Subcommittee on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce Development Holds Hearing on Crypto's Opportunity for Main Street

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congressman Brian Jack (R-GA), Chairman of the Small Business Subcommittee on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce Development, held a hearing titled "Main Street Meets Crypto: What Digital Assets Mean for Small Businesses" to examine how crypto and blockchain technology can lower transaction costs, speed up payments, and open new opportunities for small businesses across the country.

"Today, as the Senate deliberates consideration of the landmark Clarity Act, I convened a bipartisan hearing entitled "Main Street Meets Crypto: What Digital Assets Mean for Small Businesses." Our hearing examined opportunities to lower costs for small businesses, reduce payment friction for entrepreneurs, and utilize emerging technology to benefit Main Street across America. Thank you to our witnesses for your insightful testimony before our Subcommittee today," said Chairman Jack.

---

Watch the full hearing here.

Below are some key excerpts from today's hearing:

Chairman Jack: "What does removing some of these intermediary layers mean in practice? Does it mean lowering costs, faster access to money, better cash flow? All three?" Mr. Shirzad: "It means all three. And for businesses like my family's, and ones that Mr. Leventhal serves in the food service business. The margins are always extraordinarily thin, so if you save even one percent or two percent because payment costs have gone down, as they will with stablecoin adoption, it's a transformational moment. It allows restaurants that fail at a very high rate-like my family's-to survive, thrive, and maybe hire another employee. Do all those things they need to do that are otherwise impossible."

Chairman Williams: "I'm a car dealer, okay, so I know about margins. I think your business and our business are as tight as it gets. But for many small restaurants, getting a customer through the door is only the beginning, as you said. The real challenge is often turning that customer into a regular. Blackbird has helped restaurants develop stronger relationships with their customers. So my question would be, how can blockchain-enabled technology help a small business build loyalty without requiring the owner to become a technology expert?" Mr. Leventhal: "Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. That is precisely our job as a technology company building for small businesses: to do the hard work so small businesses don't have to become particularly sophisticated in the weeds of the technology. You mentioned loyalty. One example of how we're using blockchain for loyalty is our points currency, which we call $FLY, and it's available to all of our merchants to use as they see fit. So, if they want to incentivize people to become regulars, they can reward those people with more points. It's more efficient using digital assets, and it's more composable using blockchain. And so our job is to build the interfaces, infrastructure, systems, and training so that small businesses can feel that it's plug-and-play." Chairman Williams: "So, in the short time I got left, from your experience working directly with restaurants, where does blockchain technology have the greatest impact on a small business's bottom line?" Mr. Leventhal: "We think it's going to be in terms of the economics of payments and the economics of acquiring and retaining customers."

Rep. Fuller: "So, one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, if crypto is going to be something that will benefit Main Street and not just Silicon Valley, what has to be true so a community bank or small business is willing to take on this technology and use it without a full-time compliance shop?" Mr. Shirzad: "It's a really great question. You have to think about blockchain technology in the way that we all experience the internet. At the start, it's an extraordinary efficiency story, and the internet's value proposition was to make email a better, faster option than paper correspondence. So when the internet came about, we all thought, "Oh yeah, there's an advantage here. We all now think of the internet as much more than email. We think about the internet's ability to make data programmable and, that way, get video conferencing, social media, AI agents, and all those sorts of things. And the same thing's going to happen with the blockchain. Initially, the value proposition is better, faster payments, which matter for your constituents and small businesses. But eventually, the value proposition will be programmability. So it empowers people, your constituents, who may not be in the coastal urban regions, to be able to do things with their money in a way that only sort of big, sophisticated actors with Big Tech shops could potentially do. And so that sort of evolution of how we all engage with value is a really exciting thing, and why it's so important for Congress to provide the regulatory clarity we need."

###