The Wolf Of All Streets - Stablecoin Explosion - Ripple And VanEck Enter Market | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

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I think one, two, one, two. If it wasn't, look, if it wasn't for Scott would be killing us for talking about meme coins again. I'd want to talk about that poster since you ran that gummy thingy, but Scott will not let me. So we'll have to talk about it. Maybe. I don't know what you're talking about, but you pissed me off. You guys felt it. You guys felt it. Mem coins above. So that was a joke. was a joke that was

a joke you know i tried i tried to have a stable coin conversation and you guys went with a meme coin title again i swear that was a joy that was a joke the team took it seriously i can't believe they put it can you can you change the title title? I know we need to talk about mem coins. I was a joke bro in the group. I didn't expect them to change the group name to that. XR free stable coin. No. What was your title? Like something XR, stable coins explode. Can you change it? I'm done here. No, my fingers aren't working. I'm shaking too much.

Well, just, just for the audience, you do that for the audience. We have a backstage group and I was just making fun of Scott that he gets this stuff every time we talk about meme coins. So he put out a title for the team. The team's like, what title should it be? He's like, you know, stable coins explode, VanEck and XRP enter the market or something like that. And then just to mess with him, I changed, I put a title instead. I put my title. I was like, let's talk about meme coins again. Cause why not?

Something like that as a joke, but my team is obviously very obedient. So I'm very grateful. You said, you said, no, the title should be like meme coins exploding again. And then I was like, are they, are they? Cause I thought you were serious too, because every single day you want to talk about meme coins. I wasn't serious. Of course not. We're getting your panelists.

But yeah, so the team did that title and now Scott is pissed. Rand, we'll talk about Gummy another day because I was surprised to see the post. You can talk about Gummy. You can talk about Gummy. We can start there and then get into the, uh,

no, no, no other meme coins. Like I'm just kidding. I'd rather talk about the markets. Cause I know Ryan, last time he came on last couple of times, we didn't talk too much about the markets. Um, and I know you cover a lot on your show, so maybe we can kick it off there. Ryan, your thoughts on the markets. Can we see more retracements? When do you expect? I think we're in a no man you expect? I think we're in a

no man's land. I think we're in a no trade land. Nothing's cheap enough to buy. It's not expensive enough to sell. I think the best thing that you can do right now is just sit and trade meme coins. If you want the dopamine rush, then just trade

meme coins. That's pretty much. And for, if you like, if you, if you like crap, uh, go do crap. And for those who don't like crack, just avoid entering the market. If you don't like crack watch TV and, uh, you know, sleep eight hours a night, maybe go to the gym. If you think about, if you think about the psyche of people that are encrypted, we looking forward dope, but we have, don't tell me you have the technology. Jim, what are your thoughts? If you think about the psyche of people that are in crypto, we're looking for dopamine.

Don't tell me you have the technology. We have the dopamine. So the problem is that people want to overtrade this market because they're looking for the dopamine rush. And the reality is that this is not buy season and it's not sell season. It's season to just sit and wait for things to either become expensive or things to become cheap so don't chase basically what what i think i'm saying is don't chase the don't chase the the um the pump you want if you're looking and i look i'm going to speak about this because this is how this is what i'm doing no i can only i can only speak about what i'm doing i know that i'm here because i love the speed and i love the rush that this industry gives me and of

course I like the technology but I'm here for the speed and I'm here for the rush of things and I'm not getting it in the normal markets now now there's two ways for me to get it the one way for me to get it is to get into unnecessary trades it may be some higher leverage or the other way for me to get it is to go and just mess around with low cap meme coins, which is a lot of fun. I actually, Mario, I tweeted saying the other day and I said, honest question, who do you feel more connected to your meme coin community or your NFT community? And 81.2% of people said that they feel more connected to their meme coin

community than they feel. Did you see my response to your tweet? Did you see my response to your tweet? Did you see my response to your tweet? I didn't. I quote tweeted you and said, I would like to add third option family and see what people say, because I think that the people who are so into this would probably choose their meme coin community or their NFT community over their family right now.

Yeah. And the only reason they said meme coin is because those are up and NFTs are dead. And when NFTs go up and meme coins are dead, you're going to have everybody jerking it to their lazy lions or whatever the fuck stupidity we trade in this market. I don't agree. I don't agree. I think meme coins need to find, I'm sorry. I think that NFTs need to find functionality, um, because NFTs are expensive. And as Camilla Russo said, she said, she wrote a tweet and she said,

and she said, meme coins might be to this cycle what ICOs were for 2017 and NFTs were for 2021. Two generous views. They're more honest than, they're a more honest version of ICOs and they're a more democratic version of NFTs. But how did those things end? How did those things end for the quote-unquote communities?

How is that a compliment? Meme coins ends badly. Everyone knows meme coins ends badly. But it's not a community. That's stupid. That's what I'm saying. Someone's being sold a bill of goods that they're part of a community that will disappear the minute the token goes down 95%.

It's so dumb, it makes my brain hurt. I'm part of the elizabeth horan community because i think that elizabeth warren's the worst person on the planet and yeah but will you think that in four years will you be holding elizabeth horan and in the telegram group talking about it i don't think so no in four years she's not going to be here and i'm not going to be trading a token anymore i'll tell you that's not a community that's and I'm not going to be trading a token anymore. I'll tell you, I'll tell you. That's not a community. That's a temporary group of people. There is one community that I think I'm going to be around. I'm going to be, I'm going to be part of for not only this cycle, but probably for the rest,

for many, many, many cycles. And that's the Jensen Hung cycle. Cause I think like it's, it's sort of a bunch of us that are quite well hung and it's like Jensen hung you know so like you know people who are well hung by the Jensen hung token and I think that you can hold forever because you either got it or you don't I would argue that most people who are not

well hung would buy the Jensen hung token to give the impression that they might actually be well hung but hey well you know I don't know this is oh man this is brutal. All right. Let me go to Scott. Scott, your thoughts on the markets. Before you talk to the markets, I want Simon. I want Simon's in the crowd. I want Simon to come up and say, I want Simon to come up and say,

full disclosure, I'm a holder of Hanukkah. Just one last question and we'll go to the panel. And I know it's completely unrelated to what you guys are talking about. I feel like we're all acting like all-time highs are guaranteed this year. I agree. Is there any, I just kind of worries me that the kind of sentiment in the last bull market everyone's like you know we should see history repeat itself we should see all the all-time highs but no one had the same conviction we have right now and I'm not sure whether this is concerning or this is just part of crypto I mean I think it's slightly concerning to put a hundred percent probability on anything so I I think that everyone should be positioned

for the situation that anything can happen. I mean, I get eviscerated when I try to tweet about things like this. But play this little game in your mind and say, if the top was in, would I be okay? And what would I do next? I don't think the top is in. But mentally, what would happen if the top was in right now? Are you positioned for that? And what would your plan be? If that was the case? I don't think that that's going to happen. You asked about where I think the market is at. I a hundred percent agree with Rand on Monday. I did a charting stream, which I started doing again in Wednesday with zero hedge. And I mean,

we cooked through like 50 charts and everything said to me, there's three positions in trading, buy, sell, and sit on your hands. And everything to me said, if you're not in already or have a plan right now, maybe sit on your hands to get more clear direction, you know? And so, and that's fine. That's healthy. Like it should not be up only at all times. You should not be, I know Rand loves the dopamine hit, but if you're, you know, if in general, you're just doing it for the casino thrill, you're going to, you shouldn't feel emotional at all times in the market every time you wake up.

I don't even know how people live like that. But, you know, I just think it's a decent time. But yeah, of course there's a possibility that we don't go to $150,000 a cycle. Anything can happen. Yeah, but no one's planning for that. Alex, is there a good argument to be made that we won't hit those numbers we won't hit all-time highs uh this year we already did um now we'll hit it again we'll break those all-time highs again and continue that that bull run yeah i mean there's

i i honestly i i think there's i wouldn't say there's a good argument, but I would say that like, um, we've already run a lot, right? I mean, we've tripled from the start of last year. Like there's, there's no guarantees in markets, as you guys have been saying, like, there's no, there's no reason it has to go higher, but I would say like, look across the, look across the investing landscape. Every scarce commodity is absolutely mooning right now, right? Gold is ripping. Gold and treasuries have completely diverged after, like, of all time, bonds and gold traded similarly as a hedge since 2020. They've diverged significantly, right? There's huge, huge questions now, not just from Stan Druckenmiller and Ray Dalio,

but from everyone about the long-term credit worthiness of the United States. That's not going to improve. So in my mind, it's pretty straightforward. Like the bull case is a multi-generational bull case at this point. I think when you're asking, isn't that a good thing? No. For the Bitcoin thesis. I mean for the Bitcoin thesis. Yeah. Well, but, but Bitcoin gold, real estate, tech stocks, all of these service good hedges against that. I don't know about meme coins, but Bro, you don't know. Jameson Hunt.

Meme coins are ahead against intelligence. William? Yeah, so, you know, I've become bullish on meme coins, obviously. I think what's confusing and why there is such a debate among us and others is that the lines are blurring between what the meme coins are or are not. Think of them as a social token. And we've had social tokens that did not do much three, four years ago. But a related development that I'm seeing that I think is going to have a lot of legs, And maybe it's the last frontier of building infrastructure in the blockchain space is the advent of what is being called now

as Layer 3, and they are the app chains. So again, I'll give the example of DGN that has now its own app chain, basically, which gives them a lot of benefits and it's a signal that they are beyond what a meme coin is known to be in the past so you can think of this as a meme coins 2.0 or whatever it is but this is definitely changing. The newest meme coins are not the oldest ones that we knew about necessarily. Yeah. I want to pivot to the biggest story of the day, though, is Ripple's stable coins. When William comes on and talks about meme coins rather than Ripple's stable coin, I'm like, wow, meme coins have gone a long way.

Yeah. But maybe you can brief the audience on that announcement by Ripple and what it means for the market, Scott. And I've got obviously Mikkel here to kind of dig into it. I would love to because I don't know how I'll ever get the last 15 minutes of my life back. The news that broke at 9.09 a.m. today, the stable coin market is booming around $150 billion today

and projected to soar past $2.8 trillion by 2028. There's a clear demand for trust, stability, and utility. That's why later this year, we're launching a stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the USD on the XRP ledger and Ethereum net coming from Ripple. Obviously, yesterday, we had Matt Siegel on from VanEck. I brought up the fact that VanEck also launching a stablecoin backed by cash treasuries and I believe reverse repo. It's actually VanEck's son who is launching it. We're obviously, I think, seeing an explosion of new kinds and forms of stablecoins. We have Athena that actually just started trading their ENA token, but that took the sort of market by storm over the last couple of months. That's a synthetic dollar. They're

not calling it a stable coin and they're being actually pretty intellectually honest about the risk, but a synthetic dollar that's earned a yield effectively backed by the cash and carry trade on Ethereum and staking. So the yield comes from staking Ethereum and then, you know, being long, basically the spot staked and assuming shorting the futures. And so we're seeing a lot of new novel approaches to stable coins and then just a whole bunch of them that are structured basically like USDC and USDT. Very interesting, I think, for Ripple to enter the market here. I want the takes of the Ripple community. Mikkel, we obviously have you. You're an expert in this. My first knee-jerk reaction was,

isn't this a direct competitor to Ripple, which was created as a faster, cheaper way to send money across borders. And stablecoins, I would argue, have already replaced XRP in that regard, but a direct competitor to Ripple's own token. But then, you know, and Simon and I actually discussed this on YouTube this morning. It sounds like perhaps this is them, you know, saying XRP is going to be a gas utility token used on the network and they're doing this on Ethereum. So, Mikkel, I would love your take since you're so obviously deep in this. I found it as a bit of, I won't say surprising news, but just really interesting. Yeah, so it's definitely something that the XRP ledger is needed. I was always shocked that Circle didn't take the opportunity to become the leading stablecoin provider on the XRP ledger.

But it looks like they're kind of going to get displaced by Ripple producing their own stable coin um I think a lot of people right uh haven't really paid attention to a pivot in Ripple strategy over the past couple years their strategy used to be use XRP right as the payment token but we've really seen a pivot in Ripple's uh strategy as XRP as a liquidity token for their ODL product, and then now issuing a stablecoin on top of that for a dollar-pegged piece of liquidity on the XRP ledger. What we saw about a week ago and what's being developed is automated market makers on the XRP ledger, which are essentially going to create pools of liquidity on the XRP ledger to actually bolster the DeFi ecosystem. Ripple's strategy since day one is to work with regulated

institutions to get those institutions using cryptocurrency for real-world applications. That's why it drives me crazy when I come onto these spaces and listen to meme coins discussed for 30 minutes. But Ripple's already signed up over 500 clients for using cryptocurrencies to solve real problems. I think their initial strategy was to get those institutions to put their own deposits on the networks and create their own liquidity there. But because of regulations, because of obviously the hurdles of actually directly getting involved in this industry, we've seen that take off a little slower than expected. I think Ripple issuing a dollar peg stablecoin on the XRP ledger

is kind of an intermediate step before we can get the institutions to really step in in a big way, in the way I think we all want to see institutions step into crypto. There needs to be dollar denominated units of value on the XRP ledger. And I think Ripple is just bridging that gap right now, getting that dollar denominated unit there. And like I said, I would have thought it would be really cool to see Circle do their USDC token there. But since they haven't, I think Ripple's just stepping in and saying, you know what, we might as well do it. If all we have to do is issue dollars on the XRP ledger, put that money in treasuries and create billions of dollars on the back end with 5% yields, why not just open another business model doing that? Overall, I think it's really good for the XRP Ledger DeFi

ecosystem. I think XRP Ledger is a great network for payments. It's a natural place for a stable coin to exist. MAX WIETHE, MD, PhD Yeah, I have no doubt that anyone who can raise billions of dollars and then put that into short-term treasuries and make money and follow the tether model to Valhalla is a smart move. But here's the question, and this is non-specific to Ripple, but new stablecoins that are structured the same way as a USDC or a USDT that have the exact same business model and do not have the adoption yet, why would anybody use them?

Or why would there be any money there to do this? I mean, even PayPal tried this. They're admittedly a much larger company. And it's fallen completely full flat, right? P-Y-U-S-T. Well, PayPal has no ecosystem, which is PayPal's problem. Why do you have any use case for the PayPal stablecoin? With automated market makers and DeFi on the XRP ledger now, there's a need for that dollar

denominated unit. Where that came from, it didn't really matter. But what Ripple's doing is filling that void and creating a dollar denominated unit on the XRP ledger for DeFi. Are you surprised then that there's no, that you meant, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but you said no USDC, like why not tether on Ripple? It seems like that would be the more natural pivot here considering tethers on effectively every other meaningful chain that has DeFi or this sort of ecosystem.

Well, that's the answer, Scott. Ripple's not meaningful, Scott. I think it comes down to a lot of the tribalism that we've seen in this industry against the XRP ledger and Ripple, if I was to guess. Other than that, there's really not a great explanation for it. You see the entire Circle team congratulating Ripple on launching the stablecoin earlier this morning. Why Circle just didn't issue their own USDC coin on the XRP ledger, right? That's an answer that I've never gotten. Circle has backed off of others, to be fair. It doesn't seem like Circle's, obviously, they removed USDC from Tron recently. So I think because my gut feeling there is because USDC is so concerned with regulators and with being the effectively de facto United States stablecoin slash almost bordering on CBDC, they're probably not taking any risks.

And Ripple obviously was in a lawsuit with the government. So maybe that could have something to do with it. Oh, for sure. I mean, in the short term, I think this is just a great way to get that dollar denominated unit on the XRP ledger that's needed so badly there for the DeFi ecosystem. But I think over the long term, I really don't know if an independent issuer of a dollar denominated unit is really a winning strategy. What kind of corporation would want to say, oh, I want to put all my reserves in another company's asset, right? It doesn't make sense. I think the holy grail of stablecoins is companies issuing their own direct deposits on these different blockchains. And I think a lot of these third-party

issuers, right, are important to the ecosystem, but not necessarily the stablecoin holy grail. So I really just think this is Ripple stepping in and saying, hey, the XRP ledger needs this denominated unit for essentially DeFi, and we're going to be the one to create that. We're going to go around the horn in a second, obviously. But to my first knee-jerk reaction, I kind of asked you about, is this just a pivot for what the XRP token is, which by the way, is totally fine becoming a utility and gas token? Can we say that if they're issuing a stablecoin that the original purported use case of faster, cheaper payments cross-border using XRP is effectively a non-issue now? I mean,

is that not a thing? No, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I mean, XRP just has a different mechanism in the payment. So it used to be, right? It used to be, hey, we're going to send XRP from this institution to this institution and cash out on fiat on the other side. And now, essentially, XRP is being used in liquidity pools. So you can go from stablecoin to XRP to stablecoin. So XRP is just acting as bridge liquidity between the transaction rather than being the actual transacting sender. So I mean, as we've seen

developments in crypto, these products are going to get more advanced. They're going to develop more forms of liquidity. XRP is going to be used differently. But I mean, what we're seeing is Ripple's ODL product is growing hundreds of percent year on year. That ODL product directly uses XRP. So, I mean, Ripple's landing real-world customers, institutional customers for their ODL product directly using XRP. If we saw growth in that product, right, decreasing or going down, then I would say, obviously, right, XRP is not being used for that purpose. But Ripple's built deep utility for XRP in these products. The products are growing 100% year over year. Directly how XRP is being used at the center or liquidity, I don't think it really matters.

It remains a key part of the payment stack. I can say the market liked it. I'm just looking at the chart and basically XRP popped from $0.57 to around $0.61, now trading about $0.59, but a huge volume on exchanges. Vet, go ahead. I saw you had quite a few thoughts there. Yeah, thanks for bringing me up. I think it's a really huge moment for I think the whole crypto space.

We need more credible and issuers that have a good reputation in the industry. And Ripple definitely has it among the institutional investors and institutional players in the ecosystem. And processing large amounts of redemptions is not easy, right? I mean, there are just top five or just maximum five stable coins out of 167 who can or have a market cap of above a billion.

And so getting more very liquid stablecoins is definitely the way to go. And it seems to be more and more an ask of customers, even for Ripple, that ask for stablecoin payouts, not only just straight up fiat, but stablecoins. They want to stay in the system, but they don't want to be exposed to the volatility of crypto assets that we currently have, including XRP. So I think it's a really good bridge of having not that volatility of crypto assets, but also be still on-chain for those customers who are maybe not that sophisticated and long in crypto. And of course, for the XRP ledger as an ecosystem,

it's huge. We have DeFi now more than ever with automated market makers and so on and ask for very accessible stable coins has been as mickle was saying um historically a very big challenge to kind of solve and um so i think especially with ripple stepping up here and showing that there is demand even on the xr ledger, will probably help getting more issuers, maybe like Tether or Circle in the future too. Well, I wouldn't say, to be fair, I wouldn't say that they've shown that. I would say that if the stablecoin gains adoption, it will show that.

If it shows a lot of... I'm not, I know I get like destroyed every time I mentioned others, but I, and I don't really remember the deep details, but there was, what was it called? The stable point on Cardano. Anyone judge? You at USM or something? No, I don't remember, but you know, and it just never saw as far as I know, maybe it will guys don't kill me. Meaningful adoption. Right. So I think this is the first step to testing what you're saying but you can't say that i would go even further because it's not only about the crypto natives where a lot of the stable coins are also currently focused but even among institutions and those sophisticated players not only for degens who want to trade in out of

meme coins but actually people who want to solve their business problems with it. And I think that use case is kind of still there and hasn't been really... Yeah, USDM, you're right, by the way. I'm seeing this as news. I just wasn't on top of it, but that's brand new. USDM, I think in the last couple months on Cardano, so it

does seem that they've gotten that stable coin in the last few months. Jed was the other one. D-J-E- that was kind of me. I would love... Jed was the other one. D-J-E-D. Jed or Jed. I would love her Alex take because he's been laughing the whole time. I think he's so excited about the news. Yeah, I think it's very opportunistic.

It is a combination of seizing on a positive narrative for a company and a ledger with very low activity. There are not hundreds of institutions interested in Ripple, I can promise you that. But stablecoins are obviously a hot area. The Ripple leadership has been involved in a group in Washington aggressively arguing to crack down on Tether. So this is political, and it's about driving interest to XRP, a chain that has effectively no DeFi and no DeFi activity at all. So I think this is mostly a joke. I would be

shocked if this thing had more than $50 or $100 million in TVL after a year. William and Simon. Yeah, I just say this is another example of why I'm a shareholder and not a token holder. I think it's the exact right product match is exactly what I think they should be doing. But they've got to align the token

with the shareholders because so far shareholders have benefited from everything because selling XRP tokens is their number one source of revenue. And this is completely ideologically in line with what Ripple probably should be doing. You know, they originally tried to solve this case. It was always a fear play, but they always try to shoehorn in a token and so if you look back at like the last decade of what they've been saying um you know apparently they've got this blockchain that they're quite

proud of now in terms of technology um the token has never you know it just goes based upon people's ignorance of thinking that the token is the share because they believe that adoption is just based upon, you know, it will be used eventually. But they could actually solve that if they actually can get to a stage. And I've got no idea about the technology of the XRP ledger. But if they can just do the whole, this is native to the chain and you've got to use it to pay gas, then I think they could probably get a bunch of, well, just take care of themselves. So there's a bunch of people that own XRP.

It's been a top 10 token for a long time. They definitely got a community and an army and they will all use the stable coin to try and get adoption and pump the price of their token so i i think they can try and succeed in that use case it's really completely ideologically in line with everything that they've been trying to achieve but never quite have achieved um but until you can actually get it where the token is just not an asset that sits on the balance sheet, where you try and figure out whether people are actually going to use it

for liquidity when clearly no one is, I think they've got to just treat the token holders better and use this. And they could build that. And then you can have an alignment. And hell, I'd love for my shares to actually have another tether business model because it's one of the best investments i've ever made of just getting that free trade from the government to buy bitcoin um and if they wanted to do the same model to buy xrp maybe now is that time when they've got on the other side of the SEC case. But again, if you ended up using your government issue,

imagine if they ended up with this, where it was native to the chain, and then the company was receiving all the government yield, and then they use that to buy back XRP tokens, it would be 100% of security after trying to make it not a security. But hey, it's always this evolution between private companies, token issuers. But I think they're on track. But I just don't think token holders and shareholders are aligned on this one. I think we're going to benefit so basically the age-old argument not even just unique to ripple but in certain situations in this industry the company can do well and the token can well the token does do well because it's on the balance sheet it's just a it's just it hasn't reached a

real market it's just still 100 speculation with no utility. Whereas like, at least if you do the gas- Let's hit on some of these points, though, because Simon's made a couple points here that you could just disprove so simply. I mean, first of all, he didn't know what XRP is gas for the network, right? So the fact that the XRP ledger has been around for 10 plus years and XRP is a core utility of that ledger. I mean, let's just not sit here and make stuff up, right? XRP has core utility in maintaining the health of the XRP ledger, which has been up and running for 10 years. So one there. Second, core utility. Hold on, let me chime in. I didn't interrupt. I'm not trying to argue. I'm just saying,

I just appreciate, I did not actually know that because I'm not engaged with the community. So if I'm wrong and you're right, then thanks for correcting it. I'm just saying that. chain. Next, Ripple is working with over 500 plus different customers, and many of those customers are directly using XRP for liquidity in their products. Ripple actually made an announcement that they're not going to be signing up any other customers going forward unless they're directly interacting with XRP as liquidity in their products. This product has grown 100% year over year since its inception and is now doing billions of dollars in volume every single year via XRP as liquidity token. So to sit here and say that it's not being used, XRP has no utility, I mean, it's just very obvious looking at some simple stats that that core argument is completely incorrect. So it's just important that we establish the basis here.

A lot of times we come on these cryptocurrency shows, right? And the main discussion is meme coins and these projects that are going to go to zero and have absolutely zero utility. And then we come up here and attack some of the few institutions that are actually making progress in getting this cryptocurrency technology adopted in a real world environment. And a lot of that thought is just straight up false. So Simon, I just very respectfully ask you before you make some of these statements, maybe do a tiny bit of research so we don't miseducate the audience here on a real company making real strides and getting adoption of this technology. I appreciate that. I'll just respond to it. So I appreciate I really don't know about the tech and I'm sure you know a lot more about

the tech. But just as a shareholder, I've only ever seen revenue from selling tokens i haven't seen any of that other revenue i mean simon you cannot i mean you made this statement and then backed off with basically saying that you don't know the xrp that much i mean that's kind of i don't i don't yeah i mean that it's hard then to to make any statements and simon i'm a shareholder too, right? You don't get revenue breakdowns from Ripple, the company. I mean, it's very obvious, right? Ripple sells software to banking institutions for specifically their RippleNet products. So Ripple has a lot of revenue coming in outside of XRP. Does Ripple sell XRP? Yes. It's critical that they sell XRP for their ODL-related product. If they didn't sell XRP for their ODL-related product. If they didn't sell XRP for their ODL-

related product, no one would have XRP to use inside the product. So they've been very transparent with how the system works. If you open your eyes and look at it, it's actually very obvious how it works. So look, the reason why all of us are supporting Ripple in their goal and supporting XRP is because we've done the research and understand that this is a cryptocurrency product that can be used by real world institutions that solves a real problem, right? You make it, you allude to the fact that we're all just being misled, right? And we all just buy XRP because we think it's a share in Ripple. In the Ripple SEC case, there was 100,000 affidavits in support of XRP, right? And it was XRP holders specifically saying, I bought XRP, nothing to do with Ripple, the company, right? So we can point to all this evidence that disproves

all these things. It's just important that the audience understands this because regurgitating the same narratives over and over and over again just discredits the real utility being built in this space. I honestly feel bad for Ripple and XRP people and the people that still believe in this stuff. Honestly, it's been years and years and years. There's a big difference between being used by companies and being broadly used by companies. RippleNet, I won't say nobody uses RippleNet, but it's not ever been and ever will

be what they think it should be. There are two things long term that should be obvious to everyone. There are stable coins and then there are the actual stable coins, which are somewhat stamped by regulatory bodies and will continue to be stamped by regulatory bodies. That's USDC and Tether. You can have all the conversations you want. I was under the impression that Cardano's symbol for their stablecoin was LBGTQ, but maybe I was wrong on that. That's a little strange. I didn't realize that that wasn't the case. But, you know, there's only two people in this spaces that are serious about Ripple and XRP. You know, I don't mean to shit on them, but that's just the reality. It's not a meaningful product.

Stablecoin, cool. A bunch of XRP people will use itp people will use it banks what kind of products do they have yeah the that's my that what kind of products do they have i ask you what products yeah you say you say the products are nobody's using the product i'm asking you what products do they have and you cannot give me an answer what products do who have yeah i'm confused yeah you say ripple has nobody's using their products but then you follow up with nobody other than than xrp shills but but this is the point i just made right nobody there are two guys on this call that care about Ripple and XRP. Nobody else cares. Just over the course of this call, I've gained 100,000 affidavits. We're written by XRP guys. I mean, everybody on this call believes

this and knows this to be true. And, you know, me and Alex are the only guys that have said it so far. Like we can talk about this ad nauseum. meaningful is going to use an xrp ripple stable coin it's just not going to happen i mean it's a andrew what's a vr stunt it's a pr stunt as well andrew let me just make one point to you real quick right because look i we it's very obvious right you don't like ripple and xrp and i'm not here to convince you to like ripple and xrp right i have no interest in doing that but this this idea, right, you just keep going back to nobody is using the product. But what we continue to see is there are tons

of people using the product. No, there are not tons of people using the product. Andrew, there's over 500 institutional customers. And you said that four years ago. Four years ago, 500 institutions were using it. Absolutely not. That's not what they said four years ago. Four years ago, 500 institutions were using it. Absolutely not. That's not what they said four years ago. Yes, it is. There's nobody meaningful using the product. Go look at USBC

and Tether. What are some metrics for this? Andrew, one of the largest banks in Japan, SBI Bank, is using XRP to settle payments with the Philippines. Like whether or not you think that. Seriously, what did you what did you just say? A bank in Japan is using RippleNet to settle settle stuff in the Philippines. Are you serious? Is that a serious point that you're making? I mean, come on. Absolutely. Like, I don't understand. I don't understand how you wouldn't think that's significant. Real world institutions using digital assets as liquidity for cross-border payments. Who else is that Japan bank using it to settle payments with other than the Philippines bank? Who else? They have multiple different initiatives using XRP as liquidity for cross-border payments.

Tell me who else other than the Philippines. Who else other than the Philippines? They're also testing it in Sweden. Who could test it? They're testing. That's cool. All right. Andrew, you're trying very hard to dismiss real-world accomplishments. Your original take was that no one's using it. I provided the evidence that over 500 customers, institutional-grade customers—

Those same customers were testing and using four years ago. Nothing meaningful has come out of XRP and Ripple in years. Why is the product growing hundreds of percent year over year? Just explain that to me. What is that? How do they sell the product? You don't know the revenues. It's like literally they're just selling tokens. That's the business. Simon, Simon, of course they're just selling tokens that's the business simon simon of course

they're selling tokens you need the token to use the odl product it's such a silly argument if they're using xrp in the odl product they have to sell the tokens i mean this is almost like a little brain numbing that we're even having this conversation how why wouldn't they let them buy them on the secondary market? Why are they selling them? Why are they increasing? Simon, why do you have such an interest in dictating how Ripple runs their product?

Clearly they're running their product. He's just asking a question. He's not dictating. They have the token, so why wouldn't they use it? It's the market moving. Exactly, because it's so bad for token holders to do that it's just but none of us token holders are even remotely concerned about xrp well that's the thing you know you know what the token is but the average person buying this token

doesn't have a freaking clue and thinks that they're the they're buying this token because this is going to be the back layer for central bank digital currencies that's going to disrupt SWIFT and everyone's going to be using XRP. I think people are buying this token. You just have a bunch of press releases saying this bank, who is a shareholder, has done a transaction with this bank, who is also a shareholder. Then everyone thinks that XRP is being used and you come up with these stats. transaction with this bank, who is also a shareholder, then, you know, then everyone

thinks that XRP is being used and you come up with these stats. If it is, like, I haven't seen it. Why is Jeremy... Real quick, guys, can I jump in real quick? Real quick. I'm going to make one more point. Just to try and settle. Real quick, Michael. I'll just try to settle a little thing here. I think what everyone's trying to kind of say a little bit is that the products feel a little trivial in the zeitgeist of the entire industry. And to have a $32 billion market cap on a couple of the news from September with the bank and everything. Look, like stable coins based on the U.S. dollar are great for crypto.

They're great for America. America gets to evangelize the dollar in a new way and gets dollars into the hands of people across the world, not just the United States. So it's absolutely bullish for crypto. It's bullish for the United States of America. Whether or not Ripple can have a material impact on that industry, we just don't know. Like it or not, regardless of all the utility and the customers, a lot of people do see Ripple as a zombie chain, a zombie foundation with huge reserves and income from market making. But personally, we don't know a single person who's used it or interacted with it. And, you know, I've been building the last 10 years in the industry.

But, you know, so maybe we're just thinking, hey, it's a little overvalued. But it's almost like, hey, they're great at like the legal battles. Why doesn't the industry just turn it into like a proxy like turn it to lobbying armor the crypto industry like that sounds like an epic utility you know why are people like jeremy allaire you know congratulating them for congratulating them but not using it i mean no no no i will tell you why. Because of what I just said. Paul and Joe, because the point is we are all in this together.

And I cannot understand why good news is always then by some people portrayed as bad news. Like this is bad. This shouldn't happen. Like people are making moves in the market. They try to get adoption. They get, you know, all these things in place. And still there are people to find like something to say hey this is better i don't think that's fair here i don't think that's necessarily

fair here because this is a yeah well no i would say what he's saying no i don't i think what he's saying isn't necessarily fair because until once again until this actually happens it's a non-event so it's i don't think it's news at all. It's not bullish news at all. It's news that something could happen. I think the entire industry celebrated when Ripple beat the SEC. I don't think people were negative about that. I think when it's a major news event that's beneficial to the industry, everybody celebrates it. I think this is more of a watch and wait. Can't celebrate it

something with zero TVL yet right so well I mean yeah Jeremy and Circle congratulated them because they're working together in Washington specifically on promoting ideas like extra territoriality that would protect uh USDC and other regulated U.-based stable coins at the expense of the market leader like there there is a political game happening that they're in league on that's why they're congratulating and vice versa i mean that is that is the game like i don't know why people are offended by other people lobbying for their own product obviously no that's fine but i'm saying it's not because they think it's going to be good it has nothing to do with that yeah i mean i just go back to this and this is going to be my last comment comment on the topic i mean you just saw that other speaker right he wants to transform ripple into a lobbying

company uh simon wants to make it so xrp access shares for ripple the company right it's it's just all so silly like i don't want to be stuck as a shareholder because they promised that I would be able to go from Filipino peso to crypto one. You can't do that. Years ago when I was so ignorant and I'm still waiting. All right.

So look, I come to these spaces constantly and not any shot at the space, but you just hear constantly these cryptocurrency projects that are just blatant rug pulls, no utility for the asset class. And it's just so much noise in this space. In my opinion, there's very few companies making real world strides in this ecosystem and actually building real utility for these cryptocurrency networks. The fact that some of these speakers up here, like the former speaker, is so dismissive of a product directly using a cryptocurrency, growing hundreds of percent year over year, doing billions of

dollars in cross-border payment volume, settling institutional transfers and creating real-world utility for this industry, it's shocking to me me and it's shocking to me that people are so hyper focused on these things that are blatant rug pulls blatant jokes and people will talk about them oh this is this is real utility this is important this is good for the industry and then you have a company right building real world utility for a cryptocurrency product getting real world institutional adoption and you'll find people trying to find every excuse for why it doesn't work, why it's not important. So that's my last topic. Overall, though, I love the discussion here. Honestly, it challenges my own thesis, and I think there's been some really, really good points made by all the speakers. So look, Simon, I fully respect everything you say. I just would encourage you, right, a little more into the technicals on how the XRP ledger works, because I think it will help build a better understanding of XRP's real utility in the whole ecosystem.

But thank you, guys. You're invited, Simon. William? Yeah, I'm going to be brief. Just to respond to Mario. No, I mean, I didn't think this was going to be a big headline, XRP getting into stablecoins. My thoughts were the first is why didn't they do it earlier? And it's not a big event to me.

Now, the proof is going to be in the subscriptions and how much pickup it gets. So we have to wait and see the strength of the ecosystem instead of debating it. Let's wait and see as we waited and saw the Bitcoin BTFs, what happened in the following days after the approval was the proof in the pudding. So let's wait and see. I think for me, in the last two days, the bigger news was the SEC inviting comments about the ETF for Ethereum. That, for me, is significant and could be a turning point in making it happen later on. It is something to be followed. Anyone have any comments on the Ethereum spot ETF before we wrap up?

I mean, Alex, do you have any inside baseball there? I mean, my take on that, William, is that it's a step, but it's a step the meaningful action with, you know, less than two months left to indicate that they're taking these seriously right now. I think it's a positive step. Positive step. Definitely a positive step. Yeah. They are going there by kicking and screaming. And that's what's going on. Yeah. My gut feeling, which could be completely wrong, though, is that when we're seeing all of these large institutions like Fidelity and ARC and such refiling with staking included,

is that they know that there's no way they're getting approved right now and they're positioning for a better product in the future when the regulatory landscape is more favorable because the argument for the approval of these Ethereum spot ETFs has consistently been, these look just like the Bitcoin spot ETFs. We have CME Ethereum futures. We have market of meaningful size and surveillance sharing agreements can be the same. This is the same product. You have to accept it. By filing those, they've made these meaningfully different products that the SEC can take a

different roadmap or stance with. So I think the proof we need that these are less likely to be approved immediately is coming from the issuers themselves. And Bitwise just filed, right? And those guys are definitely on top of this as probably the most compelling crypto, one of the most compelling crypto native companies that's involved in this. So I think you're right. I think it's a great step to see anything positive in that direction.

I would just be hesitant on thinking it happens immediately or that Gensler and his side of the SEC have any compulsion to make this happen. Simon? Yeah, I'd just say I don't know how you square having an ETF application and the SEC allegedly going to be coming off to the Ethereum Foundation to find out whether it's a security or not. It feels like that you need actual confirmation that the SEC is going to go down that path. Then there's an outcome and then you'd get ETFs. I just don't know how...

I think the whole thing with Bitcoin was that it was just so clear it was a commodity. Does anyone actually know though? Because obviously we had the headline a week or so back, the SEC's coming off the Ethereum Foundation. What is actually behind that? Is there anything substantive there?

I haven't seen substance yet, which is why we haven't largely discussed it here. So I don't really know on that. I would say that Larry Fink very openly came out, uh, because he loves dunking on Gary Gensler came out and said, I don't think it's a problem. If that Ethereum is a security for us to get an ETF approved. Right. So BlackRock certainly put Larry is wrong on that. There's no broker dealer that can custody crypto asset securities, except for Promethean. So it's not clear where securities except for promethean so it's not

clear where coinbase can't custody it if it's a security right so they they they would not be able to be launched to currently if it were classified as a security because there aren't any custodians that can custody a crypto asset because security currently so that that is actually not true what larry said in the long run sure i mean BlackRock could probably go get a special purpose broker-dealer license. Yeah, that was my point. I think when it's Larry saying it, Larry has a path. But yes, I agree with you. that adding staking makes it meaningfully different. It potentially even gives the SEC an out to deny that isn't related to the regulated market of sufficient size and SSAs. But it is it's just hard to imagine how they they're in a tricky situation. They really can't deny for the same reasons without just being logically and legally completely backwards. But they also can't really call it a security without then potentially unwinding the approvals they made on the futures ETFs.

So they're in a tricky spot. But everyone I talked to were all in pretty low, low likelihood of approval in May. So it's just, I would say, I mean, as far as ETH price goes, if Bitcoin ETFs had been denied, it would have been very damaging to the Bitcoin price. I don't think anybody cares. The ETH price is pricing in a denial right now. So I don't think it's going to be a problem one way or another for the market. Yeah, I agree. I think the interesting thing you said, or the interesting takeaway from what you said for me is that the best case scenario for the SEC is to kick this can as far down the road as possible and not deal with it rationally.

And there's nothing better. There's nothing our government is better at than kicking the can down the road and not dealing with things that are, they just have to figure out some kind of creative way to deny on in may. I mean, I, I think staking does it. Yeah. They haven't gotten enough comments. I mean, yeah, they can't be arbitrary and capricious quote unquote, and the same reasons, you know, that they lost to grace mail, but I think that they can be pretty creative here. And also maybe he doesn't even care if he gets sued maybe they just do it and get sued who cares and they don't care get sued

and later approve it and make the suit mood anyway so like they don't necessarily even have to defend the suit but the question is like who who would sue and it's not clear that there is a party who cares enough or and has enough money to sue right so like it's just not i don't think we're likely to see a suit either um and the dc circuit ruling doesn't bind them here it's good precedent if you choose to sue but it's not like they're ordered by the court to do it like they were right for bitcoin exactly they are they are meaningfully different like they are they always have been but of course even with staking they're more. There is not a 10-year history of the SEC denying ETH ETFs. They can approach this as a whole fresh idea. It's a legal argument that we're making that says that it looks the same as the Bitcoin one, but they can just deny it for a bunch of reasons. They don't need to follow that exact ruling. I agree. I think it's

inevitable, just not yet. Simon, final thoughts, and we're gonna go ahead and wrap. Yeah, final thought is ETH as a security is wrecked versus ETH as a cryptocurrency. I do think that it would provide the clarity and I think the SEC would lose based upon the track record of everything we've seen in the past. But yeah, if Larry Fink thinks that having it on a special broker-dealer as a security will achieve the same level of liquidity as the current environment, it's never going to happen. I think you just created a new meme coin, Simon, called Fink Think. So somebody go launch that on our way out the door, guys.

Thank you so much. Another great spaces. I actually enjoyed the debate. And we didn't talk about meme coins the entire time, which is a huge win for me. Guys, follow all the guests. Thank you to them. And we will be back, of course, tomorrow morning, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for Crypto Town Hall.

Thanks, everyone. Bye.