''You Need to Hold XRP Now'' - Larry Fink

The Bitcoin 2025 conference is going on. We've got updates from David Sachs on crypto in America. We also have some updates from Bo Hines. We're going to get into some information from Robby Michnik of BlackRock. They're recommending one to two percent allocation in Bitcoin and other crypto assets. We also have some information from BlackRock. We're going to look at Thailand and other countries allowing tourists to use crypto to buy things in those countries. I have a really cool update on this and so much more. Guys, let's go ahead and better understand this. I also, you know, with all of this, you know, with all of these people pushing Bitcoin as the, you know, new financial rails and all of this stuff, I actually wanted to better understand this. Like, where are these people getting this, that Bitcoin is the future for banks and financial institutions? So I actually asked AI, could you show me an example of a current bank or a financial institution actively using Bitcoin, right, for FX or stable coins or tokenization? And you will not believe the answer. I'll get to that in just a minute. Let's go ahead and better understand what's happening. I feel like what we have in Washington right now is just a sea change. It's just a total comprehensive shift from being anti-innovation to being pro-innovation and being, you know, much more future oriented and getting all the, like, the obstacles out of the way and helping the private sector innovate. And it's really just been incredible. It's been really fun to be part of. Like I said, I never anticipated that I'd be part of this administration. I'm just a guy from Silicon Valley who hosted a dinner. And then the next thing you know, I'm hoping to drive this agenda in Washington. But I think that it's been, it's been really incredible to be part of and see the whole thing take shape. Yeah. Well said. Thank you, David. It's hard to imagine a president, any other president being able to do any, a fraction of this or accomplish that or any administration. And we're just over a hundred days. So it's pretty amazing that we still have a lot of time left. No, it's incredible. I mean, we're only like, we're basically four months in, so we still have, you know, over three and a half years. So I think just what we can accomplish over the next few years is going to be really incredible. What all of you guys are going to accomplish with Bitcoin is going to be incredible and to the moon, right? What are you going to accomplish with Bitcoin? Has, you know what, before I get into it, let's keep going. So Bo Heinz, this gentleman is actually in him and David Sacks are the two ones pushing forward Bitcoin adoption in America. I wanted to say crypto adoption in America, but most of what comes out of these two guys, his mouth is mainly about Bitcoin. I love that we are pushing forward with, with crypto adoption in general, but I just would love it if we shifted the mindset away from Bitcoin is the answer to our, all our financial problems to cryptocurrency and what it actually can be used for and why it's important. Because I think the message really gets lost on a lot of people because of stuff like this. Let me show you. I mean, Bitcoin is truly the golden standard and that's why we say Bitcoin is digital gold. We make no bones about that. And I've said repeatedly. You also notice how they used to say Bitcoin was like the technology of the future to now they continuously pinpoint Bitcoin as a store of value, digital gold. That is the message now that they are communicating to you and I, the public. As the United States, we want as much of it as we can possibly get. That's why we created the SPR and the way that we've done that. We've recognized it for being unique. Obviously it's a commodity, not a security as intrinsic stored value is David likes to say it has the immaculate conception, right? You know, this is an asset that we should be harnessing on behalf of the American people. And we're working diligently as a working group to figure out those budget neutral ways in which we can accumulate more. And I always told journalists that asked me all the time, you know, how much do you want? Again, I'll say repeatedly here today. That's a very silly question. We want as much as we can possibly get. And I'll say it at nausea the rest of the time that I'm here, but you know, I think that we, we showed that we recognize that for being unique in the way that we set up the strategic Bitcoin reserve, we have the digital assets, national stockpile, which is different. And in this SPR, we said two things. One, we want to accumulate more into, we're not going to sell any Bitcoin that we possibly have in us government period. I mean, Bitcoin. Okay. So a few things here, they have the Bitcoin strategic reserve, but they also have the digital assets stockpile, but they have no money to put into the other digital assets. And they're not actively looking for ways to do that. They're actively looking for ways to put it into Bitcoin, but they're not actively looking at ways to support American innovation. Make, make note of that. Right. And here is something that maybe Bo Hines or David Sachs has just like failed to realize, but you know, if you're talking about the next hundred million people using Bitcoin, right. Let's see how long it actually takes to process these transactions. I've been trying to speak louder about this and take a look. So if 10 million people, 50 million people at a hundred million people woke up tomorrow and decided to do one transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain, buy a coffee, buy lunch. I tried to say like, you know, tokenization or something like that, but we can't really go there. Right. So here is how long this would take 10 million transactions. It would take 16 to 38 days to process 10 million transactions, 50 million transactions that would take 82 to 192 days. And a hundred million transactions would take 163 days to half a year to a full year to complete. Now, some people are going to say, Oh, what about layer two sensei? Absolutely. Layer twos can help, but it can only help so much, because of how slow this is financial institutions at large are not looking at Bitcoin as a utility token. They're looking at Bitcoin just for its store of value. And because when I asked AI, when it comes to financial institutions who are actually moving forward with using Bitcoin for cross-border or FX or tokenization, what are those bank names? Who are those financial institutions? And look, few major financial institutions are directly using Bitcoin itself for cross-border payments, tokenization of financial assets. Instead, the industry trend is toward using blockchain technology, stable coins, tokenization, and other platforms. So banks and fintechs, 62% are actively partnering with fintechs to improve cross-border payments, yada, yada, yada. But the question was how many banks are actually doing it? And I said, I asked which banks, and you didn't give an answer. And it says, you are correct. There are no major financial institutions or major banks that are using Bitcoin itself as a primary rail for cross-border payments or tokenization of financial assets. So they're telling you, the public, that Bitcoin is the answer to all of America's problems, pretty much, right? This is going to save us so much money, but yet no major financial institutions are even looking at Bitcoin for anything to do with any of it. So this is when you hear people talking about the greatest distraction in history and financial industry, that's what this is. They are distracting you with Bitcoin. They want you to buy Bitcoin. They don't want you to buy what could be the new financial rails, which is XRP, XLM, Algorand, HBAR, Chainlink. They don't want you to buy any of it. They want you to put all of your money into Bitcoin. Because if they can control, right? Because basically there's a lot of manipulation that happens all across crypto. And if they can get the average person that only has maybe a thousand or 5,000, maybe $10,000 to invest, they want you to buy 0.01 Bitcoin or 0.1 Bitcoin, right? Because they know even if Bitcoin goes to a million dollars, maybe even $5 million, that still won't be enough to take you out of their debt system. But if you put that same amount of money into maybe XRP or XLM or any of the assets I just mentioned, that could give you financial freedom and they don't want that. They want to control us. They want to keep us in their debt system because that is what gives them power over us. And this continues. Well, this is a little different. Ms. Robbie Michnick breaks down why BlackRock recommends allocating 1% to 2% of your portfolio in Bitcoin. Now, I don't have a problem with Bitcoin, okay? I think you should have some Bitcoin. What I don't like is the way that they sell this and shovel it down everybody's throat because the average person isn't taking the time to do this extra due diligence you are, right? So, everybody else sees that Bitcoin is this great solution that really doesn't solve anything other than the gold problem, right? The problem with gold is it's heavy. It's hard to move around because people want to rob it, right? And having Bitcoin allowing you to put this, you know, billion dollars or whatever it is on a flash drive or a ledger or something and bring it across the world, that's what it is. That's all you are getting, digital gold. Let's keep going. What has happened since that recommendation? Is that recommendation being followed? What types of investors are looking at it? How do we go from that recommendation to investors actually allocating 1% to 2%? Yeah. So, just I think to set the stage for what model portfolios are and how they work for some in the audience, basically the idea is to support financial advisors in their journey to be able to build better portfolios, more optimized portfolios for their end clients. And so, model portfolios have become a very powerful tool to help financial advisors do that. At BlackRock, we have a very significant asset base in the model portfolios that we build and then equip our wealth advisor clients with. And one of those portfolios, as you know, in February of this year, so just about three months ago now, added Bitcoin as an allocation in the 1% to 2% range. And this was a model portfolio that includes alternatives in it. And so, that was, as you know, I think a significant development that was not a sudden reaction to any one thing. That was a result of multiple years of analysis and research by that team who runs those portfolios. All right. Let me ask you this question. Over the next five to 10 years, we understand that crypto is here to stay. We're at about a $3 trillion market cap in 10 years or less. We'll probably be over a hundred trillion. If the US only bought Bitcoin, the goal which I've heard from the Trump administration and Bo Heinz and all these people is to buy Bitcoin today, hold onto it for five or 10 years, and then to sell Bitcoin and take all the money, to take all the money and to pay off debt. But if you own 5% of the entire supply of Bitcoin, and let's say Bitcoin's at $5 million in 10 years or something like that, and you go to sell that 5%, whether it's a little bit at a time or it's all at once, what do you think happens to Bitcoin? Imagine the sell order on whatever a few trillion dollars worth of Bitcoin, it would collapse the entire market. This is why I'm trying to get the word out so these people start spreading the money around. Instead of buying 1 million Bitcoin, let's buy 500,000 Bitcoin. But we can also buy some XRP, some HBAR, some Chainlink, and actually do what you have set out to do, right? What the Trump administration set out and saying that we're here to support American innovation, American companies, Bitcoin is neither. It's neither an American company, neither an American innovation. So what are we doing? Am I beating a dead horse? I feel like sometimes I am here. Okay. All right. Let's keep it going. BlackRock does warn that quantum computing could threaten Bitcoin's security. Okay. So quantum computers. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. Those have been invented. They're already starting to create those for retail purposes. I would imagine if a government that is North Korea, Russia, some place in China, if one of those bad actors got a hold of a quantum computer, do you think they wouldn't attack the Bitcoin ecosystem? Do you think that Bitcoin would be spared, right? You already see hacks of billions of dollars in the crypto space. If you think they are not going to target Bitcoin, I think you need to have a serious look in the mirror and have a come to Jesus moment with yourself because that is exactly what's going to happen. If you look at XRP, XRP does have seen some quantum resistance. And so you start to wonder if BlackRock is warning their customer base about this. This is a real concern. If quantum computing is able to advance in a way, there is a risk that quantum computing could result in the cryptography underlying the Bitcoin network to become ineffective, which if realized could compromise the security of the Bitcoin network. What are we doing? I did think this is really cool. Let's switch it up. We're switching gears. Thailand is allowing tourists who spend crypto via their credit card and it plans for other major financial reforms to unify traditional digital asset markets. Let's take a look at, I wanted to better understand not just Thailand, but what other countries are doing something very similar because this is about global adoption. And I'm very interested to hear. So it looks like the European union has implemented the MECA act, creating a single market for digital assets. I don't know why they have mid car along with new anti-money laundering, money laundering, digital asset resilience laws provides a unified legal framework for both traditional and digital assets, ensuring consistent regulation and consumer protection across member states. The UK is adopting a flexible market-driven regulatory approach post Brexit, aiming to position itself as a global hub for digital finance. The UK is working to balance innovation in digital assets with robust consumer protections and considering reforms to integrate digital assets more closely with traditional finance markets. The U S regulatory environment is complex in the United States. You know what we, I talk about this too much. I don't need to get into what the U S is doing. You already know Switzerland is recognizing for its crypto valley and strong legal frameworks to integrate digital assets with traditional finance, many Swiss financial institutions and merchants accept crypto. And the country has clear rules, distinguishing digital assets as securities or payment tokens in Singapore. They have developed a robust regulatory framework under the monetary authority of Singapore supporting both traditional and digital financial markets. The city state encourages innovation while ensuring consumer protection and financial stability, making it a leader in digital asset integration. The United Arab Emirates, especially in Dubai is a global hub for blockchain and crypto innovation. The government promotes digital asset adoption with clear regulations, supporting the use of crypto payment cards for fostering and thriving digital asset economy. El Salvador of course has been buying Bitcoin for quite some time, allows people to use Bitcoin to and Portugal offers zero tax on individual crypto gains and have integrated crypto into its financial system. Canada, Canada, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Malta. These countries have implemented favorable regulations for crypto payment cards and are working towards greater integration of digital and traditional financial markets through approaches that vary by jurisdiction. So as you can see, the world is moving forward with crypto adoption. And as you saw clearly here, that no major financial institutions are going to be using Bitcoin for anything that truly matters, where all the value is going, right? There's only so much paper money that you can put into Bitcoin, but when you can tokenize debt, real estate, stocks, bonds, derivatives, equities, I mean, the sky is the limit. That is why you really need to diversify. If you're only holding Bitcoin, understand that if you want to own a piece of the new financial system, it isn't Bitcoin. All right. And then Adam Black said he finally was right. Bitcoin is going to $10 million. We see this everywhere. People are, you know, everyone is making guesstimates of where Bitcoin is going to go over the next 10 years. And I've seen a lot of people say $10 million. Let me play this and we'll end here. So I think Hal Finney was just like, you know, a decade ahead of his curve in terms of thinking about, you know, that this could actually happen, right? So I think, you know, because if everybody was 100% convinced that it's going there, it would already be there, right? And so there's got to be doubt about the, you know, the pace of adoption, how much more money is and what the addressable market actually is. We don't fully know. I mean, I think Hal Finney's estimate is reasonable because still today, you know, even though he made it, it's because there is a lot of monetary premium where people are trying to protect themselves from inflation and safe by, you know, buying real estate. In some cases, they're not even using it. It's just vacant. But, you know, there's a lot of that in New York and China and different places, right? And that is not a great thing because it makes housing less affordable. And if there was, you know, a financial product or a monetary instrument that did that for you, it would make housing more affordable. So it'd cost of housing, access to housing, quality of housing that you can afford on a budget. So those will all be good things. And there are other things with monetary premium or where people are trying to protect against inflation, like, you know, the bond market and some more esoteric things like art, wine, where people use that as a kind of novel way to protect against inflation. And if you add all that stuff up, it's, you know, 200 trillion is possibly a conservative estimate at this point because we've had a lot of inflation between- $210 trillion market cap. And they call us crazy for thinking XRP could reach a thousand dollars or $5,000. Right. Makes sense, right? Bitcoin, it's going to go to a hundred million dollars. What kind of market cap is that? Oh, it's like three to $4 quadrillion. Easy. There isn't enough money in the world. And you obviously see that they're not tokenizing value on the Bitcoin ecosystem. All right. A lot of cool updates, a lot of things happening, very bullish. The market is ready to explode and I hope you're a part of it. All right. I'll leave it at that.