The Bitcoin Conference is taking place at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty discussed Bitcoin and cryptocurrency on stage at Music City Center.

“I could not be more excited to see this audience here in my home state,” Hagerty said.

Hagerty was elected to the United States Senate in 2020 from Tennessee. He is a life-long businessman and started his business career with the Boston Consulting Group. Hagerty’s career has allowed him to travel across five continents, including three years based in Tokyo, Japan. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan prior to being elected as a senator. Hagerty resides on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations and the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules & Administration.

Why Hagerty likes Bitcoin

“That gets to the DNA of a person, right, because it really gets to the DNA of this state and of so many Americans, because I love liberty and freedom. I don’t care for centralization, and the notion of autonomy is something I think every American appreciates. Go back to our founding fathers, you know the whole notion of federalism and the authorities not explicitly given to the federal government should be reserved to the states, yet we have a federal government right now that’s trying to grasp as much authority, and power, and centralization, as they can so it’s very basic and very fundamental to me. One other thing, the innovative capacity of America is being demonstrated right now in this industry, and if we don’t nourish it and create the ecosystem for it to thrive here, it’ll go someplace else. I want to see America win, because at my core, America is the winningest nation ever and I got to see it happen here.”

Why there is enthusiasm for Bitcoin now

“To see my colleagues coming together, and I’ve got a great set of colleagues here, more to come, I think what we see is President Donald Trump’s stance on embracing the industry crescendo that’s been started by the words of one man, that’s president Donald Trump. He’s leaned into this. He said, ‘look this is fundamental to America’s competitiveness’. It’s also fundamental to our liberty and freedom, and he is leaning all in. I can’t wait to hear his address here, but I think that has been the thing that has spurred so many people to say, yes the time is now for us to embrace this industry, for us to address it, and frankly, what we’re going to see is in November this industry is going to be on the ballot, meaning if you favor centralization government control, lack of sovereignty, then you know you can vote for Vice President Harris. I wish you were here to have this conversation with us today. I think her answers to the questions might be quite different if you want liberty, freedom, decentralization, you know the ability to self-custody your own assets, the ability to control your own destiny and not have your privacy invaded by control of your transactions. Then Donald Trump is going to be a clear answer for you and down the ballot on the Republican side.”

Embracing Bitcoin

“By not creating the ecosystem for success, we’re going to see this industry move offshore along with the talent that goes with it. What also leaves this nation is our source of competitive advantage. America should be the hub of innovation if you think about the steps here from the Internet to cryptocurrency, to what will happen with artificial intelligence, we need to be on that spectrum, and we need to be playing hard every day the current administration has a very different worldview, and that is one that’s based on centralized control. Central control finds the whole notion of a decentralized currency repugnant the notion that you could self-custody your assets. They don’t want that. This is about control, plain chokepoint 2.0. The government’s attack on the industry, and simple we’ve seen it in operation, chokepoint in the Obama administration, now chokepoint 2.0 is coming after this industry right here. They’re using the tools of the federal government to shut down an industry that they don’t like. They’ve done it to private prisons, they’ll do it if you want to buy a box of shotgun shells to go out and shoot skeet, whatever they want to control. Whether they want to geofence, your driving pattern or whatever it might be. If they can control your means of transacting MH, they can control your life. That is the exact opposite of the position that I want to take.

“I just left the Republican National Convention last week, and as I said earlier this morning, this feels today to me like the Bitcoin National Convention. It’s great to see the orange party well represented here today. To cover just some of the planks on the Republican Convention, regarding this industry, we’re going to end the war on digital assets day one, that’s going to happen. We’re going to support the mining industry. We’re going to support self-custody, all of the things that are necessary for this industry to thrive. We’re there.”

Central Bank Digital Currency

“I think you look no further than Xi Jinping and the Communist Party in China to see where they’re the largest footprint of adoption is taking place right there, and what does the CCP do, they want to control their population. You’ve got a social credit score. If they don’t want you driving beyond the bounds of Beijing, they can stop you from buying fuel to do that. The tolls won’t work for you. They can ease or constrain the flow of your funds based on your behavior, that is centralized control, that’s the Chinese Communist Party. Why in the world would the United States want to adopt anything that the CCP thinks is a good idea? Yet we have a cabal in Washington that thinks this is a great idea. You think no further than when Silicon Valley Bank failed that weekend. The next morning, Monday morning after after the failure, they had the former candidate for Comptroller of the currency from Moscow State, by the way she’s on the radio on Bloomberg saying the only answer is a centralized digital currency. That’s where they want to head things and that is not where we can allow things to go. I think it will change in November, again it’s on the ballot, but we have a chance to make a radical change in the right direction here.”

Self-custody, creating a proper ecosystem

Hagerty further discussed self-custody within Bitcoin. He mentioned a new administration would offer different personnel, including relieving Gary Gensler, the 33rd Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, of his duties.

“We have several opportunities. The first will start in the executive branch with a series of executive orders that can facilitate the self-custody or any other aspect of the industry, but I think perhaps the most important thing on the executive branch side is changing personnel. That’s what happens and you can name a few that you’d like to see changed. I would start with Gary Gensler. Right now, Gary Gensler is a person that was at the MIT media lab. He understands the industry well. I think that’s why he’s been so effective at trying to crush it, but if we don’t see a change, everybody in Washington, this is the worst kept secret in Washington, Gary Gensler’s aspiration is to move from the SEC to become treasury secretary. Think about that for a moment. Let that settle in. If we don’t maintain the gavel in the United States Senate, there’s a very good chance Elizabeth Warren becomes the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Think about that for the moment, so there is a real clear choice in the ballot, and we’ve got to take back the Senate, we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to retain the House of Representatives, that gives us the maximum opportunity to take a step function leap in the right direction to support this industry, to create the proper ecosystem, the regulatory environment that’s necessary to allow certainty, but not constraining and what you’ll see is appointees by President Trump at the SEC at the CFTC and other areas that are actually supportive of the industry, and rather than working in conflict with the industry we’ll be working collaboratively. That way, together, the federal government can support our nation’s strengths, our competitive advantage, the United States will win yet again.”

View on how technology and monetary components evolved Bitcoin

Hagerty is the only member of Senate in 2024 who served in President Trump’s administration. He served as the 30th United States ambassador to Japan from 2017-19.

“I think a lot of our audience wouldn’t have a reason to know this, but before I came to the United States Senate, I served in the Trump administration, in fact, I’m the only former member of the Trump administration serving in the Senate. My job was the US ambassador to Japan. I think most of you know this, Japan is the third largest economy after the US and China. It’s a huge economic partner, but it’s also a critical military and national security partner. In fact we have more US military stationed in Japan than any place else in the world. We’re dealing with issues from North Korea, from Russia, from China, Taiwan right at the doorstep there. This is an area where in 2017, when I took my office, we were very concerned about illicit finance that was supporting the North Korean regime and the aggressions in China. Here’s my first big experience. I walked into my office one morning and above the fold in the newspaper, there was the fact that Coincheck had been heisted. That robbery took over half a billion dollars in one night. Who had done it? I worked with my intelligence team. We found out very quickly a state actor was involved. Now this is at a time when we are working aggressively to stop ship-to-ship transfers of coal to keep the North Koreans from getting three, five, six million dollars where we literally had our Secretary of State on the phone with other nations to not accept guest workers from North Korea because we didn’t want them to obtain tens of millions of dollars. A half a billion dollars heisted in one night. We couldn’t put the finger on North Korea, but I can tell you I was deeply concerned, and the first place that I went was the use of cryptocurrency for illicit finance. I fly back to Washington. I meet with our secretary treasury Steven Mnuchin. We had a conversation about it then, and this is again early, and we were both deeply concerned. Then what evolved? The ledger technology and the transparency that the chain provides actually allowed law enforcement with the proper authorities to begin to catch the people that were involved.

“Just do the work and I realize this is actually far superior, certainly, to cash and it offers a a unique opportunity given the transparency and the way the ledger works for something very interesting to happen. It’s the converse of what you often hear in Washington that this is illicit finance. One of my colleagues in the Banking Committee, Elizabeth Warren, points this out all the time, cryptocurrency is evil because of its illicit finance using numbers that have been, you know, completely debunked, but as I began to dig into it further and realized how smart contracts could work, how the technology would evolve the efficiencies, that we could gain in back office processes and procedures. You know, as a business person, as somebody that I started my career at the Boston Consulting Group, I became a private equity investor continually looking for companies that will transform with technology. This is a chance to transform our nation with technology. If you think about the productivity gains that we can achieve with this, this is going to be another step function in our productivity that will make America, again, the most competitive economy in the world, so my perspective completely changes. I dug into it, it’s been spending time with you over the past few years Rod (Roudi, co-founder of Bitcoin Park) and your team, and with many others in the industry, that I have learned a tremendous amount, and I tell you the creative talent in this industry, the energy behind it is just exceptional. It’s at the core of what makes America great, and I love this industry, and want to see it continue to thrive.”

Know Your Customer Regulations

“So Senator Warren has a one-size-fits-all approach to KYC, know your customer. Look, there are good and valid reasons for this sort of information to be collected at the appropriate points, but to come in and apply it across an industry that’s evolved way beyond where we are today from a brick and mortar environment to where we are with the blockchain technology is not working. What I think what is intended to be is a poison pill so we have to stop that. We have to constrain it. Let law enforcement do their job, but let’s not kill an industry by imposing some sort of one-size fits-all requirement that will not work. It needs to be far more thoughtful than that, and I think at its core, this is just an effort to try to kill the industry using this type of regulation that sounds good on on the surface, but as you dig in it’s devastating because it’s misapplied.”

Mining, energy and nuclear

“The Bitcoin mining industry has been attacked aggressively by the environmentalist, by a number of people. Our view here in Tennessee is quite different and President Trump, you know, gets this completely. The Bitcoin miners are tremendous customers for those who want to build out the electric grid. We want to build our grid out aggressively here in Tennessee. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is our utility here, is the largest in the nation. It’s a source of competitive advantage for Tennessee that we have this grid. Bitcoin miners are coming to Tennessee. They’re setting up operations, frankly, they do it in rural areas that have lost jobs to offshoring things of that nature. It’s been good for our local economies, but they allow us to cost justify the buildout. Tennessee, right now, has 42 percent of our complete energy portfolio in nuclear. Nuclear investments are massive to be able to know that you’ve got the type of demand load that’s necessary to justify the next level of investment is important. The Bitcoin mining industry can help us do that, and as we build toward the type of grid that will be necessary to support AI, you think about Elon Musk’s big investment in Memphis that’s coming in, you think about semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication we want to see happen here. I’d love to see it happen in Tennessee. We’ve got to build the grid for the future and Bitcoin miners can help us get there. One of the unique aspects of the way the energy consumption profile for a Bitcoin minor is such that they can curtail their usage immediately, if necessary, so if we have an event like a storm, super hot weather, or a freeze, they can shut down, whereas other Industries cannot, so it adds a surge capacity, a sort of accordion if you will to the capacity that we build here in Tennessee, and in that respect they’re some of the best customers we could possibly have.

“Nuclear is and should be a massive source of competitive advantage for America. We have Oakridge National Lab and the Tennessee Valley Authority right here. They understand how to do nuclear. The cost have grown exponentially. This is all a product of years ago back in the 70s with Three Mile Island in a movie called The China Syndrome that scared everybody away from the industry. We were on the right, sort of scale curve, we were lowering our cost and we completely blew up the scale curves by backing out of the industry and imposing massive regulation, so the cost to build a new nuclear plant has gone through the roof. We need to take a realistic perspective on the permitting the timelines, look at small modular reactors, and a lot of other technologies that we can really succeed with and go very hard at it again. The industry here can help us cost justify those investments.”

What is next on the agenda

“I think if you look at what will be most impactful for the entire economy here, and also from our geopolitical position, President Trump will get back into the energy business full bore. What we saw happen on day one when the Biden administration came into office is they waged war on domestic energy. Joe Biden immediately took federal lands off the map for exploration, that’s a quarter of our capacity off the map right now. You try America’s energy production permitting a pipe line right now, refinery next to impossible, what they did is they flatlined us. We were on a growth trajectory like this, in terms of energy production, they flatlined us. Their solution has been to appease Iran. Let Russia produce, let Venezuela produce, that’s not the right answer. America needs to go back into full production, and we will when President Trump comes into office.

It will immediately lower cost. You think everything in has to be transported that will have an immediate positive impact on inflation, clearly, but it also makes us a much more powerful geostrategic partner, meaning we can become the supplier of choice to Europe again. We just lost that status in May of this year to Russia. We can become the supplier of choice throughout southeast Asia. You think about our counterweight to the China’s Belt and Road Initiative, that is it, we can have a dramatic impact on our posture in the world if we play to our strengths and build on the fact that America’s innovation has driven us to a point where we can be the number one provider of energy in the world. We can we should and we will after November

Final thoughts on his Bitcoin journey

“I know if you turn on the television there’s so many things that can depress one and make you feel like the nation has gone to hell in the hand basket, but when I look across this audience here today, when I go out and walk the conference halls, what I see is the energy and the enthusiasm, and the inspiration that makes America great, and if we think about the innovation and the capacity to lead, it’s right here. It’s resident of this conference. I couldn’t be more proud of America than I am today, sitting here with all of you, so thank you for your leadership.”