XRP The $0.00 Standard

[00:00:00]HAR, XDC, Salana, XRP. There are so many different chains out there. But why do I talk so much about XRP? Well, guys, the obvious answer is is that well, Ripple is a 200lb gorilla in a room of a whole bunch of people with a lot of hopes and dreams. And Ripple already has the people. They already have the infrastructure. They already have the partnerships to make it all happen. But I'm going to nerd out in this video a little bit and talk about something that I don't really think is talked about by a lot of people in the XRP community, which is the actual design of the XRP ledger. Now, to be clear, my main thesis for why the XRP ledger wins over the long run is because Ripple has built out the partnerships. They've built out the infrastructure. They've built out everything they need to touch real world finance. If you compare that to something like a Salana, let's say, there is a lot of brand new applications of cryptocurrency technology happening on Salana. But the only problem for Salana with me is always that they're not as close to the regulated financial system as someone like Ripple. And I just want to be clear that over the long run, I think that's one of the most important pieces. And Ashish Burlo of Everdorf actually said this same exact thing. As she burles said 50% is probably the technology, but the other 50 is building actual applications for the technology with the real world in mind and that means regulations and all that. So, it's so important to start a video like this and say it's not all technology. But guys, it helps that the XRP ledger is extremely different than almost every other cryptocurrency out there. The big reason in layman's terms for why the XRP ledger is so different is because Salana, HAR, XDC, all these other chains rely heavily on smart contracts. And smart contracts are very, very interesting. They essentially allow you to do anything on any given blockchain, which is amazing. It opens up countless possibilities and infinite possibilities for what you can build.

[00:02:13]The problem though is that when you have infinite possibilities, you also have infinite opportunity for security issues. You also have infinite possibility which takes up a massive amount of resources to maintain that infinite possibility.

[00:02:34]What Ripple said in the very early days, which I fundamentally agree with, is there are going to be a lot of use cases for blockchain technology.

[00:02:42]But to be honest, not all of those use cases for blockchain technology might actually be where blockchain technology wins. When I first got involved in blockchain technology, it was actually a very simple thesis. It wasn't that the entire world was going to run on blockchain, that we have to track shipments from one ship to another on blockchain. Like those were all interesting things, but for me, the key use and the key disruption blockchain technology was going to bring to the world was always around finance. It was always around moving money. And the problem is is with all these different blockchains that have infinite capabilities and you can build anything on them. It's like how many of those capabilities are actually [snorts] being used? If you open up the spectrum of the blockchain to do absolutely anything that's great, but how much value is being added by those tailend applications?

[00:03:43]The thing I have always admired about the XRP ledger is its core focus is on financial transactions. And what that means is they can keep the chain lean, mean, and secure and still handle what I have always thought was going to be the biggest by far application and use case for crypto. I mean, Satoshi said it himself. The main purpose he built Bitcoin for was peer-to-peer payments.

[00:04:12]the movement and settlement of value.

[00:04:14]And Bitcoin ultimately kind of failed at that. It just didn't have the technology to keep up. What Ripple did with the XRP ledger that has always really attracted me outside of their partnerships, outside of how they're positioning the XRP ledger, outside of the other businesses they built alongside of it to drive real world volume. But what they always did that was so important was keep the XRP ledger lean and mean and ready to handle what they thought the primary use case would be. And that primary use case was finance.

[00:04:51]One of the early creators of Salana actually came out and said that you could probably replicate the entire financial system with six smart contracts. And this is how the XRP ledger works because a lot of people get this confused. A lot of people see the XRP ledger and say, "Oh, the XRP ledger doesn't have smart contracts," which is kind of true. The XRP ledger doesn't have the capability for anyone at any time to go issue a smart contract on the chain. But you need to understand that the XRP ledger is a fully permissionless code piece. Which means at any given time, if I have a feature set that would normally be represented by a smart contract on another network, I can implement that to the XRP ledgers cord codebase as long as the rest of the network agrees. Well, what does this mean? This means that when the Salana founder came out and said that you could run the entire financial system on six smart contracts, those six smart contracts could be implemented into the core XRP ledger codebase. And that means you didn't need the 100 to a,000 to 2 million to 10 billion smart contracts that Salana has capable. You just needed six. And say later down the road, oh, it turns out we actually need a seventh.

[00:06:10]Well, Salana has those capabilities, but it's clogged up with so much more. The XRP ledger, you just add the seventh.

[00:06:19]And what's so important about this is I believe over the long run, specivivity is going to win. I don't think I said that word right, but having a specific tailored blockchain is going to win out for each application. So, there might be a blockchain really good for gaming.

[00:06:36]There might be a blockchain really good for NFTts. There might be a blockchain really good for Coinbase. There might be a blockchain really good for Robin Hood.

[00:06:45]In fact, they're already building those.

[00:06:47]Notice they're not saying, "Oh, we're going to build on Ethereum," or, "Oh, we're going to build on." No, they're just building their own chain. So the XRP ledger in my opinion is so perfectly positioned not trying to be this jack of all trades because ultimately when you try to be a jack of all trades, you end up being okay at everything but good at nothing. And the truth is is I don't know if there are a lot of other really important, highly specific applications that blockchain is going to be used for outside of finance.

[00:07:23]The real revolution, the real place the financial system has lagged is not in its front end, not by not having having NFTts, not by not having meme tokens. It was the lack of the capability of moving and settling value. The XRP ledger can win a massive amount of market share and go up by exponential amounts just by winning that use case. And even if all these other chains have similar capabilities, they are always going to be bogged down by not being highly tailored and specific for that core application. So guys, to be honest, the XRP ledger in my opinion is the most best or the most wellpositioned blockchain out there because of the partnerships, because of the people, because of what Ripple has done to interconnect it to the trillions upon trillions of dollars in the traditional financial system. But on top of that, like Ashish Burla said, you still have the technology piece. And sometimes I feel like if I'm buying Salana and Ethereum and HAR and XDC, you're kind of just buying the same idea all over again. It's the same idea that everyone's going to want to do everything on blockchain and you need infinite ways to compose the blockchain and you just need to throw it all out there and see what sticks.

[00:08:51]But why would I have to make that bet if my entire thesis going into it was that finance is the real use case here? that moving moving and settling value and tokenization is the real value ad that blockchain technology is going to bring to the world and for me that makes XRP extremely unique that makes XRP extremely differentiated and that's what I like. It's not the same thing over again. It's not a Salana competitor.

[00:09:20]It's something completely different, unique, and specifically tailored for the application technology.

[00:09:29]So guys, what we're likely going to see is the continued trend of people maybe building kind of a fun interesting application on Salana, but ultimately once they decide what they really need in a chain, they're just going to make their own chain. The question is though, will that work for a neutral decentralized settlement layer? And the answer is no. That's where you need public decentralized infrastructure to interconnect the massive web of chains that is being created. And guys, for that, what you really need is the is the best way, the most efficient way, the most connected way to move and settle value. And that's where I think the XRP ledger specifically shines. Does it mean that every single application is going to be built on the XRP ledger?

[00:10:20]Absolutely not. But guys, I think that's actually more of a bare case for a salon in Ethereum. I think the real bull case is building a chain that is highly specific that has the tools necessary to get the job done without being overbuilt and over complicated. The features coming to the XRP ledger, batch transactions, privacy are exactly what financial institutions want. And guys, that's no coincidence. Ripple is putting them there for a purpose. Ripple wants the institutions to just have enough what they need to build out their use cases because they understand that's going that is what's going to differentiate the XRP ledger over the long run and make it the chain for institutional finance. Guys, thank you so much for coming. Hope everyone has a great day. for now. Nickel