5th October 2023 > > Ripple.

tl;dr

Some thoughts about why XRP is now part of the CC Treasury portfolio.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

That’s a major move in the perpetual futures funding rate. Shorts are nervously contemplating a brutal short squeeze higher.

Occasional Series – The Manx Missile

Amazing and very welcome news – Mark is back at the TdF next year. At 38, and not exactly built to race up mountains. We love you mate, for the pain you take.

Occasional Series – Election odds

Betfair has priced Labour at 83% and the Conservatives at 17% to win the next election. Regardless of your political beliefs, those prices do not look right for a two-horse race (dream on the Lib Dems. You are neither liberal nor democratic).

The night before the EU referendum, Betfair had Brexit at 7s or 8s, a bet that no-one could seriously contemplate not taking. Those who voted remain at least had their disappointment tempered by a nice fat payday.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Sam Bankman-Fried (*)

Sue me if you like, but you are a first-class asshole. You are a fraudster, and a low-life feral scumbag. 110 years in a vicious jail full of murderers and rapists is not long enough for someone like you.

Enjoy the prison food. We all know the extra ingredients.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Ripple

Ripple has received regulatory recognition from MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) to allow it to offer digital asset payment services, otherwise known as a Major Payments Institution license.

It has taken Ripple six years since establishing Singapore as its Asia Pacific headquarters, suggesting that either Ripple’s attitude to compliance is akin to that of Binance’s or that the bureaucrats in Singapore work to a UK style standard of urgency. Either way, you cannot change the past, you can only influence the future, and this step is an important one. CEO Brad Garlinghouse took aim at regulators in both the US and the UK:

“Under MAS’ leadership, Singapore has developed into one of the leading fintech and digital asset hubs striking the balance between innovation, consumer protection and responsible growth.”

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I long felt ambivalent about XRP, the native token for the Ripple ecosystem.

There are serious questions to be asked about the degree of centralisation not helped by the news that there is now a clawback function embedded in XRP Ledger Version 1.12.0:

https://xrpl.org/blog/2023/rippled-1.12.0.html

Ostensibly to deal with a situation of fraud, or loss of private keys, the scope for inappropriate use is not dissimilar to the power that certain governments are granting themselves with respect to CBDCs. And this must be a major worry.

Putting the technology to one side, I always felt uncomfortable with the XRP army of supporters on social media. I know that most social media discourse is shouty, and based simply on the contributors’ wishes as to how the world should be, rather than how the world is. But the XRP army takes this approach to a whole new level, something I find to be distasteful.

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Having said all that, my ambivalence has lessened of late, to the extent that XRP is now part of the CC Treasury portfolio.

The firm itself appears to be in a great position to take advantage of wholesale crypto adoption, by embedding itself within the financial sector, and by providing CBDC related services. CBDCs may possibly be one of the most dangerous technologies ever conceived, but outside of the US, Switzerland, and Slovenia, they will become part of the system of government. One might as well reap financial rewards from this development, however immoral it may be.

XRP also points the way forward to the co-habitation of the centralised and decentralised world. The former may wish the latter had never been created, but now the genie is out, it cannot be put back. The latter cannot function in isolation – it is supported and enhanced by the power structures of the centralised world. To a certain extent, XRP straddles both worlds, and will likely benefit from doing so.

And if it turns out that Ripple deals a body blow to the Gary Gensler show of desiring to kill cryptos, we will all be heartily cheering.

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(*) Note to the ever-expanding CCC team of lawyers and compliance officers.

Yep, I am publishing this comment.