Weekly Crypto Check-In

Robert Swarthout: 00:09

Welcome to another episode of the weekly crypto check-in recorded on March 2025. I'm your host Robert Sworthout and generally my cohost Andres Sandate. How's it going Andres?

Andres Sandate: 00:18

Hey Robert, it's good. You know, we're we haven't done this in a couple of weeks so I'm excited to get back on and I'm I'm wearing my my Jayhawks at least for a few more days. You know, we're we're not a a one seed much less a a five. I think we're a seven seed in the NCAA tournament. I hope we can get to the second weekend.

Andres Sandate: 00:37

That's that's my new goal. So, happy March madness to, to all of you and happy late, Saint Patrick's Day.

Robert Swarthout: 00:45

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, a bit of the flip. Normally, the Kansas is the basketball school that, thinks they're gonna go deep. I'm a Florida fan, and for once in a long time, we actually think we might have a chance.

Robert Swarthout: 00:56

So Yeah.

Andres Sandate: 00:57

It won the SEC tournament and, got did got a one seed. So Yeah. A lot of people are excited about the SEC's, you know, one of their teams cutting down the nets in April. Absolutely. There seems to

Robert Swarthout: 01:09

be a decent odds for that to happen. So Yeah. I guess we'll know about a month from now.

Andres Sandate: 01:13

That's right.

Robert Swarthout: 01:15

Yeah. So let's just jump in here. We got a lot to talk about today. Right. The first thing is the White House had a digital asset summit.

Robert Swarthout: 01:21

We talked about it last time that it was happening two days later. We recorded on Wednesday, and it happened on a Friday. It it it was a bit of a nothing burger. You know, it was it was the week of the Trump EO where he talked about a a strategic Bitcoin reserve and then a digital asset stockpile. They talk about the nuances between those.

Robert Swarthout: 01:45

And we've gone over that last episode, but, you know, in my opinion, sadly, the the summit seemed to be more of a come get your face in the news if you or some level were a crypto donor. There was certainly adversaries within the crypto industry at that table. Roughly two dozen people were sitting there with Trump at the at the table at the White House. But it was a little bit of yeah. Like I said, nothing burger, but I guess the news that came out of it was Trump was talking about stablecoin legislation, which we'll get to in a minute.

Robert Swarthout: 02:16

But Right. There there was some, I guess, soft praise from Trump to the people at the table.

Andres Sandate: 02:22

Yeah. Yeah. Again, a lot a lot of expectations from this industry that maybe the summit was going to offer an announcement or was going to offer something in terms of solidarity around legislation or regulation. Yeah, think I saw the same comments that you did in terms of the media's reaction that was a big nothing burger. So, yeah, you pull all these folks together in DC, it doesn't happen often.

Andres Sandate: 02:52

Often it feels like it's a photo op, it's a media opportunity. There were a lot of people in the room who obviously are gonna have a lot of opinions and weigh heavily on, we've talked about it, regulation, the midterms, a lot of these forces at play. They're clearly big stakeholders. What I had posted personally was it's interesting how much crypto has become about policy suits and ties and centralized, you know, power structure.

Robert Swarthout: 03:25

Absolutely. The

Andres Sandate: 03:25

whole industry is all about DeFi and decentralization and permissionless. It's just how much the industry has changed in a year and used to consolidate.

Robert Swarthout: 03:41

Yeah. You know, it's and there's different facets of the crypto market. Right? There's the, you know, the Bitcoin markets, and then there's the DeFi. Then there's other, you know, smaller pockets within crypto outside of that.

Robert Swarthout: 03:52

But it's, you know, I would imagine that if you show if you were able to zoom forward with a time machine from ten years ago and let people that were promoting Bitcoin back then look at Bitcoin today, they would be head scratching. Right? Because the whole libertarian side of it or like we we don't wanna be part of banks or government now. It's all my gosh. That's all that that they want.

Robert Swarthout: 04:14

So it's just kinda funny to see how it flips.

Andres Sandate: 04:16

So I think for me, my takeaway on this is when the digital asset community, let's call it our industry, those 20 folks that were there are in the same room as Jerome Powell and Larry Fink and the head of the SEC and right, the president, like when those groups actually get together and start to really say, let's get this thing going, that's when I'm probably going to start really paying more attention. Because without those central banker regulator, you know, lawmaker folks and this, you know, private sector CEO, you know, head you know, crypto billionaire, like, without those two parties playing, together in the same room and and hashing this out, like, I I just think a lot of it is it is media ops. Oh, a %.

Robert Swarthout: 05:07

Yeah. I would agree with that. It's yeah. So some of the details that are starting or they're they're they're working their way out. First, the government doesn't know how much Bitcoin that they hold.

Robert Swarthout: 05:18

That's crazy. I get that how different departments, different kind of law for for enforcement agencies may have confiscated Bitcoin or whatever, XRP or ADA or whatever it may be as part of some court work. The estimate is The US holds around 200,000 Bitcoin. We'll find out what that number is. I do know that there's a bit of a speculation that it may be roughly half that because there's a court case dealing with a hack that happened at Bitfinex years ago, and maybe roughly 98,000 of those get returned to Bitfinex.

Robert Swarthout: 05:54

That would be, quite the turnaround on, thinking that we The US has the largest reserve in the world going to basically third place. So, you know, we'll see how that plays out over time. But, you know, at the end of day, this EO and the summit is really, you know, Trump's, you know, doing something, albeit something small. It needs to be put into law or it doesn't really matter in my opinion. But, you know, so he can say a promise made is a promise kept when it came to Yeah.

Robert Swarthout: 06:20

He's been he's been trying to toot that horn about once a week, it seems. So

Andres Sandate: 06:25

Right. Well, and I think for investors who own crypto, you know, they're probably wondering, did it impact prices? And the reality is it it it just wasn't the catalyst to drive prices up that maybe people were thinking or hoping if if they are long crypto. So, yeah, just more to come. But we've got a lot of topics to cover, so so we gotta keep rolling.

Robert Swarthout: 06:48

Absolutely. So our next topic, is during the summit, Trump started talking about how he wanted, on his desk to be able to sign into law, stablecoin legislation from congress. Yeah. You know, hopefully, happens. I'm I'm like I mentioned, on another podcast this morning, I'm out of the business of trying to predict when congress does things because it's, you're always gonna be wrong.

Robert Swarthout: 07:12

But in this case, I think that there's a chance it happens. There's a bill called the Genius Act that got voted at a committee and now it's going up for markup. And I believe that's coming through the Senate if I'm not mistaken. And they there's a chance. You know, it'll be the first building block and, you know, it doesn't materially change much for crypto.

Robert Swarthout: 07:36

I mean, stablecoins having that is great, but you're not gonna speculate on a stablecoin. So most people don't hold them per se, but it's it's the first building block that other other things will get built upon, and then maybe we can get some momentum thereafter for, you know, legislation or regulations around more of a market structure bill. So

Andres Sandate: 07:56

Well, if you could push the the cursor down so we're on that second highlight. But Yeah. You know, one of the thing one of the things that that I think the market can expect from president Trump is that there's gonna be an announcement and there is going to be a signal that, you know, the ball is no longer in my court, right? So by him saying, want a bill on my desk to sign before the August recess, what he's effectively done is he put pressure back on, you know, the House, the Senate, the lawmakers to say, do your job, right? Because I've gone out and I've made a campaign promise that we're gonna get, you know, we're gonna get regulation, we're gonna get, you know, the right regulatory structure in place for this industry to get unlocked.

Andres Sandate: 08:39

And now he's come out and said, I want to build by the you know, basically the end of the summer to sign you know it's a it's kind of a genius move from a political standpoint, right? Deflecting you know any any blame if you will from the industry. So we'll see. I don't know. He's shown before that he can use the power of the executive branch to really push through his agenda.

Andres Sandate: 09:05

So we'll see if that plays out here in terms of legislation.

Robert Swarthout: 09:09

Yep. And, you know, if anyone cares about optics about what people think about him, it might be him, Sam deflecting and putting the blame elsewhere may make a lot of sense for him. So we'll move on to our number third topic here. So Texas strategic Bitcoin reserve, it passed that was state bill 21, I believe, passed the senate. I believe, basically, the next step at that point is the governor's desk for it to be signed.

Robert Swarthout: 09:37

And this, admittedly, is over a week old. So there's a chance that this already happened, and I just didn't see the actual signing happening. But this is strict strictly a Bitcoin reserve. There's no other digital asset makeup of this as far as I understand. So, you know, it's cool to see the first state do this.

Robert Swarthout: 09:55

Texas is a state that actually might have a surplus. I don't know their exact financial situation, so that it may make sense for them to do it. And, you know, in some ways, try to front run the government if they think the government's gonna be buying Bitcoin at some point. So or the federal government.

Andres Sandate: 10:08

Yeah. Well, and this is, you know, this is in in line with Texas, you know, launching effectively, now small, albeit it's it's it's in its infancy, but a competitor to the, you know, to the NYSE, right? They launched a market effectively where companies can list and and and build effectively a public market. So, yeah, I mean, don't know the name of the of the regulator or, you know regulators there in terms of their financial markets, etc, but they are. They're definitely ahead from a from a standpoint of trying to be ahead of their their peers to bring you know more activity to the Lone Star State.

Andres Sandate: 10:49

So yeah, we'll see what Governor Abbott does with with the bill. Perhaps it's old news at this point, but certainly, you know, finally, some someone that's put a stake in the ground if you will.

Robert Swarthout: 11:00

Absolutely. And kind of on the topic, oddly about the this equity trading. I saw that Nasdaq is gonna be opening up a secondary headquarters. I believe it's in Austin. So Yeah.

Robert Swarthout: 11:10

Early next year. And we'll talk a little more about the Nasdaq in a little bit, kind of a tie in there, but it's, Texas seems to have a lot going on.

Andres Sandate: 11:18

Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Robert Swarthout: 11:20

So our next topic, and this one will be brief. So David Sachs, he is the appointed czar of AI and crypto by president Trump. Well regarded within crypto and AI. So I think he was a great pick. We've gone over that in the past.

Robert Swarthout: 11:33

But he publicly came out and said because people are starting to wonder, oh, does he still own his Bitcoin? Does you know, he was an investor. Is he still in some funds that whether they're AI or crypto focused. And he said that prior to starting in his role as the czar after he was named. But prior to starting, he worked on his own in a voluntary admission and went and divested up to around $200,000,000 of his personal net worth out of AI and crypto focused things, whether it was crypto directly or crypto VC focused funds or AI for that matter.

Robert Swarthout: 12:08

It's a big deal. He according to him and everything that I've read, he did not have to do this. Right. The ethics said that they he would have had enough of a arm's length distance or maybe there's a precedent. I'm not quite sure.

Robert Swarthout: 12:19

But, you know, it's it's and he's not getting paid for this role. So it's like, a bit of a double whammy there. It's, you know, this likely will cost him probably a couple hundred million dollars, if crypto goes on a run like it might. And he's a wealthy guy to begin with, so maybe we don't need to cry for him, but it's it's cool to see the dedication to the seriousness that he's taking here for this role.

Andres Sandate: 12:44

Yeah. I mean, it's a it's a positive signal. Right? Because, you know, he's obviously accumulated those holdings over many years. His basis in those, you know, from a tax perspective, not to get too in the weeds, but it's a substantial, like you said, material, substantial, whatever the term, it's a substantial decision from just a pure financial standpoint.

Andres Sandate: 13:10

Then when you look at it from just the implications from the standpoint of policy and being a key, key stakeholder in trying to get through legislation and trying to push forward an agenda around pro AI, pro crypto, pro, you know, The US being, really the leader in these two areas that the Trump administration has come out and said, right, in in all, you know, in in all venues, we wanna be the leader. He, you know, I'm going say he needed to because he didn't. But, you know, for him to not have to go and explain himself in a room to a bunch of technologists or investors or politicians or legislators or regulators, that there be any hint of an ulterior motive or agenda. I think it's super critical. So yeah, I think it's a really savvy move on his part from that perspective alone.

Andres Sandate: 14:15

But then, yeah, the the you know, I think you have somebody then that's in the public domain that's not quote unquote tainted. Right?

Robert Swarthout: 14:22

Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, know, hope hopefully, more people would take this lead out

Andres Sandate: 14:28

of wish. And of taint, what a terrible segue you've set up for us to now have to talk about SPF from prison nonetheless. But we we but we here we are. It's crypto and this guy just won't go away.

Robert Swarthout: 14:41

Yeah. He he's he's kinda like that gnat that flies around your ear and you're always swatting it away. So I when this happened, I just did a double take. So he is obviously still in the Manhattan Detention Center, and he sells he he shares the same cell group as P Diddy. So I'm sure it's quite the eclectic group in there.

Robert Swarthout: 15:02

But the point here is is he did a roughly a forty five minute interview with Tucker Carlson and it you know, it's a video interview. It looks like, you know, Zoom basically each way. In the parking How?

Andres Sandate: 15:17

How? Is that even possible? Well go to prison and have a video interview with a national media figure

Robert Swarthout: 15:24

Right.

Andres Sandate: 15:25

Tucker Carlson. I just don't understand. Yeah. Like I mean, this gonna get tough again.

Robert Swarthout: 15:30

This is this is a good get by Tucker. I'll just say that. But but Sam looked like he was in some sort of closet, but I just assumed that they put him there because that's, you know, he's in a small room because that's the way they do these things. Well, they're not supposed to do these things. So after the forty five minute interview, you know, I think it was either later that night or the next day, I see the next headline, which is next on our list.

Robert Swarthout: 15:52

Sam was placed in solitary confinement because he did an illegal interview. Shocker. Right. Shocker. So the questions arise like, had it my assume my assumption this was not on a laptop.

Robert Swarthout: 16:02

This is on a cell phone. So find it. You can do these in cell phones. Like, how did he get that? Like, how is their cell service?

Robert Swarthout: 16:08

Like, there's all these you know, I started to have all these technical questions. Sure. But it was a wide ranging interview. Right. It was kinda fascinating.

Robert Swarthout: 16:15

The dude is delirious in my opinion. But he you know, Tucker even asked him, like, did you try to get a pardon? And Sam's like, oh, no. I did wrong. So I definitely need to be punished.

Robert Swarthout: 16:25

I'm paraphrasing here. Mike, he he says whatever he needs to say in the moment, obviously. But Right. It's the the the part that, you know, the the Internet never surprises here. And this is the the my favorite part is so this would have happened as part of the FTX estate bankruptcies going on.

Robert Swarthout: 16:43

There was all these documents that came out. Apparently Sam had a Google Doc that he had a bolded list of if he ever got in legal trouble, how he would try to get out of it. And literally one of the bullet points on there was I would try to get an interview with Tucker Tucker Carlson to talk about it. Right. So Right.

Robert Swarthout: 16:59

So he had a mental list still and he's working through his Yeah.

Andres Sandate: 17:03

He's working the playlist, man. Yes. Oh, man. It just it's just I don't know if this is I don't know. I mean, it's hard for me sitting here with you doing this show.

Andres Sandate: 17:17

We're still talking about this guy. I'm not even going to say gnat or fly. It's a horse fly. A wasp. It's something.

Andres Sandate: 17:26

Look, what it is, is America is the land of second chances, third chances, fourth chances. That's who we are. We love a comeback story. We love the underdog. We love the whole narrative.

Andres Sandate: 17:40

And this wouldn't be the first guy or gal who's committed a financial crime, in this case, lots of them, to come back and have a second chance or a second lease on life. One part of me is like, is this guy going come back as Michael Milken? Do a lot of the things good for society, for folks like Milken has after the Junkong sandal? Or is he going to come back and try to start a crypto exchange? And man, it's just one of those things where you just wish you could turn the page fully.

Robert Swarthout: 18:17

Right. And it never blew it shut so it doesn't come back.

Andres Sandate: 18:20

Everybody's got to have ratings. Everybody's got to have followers. Everybody's got to have, you know, a big get when you're in the media business. So, you know, you can't blame Carlson for for doing doing the. He's doing his job.

Andres Sandate: 18:32

I mean, he's doing his job, right? So anything newsworthy, I guess, from the standpoint of the industry or the case or the settled, you know, the bankruptcy estate that came out of the interview itself?

Robert Swarthout: 18:44

No, Sam still holds the belief that he didn't specifically say this, but you read in between lines that he functionally did nothing wrong because if we just had waited, I think he said ninety days, we would have had more assets than we had liabilities. Got it. Like like so he is he is not fully said, I'm sorry. I made a mistake yet.

Andres Sandate: 19:04

Yeah. And and obviously, you gotta know he's working the pardon angle. He's working to try to get that to get that pardon. So Yeah. I'm sure we haven't heard the last.

Robert Swarthout: 19:14

Well, hopefully, we have. We'll say that. So moving on to our next topic. And this one probably quick. So the Nasdaq announced that by early twenty twenty six, so roughly a year from now, they plan to launch $24.07 trading of equities.

Robert Swarthout: 19:28

I don't know if it's $24.07. It may just be $24.05. I haven't heard the details that specific yet. Immediately, when I read this headline, I kinda went, oh, no. Duh.

Robert Swarthout: 19:38

They're gonna tokenize. It's gonna be a blockchain. I don't know if we're going that far yet, but that's where I think this is headed. So

Andres Sandate: 19:44

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look. It's like I always remember reading the books when I was kind of coming up and and about careers, and it's like you'd read about these guys on the West Coast who got up at 3AM. You know, they got to their desk at 4AM so that they could be ready to go when the markets in the New York open.

Andres Sandate: 20:01

You know, it's like, now, I don't know. It's going to change a lot, right? Like if we have twenty fourfive, right? Initially, it's just sort of like that's going to become twenty fourseven. And you have to attribute some of this to the, obviously, one, the global interconnectedness of markets.

Andres Sandate: 20:17

Number two, you know, just just blockchain and and and and crypto and this whole industry which has made, you know, put a threat if you will on equities markets. Right?

Robert Swarthout: 20:27

Yeah.

Andres Sandate: 20:27

You gotta

Robert Swarthout: 20:29

Yeah. I was on a podcast this morning with Casey talking about this exact topic, and he was kinda complaining like, oh, you know, when are people supposed to sleep and all these things? You know? He because he comes from the traditional side. I'm like, Casey.

Robert Swarthout: 20:39

Sure. Welcome to crypto, man. It's been this way forever. I'm not quite sure why you should be surprised if you have to wake up at 03:00 in the morning, which that's not his business model, and I get it. Yeah.

Robert Swarthout: 20:48

More jokingly, but it is, a reality

Andres Sandate: 20:50

of crypto. Yeah. Well, hey, you know, early bird gets the worm or or, you know, whatever the version is for late night. But, you know, money never sleep is is was the was the headline of the second, you know, the second was it Charlie Sheen movie with Michael Douglas Wall Street, know, Wall Street money never sleeps. So you know, it's sort of, you know, tongue in cheek there.

Andres Sandate: 21:12

But the reality is that the markets are global, right? And assets now are global. And as we go more private and we go more alt and we go more illiquid and we go more in crypto, like, this is to me, it's an important headline, but it's a sign of, you know, what we're gonna be looking at in the future. And if you're a wealth manager or if you're a professional in this space, like, it's just global and it's all connected. And your job is to, you know, have a strategy around all of that.

Robert Swarthout: 21:41

For sure. So we'll move on. The OCC came out. So this is the office of the comp con control. Controlled currency.

Andres Sandate: 21:50

Currency. Yes.

Robert Swarthout: 21:51

Mouthful They they came out and said that banks can are now allowed to custody crypto, stablecoins, and also run their own nodes on networks. This is like this is if there can be something more than a one eighty without coming back around to being negative, this is this is it. Because the Biden era administration really pushed hard on banks. Banks were allowed to do this, but it was in such a way that banks would never do it. Right.

Robert Swarthout: 22:18

But here here we are. You know, I don't think we're too far away from, you know, a scenario where you can log in to your Bank of America account and see your crypto.

Andres Sandate: 22:27

Right.

Robert Swarthout: 22:27

We're probably less than a handful of years away, probably two or three years away be my guess at most. Well, know, you you always wonder how

Andres Sandate: 22:37

all the people who go into, consulting and and, you know, work at these gigantic consulting firms, several of which are public now, and you're like, What do they do? And I have some friends that are in banking, and that's where I started largely my career in financial services was in banking. And then you realize when this type of announcement happens, like, just the whole machine gets activated. Right? Like, so now you got consultants in there talking to banks about how do you build infrastructure, how do you put in place controls, how do you put in place technology, Do you have to go hire a bunch of people?

Andres Sandate: 23:12

Because you don't want to miss out on opportunities to generate profits at your bank. The same time, the concern is, on the other hand, what happens in four or eight years if this rule is changed? And so banks and big organizations and small have to, like I just said, you now have to have a strategy. You now have to have an approach because if your peers are going to get into custody, right now you have to and then you're going to need accounting and you're going to need audit and you're going to need legal and all this stuff gets activated. So it's just it's really fascinating.

Andres Sandate: 23:51

Yeah, to your point, like consumers will now be able to log in, look at their app and be able to say, oh, okay, now I can look at my equities, I can look at my stocks, I can look at my crypto. Yeah. You gotta think it's all coming.

Robert Swarthout: 24:03

Yep, absolutely. Moving along. So our next one is Hedera. We don't normally talk about Hedera, but the ticker for that is HBAR. They are maybe, you know, would be considered falling in the basket of Dino tokens, which we've referred to a few times.

Robert Swarthout: 24:20

They're long standing network. But the big news around them was they were selected by Swift. So the the group that runs the wire transfer system around the world was to integrate Hedera stablecoin net portion of their network into Swift as a settlement layer. So now of three tokens that have that kind of ability, although it admittedly doesn't happen much yet, is HBAR, XRP, and XDC. So that whole Dyno basket is kind of popping up there again.

Robert Swarthout: 24:50

But this is cool. Like, I did not see this coming anytime soon. But the you you can you know, if you care to look in that part of the market, Swift is trying to change. They know that they're behind. Right.

Robert Swarthout: 25:03

The the stablecoins are really probably gonna shake their business pretty hard because, you know, if I can send somebody a stablecoin anytime for, you know, pennies effectively, Like, what's the point of having to deal with a wire transfer? The future is quickly approaching. Yeah.

Andres Sandate: 25:21

And I think these are the headlines that are easy to gloss over when you could talk about SPF or we could talk about, right, the digital asset photo op or digital asset summit. And I think it's important to tell folks the magnitude of this while we're getting deeper into the weeds. What I think this headline demonstrates is that there is real enterprise application layer infrastructure work happening in our industry. It has nothing to do with meme coins, has nothing to do with celebrities. It has everything to do with allowing somebody halfway around the world to send money more quickly with less cost, less headache, more transparency, on and on and on.

Andres Sandate: 26:07

And to simplify it, like it's just good for consumers. It's good for enterprises. And so these are the kinds of things that are just, like I said, they're just easy to pass over, easy to gloss over, but they're so meaningful when it comes to who which of those crypto tokens or Dino tokens and the companies behind them, like, that have been at work for years building towards these types of announcements. Like, they they finally get sort of a breakthrough. Right?

Andres Sandate: 26:39

So pretty cool stuff.

Robert Swarthout: 26:40

And at some point, these will be used, then these will be considered overnight successes.

Andres Sandate: 26:45

Just how it

Robert Swarthout: 26:46

is. Yeah. There you go.

Andres Sandate: 26:49

Yeah. Kinda like Florida basketball. Like, they overnight There you go. Even though people, you know, fifteen years ago might remember a couple guys, Al Horford, Corey. You know?

Andres Sandate: 26:59

Yep. You know, I can't remember his last name, but, yeah, they they won back to back national championships. Remember a guy named Willie Donovan? Corey Brewer.

Robert Swarthout: 27:07

Yeah. So funny how we all play this together. Yeah. So this next thing is even bigger than the Sedara thing we just talked about. So Yeah.

Robert Swarthout: 27:16

We've talked a lot about the SEC ripple case on this podcast. Good things and bad things. Well, this morning, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, tweeted out that the SEC has dropped its appeal. So the case is not truly over, but it definitely headed down a path where it's over. People have wondered why this one took so long to kinda get wrapped up with all these other cases getting dropped.

Robert Swarthout: 27:39

This was by far the furthest along. This had a judgment. They were in the appeal process, all that stuff. But, so the SEC, like I said, dropped their appeal. Ripple's appeal is still sitting out there.

Robert Swarthout: 27:49

The rumors slash speculation is they want to, negotiate down the hundred and $25,000,000 fine or or middlely get rid of it. Yeah. And also the injunction, that has more of an impact potentially on them going public in their in their stock sale than it does them actually selling XRP. So interesting angles there for them to kinda work through. But Brad was also a digital asset summit week that's that's happening today, I think, in New York City.

Robert Swarthout: 28:18

And he was on stage right after he tweeted this, and I dude had some big smiles on his face. Yeah. For sure. You know? Imagine busy.

Robert Swarthout: 28:26

Pretty good tonight.

Andres Sandate: 28:27

Yeah. He's he's been busy, between, you know, being in DC at the, at the digital asset summit and now making the rounds at the crypto conferences. But yeah, this is huge, right, for it's big for Ripple and the pro, you know, XRP community. I think it removes a big, big hurdle cloud, you know, whatever you want to call it, from they being more legitimized in the eyes of the institutional community and their aspirations as a company to potentially go public and just enter into more relationships with governments and enterprises. So, yeah, I mean, who knows?

Andres Sandate: 29:09

Maybe we're a week, two, three weeks away from another shoe to drop in this case. But as we followed this over the last couple of years, who knew that we would be here at one point in first quarter of twenty five, but here we are.

Robert Swarthout: 29:26

Exactly. And it's a bit surreal, admittedly. Some of and I was around this market before this case was brought in late in December of twenty twenty of twenty twenty. Yeah. So we're over four years and three months past, and it's just like, you know, it felt like it was gonna take forever.

Robert Swarthout: 29:45

And admittedly, it did take a long time. Yeah. Four and a half years is nothing short, but it's, you know, nature seems to be healing. I guess I'll use that phrase so we don't spend forever on it. But

Andres Sandate: 29:57

Right. My guess is in

Robert Swarthout: 29:58

the next couple weeks, we'll get more details around Ripple's appeal, and those other pieces that we kinda talked about.

Andres Sandate: 30:04

We'll Well, Elliott Management, yeah, Elliott Management, you know, fought the Argentine government, for fifteen years, you know, to get the outcome they wanted for their shareholders and their investors. And so four years in crypto land feels like four decades in Sure. Normal and and because of the pace at which things develop and change. But, but in the grand scheme of things, when you look back in the annals of of history of the development of this new asset class, you know, yeah, people forty years from now will say, oh, that was four years. It was no big deal.

Robert Swarthout: 30:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Andres Sandate: 30:36

It's a big headline. It's a big headline. So Yeah.

Robert Swarthout: 30:40

So our last topic is just more of a bit of a summation, but I think it's a great way to say it. So, like, this news largely happened within a week. We haven't reported for two weeks, but this largely would have all been in the last week's show. And it felt like a decade's worth of change happened in a week. Certainly, if we would have been trying to get this change in the last administration, it would have been more than a decade.

Robert Swarthout: 31:02

But here we are, and it's, you know, it's I I think it's a moment of reflection that I think is healthy. So Bitcoin reserve, the SEC, the White House crypto summit, the SEC dismissed other actions, especially against Kraken. The senate voted to kill the IRS broker rule, which didn't even make it in our show, but that was important. And, you know, the Hedera news, the and then the SEC news with Ripple. So, you know, it's, you know, fun times is, I guess, the way that I'll put it.

Andres Sandate: 31:30

Yeah. My my take is look. I mean, if if you're following the market and the economy, there's so much uncertainty right now. Right? I mean, With macro policy, with geopolitical tension or uncertainty with the posture of the Fed and what they're going to do with rates, employment, consumer confidence, right?

Andres Sandate: 31:54

Like you can look at all these different things and I think you sum it up and say uncertainty when you maybe zoom in more to crypto. When you add all these headlines up over the last three months, yeah, you could you could look at Bitcoin and the price at 83 kind of hovering in that $80,000 range and kind of be disappointed. But you could also, you know, zoom out and look at these headlines and when you take it all in totality totality, perhaps the market is just gurgling and just missing what is a gigantic step for the industry in the direction of progress, in the direction of it being a more validated space for consumers and investors. It's just hard to see that when you're living in the day to day and the week to week, and I think that's why you have to you have to take take a minute to reflect from time to time. It's a fun show today.

Andres Sandate: 32:50

Yeah. A a lot of opportunities to to to do that for for listeners.

Robert Swarthout: 32:54

Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the weekly crypto check-in. To stay updated on future episodes, you can find us any podcast player by searching Teton Crypto Capital or the weekly crypto check-in. Take care.

Disclaimer: 33:06

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Disclaimer: 33:32

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