0:05

All right, everybody, today we're going to

0:07

be breaking down XRP. What's happening with

0:09

Ripple and is it about to have

0:12

a massive breakout? You don't want to

0:14

miss it. I've got a special guest today as well.

0:16

My name is Paul Barron. Welcome back into TechPath. I do

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rolling. Listen, we've had, we've

0:49

never had this gentleman on before, but

0:51

I want to bring in someone that

0:53

we've been watching for quite some time

0:55

in the XRP ecosystem, then of course you

0:57

guys know him out there as Mickle. coming

1:00

in. Hey Connor, how are you? Good,

1:03

how are you? It's a pleasure to be here and

1:05

always a big fan of your show, so just

1:07

happy to come on board. Yeah, it's

1:09

going to be fun. If you guys

1:11

haven't checked his YouTube page out,

1:13

just go over. You can search MichaelXRP

1:15

right there. Some of his most recent videos

1:17

will be talking about that, going to

1:19

a billion users and possibly the ETF, what

1:22

kind of impact that it's going to have.

1:24

But go over there, hit subscribe. I'm going

1:26

to do it right now. I am now

1:28

a subscriber. of NickelXRP.

1:30

So let's jump into it today.

1:32

I want to get into a few things, Connor.

1:34

And one of the things I want to get

1:36

into is the whole news here with Coinbase. This

1:38

is an interesting evolution

1:41

of what Coinbase is doing. Obviously,

1:43

they're announcing their derivatives, all

1:45

of that coming under now

1:47

the Coinbase banner. First of all, what

1:49

do you think about this release of

1:51

information? Do you feel like this news is

1:53

big news for the community or is this something

1:55

that's kind of secondary? Well,

1:59

I think it's more big news for

2:01

institutional use cases, hedging

2:03

and building more complex structures

2:05

with XRP in terms

2:07

of the derivatives. I don't

2:09

think it's something your average user is going

2:12

to do a lot of interaction with, but

2:14

one of the things we've personally been faced

2:16

with is just having some

2:18

of those structured products on trusted exchanges,

2:20

especially in the United States right now

2:22

to get that kind of liquidity. A

2:24

lot of the times you have to

2:27

go to offshore firms. Coinbase obviously has

2:29

a great reputation here in the United States. And

2:31

so just to have some of

2:33

those more complex feature sets around

2:35

being able to trade price and

2:37

just do more intricate financial products,

2:40

it's really nice to have that

2:42

in the United States. There's a

2:44

lot of larger firms offshore but

2:46

sometimes that can create potential issues

2:48

and also you're also dealing with

2:50

counterparties who you might not be

2:52

as comfortable with so just having

2:54

those more sophisticated products rather than

2:56

just obviously spot is very very

2:58

useful to anyone building out. more

3:00

complex structured products. So

3:02

it's a great advancement there. Like

3:05

I said, probably a little less interesting

3:07

for your average user, but still

3:09

going to be very beneficial into bringing

3:11

larger, more sophisticated people into the

3:13

space. Which that'll be good, I

3:15

think, for XRP in general, because it's

3:17

going to open that up to the

3:19

traditional investment house, as well as potential other

3:21

structured capital out there that might

3:23

want to go the direction of derivatives.

3:26

which is good. I think that's going to

3:28

kind of rising tide lifts all bolts. Let's

3:31

go over to the topic of

3:34

banking because now that we've

3:36

got somewhat of a regulatory

3:38

alignment coming out of this

3:40

administration, crypto is now going over

3:42

and knocking on the door of the

3:44

banking world that basically has been shutting them

3:46

out for the last five to eight

3:48

years. And they're actually coming in

3:50

and saying, hey, Yeah, maybe it's time for us

3:52

to go in and get a bank charter.

3:54

You've got Circle, Bitco as well as others going

3:56

into this. At the same

3:58

time, you've got Ripple, of course,

4:00

which has already kind of been in this

4:03

lane. Do you feel like this is going

4:05

to be something that will be competitive to

4:07

what Ripple's future is from a

4:09

banking ecosystem side? Yeah

4:11

I actually think it's going to be pretty

4:13

different and I have a little

4:16

bit of a unique insight here

4:18

because personally I've gotten to work

4:20

with Anchorage Digital who is the

4:22

only federally chartered OCC bank at

4:24

the moment and the way I

4:26

kind of see this going is

4:28

that a lot of these cryptocurrency

4:30

banks will sit as the infrastructure

4:32

for more of the traditional banks.

4:34

I don't think a lot of

4:36

traditional banks are really going to

4:38

figure out cryptocurrency infrastructure, and they're

4:40

going to rely on a lot

4:42

of the players like your ripples,

4:44

your anchorages, your Coinbase to

4:47

provide that level of

4:49

custody. for their clients. Now,

4:51

I still do think that there's going

4:53

to be those traditional banks as well.

4:55

And then they're going to lean on

4:57

some of these more cryptocurrency focused banks

4:59

in order to do that part of

5:01

what they're holding is. And maybe in

5:03

five to 10 years from now, you'll

5:06

see a lot of these cryptocurrency banks

5:08

becoming a lot more full

5:10

scope and really disrupting the status quo

5:13

and bringing a lot of those

5:15

more traditional products but i think one

5:17

of the biggest pieces that the

5:19

industry is really been missing. Is that

5:21

banking license because there's a lot

5:23

of things that i get into the

5:25

weeds of client protections that not

5:27

a lot of people. Really

5:29

focus on when it comes to

5:31

players like coinbase when it comes to

5:33

different players who. are not a

5:36

federally chartered bank. So Anchorage is able

5:38

to square that with the OCC

5:40

back in 2020. They were the first

5:42

ones to do it. And it brings

5:44

in a level of client protections that

5:46

are very important. I think ultimately it's

5:48

going to be commonplace for a lot of

5:50

these different firms to apply for that

5:52

licenses because allows them to protect clients a

5:54

way they can't really do now. But

5:57

in the interim, I think a lot of

5:59

these will really set as infrastructure

6:01

players for a lot of the more

6:03

traditional banking world because i don't see

6:05

them building it themselves and if you

6:07

take a look at who people are

6:09

integrated with who they're leaning on it's

6:11

actually already pretty obvious they aren't planning

6:14

on building it themselves so i think

6:16

this is going to be a really

6:18

big step in taking those billions of

6:20

clients at these institutions already have and

6:22

rather than sending them off and saying

6:24

hey we're not going to service this

6:26

you have to go use this other

6:29

provider being like hey we can now do

6:31

this whether or not that's them actually

6:33

doing it or just have an API to

6:35

kind of their back end to a

6:37

cryptocurrency company who's better at it that's where

6:39

I think this is going towards pretty

6:41

rapidly. Well, and I think

6:43

the banking ecosystem is very adept

6:45

at being able to develop

6:47

these partnerships. They've done it in

6:49

many different sectors, including the, if you

6:51

think about merchant services along Mastercard Visa, a

6:53

lot of that is integrated, you know,

6:55

in and in many cases, even if you

6:58

look at Stripe, because there's a lot of

7:00

companies that have already started to use third

7:02

-party services. I know the banks now are

7:04

trying to catch up in that space. I

7:06

don't know that they ever will. So

7:08

to your point, that is a big

7:10

one. If you compare this also

7:13

to what's happening with XRP Ledger and

7:15

them getting it into Hidden Road,

7:17

this of course could change things

7:19

up quite a bit here in

7:21

terms of prime brokerage services. Do

7:23

you think this will have

7:25

any competitive layer into some of

7:27

the services that might be offered

7:29

by let's say a Bank of America or

7:31

a Chase or someone like that that would

7:33

be able to partner with someone

7:35

like a Coinbase or a Robinhood, whoever it

7:38

might be that would be a potential

7:40

utility. Yeah, I see

7:42

it as competition on a

7:44

different level. So I don't

7:46

see it necessarily competition

7:48

on like a retail account

7:50

level, but in terms

7:53

of a higher level clearing

7:55

service and more institutional

7:57

kind of use cases for

7:59

structured products and stuff like that,

8:01

that would trickle down to the underlying

8:03

users. I see that being

8:05

a huge application here. At the end

8:07

of the day, normally when a bank is

8:09

building any kind of structured product or

8:11

anything like that, right? They're not building

8:14

it out at the account level. It's

8:16

normally a larger fund or a larger product

8:18

that they've built out that clients will

8:20

be able to get access to. And

8:22

when it comes to that back end clearing,

8:24

tokenization, issuance, any kind of

8:26

more structured margin product. I think

8:28

that all happens at a higher

8:30

level using someone like a hidden road.

8:32

And I think this is kind of

8:35

Ripple's big strategy, right? Like if you

8:37

want to get. a billion users using

8:39

blockchain technology. Well, the vast majority

8:41

of those billion users have no interest holding a

8:43

wallet or doing all these other things, right?

8:45

They just want the advantages of the technology. And

8:47

if you're a bank, right, you probably don't

8:49

want to be coaching all your clients through what

8:51

a seed phrase and all that stuff. So

8:53

they want to be able to use the technology,

8:55

but they want to be able to make

8:57

it as low touch and ideally not

8:59

even have their clients even have to know that

9:02

these things are happening. So I

9:04

think a lot of that's going to happen at

9:06

the higher level. I think that's where Hidden

9:08

Road really comes in. And then they're able to

9:10

go to their clients and offer these more

9:12

efficient, better products for them that leverage the power

9:14

of blockchain technology without the users really

9:16

ever having to see a big difference

9:18

there. So that's how I think Ripple's

9:20

kind of always structured a lot of

9:22

what they do. Even if you look

9:24

at how they interact with a lot

9:26

of their clients and on their marketing,

9:29

their clients might be using XRP, but

9:31

they don't bring it to the client

9:33

saying, Hey, you need to do

9:35

this calculation, send over this much XRP,

9:37

swap it. It's really always from

9:39

Ripple's perspective. Hey, you're going to be

9:41

using the power cryptocurrency. And

9:43

if you don't want to know about

9:45

how that's happening, you don't have to. And

9:47

I think that's kind of kind of

9:49

be like that plumbing piece being put into

9:52

a lot of these institutions, that's going

9:54

to be the most important part. And Hidden

9:56

Road kind of acts as that bridge

9:58

for more of the traditional financial product sets

10:00

out there, structured income, clearing,

10:04

large equity sales, large currency effects,

10:06

and bridging that over now to

10:08

the crypto currency world so these

10:10

two different things can really interact

10:12

on a higher level. Yeah, and

10:14

one thing I think that a lot of people don't

10:16

realize is once that we get mainstream

10:20

services and adoption like

10:22

that, the likelihood of

10:24

those users, those investors,

10:26

just in everyday people,

10:29

they're going to start to explore things.

10:31

And I think that's when maybe

10:33

they start to get into the XRP

10:35

ledger ecosystem, start

10:37

to understand how they can go out

10:39

there and truly get into crypto in

10:41

general. Hopefully they're watching our shows. Well,

10:44

I know we have a DeFi segment later, so

10:46

more than half. Yeah, gonna hit it. And

10:48

now specifically, it's a very interesting question. I think

10:50

I have a different viewpoint than you might

10:52

expect there. All right, well, good. Let's

10:54

get into this, and that is

10:57

a potential national XRP reserve. Now, this

10:59

was a little bit high there

11:01

for a minute back here in February

11:03

after, you know, Garlinghouse and the

11:05

team of Ripple made their

11:08

Mar -a -Lago Accord meeting,

11:10

I feel like. Oh, it

11:12

seems like everybody's in Mar -a -Lago these days,

11:14

but now it's dropped down to around 20 %

11:16

possibility. What do you think? Do you think we're

11:18

going to get XRP in the reserve? I

11:21

do hope if there is an

11:23

XRP reserve, there's a little bit more

11:25

of a reason for it. I

11:28

would love to see some kind of

11:30

higher level partnership between Ripple and

11:32

the United States government and have some

11:34

uh liquidity reasons to be holding

11:36

a significant portion of xrp if it

11:38

is just on the investment standpoint

11:41

if it's just like hey we want

11:43

to be able to hold and

11:45

allocate to this asset i mean that's

11:47

great as well but i don't

11:49

know if i necessarily have any kind

11:51

of idea on when the government

11:53

would kind of say hey now's the

11:55

time we want to start allocating

11:58

to more crypto assets other than

12:00

Bitcoin. I mean to be honest

12:02

it kind of seemed like that was the plan

12:04

and then a subset of people got kind

12:06

of mad about it and were complaining and then

12:08

they walked it back. So I don't know

12:10

to me it seems like. they had

12:12

this idea in this concept and then you had

12:14

some in -fighting on what actually got put across

12:16

so I don't know how powerful that is

12:19

I don't know if it was more of okay

12:21

well appease you in the short term and

12:23

then we'll do what we wanted to over the

12:25

long term or they like totally flip their

12:27

idea and now they don't want to touch anything

12:29

other than Bitcoin that's what I'm

12:31

not really sure about. I mean over the

12:33

long run I don't think it really matters because

12:35

I think these technologies will prove themselves out

12:37

and the United States government will kind of be

12:39

sitting there in the same way they kind

12:42

of ignored Bitcoin for so long saying hey

12:44

well now we're Ignoring this other thing that

12:46

we wanted to be able to hold

12:48

as a reserve and we didn't do it

12:50

because there was controversy at the time

12:52

But I think more adoption more price depreciation

12:54

for the underlying asset and we'll be

12:56

kind of back in the same exact thing

12:58

where now it's XRP being added and

13:01

then some other community will say oh well

13:03

Why isn't our thing being added and

13:05

as these things get more and more adopted

13:07

it will be easier for them to

13:09

justify it and Kind of get through it,

13:11

but Yeah, I think ultimately at the end

13:13

of the day, I think the entire

13:15

decision making process there was a little fuzzy

13:17

and probably time more than

13:19

anything fixes that. Well, and

13:22

you kind of have to compare

13:24

a little bit because in this, there's

13:26

no other crypto that has been

13:28

in the crosshairs, at least from a

13:30

legal standpoint now with a fine

13:32

that maybe the Treasury Department could

13:35

reroute that fine and say, well, we're

13:37

going to take that fine and just turn

13:39

it into XRP tokens, put it in the

13:41

strategic reserve. Maybe that would be an angle in

13:43

which the Trump administration could pull that

13:45

off. David Sacks might try it. Brad

13:48

also said that he was interested in paying

13:50

an XRP. I know that was something he

13:52

dropped in an interview. So I think it

13:54

makes a ton of sense to be able

13:56

to do that. I think it would be

13:58

very cool to see it happen. in

14:00

terms of like what that means for

14:02

the ecosystem, right? Like for me, United

14:04

States government holding XRP cool and interesting

14:06

but in terms of like tier one

14:08

banks actually putting that in as rails

14:10

forth kind of their financial plumbing that

14:12

to me is something that gets me

14:14

a lot more excited than Ripple paying

14:16

a fine in the United States government

14:19

having a little bag of XRP. Yeah

14:21

I agree with you I think

14:23

the banking rails are kind of the

14:25

holy grail of that. Speaking of

14:27

that when you look at the holy

14:29

grail of valuation right now XRP

14:31

holding Right here on

14:33

CoinMarketCap, we're holding position

14:36

right now, right? Yeah, 121,

14:38

121 built. So the

14:40

likelihood of flipping ETH. And

14:42

this is something that people talk about

14:45

all the time, possibly if it accelerated,

14:47

if you compare this, and I was

14:49

looking at this today, right

14:51

now, and I'll zoom in on this, if it

14:53

were to flip ETH, and that's if ETH wasn't

14:55

moving, now granted, ETH hasn't been moving much, it

14:58

would only have to get to a

15:00

$3 .33 price to flip ETH. with

15:02

a little movement on ETH. With

15:05

Bitcoin, it's a bit of a

15:07

challenge. That's almost $29 a share, or

15:09

I should say a token. So

15:12

what do you think? Do you think this is

15:14

a possibility that we could see XRP back in

15:16

the number two slot? Yeah, I'll

15:18

give you kind of my

15:20

controversial take to start here and

15:22

that's that in my opinion

15:24

XRP is already flipped Ethereum when

15:26

you look at the market

15:28

cap calculation for how they even

15:30

do market cap they're taking

15:33

circulating supply which is like kind

15:35

of a weird metric to

15:37

start rather than just using the

15:39

total available tokens but if

15:41

you look at what they're taking

15:43

for Ethereum circulating supply, they're

15:45

taking every token in existence. For

15:47

XRP, they're cutting out what

15:49

ripples holding an escrow. But from

15:51

a market cap perspective, all

15:53

of those tokens have already been

15:56

issued by the ledger. All of

15:58

those tokens have been in the

16:00

circulating supply before. Now

16:02

they're just locked up. And I

16:04

kind of asked the question,

16:06

why do we count Satoshi's wallet

16:08

for circulating supply? why do

16:10

we count the ethereum foundations there

16:12

why do we count their

16:14

ethereum towards circulating supply but you

16:17

don't count ripples escrow of

16:19

xrp so for me the whole

16:21

kind of. Calculation for

16:23

market cap is already a little

16:25

weird not counting so many of

16:27

those tokens and then to add

16:29

to that weirdness. If you

16:32

take a look at what coin

16:34

market caps reporting on the fifty six

16:36

billion that they use to create.

16:38

that number, that's actually not even the

16:40

real circulating supply because there's only

16:42

like 36 billion left in escrow. So

16:45

even that number is lagging quite a

16:47

bit. Long -winded way of saying, I

16:49

think we're actually a lot closer to

16:51

flipping Ethereum than the coin market cap

16:53

numbers even show. But I think it's

16:55

a high degree of likelihood. I mean, the interesting

16:58

thing is, is one, any

17:00

kind of different reported numbers from

17:02

how coin market cap is even looking

17:04

at circulating supply in terms of

17:06

Getting that number correct and having the

17:08

appropriate circulating supply probably makes it

17:10

so we only need a three dollar

17:12

xrp to flip a theory and

17:15

then on top of that i mean

17:17

the last six months xrp is

17:19

outperformed a theory and i'll tell you

17:21

right now this is the interesting

17:23

thing not a lot of people realize.

17:26

When it comes down to

17:28

like the allocation of these

17:30

cryptocurrency assets by your more. Typical

17:33

traditional financial advisors and stuff like that.

17:35

There's not a lot of rigor to

17:37

it They say okay You should hold

17:39

Bitcoin because that's the biggest thing and

17:41

then we'll hedge that position with a

17:43

little bit of the second biggest thing

17:45

But there's not a lot of like

17:47

oh because we believe in the functionality

17:49

of Ethereum the smart contract like it

17:51

doesn't really get to that like you

17:53

would you think it would but it's

17:55

a little it's a little lazier and

17:58

I think if you and you're already

18:00

hearing this As ethereum

18:02

continues to underperform xrp a lot of

18:04

people are asking the question like

18:06

hey why am i even allocated to

18:08

this ethereum thing anymore because they're

18:10

not making the decision based off of

18:12

the underlying network they're making it

18:14

based off of what is going up

18:16

now so i already think you're

18:18

starting to see some of that reallocation

18:20

and i think with the. case

18:22

off of Ripple when you see a

18:24

lot of these ETFs launching, it's

18:27

just going to add fuel to the

18:29

fire and I wouldn't be surprised

18:31

if it's one of these things, a

18:33

combination of these things, all kind

18:35

of lead to XRP flipping Ethereum. But

18:37

my last note here is XRP

18:39

had already flipped Ethereum prior to the

18:41

case. If you go look at

18:44

the ETH to XRP ratio chart, just

18:46

so happened that as soon as

18:48

there is the investigation into Ripple and

18:50

XRP, XRP started out underperforming ETH.

18:52

And as soon as the case was

18:54

over, XRP starts outperforming ETH. So

18:56

it almost seems like we're just back

18:58

to the norm here, and we

19:00

don't have this weight on the XRP

19:02

shoulders. Well, to your

19:04

point, you're looking at back in

19:06

November, this is the weekly chart right

19:08

now on ETH versus XRP right

19:10

here. And you guys can see it.

19:12

Now, there is a very interesting

19:14

line of defense that we are on

19:16

right now, Connor. Do you think

19:18

this is the point in which we

19:20

see a breakout? Because this is

19:22

the first time we've really retested this.

19:25

Really, if you go back, I mean, this

19:27

goes back way into when was the last

19:29

time we looked at this position on an

19:31

upward trend, back of September 2018. of

19:34

the did

19:58

sort of know these things were on and

20:00

if you were a large fund invested in

20:02

crypto like and you had an idea these

20:04

things were going to drop obviously you had

20:06

to wait towards ETH rather than XRP. But

20:08

no I think this is kind of a

20:10

huge zone and you pointed out the exact

20:12

zone I've been talking about on my live

20:14

streams as well. I think it's

20:16

going to be interesting to see what

20:19

the catalyst is. Is it those ETFs

20:21

getting more certainty on when they're getting

20:23

pushed through the door? Is it them

20:25

going live? Is it The actual voting

20:27

on of the Commission to end the

20:29

case in totality Or or maybe it's

20:31

just an announcement No one's been expecting

20:33

in terms of some financial institution Signing

20:35

some contract and coming more public with

20:38

ripple about it But I think there's

20:40

a lot of potential catalysts that could

20:42

do it and I just don't see

20:44

that same momentum in the Ethereum ecosystem

20:46

right now It seems like there's quite

20:48

a few of outs outstanding issues that

20:50

You know, as an Ethereum holder myself,

20:52

I was kind of hoping these things

20:54

would have gotten fixed and solved quite

20:57

a bit ago. And it just seems

20:59

like they continue to lag and nag

21:01

and, you know, you kind of see

21:03

these potential fixes come in, but then

21:05

a lot of the other issues are

21:07

still sticky. So I don't know if

21:09

that's weighing on price performance. If it's

21:11

just in general, these other cryptocurrency networks

21:13

gaining a lot more adoption. But I

21:16

think that performance is going to hurt,

21:18

especially when it comes down to those

21:20

Asset managers who are just putting money

21:22

in Ethereum because it's the second biggest

21:24

thing Well, yeah to your point I'm

21:26

back to the whole idea of asset

21:28

managers that are really looking at crypto

21:30

I think to the point that most

21:32

asset managers I know many of the

21:35

money managers I talked to that talk

21:37

about well, what's you know, what's an

21:39

alternative to hedge against Bitcoin One of

21:41

the things that they always bring up

21:43

is still the legal scenario that XRP

21:45

faced or ripple face So I think

21:47

a lot of that was was still

21:49

you know, kind of under the bridge

21:51

in the sense of asset managers, maybe

21:54

they haven't completely got onto the

21:56

idea of this is over, you know,

21:58

and maybe there is going to

22:00

be something that will flow into that.

22:02

Now, one thing that will happen

22:04

is if we start to see another

22:07

network move into this, I was

22:09

looking at the Phantom blog and they

22:11

were going into some of the

22:13

request items. Guess what was number one

22:15

right there? Adding XRP's ripple chain,

22:17

number one out of all of the

22:19

different feature requests out of there.

22:21

Do you think this is a possibility?

22:23

Can we see phantom with ripple

22:25

available over on it? Oh I would

22:27

love to see it and I

22:30

think it's one of these things these

22:32

other ecosystems should wake up to

22:34

a bit. I think for a long

22:36

time it was looked at as

22:38

like oh well there's like not an

22:40

XRP community or people don't want

22:42

to use their XRP for anything like

22:44

that. I can tell you that's

22:46

absolutely not the case. I mean when

22:48

it comes to ecosystem size, when

22:50

it comes to participants, the XRP community

22:52

is Very very very large

22:55

and I think there's a lot of

22:57

potential benefit from someone like phantom adding

22:59

these capabilities For the longest time the

23:01

XRP ledger just didn't have the feature

23:03

set to support some of this stuff

23:05

So it wasn't that people didn't want

23:07

to do it or there was no

23:09

appetite. It was just that bridges were

23:11

really bad No one really trusted using

23:13

any bridges and it was that the

23:15

XRP ledgers didn't have the native functionality

23:17

to do some of these things like

23:19

meme coins or other DeFi related activities

23:21

natively on the chain. But I think

23:23

if I was someone like phantom and

23:25

I was seeing like, wait, there's a

23:27

huge appetite for people over here who

23:30

want these services and they don't have

23:32

another way to get it. I mean,

23:34

it seems like to be a no

23:36

brainer in terms of saying, okay, well,

23:38

you have the third biggest asset cryptocurrency

23:40

here. There's a large amount

23:42

of untapped potential in terms of building

23:44

out these services. there's

23:46

so much market cap and not a

23:48

lot of avenues. It just seems like you

23:51

could really capture a lot of that

23:53

very quickly, where some of these ecosystems that

23:55

are not the XRP ledger, there's a

23:57

lot of different ways to access things. There's

23:59

already kind of native on -chain support. So

24:01

you might get a certain subset of

24:03

the people over there, but there's kind of

24:05

a lot of different avenues people can

24:07

take to maybe do that same exact thing.

24:09

So I think Phantom would be a

24:12

great addition on the XRP side. And I

24:14

think they would be extremely

24:16

surprised with how much volume and

24:18

how much liquidity would come over

24:20

from this community. For

24:22

sure. Well, I mean, you could even

24:24

throw in the idea of stablecoins coming

24:26

in RLUSD and into some of the

24:28

other ecosystems as we see that being

24:30

listed now in other places out there.

24:33

Speaking of the XRP ledger sidechain,

24:35

the EVM side of things, when

24:37

you look at this, do you

24:39

think there's a possibility that we

24:41

could see Trump's liberty fi? finance

24:44

come into this. Now remember, they're

24:46

very pro Ethereum right now, but it's

24:48

possible. I mean, what if we

24:50

could see them roll into this? What

24:52

kind of impact do you think

24:54

that would have? Well, the XRP

24:56

sidechain in general is going to

24:58

be a very interesting use case for

25:00

the XRP ledger because it squares

25:03

one of Ethereum's biggest issues, which is

25:05

like, Hey, like we want all

25:07

this functionality, we want people to do

25:09

whatever they want, but it can

25:11

just the chain and having an XRP

25:13

side chain allows you to add

25:15

the full functionality people would want in

25:17

order to build whatever they need,

25:19

but still have the speed and efficiency

25:21

safeguarded of the XRP ledger. So

25:23

in my opinion, it was a really

25:25

smart way to build this out

25:27

like rather than having all the experimentation

25:29

and all these different things that

25:31

might or might not work might be

25:33

used might not be built directly

25:35

on main chain and bogging it down

25:37

like hey go build this in

25:39

a side chain environment. There'll be a

25:42

bridge in order to access liquidity

25:44

back and forth. You as an end

25:46

user might not even have to

25:48

know if you're interacting with main chain

25:50

or side chain and then if

25:52

there's such a good feature set on

25:54

this side chain that everyone agrees

25:56

unilaterally should be on main chain. Then

25:58

you can take that through the

26:00

amendment process and put it directly into

26:02

the XRP ledger main chain. So

26:04

it's really cool. It kind of separates

26:06

out that instance you have where builders

26:08

need super customizable code, but want to

26:10

be able to build in the XRP

26:13

ledger environment. You can do that on

26:15

the EVM side chain. But also, if

26:17

you have such a good idea, and

26:19

it's such a good proposition that everyone

26:21

agrees that that should be added to

26:23

main chain, you could push it through

26:25

the amendment process, just like we've seen

26:27

with clawbacks, the AMM, and all these

26:29

other things, and get that onto the

26:31

core ledger. So I actually love this.

26:34

A lot of people think they want something

26:36

and think it would be a really

26:38

good use case, but it's hard to actually

26:41

forecast user activity. So being able to

26:43

bring this onto the side chain, not slow

26:45

down the main chain, test it, and

26:47

then push it to main chain if applicable,

26:49

or just keep it in the side

26:51

chain, I think it's a great way to

26:53

square that. And people like Liberty Financial,

26:55

I would love to see them coming over

26:58

and just getting access to a faster,

27:00

slicker, cleaner ecosystem in order to run their

27:02

business on. I think when you compare

27:04

the speed, when you compare the efficiency when

27:06

you compare the functionality of the XRP

27:08

letter, especially with the EVM sidechain, I think

27:10

it's going to become a more and

27:12

more obvious place for them to be able

27:15

to run their business. Well,

27:17

if you look at other

27:19

tokens that have done EVM sidechains,

27:21

you just look at flow.

27:23

I mean, what happened with flow

27:25

in terms of its overall

27:27

value? really started to skyrocket. So

27:29

that in terms of a

27:31

strategy being used, that's kind of

27:33

a comparison. And that has

27:35

been very effective in terms of

27:37

its performance. I want

27:39

to jump over to RLUSD because

27:42

if you look at the

27:44

current tracking of stablecoin metrics, Ethereum

27:47

still kind of holding the

27:49

top position here, obviously as

27:51

the kingpin. But when you

27:53

look at XRP Ledger, it's

27:55

starting to hold in as

27:57

well. But Do you feel

27:59

like RLUSD would be more

28:01

efficient on the ETH ecosystem

28:04

than on the XRPL ledger

28:06

ecosystem? What are your thoughts?

28:09

I think it depends on what you're trying to do. If

28:11

you're trying to do a payment and you're trying to use

28:13

it as like a, hey, I need

28:15

to move money from point A to point B,

28:17

then it obviously makes no sense to be

28:19

doing it on the Ethereum ecosystem. It's a mess

28:21

to do it over there. But if you're

28:23

looking to do DeFi related activities

28:25

I mean right now when it comes

28:28

to liquidity and volume. Ethereum is still

28:30

by far the leader in most things

28:32

DeFi so if you're just looking

28:34

for a dollar denominated unit to participate

28:36

in DeFi. Well right now a lot

28:38

of those big protocols are still hosted

28:40

on Ethereum and therefore if you want

28:42

a trusted stablecoin and you want

28:44

to use RLUSD then Ethereum makes a

28:46

ton of sense but if you're just

28:48

using those that money back and forth

28:51

and using more as a payment scheme.

28:53

Or when we see Hidden Road

28:55

build out a lot of their prime

28:57

brokerage services and you need collateral backing,

28:59

a lot of those positions, that's

29:01

kind of the interesting point where

29:03

it's like, okay, well, you have

29:05

native, native DeFi, right? Just like

29:08

crypto, native DeFi experience over here

29:10

on Ethereum. But if you

29:12

could build out a more institutional,

29:14

trad -fi, DeFi, um environment with hidden

29:16

road maybe you actually see an even

29:18

larger use case for a more

29:20

of a professional structured DeFi environment

29:22

right happening on chain in a decentralized

29:25

way but maybe you still have

29:27

counter parties mixed in here or there

29:29

when it comes to the issuance

29:31

of assets maybe not everything's done

29:33

by a smart contract maybe there is

29:35

kind of a more manual prime

29:38

broker that sits in there clearing trades

29:40

as well it's just a very

29:42

interesting idea because That's what Ripple

29:44

is trying to build out with Hidden

29:46

Road on the back end in

29:48

terms of settling on the XRP ledger.

29:51

RLUSD comes in as liquidity on

29:53

some of those trades. Suddenly you

29:56

have like a brand new cryptocurrency

29:58

prime broker on the XRP ledger

30:00

and Hidden Road is pushing something

30:02

like I saw six trillion annually.

30:04

That's the kind of thing that

30:06

could take this whole DeFi environment

30:08

right now and flip it on

30:10

his head. Well, speaking

30:12

of DeFi, you look at Doppler Finance

30:14

and the comparison right now. This is

30:16

just in the dollar value right here

30:19

as you can kind of see

30:21

the comparison. But do you

30:23

feel like when you just think

30:25

about DeFi in general on XRP,

30:27

do you feel like this is

30:29

growing, stalled? What

30:32

do you feel like needs to happen for this to

30:34

really kind of become a thing? Yeah,

30:36

it's a really interesting question. And

30:38

I think there's two things people are

30:40

having a hard time squaring. And

30:42

that's that look, a lot of people

30:44

want DeFi, right? But like, in

30:47

my perspective, they want

30:49

something that doesn't exist. Like, there

30:51

is DeFi on the XRP ledger

30:53

with like AMMs and stuff like

30:55

that. But the thing that people

30:57

miss is like, these are tools.

30:59

They're not structured products. And a

31:01

lot of people want structured products.

31:03

Like a lot of people want

31:05

to be involved in DeFi but

31:07

don't want to be the manager

31:09

behind the DeFi strategy they might

31:11

be running. So a lot of

31:13

people really what they are looking

31:15

for is a way to take

31:17

tokens put them with someone and

31:19

have some return created on them.

31:22

Now whether that's done with all

31:24

smart contracts or you have a

31:26

fund that is doing it or

31:28

you have some professional DeFi manager

31:30

running a specific strategy in which

31:32

you put your tokens into. That's

31:34

where I see the future

31:37

headed a lot more than some

31:39

magic protocol that creates yield.

31:41

Could that exist? Absolutely. But

31:43

I still I question whether

31:45

how sustainable some of the protocols

31:47

out there today are going

31:49

to be in five to ten

31:51

years. A lot of what

31:53

you look at is yield farming

31:55

in which it tokens kind

31:57

of just being Printed and

32:00

then that printed token is obviously inflating

32:02

and that's what you're getting the

32:04

reward from and not everything is like

32:06

that But the future I see

32:08

is like hey, you're working with an

32:10

investment team You are able to

32:12

get allocated to some kind of fund

32:15

It's one of the things we've

32:17

already done where you can put XRP

32:19

in kind and you actually have

32:21

investment professionals on the back end able

32:23

to run a tailored strategy for

32:25

you where, you know what, you're not

32:27

watching the liquidity pool ratios. You're

32:30

not constantly looking to see, okay, well,

32:32

this asset just moved against this

32:34

other asset, therefore I have to get

32:36

out of this pool. So I

32:38

think a lot of people are going

32:40

to DeFi, looking for some kind

32:42

of structured product where they can just

32:44

put tokens and forget about it.

32:47

And that's sort of the thing in

32:49

the equation that's missing because the

32:51

future I see is there will be

32:53

people who are experts at that

32:55

but those people are going to be

32:57

very into the weeds of like

32:59

running strategies and running these specific things

33:02

and I don't think your average

33:04

user is really looking to spend all

33:06

day going and sifting through all

33:08

these different pools and stuff so I

33:10

do think the future of DeFi

33:12

is going to be a mix of

33:14

both the tools on chain but

33:17

for now, a human element of actually

33:19

running the specific strategies using these

33:21

on -chain tools. Yeah, I probably would

33:23

agree with that, because I think you're

33:25

exactly right. Getting into DeFi is

33:27

going to take some time. For

33:30

other than the crypto

33:32

natives that really understand what's

33:34

happening within DeFi, to

33:36

get it mainstream, I think, is the

33:38

question. Let's talk about RLUSD

33:40

for a second. If you look at

33:43

USDG, this, of course,

33:45

available on RobinhoodPacks, Kraken,

33:47

yeah, Kraken's got it too. You

33:49

can see pretty consistent up,

33:51

down, you know, kind of side

33:53

stepping and growth overall, but

33:55

if you compare RLUSD, we've

33:57

had kind of a plateau occur.

34:00

Explain to me, Connor, why do you think

34:02

this is happening with what should be,

34:04

in my opinion, one of the most popular

34:07

stablecoins out there? Yeah,

34:09

no, it's an interesting question. So

34:11

I think there's a little bit

34:13

of two parts of it. I

34:15

think the biggest thing right

34:17

now in terms of RLUSD

34:19

growth is obviously larger exchange

34:22

integration in terms of more

34:24

people being able to purchase

34:26

that on their more traditional

34:28

kind of exchanges. Obviously, we

34:30

have that available on Uphold,

34:32

which is great, but Coinbase

34:34

would obviously be another big

34:36

step forward there. And

34:38

then the other thing is, is

34:40

like, okay, so there's two people

34:42

really using stablecoins. One of those

34:44

people is Ripple for payments. And

34:46

the other side is people are

34:48

using these things as collateral and

34:50

different DeFi protocols. In order to

34:52

get RLUSD, especially the Ethereum version

34:54

listed on a lot of these

34:56

different It's

34:59

happening but it's a little bit of

35:01

a cycle that needs to take place

35:03

right you need to get it listed

35:05

you have to build up liquidity in

35:07

the pairing that you have to have

35:09

incentives for people to come in and

35:11

take advantage of that pairing. So I

35:13

think in terms of the more defy

35:15

ecosystem level there's going to be quite

35:17

a bit of a build out in

35:19

an incentive piece that's going to allow

35:21

people to start getting comfortable using it.

35:23

I think that changes in one big

35:25

way. When you start to see actual

35:27

large financial institutions getting involved in this

35:29

asset class, their decision -making process

35:31

is going to be a lot

35:34

different than end -retail users. Compliance

35:36

is going to be of the

35:38

utmost importance, and so is hand -holding.

35:40

And I think that's where Ripple

35:42

plays a very interesting role in

35:44

this entire thing, where they're able

35:46

to build out a lot of

35:48

these structured products starting from custody,

35:50

going to payments, going to prime

35:52

broker services. all on the backs

35:54

of RLUSD. So I think right

35:56

now we're kind of in niche

35:58

retail adoption of DeFi where we're

36:00

headed is large institutional DeFi and

36:02

a wholesale kind of level and

36:04

that's where I think RLUSD and

36:06

Ripple are going to play a

36:08

very important role. I just think

36:10

we're a lot earlier to that

36:12

adoption cycle than you're going to

36:14

see for more of retail can

36:16

figure out whatever they. can do

36:18

with these assets. Yeah, let's get

36:20

into the last couple of questions

36:22

I want to hit on. One

36:24

is the Futureverse, obviously their acquisition

36:26

of Candy Digital. All

36:28

of this because it gets into a

36:30

ton of IP there. You've got

36:32

MLB, Netflix, WWE,

36:35

NASCAR, all that DC Comics even

36:37

are available now. So

36:39

Futureverse is an ecosystem that

36:41

is fueled by Ripple, by

36:43

XRP in essence. What

36:46

are your thoughts on that? Do you

36:48

feel like this is is a huge

36:50

deal or do you feel like at

36:52

some point? We're gonna see some pretty

36:54

amazing, you know solutions. I'm just looking

36:56

at Right here at candy .io. You

36:58

can kind of see all of this

37:00

I'm just amazed that this is now

37:02

available within the Futureverse platform. What are

37:04

your thoughts? No, that's really

37:06

cool and to be completely honest with

37:08

you I actually didn't even know

37:10

that acquisition took place I will say

37:12

one thing about gaming in Futureverse

37:14

is It's an all or nothing sort

37:16

of thing for me when it

37:18

comes down to success. I'll tell

37:20

you as someone who used to be

37:22

pretty avid into playing video games and stuff,

37:25

there's so many video games you'd go play

37:27

and you get on and you're like,

37:29

this looks like the dumbest game ever. This

37:31

is never going to blow up. And

37:33

then this game, even like I remember when

37:35

Fortnite launched or Rocket League, these games

37:37

that seemed so silly, end up taking off.

37:40

And then you see these other games

37:42

that are intricately built and so complex and

37:44

no one plays them. They don't get

37:46

a single user. So I think that's a

37:48

little bit of one of the tough

37:50

things for me when it comes to the

37:52

metaverse, like the future verse. Not that

37:54

I don't think they're doing an outstanding job,

37:56

which they absolutely are. But just figuring

37:58

out what's going to be that thing to

38:00

cause those users to come flooding in.

38:02

Because in my opinion, it's very unpredictable. That's

38:05

been one of the biggest problems with a lot

38:07

of the crypto game. sector so

38:09

far it's like okay we built all

38:12

these things but to get people to

38:14

come use it it sometimes doesn't really

38:16

make a lot of sense. forward

38:18

looking on what people are going to

38:20

enjoy and have fun with. So I certainly

38:22

think they're doing an excellent job. I've

38:24

been monitoring the progress. I think they're giving

38:27

themselves an excellent chance to garner that

38:29

mass adoption. I think this is a great

38:31

example of it. But it's one of

38:33

those things that continually amazes me what humans

38:35

in general tend to latch onto when

38:37

it comes to their form of entertainment. And

38:39

let's not forget that Futureverse

38:41

had their proposal approved. on upgrades

38:43

on the render network as

38:46

well. So this is all leaning

38:48

in to a very positive

38:50

play for futureverse, for sure. Hey,

38:52

listen. I think they're doing

38:54

a great job of branching out

38:56

sideways and rather than only

38:58

trying to get people in the

39:00

XRP ecosystem up, really spreading

39:02

out and bringing more people into

39:04

the XRP ecosystem by leveraging

39:07

different channels. And I think this

39:09

is an outstanding example of

39:11

that. Connor, what do you think is

39:13

going to happen at the Vegas event? You've got

39:15

XRP Las Vegas coming around the corner. It's

39:17

possible. Are you going to be there, by the way? Oh,

39:19

yeah. I'll absolutely be there. I

39:22

went last year as a blast yourself.

39:24

OK. Yeah, I'm going to be

39:26

there. So we're going to be actually

39:28

doing some sessions and also recording. A

39:30

couple of questions, though. Do you think, I know

39:32

David Schwartz is speaking there. I don't know if

39:35

Gardner House has said that he's going to show

39:37

up or not. But do you think Ripple will

39:39

announce anything at this event? I

39:41

think it's very possible they do

39:43

announce something now in terms of

39:45

what they announce I have no

39:47

idea I know last year it

39:49

was kind of right around when

39:51

RL USD was first becoming a

39:54

thing and that's what they announced

39:56

there I also do know there's

39:58

a lot of smaller announcements in

40:00

terms of the

40:02

case and just like a lot more

40:04

of an intricate look at everything moving

40:06

on the back end. I do

40:08

think there probably will be an

40:10

announcement of some sort but what

40:12

exactly that is I'm not sure

40:14

my guess would be something around

40:16

hidden road and and something they're

40:18

planning on doing or something of

40:21

that magnitude but I'm not entirely

40:23

sure I'm really excited to see

40:25

what potentially will be talked about.

40:28

Well, guys, it's going to be a big event.

40:30

It's happening in about a month, about a

40:32

month and a half, I guess now. It's the

40:34

end of May out in Las Vegas. During

40:36

the Bitcoin week, Litecoin is going to have an

40:38

event that same week. So a lot of

40:40

people will be there. So this would be the

40:42

time to do something big. If

40:45

you were, you know, a project and or an

40:47

organization that wanted to get a lot of

40:49

splash for sure. Connor, it's been great having you

40:51

on today, man. Thank you so much for

40:53

coming in. We appreciate it. Yeah, no, thank you

40:55

so much for having me. I feel like

40:57

this was long overdue and always a big fan

40:59

of everything you're doing and helping out the

41:01

XRP ecosystem So happy to come on. I had

41:04

a blast and looking forward to doing it

41:06

again soon Alright guys, if you're not in the

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41:18

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41:21

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41:23

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41:27

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41:29

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