SWIFT Is Dead & Ripple CEO On XRP Ledger Bond Settlement

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, this is the digital asset investor and we're going to start off with a clip of Brad Garlinghouse talking about bond settlement coming to the XRP ledger. I missed it is from XRP Las Vegas. I kind of built in at the base level.

[00:00:16]There's a bunch of industries I don't know that much that much about. I read about things like bond settlement. Bond settlement is slow, it is arcane, and it is absurd to think about how that works in a world of the internet. And I think it's only a matter of time before you see things like bond settlement move to on chain and you know, to the extent Ripple could help catalyze those things to leverage the XRP ledger, fabulous. But again, I I don't want to leave people the impression it is going to be a multi-chain world. The XRP ledger is exceptionally good at some things and not good at some other things. And that's okay. Like it's almost by design.

[00:00:55]Like that's good because if you try to be all things to all people, you're going to be less good at other things. You're going to slow the transaction speed down. You're going to impact cost per transaction. You're going to like we have an amazing underlying infrastructure that's really good for certain things and let's invest and go after them.

[00:01:12]Well, I'm going to go check my volumes to make sure they're right while you listen to the intro.

[00:01:17]Ignition [music] sequence start.

[00:01:20]6 5 4 3 2 1 0 lift off. We have a lift off.

[00:01:31]>> [music] [bell] >> Okay, we're going to start with Patrick Witt talking about the Clarity Act. Here we go.

[00:01:46]>> I mean Yeah.

[00:01:48]What's your vision assuming this does pass for what this industry looks like, you know, a year, three, five years down the road? Well, I think you you look at genius as an illustrative example of what can happen. Genius passes, stablecoin market has exploded, you see tremendous investment going into that.

[00:02:07]New funds that just got raised, Han Ventures, A16Z, Dragonfly, Paradigm. So many of these funds are being raised and one of the primary thesis that they're investing in is around stablecoins and new payment rails. So, that is proof point of cause and effect.

[00:02:23]We got this bill done, there's regulatory clarity, the rules are being written, and now here comes all of this investment, all of this new venture money, institutions starting to, you know, say, "Okay, what does this mean for for my company, my business? How can I take advantage of this? How can we potentially integrate this product into our suite of products available?" So, I think with clarity, you're going to see a similar response to that that government stamp of approval that these assets, this industry is here to stay.

[00:02:51]And you're already seeing a number of the the banks and other existing institutions start to position themselves, but that's really just going to firm up with this legislation getting passed. And I think you're going to see a lot more investment in space, a lot more institutional adoption, which inevitably makes its way into the entire financial fabric.

[00:03:11]Now, here what he's talking about is what Christian Carlos has said, which is that the banks need the Clarity Act more than crypto needs the Clarity Act.

[00:03:20]>> very bullish on on this legislation. And many people out there would say that the banks are actually probably more in need of this legislation than crypto is. That bank permissible activities in in title four is hugely important to the banks because, you know, in a world in which you start to tokenize a lot of these assets, if banks don't have a clear permission to engage in this, they're going to be left behind. So, competitively, I think it's it's arguably as important, maybe even more important that the banks get this legislation done. So, the fact that there are some that are that are very outspoken over this issue of stable coin rewards and yield is is maybe it embraces the question is do they just want to fight a bill overall and maybe it's not just this issue but that's the one that's been most salient that they've tried to use as a wedge issue but Yep, they have not acted in good faith.

[00:04:10]That's for sure.

[00:04:12]Now they're talking here on crypto and crypto America law. They're talking about how this is much bigger than just crypto legislation.

[00:04:21]>> I don't even think of this as a crypto bill. I think of it as a market modernization bill. Like if What you mean like Bretton Woods 2.0?

[00:04:30]Bringing us into the next 100 years.

[00:04:32]>> This is the legislation that is going to bring our financial markets into the 21st century and to me that's what makes it really exciting and and historic and and of course you know I'd be remiss not to mention vaults. We were very excited.

[00:04:45]Our whole team was really excited to see the mention of you know not just vaults but vaults tokens and digital asset receipts and transparent systems and constrained programmatic infrastructure, right? Like you see these terms in the bill and like I said I think that is a really meaning conceptual shift. Like I think Congress really is beginning to understand and think of crypto as infrastructure. So that was really exciting.

[00:05:09]Yep, it's infrastructure. Now this tweet was put out and this is interesting. It says the Clarity Act may still fail from becoming law seven reasons why. First the Senate bill merger the banking committee text must first merge from with a parallel bill from the So these are all just like all all the drama you're going to see will have to do with all this. You need a 60 vote the 60 vote wall. There's 53 Republican seats that So they need at least seven Democrats to come over but all those Democrats know what happened in the last election folks. Third the ethics fight where they're going to go try to make it about Trump.

[00:05:47]Um I can't remember where I heard it, but I heard that Trump um was Somebody told me that Trump that they had heard that the Trump family doesn't have a problem with them putting rules against the Trump family trading, but they they want it to be after 3 years or something like that. In other words, some kind of compromise to give these people let these people be able to hold it up and say, "Oh, we see we got Trump ethically. We've got we pinned him down. We got it we worked out a deal."

[00:06:18]Then you got the banking lobby. Banks are still working on trying to kill DeFi, safe harbor, and different things. House reconciliation. The House passes its own version in July 2025. Senate version added new language. Both chambers have to vote again unified bill. Six if there's an August deadline. If it doesn't happen by then, you're going to have the midterms. And seven, rulemaking delay. Even if signed, the law has 360-day delay. SEC and CFTC must write the rules. Um and okay.

[00:06:53]So, then we've got this, which is um Raoul Pal, and he's talking I'll just let you hear. Speak to the team at Coinbase. I speak to any of these people. I see any of these people saying it's all over. Mhm.

[00:07:06]>> [clears throat] >> They're all saying it's all coming. Mhm.

[00:07:09]Cuz don't forget, if you're at Coinbase, you know the pipelines of institutions who are going to use your rails to tokenize. Mhm.

[00:07:15]>> [clears throat] >> If you're Bitwise, you know what the RIAs are thinking, the endowments are thinking, the pension plans are thinking. You know the lead time it takes.

[00:07:23]Um it takes a long time, but they can see visibility of their pipeline.

[00:07:28]They know how price sensitive those people are, so they can weight the probabilities of who their customers are going to be. Mhm. And Coinbase can do the same. Mhm. We haven't had the Clarity Act yet.

[00:07:39]Once that comes, it kind of is like, okay, it's now free reign. Floodgates, that's what happens. Now, let me pull this up so you can see it. Um the folks, the XRP community was while everybody else was talking about cartoon monkeys and green candles and Shiba Inu and all the garbage that did not matter or that was a prototype, the XRP army, community, whatever you want to call it, was talking about the bigger picture. We were talking about bricks. We were talking about the petro dollar. We were talking about what crypto really was created to do.

[00:08:14]And it wasn't created by some guy in his bathroom in his mama's basement or whatever.

[00:08:20]That is not who Satoshi is.

[00:08:22]Well, this is a great graphic I saw going around. What just happened in Beijing wasn't a trade trip. It was a showing of force and possibly the most important financial events since Bretton Woods in 1944. They're showing all these major financial executives that came, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Visa, MasterCard, Blackstone, City, Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, Boeing, Cargill, Coherent.

[00:08:46]And then they had all of the different people in the Trump administration.

[00:08:50]The timing is no coincidence and I've been saying this, folks. The Clarity Act, Digital Asset Market Structure advanced through Senate Banking Committee same day Trump sat across from Xi in Beijing. Then of course you had the the Iran factor with the oil. China buys 90% of their oil there. The Beijing outcome, Xi offered to help pressure Iran. China agreed it must remain open.

[00:09:13]Told Trump uh Xi told Trump China won't give Iran military equipment. Chinese vessels started moving through the strait days later.

[00:09:22]And then of course this and this is what we're really talking about. Let me get it up.

[00:09:26]Genius Act. So, the new financial architecture is being built right while all this is going on. Genius Act, then Clarity Act, strategic Bitcoin reserve.

[00:09:36]Don't forget the digital asset stockpile. They don't want to talk about that.

[00:09:40]BlackRock, Goldman um tokenize real world assets. Visa and MasterCard moving stable coin rails.

[00:09:47]Hong Kong building the bridge between East and West digital finance. China's MBridge project. 1944 Bretton Woods world powers gathered after World War II designed the global monetary system with the US dollar at the center.

[00:10:00]This may be Bretton Woods 2.0 except this time the dollar isn't uh doesn't sit on gold, it sits on blockchain.

[00:10:08]Well, I think gold will be a crucial part of this too.

[00:10:12]Um the most powerful people on the planet just flew to Beijing together to make sure America controls how the future is built.

[00:10:20]This is a a con- in my opinion, it's always good it was always going to be some type of compromise on world reserve currency. I believe that there will be digital assets in a basket of currencies.

[00:10:35]Maybe through the IMF, we'll see. Or maybe they just get rid of the IMF.

[00:10:38]We'll We'll see how it all pans out.

[00:10:41]All right. Uh let's go back to this so you can see it better. Now, the other day we showed you this. It's worth hearing again from Eric Trump.

[00:10:49]If I can play You think the Swift wire transfer system is going to exist in in 7 years when you can't send a wire past 4:00 in the afternoon on a Friday? Not a chance. Not a chance. You know why these stable coins are coming around and Bitcoins come around and you can transact using your smartphone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You think commodities are going to be traded on a Swift system where again people's money is frozen out? You don't get interest on that money for 72 hours? Of course not. And the banks have fought like hell to keep that from happening and we've broken the banks.

[00:11:25]Okay. So, then we've got this from Smoke. Ripple Swift documented.

[00:11:30]Financial interest institutions increasingly adopt hybrid approaches with Ripple for specific high volume quarters while they maintain Swift connectivity. Universal I didn't see that I had got that out where you couldn't see it. Connectivity for universal reach. And then this was um let me put this on the other screen so you can see this better. This is um I'm drawing a blank on his name from Rip- Ripple. Listen to this. It really was about trying to form a a a better messaging system. Sort of something that that updated the the the Swift approach and leveraging cryptography and and blockchain technology to make that real time, to sort of address some of the challenges that are are inherent with a system that's been around for 40 or 50 years. Um that didn't involve cryptocurrencies, that didn't involve really solving the liquidity challenges associated with with with cross-border payments.

[00:12:19]But over time as our customer base got more comfortable with that the technology and saw the opportunity and saw that we were able to abstract the complexity away and really just deliver the benefit they were seeking, we then sort of went to this next step which was addressing liquidity by by leveraging a digital asset. In our case we use one called XRP as a bridge currency between really a fiat transaction. So from the end users' perspective, they didn't really understand or need to understand that the the crypto was involved. All they saw was faster, it was cheaper, it was more reliable, it was available 24/7. So all big improvements on what was happening before.

[00:12:58]And so we're continuing to move down that that continuum if you will. Um and we're taking more and more of the complexity on our backs, getting even into the flow of funds as opposed to just providing a technology. So we're licensed now um in many states in the US. We have a bit license in New York.

[00:13:15]Um we've applied for licenses throughout the world. We have a ma- major payments institution license um recently granted by the MAS in Singapore. So over time we really want to be that that go-to place where you can can I can move money quickly whenever you want however you want and then start to layer on these other building blocks if you would.

[00:13:37]Okay.

[00:13:38]So, the Swift thing is happening now. Let's look at the This is the new Fed chair.

[00:13:45]Now, you have to understand as usual he's wearing his Bitcoin tie and they're they're for whatever reason the US government wants to keep the Bitcoin narrative going for now. They know it's not about Bitcoin. But this is the new Federal Reserve You you made reference to Bitcoin and I thought I heard a little bit of condescension that people are buying Bitcoin. It had the more the more I see it has to be that they intend to pay off the US debt with Bitcoin so they want to drive it up.

[00:14:11]But then when the utility of everything else kicks in I think it'll drive Bitcoin up too.

[00:14:19]But I believe that they've always known the infrastructure was going to involve other digital assets that that aren't Bitcoin. Bitcoin and these things. But doesn't it right Charlie Munger, this is a two three years before he died.

[00:14:30]Charlie Munger attacked Bitcoin. He called it evil in part because it would begin to undermine the Fed's ability to manage the economy. Or it could provide market discipline or could tell the world that things need to be fixed.

[00:14:44]Uh Bitcoin does not make you nervous. Uh Bitcoin does not make me nervous. I get Cuz he knows the plan.

[00:14:52]If you had told me three years ago that every single government official, everybody in our government including the Congress is working towards Well, actually if you had told me that three years ago, I mean I was saying that this was all the plan for a long time.

[00:15:09]I just didn't know how many bad guys in government we would have to put on the back burner before it could get done.

[00:15:15]>> Can hearken back to a a dinner I had here in 2011 um, with a someone who's another guest on your show. I won't say his name.

[00:15:26]Um, um, okay, I just did Marc Andreessen who showed me the white paper. That was the original white paper. I wish I had understood as clearly as he did how transformative Bitcoin and this new technology would be. Uh, Bitcoin doesn't trouble me. I think of it as an important asset that can help inform policy makers when they're doing things right and wrong. Um, it is not a substitute to the dollar. I think it can often be a very good policeman for policy.

[00:15:57]And if I were to By the way, while you're listening, I'll point it out when he says it. They always lead with Bitcoin, but you'll hear them Oh, you got to listen for the right words and they'll tell you what's really going to happen. Speak more broadly to what did Charlie Munger and others perhaps have have in mind. Um, there is a proliferation of securities that go under all sorts of names. Many, if not most of them, are not worth what they're might be being traded for. So, what did Charlie say and maybe his his pal Warren say? There's the innovators, the imitators, and the incompetence. There real innovators that are happening in and around that new technology. And what I would try to impart towards, um, businesses and bankers is that the underlying technology that Mark showed me in that white paper or tried to The underlying technology is not Bitcoin.

[00:16:51]It's the underlying technology that they were able to improve with things like the XRP ledger. Show me that white paper. It's just software. It's just the newest, coolest software that will provide us an ability to do things that we could never have done before. Can the software be used for good and evil? Yes, both, like all Maybe he's been listening to me. I've been saying that. software.

[00:17:12]So, I don't cast aspersions like that.

[00:17:14]If there's a final point, it's these technologies are being built here. I don't just mean on Stanford campus. I believe in the United States and the world's most talented engineers from China and Europe and everywhere, they come to the United States even now to try to build this stuff.

[00:17:34]And my view is by building it here, that gives us an opportunity to be more productive and create something very special over Yeah, and you're not going to create it with Bitcoin.

[00:17:45]Um now CZ uh Binance is talking about how the AI agents are going to need money and it's going to be crypto.

[00:17:52]>> You recently predicted that AI agents will execute 10,000 times more transactions than humans. I mean, do you really see that blockchain rails and crypto is going to sort of be phased out by humans and starting to get replaced by sort of AI agents and bots? I mean, is the future of crypto going to be AI?

[00:18:10]I would have kind of phrased it slightly differently. I wouldn't say humans will be phased out. I think well, number one is a lot of agents going to be working for humans, hopefully. So, we don't want the other way around. So, I think a lot of the agents they may be autonomous in the sense that they can execute complex tasks relatively independently, but most of them are working for purposes as defined by humans. So, the money they're spending, etc., the money they're making is probably for humans. So, even though humans it's just that I feel AI is a tool. If we develop it correctly, AI should be a tool that increases our productivity, increases our reach, increases our ability to do more things.

[00:18:41]They are tools that transact on our behalf. But they they also need a that tool needs a tool. It needs a money that they can use programma- programmatically. Like that's blockchain, right? So, those new tools will generate generate a lot more transactions than what we were able to do before because AI is more automated, more kind of can run in the background autonomously. They can do more things that we may not be able to do before.

[00:19:02]But I wouldn't say humans will be completely phased out unless AI completely takes over and then we end our we end our civilization. That's We have big problems.

[00:19:10]Yeah, then we're going to have real big problems.

[00:19:12]Um I'll I'll go over this and then we'll go into the group. May 2026, the CME Nasdaq to launch XRP index futures trading on June 8th. CME Group's the world's largest and most important derivatives exchange through its partnership with Nasdaq. CME Um let's go down here.

[00:19:31]Um Right, for the first time live trading is scheduled for June 8th. Ahead of the live trading these crypto contracts, the CME Group will also implement a major operational shift. Starting May 29th, the CME Group will move its cryptocurrency futures options trading to an always-on 24/7 schedule. This is deliberate step to match the 24/7 trading nature of digital assets. It's going to be massive.

[00:19:58]We're going to go to daixrp.com.

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