Welcome to the Thinking Crypto Podcasts. You're home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple, please leave a five star rating and a review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, Today Ripple released their Q four twenty twenty three XRP Markets Report,
and I want to highlight two key points in here. I'm obviously not going to read through the entire thing, you guys can certainly do that. The first is regarding institutional sales of XRP, and the reason why this is important is the SEC recently won the motion to compel to have Ripple provide the twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three reports to them, and that was part of I think their plan to negotiate a higher penalty that Ripple would have to pay.
So let me read the following for you so you can an idea of the context. Looking ahead, Ripple and the SEC will enter the remedies phase of the case focused on institutional sales. Legal briefs will be submitted in March and April of this year, and then the Court will decide which remedies to impose. Even prior to the court's July ruling, Ripple had changed the way it sold XRP, and going forward, we will ensure that Ripple's sales conform
to the legal standards articulated by the Court. Ripple will continue to raise the bar on compliance, ethics and transparency and invest the resources necessary to ensure compliance with the law as it continues to evolve in the space. Now the key word there is they change the way they sold XRP. So it could be that the SEC getting this small victory in the motion to compel is a moot
point because Ripple has already updated things. And you know, in my recent interview with metalaw Ma and James Murphy, I'll be publishing that tomorrow, he mentioned like, hey, a lot of the sales for ODL and so forth is happening overseas and the SEC doesn't have jurisdiction over that. So I think, you know, the recent small victory to the SEC got for that motion to compel is a moot point, and it doesn't seem like it's going to
have too much of an impact, all right. Second, Ripple licensing wins. So licensing frameworks have helped establish regulatory clarity, attracting companies, entrepreneurs, investments, and fostering sustainable innovation. In Q four, Ripple including subsidiaries obtain licenses in major markets, including its full Major Payments Institution license granted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and its registration as a Virtual Asset Service provider by the
Central Bank of Ireland. To date, Ripple holds a New York Bit license and has secured money transmitter licenses in forty jurisdictions in the US. That's pretty big, folks, the amount of licenses they have, and they have the most coveted license, and that is the New York Bit license, which is so hard to get. There are crypto companies that have been waiting years for this. I've spoken to many representatives from many of these crypto companies and it
is hard to get the license, folks. So the fact that Ripple has this is pretty incredible. So those are the two major takeaways, and we'll have to see how things go with the sec versus Ripple in settling, well, I shouldn't say settle but they're coming to the remedies part of this lawsuit and hopefully it's wrapped up soon. And here's an interesting article from coin Telegraph highlighting that despite the XRP price being down, Wales are opening bullish leverage long
positions. So XRP on the charts is in a falling wedge. Looks like it's going to bottom out and then break out, you know, to what price. I don't know. Could we get to eighty cents or something like that. Can we get to a dollar? We'll have to wait and see. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not just XRP, it's other all coins as well. And with bitcoins current moved to forty five k, some of that liquidity will flow to the all so you can see alls pop
off. But XRP on the charts looks like it's positioned to do that, folks, So be on the lookout. Let's see what happens in the coming weeks and if XORP is going to go in the move now, folks, as many of you may know, Prometheum launched their Etheroreum custody service. I interviewed Aaron Kaplan of Prometheum. If you haven't seen that interview, check it out. We talk about a lot of things like is he therma security? Bill Hinman much more. Now here's the interesting part, folks, and I
don't think a lot of people are talking about this. And in the interview Aaron Kaplan kind of alluded to it. Prometheum has a license, the special Broker Dealer license, which allows them to custody what they would call digital asset securities. The first asset they go and list is E theorem. What has Gary Genser refused to say before Congress? Is E theorema security or not? Right? Patrick McHenry famously tell us, sir, is E theorem of security?
Gary Ginster just remains quiet. Right, So what's happening here? Gary's not reiterating Bill Hinman or J. Clayton statements about Ethereum. They have not approved any theorem SPOTTYTF And Prometheum gets this license and they are treating Ethereum as a security. They're not just saying, hey we listit etheroreum. And here's a prime example. They literally tweeted out Prometheum Capital is thrilled to announce eth
as the first digital asset security for institutional cussy on our platform. What's happening here? This is this a plan by Gary Ginser? Is this the next sneaky move by Gary Ginser? Remember Gary's no dummy. He's a smart guy. And I never said he was dumb or for he's some low IQ dummy or something like that. No, no, no, he's a smart guy. He's a Goldman sas guy. What I said, he's a scumbag. He knows what he's doing. Right years ago, this man was teaching about
crypto at MIT. He tried to go work for Binance. Then all of a sudden he comes to the sec and doesn't oneint eighty. But that's because he is a puppet on strings being controlled by Elizabeth Warren who's controlled by Jamie Diamond and the trad five folks who want to slow this market down and come
in and take over. That is the endgame. But the fact that Prometheum is doing this and positioning eth as a digital asset security who has been calling crypto assets digital asset securities, Gary, I think this is Gary's sneaky move. Something is going on here, folks. And look there are people in the market speculating that you know, the ethere orm etf will be approved. I don't know about that. I was more bullish on bitcoin SPOTTYTF. I
don't know about is SPOTTYTF. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying etherorem is a security. I think the entire market needs Claire. Just look at what happened with the Ripple situation. XRP was declared intrinsically out of security. We can't have this cherry picking. We need clear regulations and we need to get this market in order. Here we got Eric Balchuniz of Bloomberg highlighting that Arc and Vest, which is Kathy Wood Arc Slash twenty one Shares has
just filed an amended S one for their spot ether ETF. Looks like they updated to be only cash creations and some other things that bring it in line. Would recently approve spot Bitcoin ETF prospectus now Nate Karachi, who's president of the ETF store, he set the following. In my opinion, there are three options for the SEC. One approve the spot bitcoin ETFs. Two, force closure of the Ethereum futures ETFs which they just allowed in October three,
deny and likely face lawsuits since they allowed ether futures ETFs. Some nuances here, but those are the choices or these are the choices. Number two and number three seem untenable. So it's interesting, what will Gary do. We know he's not slowing down, folks, and he's not budging until the courts make him. Just look at the gray scale situation. He could have easily approved the bitcoin's body tabs. He's already declared bitcoin many times as not a
security. Bitcoin features have been trading for a long time, So why did it take so long to do this? Why did it take the courts to call him arbitrary and capricious? Once again, He's been controlled by Elizabeth Warren. That's what's happening here. That's his boss. He doesn't care what you and I think. He doesn't care what the crypto industry thinks. Now, what could fix a lot of this is if Congress can act and get regulations
through. This week, Janet Yellen called on Congress to pass regulations, so they may do that so that Gary doesn't continue to nonsense here with the theorem, because there's a lot of baggage ready. Theorem Once again, Bill Hinman speech, Jay Clayton, Form SEC Chair echoing Bill him in statements and then does Gary want want to get tied up in litigation where it brings Hman in for more testimony and more of these things are highlighted like they were in the
Ripple lawsuit. These are big questions, folks, and we'll see what happens. But Gary is up to something. There's something sneaky here with this Prometheum thing, and they are echoing the statements that Gary uses digital asset securities, right, that's a made up term by Gary Ganser. Now, speaking of ETFs, Matt Hogan highlighted that after one month and he's from bitwise, four of the twenty five fastest growing ETFs of all time are spot bitcoin ETFs.
Folks, the capital is flowing in black rocks. ETF is of course leading billions of inflows. It's incredible what is happening. And that's one of the reasons I'm so bullish on this upcoming bull market cycle. As the bitcoin having takes place, the supply the rewards gets cut in half and less bitcoin to go around. It becomes more harder to mine bitcoin to the mining difficulty rate increases, so it's gonna be I think, an epic bull market and a
great indication of that is the amount of inflows into these ETFs. Now, speaking of the SEC, remember the debt box situation, right, the SEC once again scumbags. Right. They lied to the judge in the debt box situation. They tried to cover it up, sweep it on their rug. Oh you know, we didn't do anything, blah blah blah, typical. But the judge said no, no, no, I'm going to sanction your
ass. And then the SEC dropped the case. Right, And here we got some senators who have picked up on this, and it looks like they're ready to take action. Eleanor Tarroot of Fox Business tweeted out, Republican senators have gotten wind of the debt box fiasco, where the SEC intentionally misled a court in order to gain access to emergency relief against the company. The group
of senators that includes JD. Vance and Senator Cynthia Lummis says it's skeptical of the mandatory training the agency is requiring for its lawyers as a remedy to the situation. Here's a quote. Perhaps such training is in the most elementary aspects of legal conduct is necessary. Now, letters are fine. I think they're important for optics and changing the narrative. They got to take action, Patrick McHenry, you have to file the subpoena against Gary Gaincer. We got to
take action, and I hope they do. I hope Patrick McHenry does this because these letters, once again, I'm not saying they're not impactful. They are, but they're not keeping Gary Gainster up at night. Right. But you hand him a subpoena, it's going to be really big. It will be roundbreaking and ground shaking as well. Now Ron Hammond also weighed in on
this letter, and he's up the Blockchain Association, he said. When describing the SEC's current posture on litigation, former SEC chair Clayton said there's been a shift to if we're not losing cases, we aren't suing enough businesses, which is as nine. So Ron says, well, the l's are racking up and the Senate Banking Republicans are taking notice with the latest letter on debt Box. But once again, letters great changes the optics and the narratives. Yes,
take action against this guy, Gary Ganser. That is now, folks, quick word from our sponsor and that is Uphold. Uphold is a great crypto platform. I've been using them since twenty eighteen. I've interviewed the CEO, the CFO of many representatives. They have two hundred and sixty plus cryptocurrencies. You can buy bitcoin and all the top all coins. You can also trade precious metals on here, gold, silver, palladium, platinum. They
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Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Now we got news here that Bain Capital Crypto leads a five point two million dollars seed round for Ethereum Focus Decentralized exchange aggregator FLOOD. So we continue to see capitals coming in folks from vcs and different hedge funds and investment firms, and they're investing into tokens
as well as the company's building the infrastructure of the market. Very bullish, so let me give you some details here Flood and the Ethereum ecosystem focused decentralized exchange aggregator has raised five point two million dollars in a seed funding round. Bain Capital Crypto let the round with our Archetype and robot Ventures participating. Flood
said Thursday. The round closed in the summer of twenty twenty three. Flood co founder and CEO Francesco told the block, adding that it was structured as equity with token warrants. He declined to comment on valuation, but said there was also a small funding one year ago with the small investors and a few angel investors. Francisco, a former software engineer at Uma Protocol, declined to share his and his co founder Jan's full name. Jen is a crypto developer
and the author of Neuronica, a rustmachine learning library. Flood said as part of leading the round, Bain Capital Crypto has one observer seat on Flood. Francisco said, so interesting and Flood is a decentralized aggregator decentralized exchange aggregator that is currently live on Arbitrum one and is planning to expand to etheroereum Base and Optimism in the coming months. So once again, folks capital is flowing in folks are bullish. Here we got news that crypto exchanges continue to expand.
Kraken and okx the latest crypto exchange is moving into new markets. Kracken is the latest crypto exchange set to move into a new market after securing regulatory approval to operate in the Netherlands. The company's Virtual Asset Service Provider registration from the Dutch Central Bank allows it to offer its products the clients and professional traders there, the company said Thursday. The Netherlands has the highest fintech adoption rate among
developed economies. Racin said in a blog post, roughly twenty percent of Dutch citizens own crypto. According to the exchange and if you all recall, Coinbase had selected Ireland as its EU MICAH hub in October, and Kraken had also received an eu E Money Institutional license from the Central Bank of Ireland and a vast registration from the Bank of Spain last year. Outside of Europe, competing
crypto exchange Okx also expanded to a new market earlier this week. The company's new Argentina platform allows crypto trading and staking for users in South American countries. So folks global expansion happening with these crypto companies. It's a race for market share. They all want to make money. They know what's coming. The next bull market, another mass cycle, this one even bigger because of the
ETFs and further regulatory clarity than we've had in the years past. We're not, you know, where we need to be ideally, but you know, we're getting there, and with the EU having their MICA regulation. UK has passed their regulation. We just need the US, the largest capital markets in the world, to get regulations right and it's going to bring in a lot more capital. But the ETFs are a great start. So, folks, I am bullish. I continue to dollar cost average and buy the dips,
buying the blood on the streets. I don't buy pumps, and there will be a point where I will stop buying, and I'm looking to sell, right, I'm looking to sell the blow off top of the euphoria phase. So uh continue to listen and subscribe to this podcast. I'll share my strategies and my updates and what I'm doing. A great way to support the podcast, folks, that's a one hundred percent free is the Please sign up for
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