Is the US Government at War with Crypto Banks??

What's up, people? Today, we're going to talk about the FedNow token. We're going to talk about central bank digital currencies, the— all the 3 bank collapses linked to crypto, how Visa, PayPal, Mastercard are all linked together. It's something pretty interesting that's going on right now that I think a lot of people are not talking about. I've talked to multiple investors in our fund that have no idea what the FedNow protocol is, even the basics. We're going to go a little bit deeper than the basics as well, and how this affects other parts of the industry and potential leading up to a central bank digital currency. So that's the plan for today's episode. It should be very fun. And good to have you guys here. I'm actually in Europe right now. I'm in Portugal. We're gonna talk about Europe and the potential euro digital dollar they're announcing. Pretty interesting that they're developing right now. So it's pretty fun. I'll give you a little view here. Here we are off my porch. Kind of cool, right? My wife served a 2-year LDS mission here, so we're here with her. So I'm out on the deck. I'm just recording right here, just on my phone. So this is what you get, but the information should be pretty good. All right, let's dive in. I'm gonna share my screen here. And here we are. So let's first talk about the FedNow protocol. Sound good? So what even is this? Now, this is like, this is not like some conspiracy. This is announced by the Fed. So right here, here you go. FedNow, 24/7 instant payments. This was announced in March. It is first being deployed in July of 2023. So next, really next month, it's coming out. What's— and what this is, we can scroll down here, you can see a few things. You know, Venmo, Cash App, these other type of payment things. It's essentially that, but for large wire transactions. Right now, when you send a wire, it's like, it's like, why? We live in 2023. It takes 2 days to send a wire over. You can't send it on the weekends. Like, why not? So what FedNow is doing is they're working with all the big banks to put this all in. And I'm gonna talk about the kind of conspiracy theories behind this in just a second. But just what it is at face value is the— you can send large wires instantly. So I could send you— it looks like the first iteration is gonna be up to $500,000. So I can send you $350,000 right now instantly. And it'll show up in your bank account like bam, today. So that's like, it's like Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, but for large wire transactions. Our sources tell us that work at large banks, corporations will be able to do up to $5 million, individuals up to $500,000. It'll be the first iteration. What they'll do is they'll slowly tier it out over time, potentially getting those amounts larger and larger over time, which is pretty cool, okay? So you can send these amounts. They're putting it with all these banks. Now, interestingly, we have a friend that works at these large banks and she was telling us, so the big 4 banks that you know, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, they have all been working on this in depth. Regional banks have kind of been left in the dark. She's like, these regional banks, they're asking, how do we use this? How do we start working with this? And they've kind of been left in the dark. This is 6 months ago. Then all of a sudden, all these regional banks start collapsing, which is pretty interesting. So we have this all going on right now. Now, some people have pointed, is this a central bank digital currency? Right now, they are saying no, this is not a— it's not blockchain-based. It's not anything. It's just a service that the Fed is now providing called the FedNow service. It's going to all the banks. Some people now— I'm getting into theory now— theorize this is the beginning stages of what could become a central bank digital currency. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, central bank digital currency, let's dive into that. There's actually this cool website over here. This is called the— from theatlanticcouncil.org. This actually tracks Central bank digital currencies around the world and how many countries are using them. So I'm gonna scroll down here. Look at this. This actually shows the countries that are in development of this. So 11 countries have already launched central bank digital currencies. 18 are in pilot programs. So China's launched theirs. Russia's in a pilot program. All these— Australia's in pilot program. You have 32 countries in development. United States is one of those countries. I don't know if you know this. Last November, The United States did a test, 12-week digital dollar test with Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and the New York Fed, okay? Tested out. The big, big banks, they were testing this, how to launch a central bank digital currency, what would it be like, etc. Then you go down, there's 40 countries in research right now. And then here's the ones that aren't working on anything. But I mean, that is— I'll take these 2 away right here. I mean, pretty much every developed country on Earth, right? right now is either researching or developing central bank digital currency. Now, what does this mean? What is— what would a central bank digital currency do? You can watch other videos and stuff go in depth, but it's just face value. It would be essentially a blockchain-based coin for your currency. China currently has this. So you cannot use cash. It goes to a cashless system and every transaction is tracked through a blockchain. It's all individually done, etc., through an economy. It's too juicy not to do. I mean, if you can track every single transaction of an entire economy, it's too juicy not to do. You like— that'd be amazing. First off, the data you would get. Second off, the control you would get. Third off, the potential manipulation you could have. Fourth, you can collect taxes on everything. You know, a lot of people right now pay their hairdresser, lawn guy in cash and there's— they're not taxing that. They might— they'll launch it, I think, in the name of tax evaders. There's all these people that do tax evasion. They're now going to start paying taxes. And oh, by the way, all the drug dealers, they all deal in cash. If they have to use— we make cash worthless and everyone moves to a digital dollar, all of a sudden you can't do drug transactions, etc. Now, you might say, Bridger, this is crazy. The U.S. would never do that. Well, back in the 1930s, the United States did this already. This has already happened. So don't say it's impossible to me. Now, what happened? In the 1930s, the United States outlawed Gold bullion. It was illegal for our grandparents, whoever would live in the United States. If you had gold coins, gold bars, you had to— it was an executive order. You had to turn them in to the government and they would give you in replace some paper dollars that were backed by gold. And we said, we're going to take all the gold and put it into Fort Knox. That's what we did. It was outlawed. It was illegal to hold gold. And it took— they gave like a time, you know, you had to come turn it in. Now you can have a gold watch or a gold bracelet, but any gold bullion, gold things used for currency, Currency was illegal. So don't tell me it's impossible. They've already done it before. Now, I think they would tier it out through approach like something like FedNow. You'd start that today and you'd slowly tier people into this. It might take a decade to do, but that would be the plan. That's this again back to the governments. These all these governments are working on either they've launched it pilot or developing these types of things for their countries, which is pretty interesting right now. Now. Let's go a little bit deeper. Does that sound good? So again, this gives just unprecedented— People are always talking about the US dollar's dying, etc. It's going— It's actually, the US dollar has been going up in value. We have high inflation. People aren't looking at the data. They just go off a feeling. They read one book from Ray Dalio and they go, oh man, I know the history of everything in the— And it's okay. I love Ray Dalio's book. Nothing wrong with it. But you got to look at the dollar right now. We have high inflation. The US dollar is going up in value. A lot of people don't know this. Tell me an economics book where you have high inflation and also the currency goes up in value. Because you got to go back to, well, the U.S. dollar is bad, but compared to what? It's all about comparison. When you have a currency, it's just compared to what? The U.S. dollar is bad, but compared to euros, it's pretty good. I'm in Europe. I'm in Europe right now. Compared to euros, it's doing pretty good. Compared to yuan, it's doing really good. Compared to rubles or whatever, it's doing really good. Now, it's not perfect by any means. And people are talking about resetting a currency. I could see the United States resetting their currency, moving it, transitioning it into a central bank digital currency. It wouldn't reset by any means. It would be kind of the same for us. But that would be a call for reset. We've had a reset in 1946, the Bretton Woods Agreement. We then had another reset with Nixon in the '70s when he took us off the gold standard. That was a reset of a currency. And I think now we might be hitting a point where we're going to reset the basis of this world reserve currency. Some people are like, the US dollar is going to die. I have another video on this, you guys go check out. But you really think the largest superpower on Earth, the people with the most guns, military, warships, power, influence, biggest economy, everything, is just going to say, yeah, you know what, let's just use someone else's dollar. When every war since World War II has been fought pretty much based on oil and dollars. You can go through this whole tracker. And I have another video. I'm not gonna talk about it here, but you can go through the whole thing. It's all about US dollars and war. Or oil and dollars is the reason for those wars. Makes you think, right? I don't think these people are just gonna say, yeah, you know, let's just use something else. It will be a fight to the death. And I think United States might just transition their currency into something else. That's my thought. Now, let's look a little bit deeper into a couple other things. Back to FedNow. So you have FedNow here. FedNow. As a service, this displaces a lot of things. So again, I'm going to get into, you know, theories at this point. But right now, it's pretty interesting. The Silicon Valley Bank collapse, we had Signature Bank collapse and Silvergate collapse. Those were the 3 largest crypto banks in the United States. All 3 of them collapsed within 3 weeks. And the United States stepped in very quickly to collapse them. The FDIC, like, you know, I would think, I don't know, A bank's going down and having troubles, you'd give them a couple of days or maybe a week or 2, and then you'd come and save them. They saved them in like 24 hours. Do you guys realize how quick it was? It was like, oh, they're not doing good. Imagine you're running a business, like a normal business, and you have 2 bad days. All of us have bad days. You have 2 bad days and all of a sudden, the government steps in, takes over everything and you're done. You're gone. I mean, that's pretty— Now again, I know it's more than that, but it's just interesting how quickly they stepped in. So you look back at this, and why would they take over the 3 largest crypto banks in the United States, all within like a week or 2? Additionally, they send a Wells notice to Coinbase. They're really— I mean, SEC is really going to war with Coinbase right now. Why? Why are you going to war? Coinbase has done nothing but try to be compliant, help out regulation. It feels like the United States government is going to war against crypto. Crypto-based companies right now. That's just my feeling. Banks and potential theory, again a theory, is they might be paving the way and moving out competition to roll out their FedNow. And the same month they announced their FedNow protocol, they might be moving away their competition to announce a FedNow protocol, which they've already announced. It's right here. And then move to well, we're going to start moving to a central bank digital currency. And we need to get these big banks on board. We need someone to help facilitate this, like a JP Morgan. So JP Morgan, if you're gonna— maybe you've been— you don't wanna do this. JP Morgan had already plans to launch a coin for JP Morgan for 10 years. They've already developed it. They just didn't launch it. They've already had a JP Morgan coin. They've already built the whole thing out. And just again, back to theory, I don't— we're just talking here. We're paid as fund managers, though, to predict the future, right? That's what we're paid to do. So stop writing it off as conspiracy theory or whatever. People always, oh dude, you're paid to write the— to predict the future. And what's crazy is all these conspiracy theories keep coming true, by the way, especially in money and finance. Oh, there's no way Twitter was getting manipulated. And all of a sudden, Elon buys Twitter and everything's correct. Oh, there's no way that the— if I would have told you 5 years ago, the gold and silver markets are manipulated. Bridger, that's conspiracy theory, whatever. Ta-da! 2019 comes out. JPMorgan Chase had been manipulating the precious metals markets for over a decade. They got fined about $1 billion from the SEC. Go look it up. All these conspiracy theories keep coming true, especially in money and finance. So again, we're paid to predict the future, me and you as fund managers. So I'm looking at this right now. I'm looking at what's happening. You're clearing away the biggest banks. You're clearing away Coinbase. You're pushing Coinbase away. You're giving all the assets to a JPMorgan. Yeah. I mean, he's— they bought— JP Morgan bought First Republic Bank for, I think it was 7 cents on the dollar. Literally, the math. They didn't assume any corporate debt. 7 cents on the dollar, they got it. It's like, really? No one else bid and would have paid 8 cents on the dollar or 9 cents or 10 cents or 12 cents on the dollar? No one else would bid? Really? Anyways, potentially, they are paving the way to have JP Morgan Help. Hey, we're going to give you all these classes. We'll collapse some of your competitors, smaller banks, and we're going to pave the way to launch FedNow, which then rolls into a kind of a digital wallet, dual system currency. We have cash and we have this new system we're trying out. And then fully, we go, hey, you know, there's too many tax evaders. There's too many people doing drug deals and stuff using cash. We got to all move to a wallet-based system. And by the way, I walk around the United States, I can't even use cash. You try to go pay cash for something, they don't even take it. People don't even take cash anymore after COVID. And so, anyways, we're almost already there. Everything's already digital anyways, but then you move to this full central bank digital currency. Just a few thoughts. It just, it feels kind of interesting why it's happening right now, which, by the way, makes a huge pathway for crypto. So let's talk about crypto. What if a central bank digital currency launched? What would that do to the crypto markets? Bitcoin, Ethereum? Now, I run a crypto hedge fund. We're an 8-figure crypto hedge fund. We've done very well. Our performance has been awesome, by the way. Ugly Unicorn Crypto Fund has been phenomenal. I talked to Dan Young. He's my business partner on this company. Amazing dude. He's on Intel's board of advisors for 15 years, board advisor for AMD. He's done $500 million in sales. Really sharp dude. Mined Bitcoin for the last decade. So I talked to Dan about all this stuff and he's like, he goes, my— again, we don't know. But he goes, I don't think they would outlaw crypto. It's pretty hard to outlaw crypto. What you would do is you would control it. So you would launch, let's call it a central bank, a digital dollar. Let's call it a digital dollar. And that would be the on and off ramp for crypto. Think of it like a lot of these cryptos, people don't understand, a lot of cryptos have utility. It's like a company. Some of these coins have a full company behind them. Actually, Gala Games is a great example. We know them. They live local to us. They have a coin called Gala Coin. But they also have a gaming company that makes these really cool video games and stuff. They— I think they produced like a billion dollars in revenue last year as a company. And you can buy their coin. It's like buying their stock. It's like a stock market. So what you do is if you had a digital dollar, it's like an on-ramp to a stock market for crypto-based companies. It's kind of the same thing. It's like before we had the New York Stock Exchange, we were trading like, hey, I'll trade you barley for wheat. And we had bartering. And finally they said, well, let's set up an exchange. It's called the New York Stock Exchange. We can exchange stocks and bonds. Mm-hmm. And guess what? We'll do it in US dollars. Ta-da! And they're— the United States, I believe the United States government wants to act just like that. They want all exchanges to happen. Yeah, exchange whatever you need, but just do it in our currency. Just like the SWIFT system. Just like what they've done since Bretton Woods. You can buy oil from Brazil or whoever can buy oil from Saudi Arabia as long as you do it in US dollars. Does that make sense? So I think a central bank digital currency, if it came out, All ships would rise. All of a sudden, I think right now Americans, this is a round number, but I think it's like 8% of Americans have a crypto wallet. Imagine if they launched a central bank digital currency, it goes, that goes from 8% to maybe 90% of Americans have a crypto wallet. They have a wallet that can buy NFTs, buy everything else, and all of a sudden, all ships rise. And yes, it will displace, we believe, 10% to 15% of cryptos. But I think the rest of these cryptos will go up like crazy. So our fund, we have a huge diversified portfolio. We hold at any given time 40 to 60 tokens and coins at any given time. And we tell our clients like, hey, this is massive. Right now, the crypto market's like $1.2 trillion. It floats around a trillion. That's a small market cap. That's less than Apple. That's less than Microsoft, etc. The market cap of gold, for example, is like $12 trillion. Crypto is about $1 trillion. If they launched a central bank digital currency, we believe it would jump from about $1 trillion to $8 to $10 trillion almost overnight. And then further adoption, that number can be as high as $20 to $30 trillion market cap. So when people say we're still really early to crypto, that's what they mean, is like, the market cap is still really small. And if they announce all these things, which, by the way, back to this thing, pretty much every major country on Earth Has— is launching or piloting a central bank digital currency right now. I mean, it's coming. They are building this thing over and over. Like, they're building it right now. All the infrastructure is getting built. It's— now, I'm not saying go all in. I'm not saying mortgage your house. What I'm saying is it's good to have some exposure to this asset class. And don't be calling me in 5 years, Bridger, I should have done it. I should have invested, etc. Don't tell me that, okay? And by the way, we do all this stuff in Ugly Unicorn. That's what we do. So if you want to come work with us, it's uglyunicornfund.com. Go put your info in there. We'll talk to you. We hop on a phone call, whatever. Minimum commitment is $100,000. Put your money in and we get it rolling. And we move it through. We pay a ton of money every year for security work, all this kind of stuff. We can walk through the whole deck, etc. But go check us out. But it's a pretty cool market to have exposure to. I digress, okay? So let's go back to the FedNow protocol. This is now coming back to what's actually happening right now. So right now, July, FedNow is coming out. So what does this do for other things? So right now, I'm gonna go over looking at PayPal. PayPal's been pretty interesting. Their stock has sold off significantly the last 6 months, especially after this has been announced. So stock— people think PayPal is gonna get hit very hard by this. Additionally, people think Visa and MasterCard. I mean, any— at this point, if it gets so good, You don't need merchant processors. You don't need PayPal, Visa, MasterCard. And I still think you'll need them to some degree, but they become more and more obsolete over, let's just call it the next decade, with new technologies coming in unless they progress. Which, by the way, I've heard Visa and these big— Visa is one of them though, is working on a full blockchain technology to integrate. But I digress. That's more hearsay. I'm not sure if it's true or not. Here's PayPal stock sold off a ton. Here's Visa right here. Last 6 months, actually risen a decent amount here. MasterCard, up 13% last 6 months. So these guys have traded well, but pretty interesting, this report came out. This is just on Yahoo, but it's reported a bunch of places. Insiders at Visa sold $24 million in stock in the last 2 months since this FedNow has been announced. And they're not putting it back in or sometimes they, you know, people sell and then rebuy or whatever. They're not buying back in. And one of the best indicators ever of when a stock is gonna go up and down in a swing trade or long trade is if insiders, executives are selling or buying the stock. It's one of the best predictors of stocks. Right now, you're seeing $24 million in stock sold over the last few months. Pretty interesting. Again, a lot of people pointing to Visa. There's actually a lot of politicians that have been selling these stocks as well. So again, pretty interesting where we stand. So, To recap, and all this kind of stuff, central bank digital currency, FedNow, PayPal, Visa. Again, we don't know what's gonna happen, but we are paid good money to predict the future. And this is pretty compelling. I am very excited for crypto. That's why we have people flooding into our fund right now, putting money in because it is so compelling where we're at and what we're doing right now. It's pretty cool. So on that note, you guys are amazing. I will see you guys later. I'm gonna have fun in Europe here. I'll keep sending videos and I hope this is useful. If you guys can, comment, like, subscribe down below. Let me know if you guys like this video. Let me know if there's other topics or stuff you want me to talk about. Put it down below. You guys are amazing. See you guys later. Bye.