Transcription
Now, brown cow. Any better? There we go. Very good. Appreciate y'all. Discord's finicky. You know how it is. Let me get the recording going here. We'll have that for you guys. Make sure that the audio is working. Working. I've got to select the right one. Uh, we'll do that one. Oh. Oh, that's fine. And uh put Oh, that's the input. Picked the wrong one. Um, there we go. And yeah, there it goes. Both of them. Okay. And uh, yeah, there it goes. All right. All right. And we're off.
All right. Morning. Uh, thank you guys for taking time out of your Thursday to come hang out. This is not the normal way we do this. This is normally on Monday at 11:00 a.m. Central Standard Time. Uh, but because we did the town hall Sunday, we figured, you know, we'd give it a little bit longer. So, it just wasn't the same information. [laughter] It's still going to be a lot of the same information, though. Haven't had a ton of movement this week other than the fact that the Clarity Act is looking like it is going to be pushed out much, much further.
Um, you know, at at worst, at best case, early February or uh, sorry, late February, early March, uh, is what the word on the street is that they are going to be able to focus on the Clarity Act. If the government shuts down, it could be extended even further out than that. They're going to have midterms coming up in March, which will take the focus of most of the congressmen and women. And, um, so I really, you know, since they're not going to get it passed this week, I really don't think we're going to clarity until, you know, like I said, at the earliest, late February. Um, clarity before July 1st. Yeah, I I could see that. I I definitely could see, you know, uh, Q2 being a a time for this. But again, if the Democrats get in, um, the Democrats have been, you know, the ones that have kind of been keeping this from coming to terms here, uh, and if after the midterms they control, um, you know, Senate or House, it could become much more difficult to get legislation passed. Again, I I'm not political. I try to stay out of that arena. I'm just reporting on, you know, what I'm being told by other sources. Um, and you know, obviously the previous administration was not so friendly toward crypto, uh, when, you know, they were in the the White House. So, you know, we're hopeful that things are going to pass. Uh, but it really doesn't matter for XRP. We've talked about that.
The other thing that we saw yesterday that was pretty exciting, and I talked about this on the live last night, was, uh, we've got the permission domains, uh, amendment passed. Uh, and with that, um, that's a big deal. That is what's going to allow the institutions to be able to participate, uh, on-chain, on the mainnet, uh, and know the counterparties that they are interacting with. I've got about 12 hours, 12 days and 16 hours left before that is implemented on the network. We're still waiting on permission decks, as token escrow and batch. These are the three other ones that are currently proposed. XLS 81, 85, and 56. Batch is going to be a big deal for scalability of payments on the XRPL. Um, again, I talked about this last night a little bit, but, you know, payment channels, side chains, batch payments, and also, uh, the implicit or explicit subnet that Bob, uh, Bob Weey has the patent on, are going to be the keys for XRP to be adopted at scale for the back-end settlement of all these institutions. Today, it does not have the TPS to be able to do it. Uh, but with these other components, it will. Uh, and obviously, the more liquidity, uh, there is in the XRP, uh, the better, uh, it will be able to facilitate this stuff.
Um, talked with, uh, Texas Blockchain Council yesterday. I alluded to this on the live last night. Um, but they had mentioned that they were in communication with Robbie Mitchnik over there at BlackRock. Um, so I don't know if I could horn my way into that conversation or not. I would love to talk to Robbie and figure out if there's something we can do with BlackRock. Um, you know, that's that's a pipe dream as it sits today. Uh, but I might be able to finagle that. So, uh, keep you guys updated, uh, as I can on stuff. Um, if there's NDAs that get signed, obviously, I got to be a little more careful with things, but, um, so that'll be fun. And then, uh, my point with that was, you know, Robbie made the calculator that shows XRP operating at $10,000 a piece. That's really where the liquidity needs to be for, um, you know, XRP at scale, for the back-end settlement of all of these institutional markets and money flows. Um, people asked me last night, you know, what three, um, major payment channels I thought would be online here in 2026. Uh, and I think that'll be the backend settlement of the stock market, FX market, and commodities. Um, when listening to Larry Fink at Davos, he said that he believes that it will all end up on one ledger, which was very interesting to hear. You know, we've got all of these, um, pathways out there for the XRPL to be interoperable with other ecosystems, including AxelR and Wormhole and ChainLink via CCIP. Um, you know, I do think that everything will settle back to the XRPL. And again, batch payments, it's going to be a big component there. Um, but you, you know, to be able to scale globally and have all of the peer-to-peer merchant services, um, streaming payments for these platforms, um, and other things, you know, there's going to be subsidiary chains or other chains that are interoperable through these ecosystems to settle back for the large value payments on the XRPL. Um, and it's not to say that those won't see significant appreciation. A lot of people are invested over there in Stronghold or Vevel or Zbeck. These these things have specific applications. They're going after a niche market. I like them. It's just I don't think there's as much upside there as there is in XRP. And so that's why I don't own them. And again, I always have to say this, not financial advice. Uh, everything I say here is for entertainment, educational purposes only. And I'm going to talk about what I'm doing and then you obviously, you know, can do whatever you want. You take that into account and then make your own decisions. And if you need financial advice, you can go talk to Digital Wealth Partners.
Um, XRP pickles. Uh, it's sour sometimes. I'll tell you that. Um, price is where is the price this morning? We are back at the wrong chart. 192. Still down. You know, even if you bought, uh, right before New Year's, we were at 184. So, you're still up on your money. Uh, this chart actually looks pretty good for recovery here. Uh, it's kind of like a mini cycle that's happened here over the past, uh, 22 days, uh, with the big run-up after New Year's there and then the fall back down. It's gone through all the different seven phases. I'd expect that we will see, uh, some sideways trending here for a period of time, uh, before we get another move, uh, hopefully to the upside. Uh, if the market conditions maintain as they are, we could see a fall. XRP, we could move into a bare market.
Danell Dixon, uh, was at Davos also speaking about that. Um, you know, even though the crypto seems to be in a bare market, she was talking about, you know, the adoption of these protocols and networks and the implementation with partners. People are very optimistic about the technology and are looking to implement these things right now. Uh, a lot of institutional enterprise, um, providers and and people that are in the market are doing so. And so, and that is with the anticipation of the Clarity Act passing, right? They want to be on the forefront of that. They want to be market first with things. And I do think that that's coming. I just, you know, I think that XRP is likely going to see price appreciation before it actually comes to market or comes to pass, which is a good thing for everybody owning that. A lot of people have asked me, do you think other digital assets will appreciate alongside XRP? There will be a rotation of liquidity out of Bitcoin, uh, and other markets into this asset class. There'll be significant amounts of demand. I think the majority of that demand will flow into XRP, but there's ob, you know, obviously other digital assets that I think will take a portion of that. I think there'll be a huge consolidation of liquidity in crypto. You have, you know, 50,000 plus tokens that exist today. And on the other side of the Clarity Act, um, I think that that could be whittled down to less than 100 networks. And many of you guys, you know, are going to know what those are. If you've been here for a while and done any research, you can see which ones have actual traction in the market and are going to be used. Um, if you, you know, are new here, excited to have you in the mastermind. Um, there was a video that I did maybe six months ago on total addressable market for different digital assets. Um, TAM, uh, is what that's called. And I looked at all the different verticals or asset classes that have been, you know, tokenized, which chains they've been tokenized on, and which ones have traction at this point. Um, and that is a good video to watch if you are looking for, you know, which which chains are likely to have utility in the future.
Um, we just got off of the insurance webinar. Hopefully, you guys checked that out. Uh, there is a link, uh, with the QR code posted by Luke up here in the chat if you want to take time to go, uh, have a free consult with the insurance team. Uh, they would love to speak with you. Um, and they'll they'll meet you where you are. You know, our our job, how I view things is we're just here to educate people. Um, and, you know, provide products and solutions that meet their needs. Uh, and that's what they're going to do. Um, everybody that we've hired over there has that same ethos. You know, again, I had that short internship at Northwestern Mutual and I hated it because it was high pressure sales. They wanted you to close your friends and family. It felt very icky. It was not my not my game. I would much rather just make sure people are informed. Um, and whenever it makes sense for them, that's when, you know, they can reach out to us or if they go have a conversation with somebody else, at least they know what to ask for.
Now, one of the things that Carson talked about there, uh, that I thought was interesting, was one accelerated benefits. So, you know, if you have a term policy, one, you probably want it to be convertible. Doesn't cost you any more for it to be convertible versus fixed. Um, so, you know, if somebody tells you it does, I would I would question that. Um, and you probably, you know, it's kind of like an opt-out. Um, you never know what the future holds and for it to be convertible, uh, it doesn't cost you anymore, so might as well have it. Um, and then the accelerated benefits, you know, God forbid you come down with with some illness or ailment and you're not able to work, um, you can receive a portion of that life insurance while you're still alive. Uh, and if, you know, whoever is writing that policy for the term policy doesn't include those things, you're still paying the same amount of money but for less benefits. So, like I said, whether it's us or somebody else, at least you are armed with the information you need to have a productive conversation and make sure your interests are upheld.
Um, we have another webinar later on today. Hopefully, you guys, um, will participate in that. That's with Dan Plasket. I believe that is at, let me look at my clock here. Uh, it is at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. And so, uh, if you haven't registered for that one, um, go do it. We will be recording that and we will have that back out to people, uh, after the webinar. And, uh, again, excited to be able to run through living trusts, what that looks like for crypto, how to protect it, how to do the assignment, all the things that people have questions about on that side.
Legacy, how are you, sir?
>> I'm doing good. How you doing today, sir?
>> I'm blessed, man. Appreciate you hopping up here. Did you have anything that you've seen out there on the Twitter sphere that you thought was relevant to the conversation?
>> Not yet. I'm going to go look now. I was I I was held up on one of the other calls. Sorry.
>> Hopefully, I'm going to let everybody know. We should have the API issue fixed here shortly. But yeah, if anybody's experiencing any trouble still, just let us know. We'll help get you fixed.
>> Very cool. Well, appreciate all the effort on that. I know that's been a frustration for a few people. Few people telling Legacy a happy belated birthday. Uh, he's he's a birthday boy. So, uh, appreciate him. We want to celebrate him while we can.
>> Yes, thank you. Yeah, thank you everybody for the nice comments. It's really appreciated. So, thank you.
>> Uh, DD says, "The seminar was fire. Jake and Carson gave great value." Thank you, DD. I appreciate that. Uh, we try to, right? Again, just making sure you guys understand a lot of this stuff. It's complicated. Um, if you, you know, at least if you have a high-level understanding of things and you know what questions to ask, irrespective of if you work with us or not, you're going to be armed with that and be able to make sure that your interests are up.
Uh, Digitech says, "Is there announcement on DWP yield product this week? Can we expect reporting from the DWP growth fund?"
Uh, the growth fund and the product. So, uh, with them is still finalizing the audit. I believe on the other side of that, they will have everything come out for investors. Um, and then you should have already received an email communication. If you haven't, I can follow up with the team there. But to my understanding, uh, they let people know kind of what the timeframe was going to be and why the delays, uh, are happening. Uh, again, I would love if all this was real-time, um, just like everybody else. Uh, unfortunately, you know, we do have partners, um, and they have limitations, and this is how traditional funds work. Um, most of the time, the distribution and the, um, accounting really aren't done till the 15th or the 20th of the next month. We're just now to that point now, uh, here in January for the last quarter. So I would expect, uh, some pretty urgent communication there from them. The yield product, um, I'll know, you know, hopefully within the next week or so, but I don't know when. We'll still have to beta things. We'll still have to check stuff out. We'll have to make sure all the stuff works. It's going to take from the time that that, you know, gets rolled through, uh, at least another two or three weeks' worth of testing before we're able to roll it out to clients. So, at this point, you know, it's looking like February, unfortunately. But hopefully, you know, we see some price appreciation. I think that would help people out. Um, and especially if we're able to roll that out and you're able to generate, you know, a passive income for yourself that offsets your, um, your day job. I think that would help people a lot.
Nick Loveven, uh, such a good name. Uh, with previous comments you've made about the company that you were working with on the Yield product being acquainted last year, and then your interview with Mike Higgins, CEO of Hidden Road, who just happened to get acquired by Ripple last year. Cough twice now. You're working with Ripple. Uh, what's the hold up with them? You can call them Mcloven. I I don't know.
Um, let's see here. Uh, Dillinger says, "Thoughts on what's happening with the Iran conflict?" I haven't been able to look a whole lot at that today, unfortunately, but I do think that things will escalate right at the right time for oil to move. Again, supply of XRP, I think, is dwindling over there on the OTC desk in Dark Pools. Don't think there's a whole lot left. I don't know what they've taken off the market today, but it was almost 30 million yesterday. Uh, so they're taking big clips. Um, I don't think they might have, I mean, really, if there's less than 100 million left there, uh, the volume should move onto the exchanges in the pretty near future.
Uh, Upstate Holdings says, "If there if these amendments are so necessary for adoption at scale, why is there a delay in the proposals?" Um, there weren't a delay in the proposal. These were proposed over six months ago, and that's just kind of the issue with a decentralized ecosystem, right? So Ripple doesn't have centralized control over this. There are other people that have to vote in order for stuff to happen. Um, and that's very apparent. If Ripple had full control of this stuff, everything would already be live. It would have been rolled out. They they develop a lot of these proposals themselves in the code, and then they put it out to, you know, all the validators. The validators test the bugs, make sure it's legit, it's going to work with the upgrades on the network, uh, and then if they don't agree with how something's going to work or it impacts them in some way, sometimes they're in opposition and they won't vote for it. Um, and then once it gets over 80% plus one, that's when they're really kind of forced to because if they don't upgrade and accept the amendment, they're then kicked out of the ecosystem. So this two-week holding period here, uh, you should see everybody else kind of pile in, um, and upgrade their systems and implement what they need to. Um, but again, you know, this isn't a centralized system, and therefore it takes longer, uh, for this stuff to get moved through than, you know, many of us would like.
Laa says, "Thoughts on Monica Long's recent thread about stable coins will be the foundation for global settlement, not an alternative rail." Interesting. Think most stable coins are USD denominated. Well, that's kind of the point, right? The dollar wants to maintain its, um, dominance in a global, uh, distributed ecosystem that is a level playing field. Uh, and I think that we will, um, you know, ROSD and XRP. I don't think people really comprehend how significant that development is, and how impactful, you know, Ripple kind of leading the way and championing stable coins here in the US is going to be over the long term. Uh, they are the ones, um, that are kind of setting the standard for how this will work, and uh, other people are following suit. So many more people will be issuing their stable coins on the XRPL, in my opinion, whether they're dollar denominated or otherwise.
Legacy, do you have something?
>> Yeah, and I was going to say, I think a lot of people get confused with what they choose to settle in and what ch what is used to transfer the value. So, I mean, the payment rails itself have to go through a network if they're being transacted in real time, which which means the ledger itself is still being utilized. So, if they're saying that the settlement is going to be in a stable coin, that's that's just for settlement. I mean, still, as of right now, banks want to be they want to be able to settle in dollars and and same with other nations and other currencies. Um, they they want their currencies. They don't want hard asset, right? Especially something that doesn't have still still doesn't have clear legislation. But I don't I don't think it's too separate, right? I think one thing that helped me understand this too is if you go back and read the Gensler Act where they talk about the stable coin bill, it it specifically tells you that they're giving permission to the payment rails, which which is the underlying network protocol that we're all talking about. So just because they're not settling in XRP doesn't mean the ledger is not being used. And if the ledger is being used, you need XRP to transact that value.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, and and the wallets. There was a gentleman that posted this morning that made a good point. Each one of these wallets that's created on the XRPL is going to require two XRP just to create the wallet. There's only 7.5 million wallets today. Um, and again, that's why I think a lot of this can be used for back-end institutional settlement, not everybody's, you know, unique bank account. If they did everybody's unique bank account, imagine locking up two XRP for everybody in the US. That would be just in the US alone, that'd be 720 million XRP locked up just to set those up, those accounts up, as we have 360 million people here in the US.
>> Yeah. And the and the design behind XRP is supposed to be the liquidity in the middle to help these payment rails transact from from point A to point B. So when they say we're going to settle in stable coin, that I I don't see the issue with that where other people are seeing that as a problem. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to, I don't know if you saw Brad's post about it, but he literally
>> I don't. He said, uh, exceptional potential or something, and it, you know, he had XRP capitalized in the post. So again, I think people want to read what they want to read and stuff. And maybe I'm that way too. But I'm pretty confident that it's a it's a positive feedback loop and a flywheel for XRP stable coins.
Silver back up looking at it here. Uh, looking at 95, almost $96, uh, on the day. Um, up 8% on the past five days, uh, or a little bit over it, is what I'm looking at for a top in silver. Uh, the the move that's happened up to this point is pretty exponential. Uh, if you look at the move that happened to $50 back in the 80s, um, it looks pretty similar to that, and it did fall back, you know, and then, you know, work work its way back down over time. A lot of people talking about, you know, fiat currencies being destabilized and and losing value, which is completely accurate, but I, like I talked about on the live last night, I'm extremely confident that they're going to shore things up here in 2026.
Uh, the Texas Wedge says, "Since Ripple has full discretion over the re-escrow each month, why wouldn't they just re-escrow 100%, uh, for a handful of months to kick off the supply shock price appreciation for XRP so it can be used at scale?" They absolutely could, uh, and it would be in their benefit to do that at the right time. So, similar to the US, you know, there there's it's a double-edged sword. Things that benefit Ripple, uh, and other counterparties associated with them, might cut other people out or cause problems. It's kind of that way with US dollar and interest rates. Um, while with the petrodollar was a thing, we had to export dollars to other nations around the world, and we could export our inflation, which was good. The downside is that affects people here, right? And we're paying taxes for them to ship money offshore, which a lot of people don't agree with. But when you are a global liquidity provider and you're the back-end settlement for that stuff, you have to do those things. You need a treasury mechanism, be able to maintain price stability, um, and accomplish your long-term goals while still balancing the needs of everybody in the short term. So, I think that's why we haven't seen them do that, but that is why the price ran up in 2017, 2018 was the initial escrow of XRP.
Uh, this person says, "Keep drinking the tea." Um, well, yeah, I mean, if people are going to throw it out there, I'm going to give it to you.
Uh, M says, "I saw Vast get mentioned in mainstream. Pretty exciting." Yeah. Yeah. So, for those that don't know, we have a lot of new people here. We've done many private equity deals here in the group. Vast was one of those. That's Jed McCaleb's space company. So, if you don't know who Jed is, Jed was one of the original founders of Ripple, and he sold off all of his XRP to be able to fund this company. So, if you were going to sell your XRP, imagine like what you would have to be putting that money into and how much appreciation that would have to have for you to feel like that was a good idea, especially if you knew what it was going to be, right? So, uh, we were able to get on in on the only round that they've ever done for Vast. It was at a $2 billion valuation, uh, which is a crazy valuation for Series A. The only reason that they did it was because NASA basically told Jed like, you can't be the only counterparty. You you've got to have some other people on the cap table. Um, so, you know, we did $1.3 million, uh, that those shares are held with Carta. Uh, and we are in on somebody else's SPV for that one. So unfortunately, we are at their whim. If we had had $10 million, we could have gone direct. Uh, but we are at least allocated and going to get the upside. But if they decide to choose, you know, sell whenever they want to, we would be subject to that, unfortunately. As you come into more money, the more money you have, the more power you have in situations like that, you're going to get preferential treatment. Um, you know, there's been a couple deals we've done for Ripple Equity where we are on Equity Zen's cap table and we've been forced to participate in all of the tender offers, uh, whereas the deals that we've done independently, um, you know, we chose not to. So, you know, the more, um, leverage you have, the more capital you're willing to put to work, uh, it tends to come with better terms. Uh, but again, to your point, very excited to be participating, uh, in that, and I do think it's going to be a pretty substantial upside for us and those that invested over the long term.
Uh, Digitech says, "I have not received any communications." Okay. Uh, Max Conn called me a little bit earlier, and I didn't get to get his call because I was on the webinar. So I will follow up with him, um, in the not too distant future, and, uh, make sure that those get out to you guys ASAP.
Hickeyy Baby says, "How is it even possible with all the XRP being bought that the price isn't way higher and I'm just maintaining the same patterns?" Um, the volume on exchanges is not high enough to push the price higher. Um, that's really what it comes down to is supply and demand on the exchanges. As long as the OTC desk and the dark pools, uh, are operating, uh, and have some supply, the the volume's going to stay over there because they want to buy it at the lowest price possible. Um, the way I explain to our dark pool is if if you if you wired me $50,000 and I sent you $50,000 worth of XRP, would that affect the price? No, it would not because it's just, you know, two counterparties transacting, uh, without going through an exchange or a brokerage. And so that's how these transactions work. Large lump sums between two counterparties separate of an exchange does not affect the price.
Uh, Dela says, "Is it possible? Uh, if it's possible, please look at the Isle of Man and Channel Islands." Somebody had sent me, um, a contact over there for them. Not sure if that was you or not, but I appreciate that person, and we are vetting, uh, that company to see if they are a viable partner, uh, to be able to refer people to.
Um, we'll grab one more here before we have to wrap it up. Adrienne says, "Do you still refer Christina Carter for Family Trust Setup? I started a path for this preferred process with Western Law Corp on November 16th, but basically no communication or replies back. I was told two weeks. It's been two months. He'll answer on the phone." Um, let me unhappy with this partner. All right, I will call Christina. I know that she spoke with Aaron the other day. Uh, if she is not responding to you, that is a problem, and we need to rectify that. So, I will reach out.
>> I'll just note too that we do see a lot of emails that get kicked back mainly from the Proton email accounts, and mainly if they are if they're adjusting the settings to block out spam. I don't think people realize it, but if you if you put too many security settings on your email, it will just kick everything back. And I notice it most commonly with Proton. I mean, I still see it with other emails like Gmail or Yahoo, but I think a lot of people nowadays are switching over to Proton, and yeah, the emails are getting responded to, you're just not receiving it because of the settings that that email server has. It just recognizes it as spam and just kicks it back. So, I I would encourage people to check their settings as well.
>> Yeah. And again, not making excuses here. If if you did communicate with her and didn't get back, that's that's on us, and we will make sure that that gets rectified.
Um, the other partnership that was brought up on the live last night that I want to touch on before we jump off here was not XDC, but DXC, um, with Ripple. That's a big, big deal. They got over 300 million accounts managing over $5 trillion for treasury. Very large corporations and enterprises, uh, that they work with that Ripple will now be helping facilitate treasury flows and things for. Um, I I cannot impress upon you how important the acquisition of Hidden Road and G Treasury were for Ripple. Last year, I made a video about, you know, how Ripple's the next Amazon of crypto. We have, you know, um, I looked at it a little bit earlier today, like 160,000 plus shares, uh, in Ripple from the deals that we've done here. An average price before this year was around, by the end of last year, we started seeing some higher stuff, but, um, a lot of the stuff where people were early here in the group, got in at an average of like $33 a share, um, which is going to be a big, big liquidity event for people later on. Excited, very excited, uh, to have put that together for those participating here, and we'll continue to bring you guys, uh, good deal flow, uh, as things progress here on the other side of price appreciation.
Um, I am going to have to cut it here. Some other good questions in the chat. If you want to reach out to the moderators, they will absolutely be able to answer all the things that I am, uh, 99% of the way that I do. And, um, yeah, uh, super glad to have everybody here. Very blessed and grateful to have the group. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, constructive criticism, please reach out to myself or the moderators. We want to provide you guys with as much value as we possibly can. I hope you have a wonderful Thursday, a wonderful week, a wonderful weekend, and we will see y'all on the next one.