Sen. Bill Hagerty on Trump's crypto approach: We want to be at the cutting edge of innovation

Joining me now is one of the key people driving President-elect Trump's crypto agenda, Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Senator, it's great to see you again. Welcome. Likewise, Kelly. Good to be with you today. Do you personally own crypto? I mean, you can imagine, based on your knowledge and interest in the space, if you had been owning it for the past, I don't know, five or 10 years, you must be doing pretty nicely right now. Kelly, this is a sore point in my family. My kids wish I would have allowed them to do it, but if I want to be able to do my job here in the United States Senate, I just felt it best not to invest in the crypto space, even though I see tremendous potential here in America. As President Trump said, and by the way, I want to congratulate him on his Time Man of the Year award, but as President Trump said, we want to be at the cutting edge of innovation here. If you look at the Biden administration, at this SEC, you look at the regulatory onslaught that they've had to deal with, the fact that they're using the legal framework that they are, the lack of a legal framework, I should say, to just come in and regulate this industry by litigation. What we're going to look for is a great opportunity for crypto to expand here, again, putting the United States at the cutting edge of the innovation. And I think we're going to attract a lot of brainpower here and a lot of opportunity as a result of it. So your kids, your family, they're like, we could have been multimillionaires. Kelly, please don't bring it up. This is a tough conversation at Thanksgiving and Christmas, as you can imagine. I'm curious, Senator, there's a lot of people and a lot of your peers, probably, people who I talk to who really think that crypto is a waste of capital and is not something that the United States should double down on and get so upset when they hear this talk of different states, whether it's Pennsylvania, now Texas, or us doing something nationally with a Bitcoin reserve. What was your aha moment? Why do you think this has real value for this country? Well, it's taken some time, and my viewpoint has evolved. As you remember, Kelly, I was the U.S. ambassador to Japan. I saw a massive heist take place there with Coincheck. I was deeply concerned about where that cryptocurrency might have landed. But as I dug into the technology and saw the potential of the blockchain, where this could go, it's absolutely amazing. And then I think about just basic principles of a decentralized currency like this, the freedom and the liberty that it supports. There's a lot of very positive aspects to this, and I think America should be at the forefront of it. All right. You mentioned Japan, and because we do have you, I would really love to know where you stand. You'd potentially be breaking with the president you support if you said that Nippon Steel should go ahead and acquire U.S. Steel. But if the whole point, if the president elect is trying to incentivize people to invest in this country, and that's exactly what Nippon Steel, from a country that's one of our close allies, what they want to do, doesn't this make a lot of sense to you to allow this deal to go forward? This is not about our strategic alliance with Japan and the United States. This has to do with a critical strategic industry here in America that is steel. President Trump has acknowledged that he worked on it in his previous administration. Steel is an absolutely vital strategic industry for us, and it warrants a very careful look. And I might add that Nippon Steel comes to this with unclean hands. They've got an unfair trade practice history here. What we want to see is a robust steel industry happen here in America. President Trump has been clear about that, and I'm not surprised at all that he wants to do everything he can to incentivize the growth of U.S. industry. The reason why I dwell on this one is it worries me a little bit that this goes more in the vein of protectionism that undermines our productivity in the long run. For instance, I don't know that much about it, but my understanding is that Nippon Steel might have some better methods, maybe some more novel ways of producing steel, contra U.S. Steel. And if we continue in this country to not let in the kind of latest and greatest on the technology front, aren't we going to end up with obsolete, overly expensive, not cutting edge technology? Well, one thing I might go back to, Kelly, is what you covered so well earlier in the program. And if we look at our capital markets as the source of competitive advantage that they truly are, if we get out of the business of trying to use climate activism, DEI, and things like that as a tool to guide our capital markets and instead get back to the animal instincts of America and capitalism, and I think we're going to get that with our incoming SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and the team there, what we can do is make the capital available for precisely the type of innovation that you're talking about. So I'm excited about the potential. I think everything is going to change on the 20th of January in a very, very positive way in terms of making the type of capital available, the amounts of capital available that we need to see more and more innovation happen right here in America.