Speaker 1: Here we go again, another episode coming to you for
Speaker 1: the XRB pod. And of course today is going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit different because I am in the
Speaker 1: presence of Mickkel.
Speaker 2: Today and now are you man nice?
Speaker 3: Say? It's a pleasure to finally get to meet you
Speaker 3: in person and do this live.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't realize that we had never
Speaker 1: met physically. We have only been meeting in our online
Speaker 1: show each week. So it's been good to kind of
Speaker 1: get everything caught up here.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, it was really surreal, kind of had to
Speaker 3: finally have that experience. I mean, it's been a blast
Speaker 3: coming on the show and getting to meet in person
Speaker 3: and do this in verson. It's just a really cool
Speaker 3: twist on everything. And this has been a blast as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, So you look at this event yesterday, absolute
Speaker 1: rock star lineup. We had garling House up there, David
Speaker 1: Schwartz up there, we had the guy from Vassbank. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was Matt the ETF, roundtable, star studded performances by everybody.
Speaker 1: In terms of where the market is, let's go into
Speaker 1: a little bit the strategy of what Ripple is trying
Speaker 1: to do here, because Brad mentioned a lot of different
Speaker 1: things that I think the audience needs to hear and understand.
Speaker 1: When you heard him talk about not only where they
Speaker 1: were around an IPO, where they.
Speaker 2: Are in clarity, what's stuck out to you most.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of my favorite things about Ripple Strategy right
Speaker 3: now is what they're doing is they're acquiring critical infrastructure
Speaker 3: from the traditional system. I think one of the things
Speaker 3: that has been lost in the crypto world is everyone
Speaker 3: wants to build these very cryptocentric businesses, but Ripple's focused
Speaker 3: on finance, and right now, finance happens on the legacy,
Speaker 3: outdated rails. So one of the things Brad specifically talked
Speaker 3: about was how these acquisitions that they made this year
Speaker 3: are going to be critical for XRP. So what they're
Speaker 3: doing is they're acquiring critical infrastructure, prime brokerage, husciity and
Speaker 3: making it so this infrastructure that these traditional firms were
Speaker 3: going to plug into will ultimately become the rails which
Speaker 3: will lead to the XRP ledger. One of the things
Speaker 3: he mentioned that I thought was super interesting was some
Speaker 3: of their plans on ReOC wiring shares off the secondary market,
Speaker 3: really building a business that is centered around enterprise, something
Speaker 3: that I think there's really going to resonate with investors
Speaker 3: and also timetables. It seemed to me, while he wasn't
Speaker 3: retting to say, hey, we're looking to IPO, it seemed
Speaker 3: like he floated the idea a little bit more than previously.
Speaker 3: And one of the only reasons I could think that
Speaker 3: they'd be sucking up all those shares off the secondary
Speaker 3: market was to control that share account going into maybe
Speaker 3: a little bit more of an exciting part of the
Speaker 3: back end of the year. I think of all that
Speaker 3: plays out, he could be alluding to something there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the indicators right now when you think
Speaker 1: about just the strength of the roster of products that
Speaker 1: they've been acquiring over the last eighteen months, including the
Speaker 1: strategy going forward. We had Jack McDonald on the final
Speaker 1: panel yesterday and I point blanked him on SATs and
Speaker 1: I said, what are you missing?
Speaker 2: And he said he smiled a little bit, almost as
Speaker 2: there was something into work.
Speaker 1: So, if you think about the roster of acquisitions that
Speaker 1: they've done, what do you think is missing right now?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I have thought Ripple would
Speaker 3: step into is going to be some kind of a
Speaker 3: market maker, because if you look at what the XRP
Speaker 3: ledger is. At the core, it's a decentralized exchange with
Speaker 3: XRP as that liquidity. Right now, market making happens in
Speaker 3: a very centralized way. But if you could have the
Speaker 3: XRP ledger be a superdex for all kinds of assets,
Speaker 3: issued assets as well as crypto assets, taking a centralized
Speaker 3: market maker in making the core of that infrastructure of
Speaker 3: the XRP ledger could be a very interesting way to
Speaker 3: create a lot of tokenization and a lot of volume
Speaker 3: on the native XRP ledger decks. And that's how I
Speaker 3: think real world adoption happens. I think it's by a
Speaker 3: player like Ripple acting as almost in Amazon Web Services,
Speaker 3: going to these companies and integrating infrastructure directly into the
Speaker 3: XRP ledger, because they're always going to be the experts
Speaker 3: in building that business and integrating it, and they're going
Speaker 3: to work with players who are used to running their
Speaker 3: business not necessarily being a blockchain business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ledger as a service kind of thing.
Speaker 1: ZOUCH is interesting because when you think about adoption and
Speaker 1: the curves that we've seen not only on B to
Speaker 1: B but the banking side of it, we also had
Speaker 1: fast Bank on and Former You know, when you look
Speaker 1: at former Ripple guy really understanding where the banking industry is,
Speaker 1: what's missing there, what they need.
Speaker 2: To kind of move forward.
Speaker 1: Ripples in the perfect spot to play that intermedia area.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I just think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunity here, mikel Oh I do as well.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I think is lost
Speaker 3: in the community and really outside the community is what
Speaker 3: DeFi of tomorrow will look like in comparison to DeFi
Speaker 3: of today.
Speaker 2: If you look at the.
Speaker 3: Traditional financial system, people aren't really running around taking crazy
Speaker 3: LTV loans in terms of their most common activity, right
Speaker 3: it's things like checkings accounts, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, very
Speaker 3: simple loans structures in terms of financing mortgages.
Speaker 2: These are the types of high volume.
Speaker 3: Products, things that have a whole bunch of value runn
Speaker 3: Durham right now in the traditional system that I think
Speaker 3: the x are leder has a really long runway in
Speaker 3: terms of build out. If you listen to David Schwartz
Speaker 3: talk about where he thinks the future of DeFi is going,
Speaker 3: he talks about a lot of very simple products that
Speaker 3: dominate the traditional financial system that aren't built out in crypto.
Speaker 3: So I think while we've seen a huge emergence of
Speaker 3: DeFi one point zero, which has been a lot of
Speaker 3: yield generation and a lot of different high risk loans
Speaker 3: i'll call them, I feel like the scenario we're heading
Speaker 3: into is institutional DeFi DeFi two point zero, where ripples
Speaker 3: recreating a lot of the financial services that already exist
Speaker 3: in the world today and bringing those to blockchain, and
Speaker 3: I think those will be a lot more sustainable and
Speaker 3: a lot more useful.
Speaker 1: Well, and the banks have now started to really create
Speaker 1: this hybrid approach, which we're seeing it with SOFI. They
Speaker 1: launched their platform now Wh're you in grab XRP, But
Speaker 1: I think that's still just an intermediary step before we
Speaker 1: really see onboarding of traditional banks. But also more importantly
Speaker 1: is the next generation bank. So what those are going
Speaker 1: to look like? If you could put together a today
Speaker 1: and you say they're going to be a crypto bank,
Speaker 1: they're going to have traditional services, they're going to have
Speaker 1: maybe some sort of DeFi play in it.
Speaker 2: What would that look like for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, actually I think a lot of those application
Speaker 3: new fintech sort of banks, the Robin Hoods of the
Speaker 3: world have done a great job on UI and attracting
Speaker 3: people and creating broad products that encompass a lot of
Speaker 3: what people are looking for. But if you look at
Speaker 3: the direction of where someone like a Robinhood is going,
Speaker 3: they're moving towards tokenization. It's those forward looking banks, the
Speaker 3: ones that really nailed UI and really nailed customer acquisition,
Speaker 3: who are extremely innovative, and they're looking at ways to
Speaker 3: make their business more efficient, and that is upgrading the plumbing.
Speaker 3: So by moving over to blockchain technology and integrating a
Speaker 3: lot of tools like the XRP ledger, they're going to
Speaker 3: revolutionize the back end like they did the front end.
Speaker 1: What do you make of flair Flair, of course we
Speaker 1: had h gone yesterday. They're moving into a pretty accelerated
Speaker 1: mode in terms of being able to put XRP to
Speaker 1: work in DeFi through their FST. You consider Flare and
Speaker 1: a handful of others that have kind of started in
Speaker 1: the space, x ORP still somewhat underserved in that space.
Speaker 1: Do you like that strategy or are you more on a.
Speaker 2: Traditional route I do.
Speaker 3: I think people need to understand that what Flare is
Speaker 3: is really a back end, back end tool.
Speaker 2: So what it allows people to do.
Speaker 3: Especially large asset managers who historically couldn't have done this
Speaker 3: is take something like an XRP, wrap it and deploy
Speaker 3: it in different strategies and.
Speaker 2: Structures on other protocols.
Speaker 3: Right volts are a great example, a lot of vulture
Speaker 3: on off smart contracts. What FLAIR allows is for XRP
Speaker 3: to be wrapped and put in a vault where I
Speaker 3: think we might see the future of asset management.
Speaker 2: Big time.
Speaker 3: Vaults allow for a lot of different things in terms
Speaker 3: of SMAs, where you can get out of the legacy
Speaker 3: fund structures that make a lot of these things vastly
Speaker 3: more efficient. What FLAIR is doing is unlocking xrp's ability
Speaker 3: to participate in a lot of these things. So I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people thought, oh, I just wrapped
Speaker 3: my XRP because that XRP and yield starts falling from
Speaker 3: the sky. That's the mindset we need to get away
Speaker 3: from and understand that this is going to link to
Speaker 3: different strategies, to different managers to run different strategies that
Speaker 3: might produce an income on your XRP. But what FLAIR
Speaker 3: is doing is allowing and being the infrastructure to make
Speaker 3: that happen.
Speaker 1: All right, last point I'm gonna get on his clarity.
Speaker 1: Many people on stage yesterday I felt that they were
Speaker 1: trying to sidestep the clarity issue, almost to the point
Speaker 1: as if they knew something and at whether or not
Speaker 1: they were confident that we were going to get through.
Speaker 1: We just shot a show this morning. You know, you
Speaker 1: got Tom Tillis on the board right now or on
Speaker 1: the on the rail right now in terms of ethics
Speaker 1: and what the Trump family is doing. Now you have
Speaker 1: Senator Kennedy coming in with holding out because of what's
Speaker 1: happening on the housing business.
Speaker 2: So now you've got all.
Speaker 1: These senators starting to hold this thing up. My question, Michel,
Speaker 1: does this get done?
Speaker 3: So? You know, I think it's unfortunate what we've seen
Speaker 3: develop in terms of more firepower for the Democrats to
Speaker 3: attack cryptocurrency industry. It kind of seemed like maybe we
Speaker 3: could convince everyone that we could get this jammed through.
Speaker 2: It seems like the Republicans.
Speaker 3: Have put a lot of hurdles in their way and
Speaker 3: firepower against it.
Speaker 2: It seems like things are getting tight.
Speaker 3: It seems like if you talk to people to know,
Speaker 3: like you said there's earning to dodge the question. I
Speaker 3: know a lot of people are gonna feel very disappointed
Speaker 3: by maybe Clarity not happening before midterms. I will say this, though,
Speaker 3: I don't think all this time is being spent for nothing.
Speaker 3: I think it's extremely possible what the Democrats might try
Speaker 3: to do is take over the House and then repitch
Speaker 3: some of this Clarity stuff under what they're doing so
Speaker 3: they can maybe change their narrative about being the anti
Speaker 3: crypto party. While there are leaders in the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: like Elizabeth Warren, we're very anti crypto if you actually
Speaker 3: look at a lot of it, Coinbase actually had a
Speaker 3: very interesting sight breaking it down, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people in that party where extremely extremely pro crypto.
Speaker 3: I think they could potentially want to take credit for Clarity,
Speaker 3: not give that win to the Republicans, to say, hey,
Speaker 3: we did this, flip the narrative.
Speaker 2: I don't think they want to waste all this work.
Speaker 3: I think the banks want clarity, I want the crypto
Speaker 3: currency companies also want clarity.
Speaker 2: I think they get it over the board.
Speaker 3: I don't think they're going to want to hand it
Speaker 3: over as a win to Trump, though, especially with some
Speaker 3: of these things well, yeah.
Speaker 2: With ethics. Now you've got Kennedy coming and.
Speaker 1: Almost giving them an out because of housing, you start
Speaker 1: to strengthen this position. I don't necessarily like it, but
Speaker 1: I unfortunately believe that's
Speaker 2: Kind of the play right now that we're dealing with