Ripple co founder Chris Larsen gets hacked for two hundred and thirteen million XRP,
valued at one hundred and twelve point five million dollars. What's happening here.
We're gonna break down the details of this hack, and Tether is reporting a
two point eighty five billion dollar profit for the Q four twenty twenty three quarter.
That's more profit than Goldman Sachs has earned. Crypto is growing in adoption.
We're gonna break this down and much more. Let's get into it.
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It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks,
today was a big day. The FED came out and told us they
are keeping rates as is. They are not rap nor are they cutting right
now. And you know, as stated before, the markets are usually very
volatile the week of any type of FMC meeting or announcement from the FED.
So expect volatility tomorrow and Friday. I'm looking towards next week when things have
settled them, when the dust has settled. And as I've been talking about,
I anticipate rate cuts that happen sometime this year. It could be pushed
out to twenty twenty five because there is an election year coming up, or
I should say this is an election year and Biden's going to want to make
sure things look good. And the reason why I'm saying the ray cuts get
pushed off Historically we've seen that when there's ray cuts, the markets pull back.
And I don't know if Biden wants that. Maybe with the influx of
printed money, which they could start at any point, Q we could come
back at any point, they can help reduce the volatility and the level of
pullback we may see for the stock market. And of course we know bitcoin
and crypto is highly correlated to the stock market, all of it. It's
just correlated to global liquidity and to money supply and so forth. So we
are on the path to ray cuts and of course the money printer being turned
on. That's why I'm bullish. From a macro standpoint, I believe we
are already in the bullmarket. I think we're headed into phase two and phase
three will be next year. Phase one was last year and we saw the
markets rallied, right, Bitcoin and crypto rally, the stock market as well.
So it's going to be a multi year bull market as we've seen historically,
and there will eventually come a bear market. So have your plan whether
you're investing in crypto or stocks. Now, something that was interesting to FED
when they released some notes, they made a lot of updates and one was
here meet Kevin reported. FED just removed comment that the US banking system is
sound and resilient. Now they didn't talk about the banking system for the most
part, at or Jerome didn't speak about this. And today New York Community
Bank was collapsing. Their stock was dumping. Seems like they're in trouble.
Their stock went down forty percent today and this could be one of the problems
that leads to the cutting of rates later this year. And look, the
FED did a great job in help mitigating the collapse of the banks in twenty
twenty three. Early twenty twenty three and we saw Silicon Valley Bank and others
started to collapse, but through some back door behind the scenes liquidity insertion.
They were able to prevent obviously a massive collapse of the system. It could
have set off a ripple effect, and I don't know if it would be
at the level of two thousand and eight, but it certainly could have been
bad, especially with high inflation and many companies and many countries as well trying
to dig their way out of the post COVID situation. Right, so interesting
that this took place. I think they're trying to bury this a little bit,
but we'll have to wait and see, well, folks. The big
news of the day, though, was Ripple's co founder Larsen, he's also
the executive chairman. He was hacked for two hundred and thirteen million XRP valued
at one hundred and twelve point five million dollars. This was reported by Zach
XBT, who's a sleuth on Twitter, and he shared all the wallet addresses
and so forth. Now, Chris Larsen came out about a few minutes later
and said, yesterday there was an unauthorized access to a few of my personal
XRP accounts, not Ripple. We were quickly able to catch the problem and
notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved. This
is an isolated incident, and Ripple wallets are secure. Slash never were compromised.
We've confirmed nearly all of the affected funds were converted out of XRP.
We're working with law enforcement and have been advised that a significant portion of funds
have been frozen and are pursuing the remainder aggressively. Many things to thanks some
people here from Ripple for their help and and so forth. So, folks,
I have a lot of thoughts on this, and some of you may
have seen my tweets, and I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of
hate, but I always keep it real with you guys. I'm not here
for a religion. I'm here to make money. I certainly want to see
technology adopted, and if someone does something that is not up to par,
we have to call them out. I'm not here to kiss anybody's ass or
anything like that. We are here to be unbiased and neutral and share the
facts and talk about things as they are now. Before I get to my
tweet, I want to highlight here what Brad garling House, CEO Ripple said,
given some irresponsible speculation reporting, I want to reiterate that no Ripple managed
wallets were compromised, full stop. So let's get get it out of the
way. Ripple was not hacked. XRP was not hacked. The XRP ledger
was not hacked. What was hacked was Chris Lawson's personal wallet, which he
had Wow, two hundred and thirteen million XRPN. Right, So want to
make sure that's clear now. To my thoughts that I tweeted out folks,
and I said I would probably get a lot of hate here, I think
it's time for Chris Larsen to distance himself from Ripple as much as possible.
In twenty twenty two, he donated to Greenpeace to launch a campaign to lobby
for the change of the bitcoin code. At the time, I tweeted out
this was a horrible move, bad optics all around, especially with the SEC
lawsuits still ongoing. Now Chris's personal XRP account has been hacked, and you
can imagine the headlines that will follow. All of this is bad for Ripple
equity holders and XRP holders. I have confidence in Brad garling House and David
Shorts and the vision they have for Ripple and XRP, but Chris Larson is
causing more problems with these situations. And once again, folks, I am
an XRP holder. I still hold and I'm not telling you you should invest
in XRP. I'm just telling you what I hold, and many times it
depends on your entry price. I got in a very low price. I
bought in twenty seventeen, So just understand my perspective, right, I'm being
very transparent. So some may say, Tony, why are you attacking the
victim here? Folks. This is a billionaire. His company is a crypto
company. They just bought a custodian in Medico, and he should know better.
He positioned himself here to get hacked. And headlines are gonna read billionaire
ripple co founder loses XRP. Not a good look, folks. And I
don't have any ill will or bad feelings towards Chris. I'm calling things out
as is. And like I said, I go back to the green Peace
situation. That was just a horrible, horrible move. You're in the midst
of an sec lawsuit and you're a competing blockchain and you are calling for the
change of Bitcoin. And I'm telling you this because I've spoken to people in
DC as well as different companies, and people were not happy about this.
I spoke to many Congressmen who were not happy about this, So I'm not
sharing my emotions here, but it's just horrible optics there. And then you
have this situation, which the damage is I think is pretty bad. It
just puts the negativity out there, feeds food and this of course does not
do well for the price and for investors. And don't just take my word
for it, folks here. Nick Bugales, who's a former Ripple employee,
tweeted out, this looks like a key compromise. Chris is neither the first
nor sadly the last to have funds stolen that way. Key management and security
is a huge challenge is existing tooling isn't always up to task. Here's the
important part. I am surprised that he didn't use multi signing for a custody
service. See what I'm talking about here, folks. Even a former Ripple
employee can recognize what's going on here. It's not that he got his funds
stolen, but that he should know better. He's a billionaire access to money
and resources, and he has to understand that his actions and whether fair or
unfair affect the market and the perception and the optics. And once again I
mentioned for both Ripple equity holders and XRP holders. You may disagree with me,
you may be angry at me, but this is not emotional. This
is just straight up facts, business and understanding markets. So please understand where
I'm coming from. And like I said, I don't know how he plans
to do things, but I think it's best that he distanced himself as much
as possible from Ripple because if he's going to do stuff like this, and
you know, going back to the green Peace situation, go out. You
know, it's one thing if he had donated to Greenpeace and didn't say anything,
but he made it a public thing, and I'm telling you from the
people I've spoken to, that was not received well. So just understand where
I'm coming from. That's my perspective, folks. Now, the other thing
I want to highlight here is at Novino Gup Though, who has been one
of the top employees at Ripple. He's helped them build a lot of business
relationships. You've often seen him at conferences speaking about Ripple and XRP, and
there's tons of videos going around. He's leaving the company, he said,
after seven years at Ripple, it's time to say goodbye and embark on a
new adventure. Grateful to work with Ripplers in building the Internet a value.
Big thank you to Chris Larsen for your vision and Brad garling House at Monico
Long for leading us. So he's out. Just FYI on that now.
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Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Now, folks, big
news some tether, and Tether continues to improve their transparency, Folks. Every
quarter they are putting out at testation reports and this is really great. Recently
at Davos, you had the CEO Caantheror Fitzgerald endorsed Tether. If you guys
recall I shared that video and he said, look, I've reviewed their books.
Everything seems to be in order. I've often said I think years ago,
years ago, when Tether first started, I don't think their books were
in order, but I think they have since dot their eyes crossed, their
t's, get their ducks in order. I think the ship is in the
right direction right now. Here's what Paolo Ardiono, if I'm saying that right,
tweeted out Tether Q four twenty twenty three attestation is out. My summary
profit for the quarter two point eight five billion dollars, of which approximately one
billion dollars in net operational profit mainly US T bill interests, and approximately one
point eight five billion dollars from gold and bitcoin holdings. Total profit for twenty
twenty three six point two billion dollars. He said, cash and cash equivalents
cover now ninety percent of all issue tokens, highest percentage in the last years.
He says. The total t us T bill exposure direct plus indirect is
eighty point three billion dollars folks. Teller is making a lot of big moves
here. That's incredible profit and here. Matt Hogan of bit wise said Tether
made more money last quarter than Goldman Sacks. Goldman Sacks made two point zero
one billion dollars. Tether at two point eighty five billion. That's incredible,
folks. This is a major, major win. Crypto's here to stay,
it's growing, it's maturing, and we're seeing the ETFs and all these financial
products being launched. So I'm very bullish on this upcoming bull market cycles and
future ones as well. Now. Paolo also highlighted that bitfinex, which is
also part of Tether, that there are two companies that work together. They're
going to launch BFx or securities or bitfinex securities. Excuse me, he said,
super excited to see Bitfinex's securities launching. El Salvador providing a global venue
for regulated tokenized assets in a bitcoin country. El Salvador has become the center
of digital finance of Central America. Incredible. They're making a lot of progress
and El Salvador is doing some great things. Now we got news out of
Thailand here. Thailand's SEC breaks new ground in twenty twenty four with crypto friendly
rules. Retail investors can now invest with out limits in digital tokens backed by
real estate or infrastructure. Once again, we are seeing globally the move towards
embracing crypto, so regulations being put into place, They're embracing it. Financing
is opening up, governments are putting out white papers and much more. It's
incredible what's happening. So tie SEC regulates cryptocurrencies under the Digital Asset Businesses Decree,
focusing on areas like sales, trading and initial coin offerings also known as
icos. Digital asset businesses operating in Thailand are required to obtain licenses and comply
with the rules set forth by the SEC as outlined in the decree. The
SEC said the SEC's updated framework removes retail investors' limits for asset back tokens,
creates new rules for custodians, and gives the agency a larger role in monitoring
digital asset business Folks, If only our SEC here in the United States could
get their act together. But crypto is not a US asset class. It
is a global asset class, and game theory is playing out here at competitive
global market, and other countries are passing their regulations, are putting things in
place. So all these things just make me more incredibly bullish. Guys that
even if we're dealing with a clown like Gary Agains here in the United States,
the rest of the world is moving ahead. Capital will flow into the
acid class. And the great thing is that these tokens many have a finite
supply to have a hard cap. Because of the blockchain, anyone can access
it and capital can come in from every fiat currency around the world. There's
never been an asset class like that, once again with a finite supply that
we can see real time on the blockchain. All right, folks, that's
the news. Let me know what you think. If you haven't watched or
listened to my interview with Anthony Scaramuccio was uploaded today, be sure to check
it out. We had a great conversation. He just got back from Davos,
so he shares a lot of insights And if you haven't subscribed to my
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