to the space?
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Well, what’s interesting is, in its first decade, it really was focused on retail excitement around digital assets as an alternative asset class. But now distributed ledger technology is really becoming the architecture of traditional finance. We’re seeing the Depository Clearing Corporation, DTCC, now putting its collateral on digital networks. And I think that’s going to serve as a test lab for much of Wall Street to realize the savings, the speed, the power, the efficiency that’s going to come out of digital networks. And once they can experience it in captivity, they’re going to want to take it out into the wild as well.
Remy Blaire: Yes. And of course, while I have you here, you mentioned what we’re seeing across TradFi and DeFi. The lines are blurring, given everything that’s happening in 2026. But tell us how you earned the name Crypto Dad.
J. Christopher Giancarlo: It’s actually a funny story, and it’s not a name I gave myself. It’s a name that was given by the Twittersphere. I had greenlighted the world’s first regulated market for any type of derivative on crypto, which was Bitcoin futures. I did that as chairman of the CFTC in 2017, and I did that against some fierce opposition, including opposition from Wall Street itself. But we went ahead with it anyway. It’s turned out to be very successful.
But not long after we did so, I was summoned to appear before the Senate Banking Committee. And when I was there, I said, you know, senators, I know you’ve called me here as the head of an important regulatory agency, but if you don’t mind, I just want to talk to you as a dad. And I explained that I had three college-aged kids who I tried to interest in the stock market without much success, but they were completely captivated by crypto, as many young people were. And I said, you know, senators, I think we owe it to the next generation to treat this new innovation not with derision and dismissal, but with a degree of seriousness, and we owe it to them to get the regulations right. And that’s when my Twitter handle exploded, and I went from, I don’t know what, 1,200 Twitter followers to 50,000, and they gave me the nickname Crypto Dad.
Remy Blaire: Yeah. And as Crypto Dad, you know that there is a lot of concern about where this industry is going. And with the failed Senate cloture vote on CLARITY, we saw the SEC as well as the CFTC coming in. So what are your expectations for this industry beyond the end of this year and into 2027?
J. Christopher Giancarlo: It’s a disappointment that Congress actually shirked its duty. I called on them in 2018 to step up, which still isn’t done eight years later. But that’s okay. You know, the internet didn’t have an authorizing statute. Big data technology doesn’t have an authorizing statute. There’s no authorizing statute for artificial intelligence. And yet those innovations are marching forward. This innovation will march forward even if Congress doesn’t step up to its duties. And I have every confidence in SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig to write the rules for this innovation using existing authorities. And since that non-passage, the cloture vote, as you said, they have been writing those rules quite actively.
Remy Blaire: And finally, before I let you go, since we are here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, how do you expect traditional exchanges to evolve?
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Oh, very rapidly. I mean, your ownership company, ICE, has been one of the innovators in this space, moving very, very rapidly. Many of the companies represented here are moving very, very rapidly. And your cross-town rival, Nasdaq, is doing the same thing. So it’s really happening across traditional finance. I mentioned collateral, but we’re going to see issuers of securities move, not just for demand reasons, but for supply reasons. Issuers themselves are going to say there’s greater efficiency. We’re going to have connectivity to investors that we’ve never had before. So I think, both for demand-side and supply-side reasons, I predict that by 2040, all of the shares of these issuers here are going to be in tokenized form on distributed ledgers.
Remy Blaire: And of course, finally, before I let you go, I do want to ask you about your book. I’m sure this was a labor of love. So for our viewing audience, give us a summary.
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Thank you so much. Yes, it’s released tomorrow, The New Adventures of Crypto Dad. It picks up where my first book, Crypto Dad, left off. And it’s a tour through the last eight years of policymaking in Washington and around the world. It’s a visit with some of the central characters of this innovation, everybody from Sam Bankman-Fried to Shayne Coplan to the president himself, with inside views of how that’s come about, but ultimately with a message.
And the message is that this is an innovation that we, the public, need to take into our own hands, because it can be one that gives us an enormous amount of financial autonomy and financial freedom that we’ve never had before. But it’s also an innovation that, if we don’t handle it right, can reward big technology companies, and ultimately governments, with the ability to surveil our financial transactions and, worse, control them. So we’ve got to get this innovation right, which is why the book is subtitled The Quest for Financial Freedom in the 21st Century.
Remy Blaire: Well, Chris, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us, as well as for your insights and perspective. And congratulations on the book.
J. Christopher Giancarlo: Thank you. I’d like to come back. Let’s do it again.
Remy Blaire: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
