In this video Kamilah Stevenson explains that Ripple and XRP are fundamentally different: Ripple is a privately held company whose shares are owned only by insiders, while XRP is a publicly tradable digital asset on the decentralized XRP Ledger. She clarifies that owning XRP does not grant equity, voting rights, or profit participation in Ripple, and that the upside of Ripple’s private equity is limited to a small group of early investors. Stevenson reframes XRP ownership as a unique opportunity because the asset that powers the network is open to the public, and its long‑term value depends on ledger usage, validator participation, institutional settlement, and network upgrades—not on Ripple’s corporate news. She warns against evaluating XRP like a stock and highlights the tax inefficiency of holding XRP in a taxable brokerage account, recommending a Roth IRA via iTrust Capital to protect gains. The video includes a promotional $100 funding bonus link, encourages viewers to comment on their understanding of the Ripple/XRP distinction, and ends with typical YouTube calls to like, subscribe, and stay long‑term invested in XRP.
Chapters
XRP is not Ripple, and I have to say that because I see a lot of comments that let me understand that there's a mistake that a lot of people are making, and that there's a gap between what they think they own and what they actually own. And it's one of the most important things that you're ever going to understand as a holder of this asset. They are two completely different things. One of them you can actually own, and the other one is locked away from almost everybody watching this video. And once you see this very differently, you're going to understand why the thing that you can own may be a stronger position to be in. Now, I'm Kamilah Stevenson, and around here we talk wealth. And I want you to like the video and subscribe if you have not already. And I want you to know this is not financial advice. I'm only sharing for educational and entertainment purposes. Always do your own research and drop in the comments Before we get into this, when you first bought XRP, did you think you were buying a piece of Ripple the company, or did you know that they were separate from the start? Be honest. I just want to see where you are with this. Now let me lay out the basic distinction so that you can understand, because people are still confusing these two separate things. Ripple is a private company. It has employees, executives, investors, products, revenue, and an internal valuation. Like most private companies, Ripple's shares are not something that you can just go and buy on a stock app, okay? The shares are held by a small group— the founders, early employees who joined when the company was small, a handful of venture capital firms that wrote checks years ago. There is no public ticker currently for Ripple, so you cannot add Ripple stock to your brokerage account this afternoon no matter how much money you have. Okay, Ripple is a privately held company, and ownership of that company has always belonged to insiders. XRP, on the other hand, is a digital asset that exists on something called the XRP Ledger. The XRP Ledger is a decentralized network that runs independently of the company. It does not need Ripple to function. Okay, hear me out. The validators that confirm transactions on the ledger include exchanges, universities, financial institutions, and independent operators around the world. XRP is the native asset of that network. It is what the public can actually buy, hold, send, and store in a wallet or institutional custody or wherever you hold it. Ripple, the company, uses XRP, builds products around XRP, and controls a large amount of XRP supply held in a programmed escrow that pieces on a schedule. But owning XRP does not make you a shareholder in Ripple. You do not get a slice of Ripple's profits. You do not get to vote on company decisions. You do not get any of the benefits that come with owning equity in a private company. Now, this is where most people get it backwards. When a company stays private, the upside of its growth flows to a very small, very close group of people. This is the venture capital funds that wrote checks early, the insiders with founder shares, a handful of institutions that got access to private funding rounds. If Ripple the company becomes worth tens of billions of dollars, and in private markets it has been valued in exactly that range, the people who capture that equity upside are not retail investors watching from the outside. They never had that door open to them. That is just how private equity works. The most valuable seats at that table were filled a long time ago, and they were filled by people who were already wealthy and probably connected. Okay, so when someone tells you that they're invested in Ripple, what they almost always means is that they are holding XRP, and those are two completely different things. The Ripple equity, the actual company shares, are not available to the public. They may not be coming to the public. I don't know what they're going to decide to do. But here's the reframe that I really want you to understand, because this is the part that changes how you should think about your XRP. For most of financial history, the pattern has been brutal and consistent. The wealthy got the equity, the compounding upside, the real ownership of the companies that built the world, and the public got whatever was left over. The product was for them and the scraps were for you. This is usually how Wall Street has operated for hundreds of years. Think about every major technology company that became a household name. The founders, the venture investors, and the institutions captured the equity upside. By the time the public got access to those shares through an IPO, the early gains had already been distributed to people on the inside. And I'm not saying that people don't make good money on IPOs because they have, but I'm just saying how it usually goes. And what is genuinely different about this moment in financial history is that the asset doing the actual work in the system being built, the asset that settles value on the network, banks and governments are starting to use is the one piece of this entire story that is actually open to you. You cannot buy a seat in Ripple's boardroom right now. You cannot get an allocation in the next private round. Most of you, at least some of you can if you're in the right groups, but you can hold the native asset of the network that they're building on. The equity is for someone else right now, currently, but the asset is for you. And for the first time in a long time, the asset that is open to the public is not the consolation prize. It is the part of the system that gets repriced as the network finishes assembling underneath. Now, I want to be very direct with you about something because clarity has to cut both ways. The fact that XRP and Ripple are different things also mean that you have to be honest about what actually moves the value of XRP. Good news about Ripple, the company, can affect sentiment and short-term price action, but XRP is not a stock that pays you a share of Ripple's earnings. The long-term value of XRP is tied to whether the XRP Ledger actually gets used, whether the institutions actually settle value across it, whether the architecture is being built around it carries the financial flows the company is positioning for. So stop measuring your XRP position by the wrong scoreboard. Stop watching it like a Ripple stock. Watch the thing that matters, which is the architecture being built on the ledger, the validators, the volume, the institutions that are integrating, the capability upgrades shipping into the network. That is where your asset's value gets built over time. Once you really understand that the asset is what is yours, the structure underneath it becomes the next layer of the conversation. Okay? Because owning the right asset in the wrong account can still cost you significant portions of what you build. And I always come back to that. I always have to say that if you're holding XRP in a regular taxable brokerage account, when the architecture finishes assembling, the asset reprices and reflects the system being built around it., and the IRS is going to come and take a sizable cut of what you have already built. And so you want to make sure that there is structure around it that lets you keep what it produces. That is the entire reason why I personally hold a portion of my XRP inside a Roth IRA through iTrust Capital. The Ripple equity went to insiders. The XRP asset is mine, and the Roth IRA structure makes sure that every dollar of appreciation on that asset stays mine too. So iTrust will let you hold XRP, uh, HBAR, XLM, ZBEC, and whatever other digital assets that you are invested in. It lets you hold it all inside a tax-advantaged retirement account. They also have a $100 funding bonus when you fund the account. And so you can take that and you can even invest it in stocks and ETFs soon because they are coming out with that in the summer as well. The link is is in the description. If you use that link, they are giving my community $100 free of funding bonus, and that is their way of just saying thank you for opening up the account. But really, the thank you is that you have made the right decision for yourself to protect your future from loss of income. And taxes is one of the biggest payments that you're gonna pay if you don't structure this right. Now drop in the comments and let me know, is there people around you that still don't know the difference between Ripple and XRP. I'm just curious to know, uh, what people around you are saying and, uh, if there is a lack of clarity concerning the difference between Ripple and XRP. So drop that in the comments for me. I do read the comments and I'd love to hear from you. Also like the video and subscribe if you have not already, and, uh, hype it if you're feeling extra kind today. And I want you to understand that the investment in XRP is a very wise decision if you are looking for a very good ROI for the future. You just have to be long-term minded, but stay in position because I do think that they want you to capitulate so that they can buy your XRP from you. And when it reprices, you'll be looking on the sideline. And I think it's one of the biggest mistakes that, um, you could ever make if you were to sell all of your XRP. But that's just me. Hey, I'm only one person. But as for me and my household, I'll continue to accumulate. And as always, I want you to stay wise, stay wealthy, and I'll see you in the next video.
