You're Holding XRP — LOSING Money Without Knowing It

Hey, it's Kamilah Stevenson, and around here we talk wealth, and we got a good one for you today. What's up? I see you guys already in the comments. I'm looking at you guys. Uh, yeah, we have— anytime I come live, I— and I'm just answering this just because I see it in the comments— I am always on at Central Time. All right, um, so, uh, we got a great show for you. I'm gonna go ahead, um, and that— Jared, can you, uh, can you hear me?

I just want to make sure I hear you. Can you hear me?

Yes, yes. All right, uh, yeah, we got a great show for you guys today. Um, you know, for, for all of you all, I've been building this channel and this community, and, um, and I realize that most people are just one decision away from a completely different financial future, you know. And so, um, I, I've personally been invested in the digital asset space for some time. Of course, y'all know XRP is a fan. Uh, and it's a significant part of my portfolio. Uh, also of course, uh, commodities, gold and silver. And I do use iTrustCapital. I use this platform and have several accounts with them. And I love the fact that today we have a very special guest, um, coming on because I believe in what they're doing. Uh, my, my guest today is— he's a brilliant mind. I was, I was pretty impressed just, you know, learning about him and what he's been doing. Um, in the digital space and just in the financial space altogether. And so, um, before, before I introduce them really quick, I just want to frame something to you guys and just let you know, um, that we are living in a once-in-a-lifetime, um, generational financial moment, okay? I believe the rules are changing, the infrastructure is changing, institutional money is entering this space in a way that's never happened before. And the question is always not whether or not you're going to be a part of this shift, but the question is whether you're going to get in before or after the rest of the world finds out. We have a moment, we have a space. I take it very serious, and, um, and we're going to talk about a lot today. Now I do want to introduce him in a respectable way because my goodness, um, does he have a lot of reason that we need to respect and So Jared Feldman is the Senior Vice President of Operations at iTrust Capital. And when I say he oversees operations, I don't mean that he just sit in a corner office somewhere doing nothing. I'm talking about he's touching custody and financial operations across every asset type on the platform. He's involved in marketing and product development and client experience, and he literally sees the full 360 of what it takes to run one of the most trusted names in crypto IRA investing and in general. And, uh, what makes Jared different is, listen here, uh, this is the thing that gets my attention, um, is that he has come up through financial planning. So he's held his Series 7 and Series 66 licenses. So he, um, has been working as a financial advisor. Um, he understands the traditional financial world and the digital asset space. Space. And on top of that, he is a native crypto investor, right? So he didn't just show up when Bitcoin hit the news and the headlines and all the noise. He was there early and he believed in it early. So, uh, when he talks about this space, it is the perspective that is much appreciated and respected. Um, and I think you're gonna feel that today. All right, Jared, welcome to the community. Hey guys, go ahead and like the video and share it with someone. If you're not subscribed, go ahead and subscribe. Welcome, Jared. I am excited that you are here.

And I am excited to be here. That was the definition of a without further ado announcement. So much appreciated. Really excited to be here. We're really excited to work with you and your audience in general. The first thing that I'll have to say, unfortunately, given that we're live, so I have to point this out. I no longer have my 7, right? We don't, we don't provide financial advice at iTrustCapital. I am no longer a financial advisor. Now, I do take a lot of pride in the fact that I come from that world. I think it gives me such a unique perspective to be able to relate allocating into digital commodities, physical commodities, and being able to kind of think about that from the perspective of asset allocation. Risk management, and just financial planning in general, particularly on the retirement side. So very excited to be here, excited to touch on all the topics that we're going to go into. And once again, thanks for having me. Absolutely.

Look, they're excited. I'm watching the comments. They're excited that you're here. Listen, I want to, I want to prick, uh, prick your brain on, on a few, uh, topics. And one of the first things, let's start at the macro level. Um, Because if you want to understand why this moment, um, of being positioned in digital assets, um, you, you kind of have, have to understand what's happening, happening behind the scenes legislatively. And so, um, here's a, a big thing that I don't think retail investors fully grasp, that for years, one of the reasons why institutional money, um, pension funds, endowments, uh, major family offices stayed on the sidelines, I assume, was because, um, they didn't— not because they didn't believe in crypto, but because there was no clear regulatory framework, no clarity on whether a digital asset is a commodity or a security. Of course, except for XRP for now because of the court case, but no real clear rules on custody and no established guardrails. And institutions can't really move without guardrails. And so the Clarity Act changes that. And when the Regulatory clarity arrives, and I think it is going to arrive. I believe the gates will open for that and money will start moving, and people who were positioned before that shift is going to really look smart. So I just kind of want to hear how it looks from someone inside of understanding that world, for somebody who's actually building the infrastructure that this moment demands. Okay, and so for my community, we're 's watching, you know, even the price of XRP and other assets that they're convicted about, um, but maybe wasn't tracking the legislation side of things. I want you to, um, from just your viewpoint, can you break down the Clarity Act simply? What it is, what it does, um, and why should every person watching this care about it right now?

It's a really good question. You know, I think when you look at it from their perspective of the original reasons why we are pushing the Clarity Act forward. It's because we're trying to distinguish between the difference between a commodity and a security, right? So I think when crypto first came to be, they always looked at crypto as getting involved in the commodity space, right? Our clients wanted to onboard, they wanted physical commodities, they wanted digital commodities, right? Gold and silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP. What ended up happening was as crypto got bigger and bigger and as it got more respect, the regulators wanted to be able to clamp down on it and looking at it as a security, all the different crypto assets. Yeah, and it became a huge fight legislatively. XRP was the first crypto that was targeted by the regulators to try to come down on it as a security. But I trust Capital, at Coinbase, at Kraken, at all these different providers. These were always commodities, right? There was no reason to ever think that these assets, these digital commodities, were not commodities, because securities always had to pass the Howey test. Securities always filled certain characteristics that promised returns guaranteed some sort of levels of compliance and had a structure that crypto didn't have, right? So crypto was always seen as a commodity. We all knew that in the space. The only time that crypto would be a security is if they created tokenized assets that were based on securities, or if they created a crypto that had some sort of promise of pursuing returns, yield, etc. So Clarity Act is creating rules of the road that defines what's a commodity, what gets regulated by the CFTC, and then what's a security and gets regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So that's a really, really important thing to think about, is that Clarity is going to create rules of the road for that. Now, along the way, what has happened— there's a lot of infighting with lobbyists. There is a lot of lobbyists that are allocating and appropriating time for the bankers to try to negotiate the terms of paying interest or yield on stablecoins. There's debate about how DeFi will be permitted within the Clarity Act and how DeFi will be able to be adopted by the legacy traditional financial system. And now there's all those things that are being debated as part of the Clarity Act. But that's a very basic function. Clarity Act is, is really just trying to create the rules of the road for how this industry is, uh, is, is regulated. And once they determine how it's going to be regulated, then we're going to see, um, a lot more capital presumably flow into the space.

I love that. I love that. I mean, and you know, obviously, um, we had the Genius Bill and that kind of set the stage for the stablecoins, but now we definitely, um, need this legitimacy in the digital aspect, um, asset space. And I, I believe this is of course about the entire ecosystem gaining the kind of structural credibility that brings it in, like you say, that next wave of capital. I talk a lot about this on my channel, which is the difference between speculating and investing. And speculators chase the price. And I see some people in the comments like, XRP is down, which gives it a great buying opportunity. And by the way, let me go ahead and say, nothing, um, that I say or he say is financial advice. Everything is for educational purposes only. Always do your own due diligence and invest according to, um, your convictions. All right. I had to say that. And so we're looking at investors that want to invest around infrastructure. And what we're seeing with this legislation is an infrastructure moment, the same way the internet had its infrastructure moment when the legal and commercial frameworks caught up with the technology. And so we're watching that happen in real time. It's really exciting. I want to go deeper and ask you something that relates to iTrustCapital with this, which is from where you sit, like, how does the regulatory clarity actually change what iTrustCapital can offer clients? Like does it unlock new asset classes, new account types, new protections? You know, if you can just paint, paint that picture for us of what maybe before and after could look like for the platform.

Nothing too, too much will change, right? I mean, I think we, we've established ourselves as a, as a first mover in the industry and we, we take a lot of pride in the fact that we've, that, that we've been a, a first, a first mover and our, our platform's not gonna change all, all that much. We'll probably offer different asset types in the future. I think what we will see is the opportunity for yield, you know, to be able to be pushed to the, to the forefront. There will be different things that legitimize the industry that will certainly benefit iTrustCapital, but our platform is never going to really change all that much because of regulatory clarity. And that's just no, no pun intended there. But our platform will be impacted by more adoption, more people getting into the space, and heightened legitimacy for the digital asset space will certainly help us when it comes to client adoption and people onboarding to our, to our platform. But we're always going to be an ambitious company irrespective of legislation, right? We're always going to be compliant We're always going to follow the law. We'll always be in lockstep with regulators, but ultimately we're still going to be an ambitious company building products no matter what.

I love that. Uh, I, I know that, uh, because you just talked about yield and, um, and a lot of my audience is very interested on some of the topic around yield. You know, my community of course loves XRP. Of course we're long-minded, um, long-term-minded, so we're thinking out in the future. We're not saying that we feel like XRP is going to just go to the moon, you know, tomorrow. Uh, but Ripple— we love XRP, and Ripple's technology is already being used by banks and financial institutions around the world to move money faster and cheaper, um, than the traditional correspondent banking systems. When you understand SWIFT and when you understand how cross-border payments actually work now, you understand of course why XRP is fundamentally different, a different kind of bet than what most people are used to in the crypto market. And I know there's been some real developments recently. Um, I heard you were at the Swell event, right?

Yeah, we were at Ripple Swell. We were invited, really excited to, to be there. And Ripple is just— it's a, it's a behemoth, you know. There's so many, there's so many relationships that they have, and they're really trying to be an established player in the payments arena. We all know that. They're also trying to really be an established player when it comes to tokenized assets and, and tokenized securities. They want for the XRP Ledger to be a mainstay for proliferation and issuance for real-world assets, period. They want to be very much a part of the tokenization wave, and they're making acquisitions and partnerships to be able to bring that to life. And that was the biggest takeaway from the conference, is just that they're really trying to be a player in the real-world asset tokenization space. And the first movers are the ones that are rewarded the most in, in this industry, and particularly, and particularly in the tokenization industry as well, right? There's going to be so much proliferation and issuance in tokenized securities, and everyone's going to be trying to catch up to what companies like Ripple are already establishing. What I also took away from that conference, because, you know, mostly the pushback when it comes to tokenization is Well, if it's going to be so big, why isn't it big already, right? How come, you know, it's— there aren't all these partnerships, and how come all stocks aren't traded on the blockchain now if it was so valuable? And I'm a big believer in first a little, then a lot. And I think that all that it takes is one big partnership for Ripple, right? If they have one big partnership that brings billions, trillions onto their platform, onto the XRP Ledger for tokenization, they're going to go from millions to billions overnight. Just because of one potential partnership, right? So I'm not saying that I know anything that other people do not know, but if you look at who was at their event, who they have relationships with, and who's trying to build on blockchain technology and the financial industry, it just takes one big partnership to, you know, have billions potentially being transacted with on the XRP Ledger.

Yeah, I saw NASDAQ and Citibank, and, you know, yeah, I saw some big players. Of course, BlackRock was there. Um, so it is my, my community, we're always asking about yield on XRP. Is that, is that something that you guys are thinking about in the future? Is some kind of way to get rewards or yield off of XRP?

We're always exploring it. I think it's so important to differentiate between yield versus returns because a lot of people in the space that offer quote-unquote yield on XRP, they're really just offering returns. Yield is when you utilize legacy traditional prime brokerage and capital market activities like private lending to generate sustainable risk-managed yield on an asset. Returns are when someone takes your asset like an XRP, collateralizes it, borrows against it, and then tries to generate a return on your assets. So what a lot of people in the industry, like private funds, hedge funds, financial advisors, people who advertise and say they're generating yield on XRP, they're really generating returns. And the reason why that's so important to acknowledge is because there's so much more risk that's being taken when you're generating returns. If I'm taking someone's XRP and I'm collateralizing it and I'm borrowing against it to generate returns on your XRP, I'm potentially risking your entire stack in order to chase yield. Yield. But I'm calling it yield when it's really returns. So we are pursuing returns, we're pursuing yield, but we want it to be risk-managed and packaged in a way where it makes sense for our clients. Our clients are like your listeners. They think XRP is going to be part of the financial future. They think it's going to potentially go up 2x, 5x, 10x, who knows. If they truly believe that, why are they going to risk their XRP to chase 5 to 15% yield and risk potentially their entire stack? Why are they chasing 10 to 15, 5 to 15% of yield or returns when they think the asset's going to go up 5 or 10x? That's what most of our clients feel. Now, some clients chase, you know, chase the yield opportunities, they chase the return opportunities. And that's great. We are exploring it ourselves, but we're not going to bring something to market until we feel like the risk is palatable for our clients. If you look at what, uh, Xaymon Wallet is doing through Upshift— now I'm not sure if you're, if you're aware, I think I actually did see you talk about it on your show though once. Yeah, how Upshift basically has an opportunity where you can take your XRP in your Xaymon Wallet, you can wrap it on Flare, and you can generate FXRP And then you can deploy it through Upshift where they're generating, you know, some, some sort of APY on it. At one point it was like 8 to 12%, then it went down to 3 to 4%. Right now it's sitting at 3%, uh, but after fees, it, you know, it's, it goes into the high 1s or maybe like low, low 2s after fees. And I think that they cap the total value locked. So we're just like really in the early days for demand on XRP. And legitimate capital market established yield opportunities for that asset. Now, I, as you can see, I'm very passionate about it. I'm very— I'm acutely aware of what is available in the industry when it comes to generating yield on XRP, and it's just, uh, unfortunately right now the demand just can't satisfy all of the XRP that currently exists.

I honestly cannot understand why, um, people are taking large amounts of their XRP for yield in a speculative, manipulated stage in the cycle. Um, I think a lot of people are overleveraged, and, and you just don't win when you're overleveraged that way. And, uh, and I— yeah, I, I know exactly what, um, Flare is doing because I have a little bit of wrapped XRP, and I've talked to my community about wrapping it, and that it is a very small amount just for the sake of research and just kind of seeing what it does. Um, but I have always said I do not want yield unless, um, we're talking about a stable digital currency, a stable XRP with institutional adoption at scale. Um, just because of the risk that's involved, it doesn't make any sense to me. So I appreciate you guys' take on it with that balance between protecting capital and protecting investments, but also understanding, okay, there are some people who want this, but, um it's not something that makes sense at this stage. There's different phases in financial growth and, and, you know, developments, and this is just not the stage to risk throwing your XRP and, and losing, um, access to it, you know, um, just for a little bit of yield. So I, I totally agree, I get you on that, and it's really the safe play. And, uh, and obviously a lot of people just like kind of like gambling with their stuff often instead of building a real structure around it. I saw a comment asking about security and infrastructure. And, um, and I definitely want to talk about security and custody and how your assets are actually being held in and protected. And this is what I've seen. I've seen people who made incredible calls on crypto, like really, really smart people, uh, people who were right, and they still lost everything. Um, I've seen exchange hacks, I've seen the seed phrase mistakes, um, lost hardware wallets, uh, FTX You know, um, that was awful. Um, the list goes on, but here's something that it taught me is that you can build the right portfolio but— and make the right decisions and even have the right timing and still lose, um, everything if your security infrastructure is wrong. And, um, that's not a margin for error that I'm willing to accept for myself, okay? And the reason why— one of the reasons why I chose iTrustCapital is because the custody model was a major part of, um, why I made that decision, you know, would have an institutional custody. I don't think it's the same thing as holding your crypto on the exchanges, and it's also not the same thing as a hardware wallet being somewhere locked up in your drawer. And I'm for, uh, cold wallets, I say it all the time, but it's just a completely different level of protection to me. And I just want— I want you, Jared, to kind of break down exactly what that looks like, you know, um, just to kind of help understand why why would somebody want to put their, uh, crypto in an institutional-backed custody account with you guys?

Yeah, it's really the question, right? Because what's the point of talking about all this other stuff if your assets aren't safe, right? It really is the question. Our platform, we are offering retail users the ability to plug into institutional leverage level storage solutions. So whether it's storage, liquidity, staking, our clients are getting access to opportunities for storage that are only available for institutional level investors. Now, what does that even mean? When you deposit your funds onto an exchange, your funds are held on the exchange's balance sheet. This is a really important thing to keep in mind. They're being held on the exchange's balance sheet, meaning if something were to happen to the exchange— bankruptcy, uh, any sort of financial catastrophe— your funds actually technically become their funds. That's what on balance sheet means. iTrustCapital users, their funds are held off balance sheet through a qualified custodian. So our retirement accounts and our premium custody accounts, and now our new treasury, treasury accounts for entities, are all held off balance sheet through a qualified custodian, and they're bankruptcy remote. So if something were to happen to us, if something were to happen to our qualified custodian, all funds are held off balance sheet, remote from bankruptcy, as per how they're designed and how they're regulated. So it's such an important element of our platform that we take a lot of pride in, and it's why clients flock to us, is because we have that level of institutional storage Also our service, right? I think our service is also a big part of the security because it's so important to be able to call and get a hold of someone to be able to walk through any issues you have, which you really don't see in the crypto space.

It's good, that's good. I do see a couple I want to stop and look at, just a couple of questions, um, two quick ones, you know. Um, someone is asking, why do you need $1,000 to start? And then, can you send crypto to iTrust? I know the answer to the second one, but I'll just let you answer those.

The $1,000 minimum, I mean, ultimately, in order for us to be able to provide institutional storage, liquidity, staking without charging any sort of onboarding or monthly or account fee, we need to have certain minimums when it comes to transactions, uh, in particular when it comes to deposits. Once you're on the platform, the, the minimum buy or sell is like $15 depending on the asset. Well, we do have that $1,000 minimum, and it's because at the end of the day, for us to be able to offer storage and, and our services free, free of charge without an account fee, we need to have that, that, that minimum. Now, that's not to say that we're not open to having lower minimums. I mean, it used to be $2,500 and now it's $1,000, so we have lowered it in the past. That doesn't mean that we will not lower it again. But that's, uh, that's just the way that the cookie crumbles for now. When it comes to crypto deposits for a retirement account, you have to deposit with fiat, with US dollars. That's an IRS rule, right? The IRS mandates that all cash contributions are with fiat. Now, if you have crypto in an IRA, we can do a retirement account that already has crypto in kind. We can take crypto all day. That's not a problem. But for cash contributions into a retirement account, it has to be USD. For our non-retirement account, which we refer to as a premium custody account, that you can deposit crypto.

Yeah, yeah. And, um, I know that because I've moved, um, some of my crypto there. I get a lot of people in my comments sometimes in videos who are like hardcore maximalists when it comes to the cold wallet And, um, I have my reasons for diversifying everything, and, uh, and I'm gonna ask your thoughts on it. But what I— here's what I learned with working with people across all different kinds of backgrounds. I, I feel like psychology drives behavior more than ideology does. And you can, you can tell someone the right way to do something, or the right way you think you should do something, all day long, but if it creates so much friction, um, around it, they'll never do it. And that's not a win to me because paralysis is the real enemy and not the platform. And I tell people all the time that my mom and my sister would never ever ever use a cold wallet. I believe in diversifying and having sovereignty and having some in a cold wallet, but they would never use it. And, uh, I know my sister or it— and a lot of my family members would never touch seed phrases and stuff like that. And so if it's a choice between them having zero exposure to this asset class or having it inside like a brokerage-style account, um, that they understand, I, I would choose for them to participate over Perfect any day. And, um, so let me ask, uh, an, an issue, a question about the issue with like cold wallets, you know what I mean? Um, for the person who says I have a Ledger, I have a cold wallet, we should keep all our crypto in cold wallets, you know, so that I own my own keys, um, and I don't need this, I don't need iTrustCapital. Like, what is your honest response to them? You know, what does institutional custody offer that self-custody does not offer? And I know you went into that a little bit, but I just want people to be able to differentiate between the two.

Love this question. It kind of reminds me of like when you go bowling for the first time, you, you have those bumper guards up Right, and it's like as you get better at bowling, then you can kind of bowl with the guardrails down. And that's kind of like cold storage versus institutional custody. If you're getting into crypto for the first time, probably makes sense for you to pursue institutional custody. As you learn to use crypto and get more familiar with the nuance, then maybe go for some cold storage. We're big believers in don't just diversify what you own Diversify how you own it, right? Don't just diversify your assets, but diversify how you own them. Have some in cold storage, have some with an exchange, have some with institutional storage. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable, but diversify. It's like someone during the 1800s that was rolling around with gold all in their horse and buggy. Well, what if it rolls down the hill? What if— what, like, what if you get robbed, right? What if someone takes it? So diversify. Have some gold in your horse and buggy, have some in the bank, have some buried in a ditch. Have diversification in how you own your assets. We have heard, unfortunately, story after story after story from people who have been the victims of some sort of phishing scam, who have— who thought that they were on top of their stuff, and one time they just fell for the wrong thing. They lost their funds that were in cold storage because they fell for a scam. They lost their funds that were held with an exchange because they fell for fell for a scam. So you have to make sure that you're on the lookout for that stuff and understand that if you're using cold storage, that makes you even more of a potential victim for those attacks. But at the end of the day, when you utilize institutional storage, you don't necessarily have to worry about that because we've had people who have been hacked in their exchanges, hacked in their cold storage, and their iTrustCapital account was safe and sound. The last thing I'll say about that is that we've even worked with people who set up their cold storage wallet. They were good for the first 3 months, then they walked away for a year or two. They came back, they forgot how to use it, they misplaced their seed phrase, they thought they just needed their 4 to 6 digit PIN and didn't need their seed phrase. We have had to walk people back from so many instances in which they had control of their cold storage vault, but then they ended up losing control because of some mistake that they made. And they only got into it because they were pressured by someone else who told them, not your keys, not your crypto, right? They fell for the peer pressure. And we've seen people who have had a lot of regrets with that as well.

Yeah, I think it's just common sense, you know. Again, I see a lot of people who are like, only self-custody. And honestly, I understand that feeling of— because years ago when I put everything in a cold wallet. I had to learn all about it, took me some time. And I, I remember coming back years later and I, I didn't know how to operate my cold wallet. I had to relearn and try to refigure out and try to go back and get things together. And, you know, I also ask a lot of people, um, okay, if your stuff is just in cold wallets— because the way we should plan is as if something could happen to us tomorrow. Okay, um, and so is your family— are they educated? Do you have videos to show them how to get to the, the seed phrase? Um, will they know how to get there? You know, it's very easy to go to a brokerage account and have a beneficiary and get access to something while you're trying to figure that out. But most people, they might say, okay, move everything to a cold wallet, but they still haven't built a safe structure around how to pass that on if something were to happen to them. And then you just got to take into consideration the fact that, you know, some people just sleep better at night being diversified. I've heard a lot of horror stories also about, you know, someone having all of their crypto and their digital assets in a cold wallet. And it's good if that's your choice, do what you want to do. But if when that's taken from you, um, it's devastating. All, all the way to the point where just, you know, heard not too long ago somebody committed suicide because they lost $3 million worth of their assets on a cold wallet.. And so, um, to me, I just sleep better at night having that diversity, you know what I mean? So, uh, there is something that I do want to talk about also, um, that I love about iTrust Capital. I do believe in hard assets, um, I believe in tangible stores of value, um, and the reason why is because every fiat currency in history has eventually lost significant purchasing, uh, purchasing power and we're seeing the dollar devaluing. And, um, and gold has been a store of value for over 5,000 years. And so that's a, that's a huge track record. And, um, I believe it's also a real money. I look at gold as real actual money. And so as a researcher, you know, when I look at macroeconomic cycles, at what happens when governments print money and inflation and currency debasement, uh, gold and silver as a foundation makes complete sense. And so I love the fact that, um, iTrust Capital— I, I had— when I was, um, investing in iTrust Capital, I didn't even pay attention to the silver and gold. But once I started looking at it, I actually had to go to AI to try to figure out, you know, like, is this like physical gold, or is this, you know, is this like, um, exposure to the price or whatever? And so, um, finding out that it's, um, it's backed by real physical metals, I believe and being able to trade 24/7. Um, this is not a gold ETF, uh, this is not a futures contract, it's actual gold. But I want you to kind of explain how it works, you know, when somebody buys gold through their iTrust account. Like, is it actual physical gold? Where is it stored? How's it allocated? And, and what does on the blockchain mean in practical terms for the account holder?

Yeah, it's a great question. We— our company was actually founded by gold and silver, uh, investors, right? So our, our original thought behind the company was, how do we offer a gold and silver IRA that is competitive and doesn't gouge their customers in terms of fees? That was the original impetus. And then we ended up getting into crypto as, as a byproduct of that, because physical commodities, digital commodities commodities inside of a retirement account. There's a huge Venn diagram as well between the philosophy and belief system of gold and silver investors with crypto investors, right? Macro hedge, inflation hedge, um, not tied to government-issued currency, etc. So there's a huge Venn diagram when it comes to those investors as well in terms of philosophy and asset allocation beliefs. Our gold and silver offering is really unique because it gives access to physical precious metals, but it does it in a really cost-effective way with 24/7 liquidity. It's a platform and it's a product that's offered through Kitco, which is a precious metals dealer, and they have a relationship with a product called VaultChain, which is offered through the Tradewind platform. And when you purchase gold and silver on our platform, it's executing the trade through a private blockchain. That's how it creates instantaneous settlement, 24/7 liquidity, and really competitive pricing. But each, each asset, each private token on this private blockchain is backed one-to-one with physical silver or physical gold, and it's a huge bar of each, and it's guaranteed and vaulted by the Canadian Mint. So it's physical gold, physical silver, physical precious metals that are guaranteed one-to-one, but it's offered in a way using real-world asset technology. And it truly is a tokenized real-world asset, uh, in, in its finest form, in a really unique way that allows our customers to have gold and silver in their IRA in a really cost-effective manner. And they can also take physical delivery of their gold and silver. So these, these clients, when they want to take physical delivery, they essentially convert their holdings with Kitco through our platform into an offering on the Kitco platform, and they get to take delivery directly from their retirement and non-retirement accounts.

Nice. I love that. I love it. Uh, thank you so much, William. You are amazing. He says thank you so much for bringing us this helpful information. I'm signing up, and I love to see it. Uh, I do have a couple of other questions. Um, is there some people asking, is this a global service? Before you, uh, answer that, uh, someone asked about, uh, his thoughts on Ripple and XRP. He answered that in the beginning, so if you go back, you'll hear what he talked about, um, concerning Ripple and XRP, and, and it was really good. So, uh, he's probably not going to touch on that again because he went in depth. I believe that was like the first, uh, One of the first things he talked about, but is this a global service? Uh, there are people asking that.

Only for US residents at this time.

Nice. Okay. And do you all plan on expanding at any point or you're going to probably just keep it within US parameters?

We have a lot of plans for this year and that, that is not one of them. I don't want to like mislead people on, on that one. We would never say never, because as I said before, we're a really ambitious company, but we have no plans this year to offer our services beyond the US.

Okay, well, I'm okay with that because I'm in the US. Can you ask Jared what is the number one coin on their platform that customers are acquiring?

It's Bitcoin.

Bitcoin. What do you think about Bitcoin? Like, um, are you into like, uh, charts or the market cycle? Uh, do you feel like it's— you know, I, I— everybody's on— I— there's so many different extremes, you know. You, you have people saying, oh, it's going to 250 all-time highs, a million dollars in the future. Then you have some— I just saw an interview where, uh, this guy was just talking about it'll, it'll never go anywhere because it's connected to fiat. And, um, I'm kind of somewhere in between where it's either going to zero or a million dollars. I'm invested in Bitcoin, by the way. Um, I'm on— I'm, I'm in it, you know. I'm not, I'm not selling any of my Bitcoin. If anything, if it drops, I will accumulate because I've always looked at it, um, as a long-term investment for my grandkids. But I would love your thoughts on that.

I mean, Bitcoin is king just because it's, it's the number one crypto asset. It has the most Lindy effect. It's, you know, it's been around for the longest. It has the most adoption. It's a balance sheet asset. It's the number one digital asset treasury token. I mean, it's just, it has the most established history and it's the most respected as a result. Our company, you know, the backbone of our company beyond Bitcoin investors is really XRP investors. I mean, the XRP Army has been a huge part of who we are from the beginning, and anyone can really just testify to that by looking at our history with just being involved with the XRP and Ripple community. I mean, Bitcoin, in terms of where we are in the cycle, as I said, we don't provide financial advice, so I always answer this type of question by giving both perspectives. The first perspective is just like, hey, people are making the argument that the 4-year cycle is the predominant force in crypto that's tied to the halving. Event that occurs every 4 years, and we peaked in October. And, you know, if you don't believe in the 4-year cycle, then too bad, because that's just the way that it is. That's like one side of the argument, that we've peaked and now we're going into some, you know, some 12 to 18 month bear period like we have in the past. The other argument is this is a new paradigm, right? This is the 'this time it's different' argument. And that argument essentially says that this is just like a mid, mid-market correction, or there's some sort of like sustained institutional bid in Bitcoin that pretty much just says that we'll have peaks and troughs and ebbs and flows, but it'll never be as volatile as it used to be. And that's why we didn't go too parabolic this cycle, and then we, and then we won't go too, you know, parabolic down. Convexly, and that, you know, we'll see some more activity later, later this year to get us back to all-time highs. So those are the two arguments, right? I do not have an opinion either way because I learned better. I've learned better over the last, you know, 8 years of me being in the space to, to have some sort of conclusion and to have a guess as to what's going on. You just have to be allocated and prepared either way.

Yeah, and I think all investment is risk, okay? It's calculated risk. And, you know, but we, we do show the pattern that, you know, if you participate in, in the market, um, you're— and, and you hold long term and you DCA, just these very simple principles, and you buy fear and sell greed, and, you know, that you'll pretty much come out on top of most people. I do want to take a moment and, and say this is not me. Um, so first of all, my name is not @Kamilah Stevenson, um, with this picture. It's @DrKamilahStevenson. So, uh, whoever this is just joined my membership. So pay attention. If you see anybody who looks like me or who you think is me, uh, saying something weird or trying to get you to contact them or telling them or telling you to contact a number, do not do it. I will never tell you to contact me. I will never give you a number and say, you know, contact me, send me some money, or anything. Any description that you or any link that you click, it has to be in the description. None of these scammers are able to get into my description, all right? So don't trust this person. My regular, uh, account name is @KamilahStevenson1, all right? And I don't even know what this little dash is on the right side of that N. So just be very careful. You see that little small— I don't know what that is, but, um, it's weird. Um, but it is my name is It is— it does say Kamilah Stevenson, but that is not my username. Some— I could— I wish I could have got that username, but somebody stole it from me before I could get it. Just be very careful, okay? If it— if it— if, if it's not something that, you know, I would, you know, would say, um, just know my character, okay? I'm not going to tell you to send me anything, send me any money, send me any crypto, send me, you know, text me or anything like that. I just have to take a moment to say that. I do want to, um I do want to share, um, this, this page right here. This is iTrust Capital. Jared, I'm gonna scroll down to, uh, some of the members on your team. I, I think it's important sometimes to know the people behind, um, those who are managing your money. Um, can you tell me a little bit about your team? And, and I don't know, something good about them. These are the people who are managing our money and making sure that we're safe and, and we got security and, and And I heard you guys— the good thing is some of my, uh, community have reached out to you guys and they are ranting and raving. I even saw some in the comments just saying how beautiful your customer service is, how responsive your team is. Um, I just want you to kind of just speak a little, uh, word of understanding on your team and, and how they help to service iTrustCapital.

Yeah, we have a really experienced team. A really competent team in our customer service, which we call client experience here. We're available 7 AM to 5 o'clock Pacific on weekdays with no lunch break, and there's no other company in crypto or even like fintech nowadays that provides that sort of level of access to just be able to call us whenever you want. So we take a lot of pride in that, and I— that's what really differentiates us in the market. It's our service. I think having an app and having a fintech platform certainly isn't easy, but I think treating customers well, especially nowadays, you know, is difficult. And we really put resources in in order to accomplish that. And our leadership team is also a reflection of that, just a very experienced, competent group.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was looking, you know, I've Even before being in partnership with iTrustCapital, I had myself already experienced the customer service, um, how responsive they were, how kind they were, um, very communicative, you know, um, solved my problems right away. And I just love that, um, I love the fact that I was able to work with you guys after having several accounts with you guys and experiencing the journey of moving my crypto over and the responsiveness of the customer service or the What do you— the client experience team. And, um, someone is asking, is your money insured in iTrustCapital? I did want to put that there because I want insurance.

Yeah, I love, I love the, uh, insurance question. We, we certainly do not shy away from it. There are a lot of folks in the crypto industry that love to talk about insurance. I mean, any company that tells you that all of your crypto is insured and all the crypto on their platform is insured is usually greatly exaggerating, if not being untruthful to you. That's just— that's the reality. You know, we do have insurance, right? Company level, all of our institutional storage providers have insurance. We usually can't get into how much insurance is available. That's just not something that we can generally get into. But what I can say is the fact that Fidelity Digital Assets, Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime, iTrust Capital. The fact that any of these companies have been underwritten for any amount of insurance is a real testament to how stress-tested they are, the auditing, and just the level of security. Because an insurance underwriter won't just underwrite you for insurance in the crypto industry. You have to really, really prove that your security protocols are stringent. So the fact that any of these protocols have any level of insurance is a real testament to the level of security on these platforms. We don't want to tell people, don't worry, all your funds are insured, because that's just not how it works in the crypto industry. But at the end of the day, the— these are really, really ironclad platforms. What I will tell you is that it's really important to keep in mind that the reality of crypto is that if someone's cryptography, right, if, if any one of these providers or any provider in the crypto industry, any exchange, if their cryptography was breached it's not just going to be your wallet that's going to be breached. If their cryptography is breached, all of their wallets are probably going to be breached, which would create a systemic issue for a lot of these places. So ultimately, the fact that there is insurance for these providers goes to show that they have ironclad stress-tested security.

Nice. Okay, that is, uh, let's see, I was looking at another question. Um, and I appreciate this. I just got a couple more questions. We're not gonna hold you too long. I appreciate your brilliant mind and just being able to answer some of these questions because I'm not always able to, um, you know, explicitly go through these, uh, questions the way you are. Now this question I've answered a lot of times, but— and he, he's just answered this already. Can you just quickly answer that one more time for them, talking about moving it into a Roth IRA? I think people get confused between the Roth IRA and the premium account and moving your assets there.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, who would want to have to sell your crypto if you want to get it into a Roth IRA? Why would you want to sell your crypto? Unfortunately, as I said before, the IRS mandates that a cash contribution into an IRA has to be in good old-fashioned fiat, has to come from cash. If you have crypto in a Roth IRA with another provider, you can move the crypto in that Roth IRA to iTrustCapital. That's not a problem. What is a problem is if you want to put new cash as part of your annual cash contribution into a retirement account, it has to be in USD, not in crypto. Now, for our premium custody account, whether you're an individual or if you're a trust entity or any business, right? Because now we have treasury accounts, they're basically an account for entities. So anything with an EIN, a C-Corp, an S-Corp, a trust, a nonprofit, you can open up a premium custody account with us. You can move crypto into that kind of account, but you can't move crypto directly into a retirement account with us, unfortunately.

Thank you so much, I appreciate your, uh, Super Chat. Uh, you did mention, mention very, very briefly, um, I just have two quick more questions— two more quick questions, I said that backwards— but you mentioned very briefly about your new account which is your Treasury's account. And, um, I saw it pop up one day, uh, and I didn't the day before, and I went ahead and signed up. A lot of, of people here in the community, they're entrepreneurs, they run LLCs, they have small businesses. Some of them have trusts set up or are in the process of setting them up. And almost universally, uh, when I talk to clients, uh, they think that their crypto investing is just a personal activity, you know, their IRA, their wallet, their personal account. Uh, but your business has money too, and your trust has assets too. And so can you, uh, just let us know a little bit about the treasury account structure at iTrust since it's new, uh, for businesses and trust? Who is it for? What does it offer? And what makes it different from just having a personal crypto account?

Great question. We're really excited to bring this product to market. People have been asking about it for a while. If you are an investor on our platform, you have certain beliefs, right? You want to get into gold and silver, you want to get into crypto, Bitcoin, XRP for a reason. You want your portfolio to be allocated and managed self-directed for a reason into those assets. If you believe that for yourself, why wouldn't you also believe in that for your business? And a lot of people, as part of their business, they have balance sheet assets to invest, and they either keep it in cash to earn yield or they put it into stocks, commodities. And our platform is the ability to be able to open up a treasury account and to be able to onboard your entity and to be able to allocate into assets on our platform because of those same belief systems. Clients sometimes cannot deploy capital into a personal account because their assets are wrapped in a trust for either liability or estate planning reasons. And now we have an account where you can onboard your trust. Your trust can own the account, Your S corp, your, your C corp, your business can own an account with iTrustCapital, your LLC as well. You can own the account through any of these entity types and to be able to allocate into an account, um, just like you would in your, in your individual personal account. Good.

Yeah, I went ahead and signed up right away, uh, because I definitely want, uh, that level of exposure. And, and by you guys just having rolling that out. I thought it was brilliant. Um, I don't know the answer to this question. If you have a primary custody account, can you eventually transfer your crypto to a treasury account?

If you have a premium custody account and you want to move it into a treasury account, you can do so, but at this time you can only do it if it's in a trust. If it's in like an LLC or if it's in an S corp at this time we can't have you move it in kind into a treasury account, but if it's within a trust and owned by a trust, that we can accommodate from your personal into your trust account.

I see some people are, are ready to take a little bit of action. Uh, something that sits, uh, this was the last thing I wanted to ask, uh, something that sits very close to my heart, uh, my children. And I heard, uh, through the winds that you guys might start rolling out kids accounts. Is that true?

Yes, we are. We're looking into it in terms of when we'll be able to shoehorn that into our roadmap this year. That I cannot really speak to, but we are heavily scoping and researching our capabilities to offer like an UTMA/UGMA type of account for your children, which people want to do for the same reasons that they would want to open up a Treasury account. If you believe in it for yourself, you're going to believe in it for your business, you're going to believe in it for your children and want to plan for the future around that strategy. So yes, we are, we are looking into it, but I wouldn't even want to mislead people by thinking it's going to come out anytime soon. Um, maybe something that we'd be able to deliver on by like Q4 or something like that, if so.

No problem at all. Just a couple of quick question, uh, questions. I, I don't— I'm not sure, do you all get, uh, transfers from like brokerage accounts like Robinhood or Yeah, only for the premium custody account.

Premium custody account, people deposit crypto from every exchange on the planet. As long as you're a US resident and you have an account with an exchange, you can move over crypto from, from all these different places. People do it all the time.

Perfect, perfect. And some of these questions he's already answered, so if you go back and, and rewatch, I— or if you just came in late I can guarantee you he went over all of these. This is the last one. I'm not sure exactly what this is about, but 5-year withdrawal process and stipulations.

Yes, the 5-year rule pertaining to Roth IRAs. If you, if you want to put money into a Roth IRA, people love it because if I were to ask you, Kamilah Stevenson, do you want to be taxed on your money or not taxed on your money? You're going to say, I want it tax-free. So there are limitations to your your income and the amount of money you can put into a Roth IRA. Someone before asked about Roth conversions. You can also convert into a Roth IRA by paying taxes now to not pay taxes later. But the brass tax is that if you put money into a Roth IRA, you need to wait until you're 59 and a half to get it out tax-free. However, the one exception is if you are 57, for example, You cannot take it out tax-free at 59 and a half. You have to wait 5 years. That's where the 5-year rule comes into play. So if you're 51, you can take it out tax-free most of the time at 59 and a half. But if you're 58 and you put it into a Roth for the first time, you have to wait until you're 63. That's where the 5-year rule comes into play. When you hit 59 and a half before your 5-year rule kicks in.

Yes. Yeah, that was a question that a lot of people have. And I mean, I still think it's worth it because you have a tax-free account. So whatever that appreciation is, you know, it's more about how much money that you can keep. Uh, Jared, I do want to thank you so much. I know your time is precious. Um, I genuinely thank you for coming to my community and just answering all of these questions, giving us actual strategy and wisdom on how to build for the future. Um, that's exactly what this channel is about. And, um, man, I know you're crazy busy and you, you were able to just sit back, chill with us, and answer all of these questions. And I so appreciate it. I love everything you guys are doing. Um, we're grateful to be able to have picked your brain on some of these matters and, and know, you know, what the next step is. You know, for everybody also, if you haven't liked the video, go ahead and like the video. And subscribe if you haven't already. Everything that we covered today— the Clarity Act, XRP, your, uh, whatever your top cryptocurrency is, um, security, Roth IRAs, physical gold on the blockchain, institutional custody, treasury accounts, you know, um, all of those— none of those are complicated once you start to understand what's actually happening right now. And, um, that's the thing that most financial media will not do for you. They won't sit down and take time to help you to understand how to structure yourself to take to partake and to participate in, um, in, in a, a financial infrastructure transfer, you know. And, uh, so we want to give you a framework, and that's why I had them come here and just kind of help you. You guys always have a lot of questions, and I'm not able to answer them all, but I want you to understand that smart investors, they don't just watch the market. They understand the infrastructure underneath it. They know why things are moving, not just, uh, what's moving, okay? And that's the edge. That's what separates the people who build real wealth from the people who chase it.. And I want you to have that edge. And so that's why we're here. That's why we're having this conversation. So just pick one thing from today and make sure that you're acting on it. Open up the account, you know, get your stuff situated. You want to be on the front end of this. You don't want to be scrambling after, you know, if you were thinking about starting the rollover, you know, do that. Reach out to their customer service. You just saw that they have a beautiful team. You can hit that. I believe it's like a support button. You can contact them. They're always available. Use the link in the description. You will get a $100 funding bonus after you fund the account. So that's one way of, you know, saying thank you and giving you that bonus when you go through that link. So go through that link and I hope you guys are listening, paying attention, and setting you guys self up for the real wealth transfer. And remember, by the time everything becomes obvious, it's a little too late. We're going through it now. Even if it's the beginning stages, position yourself accordingly. Again, Go ahead and like the video, subscribe if you haven't already. I'll be back on, on Saturday. Um, look out for my videos that I'll be dropping. And as always, I want you to stay wise, stay wealthy, and I will see you in the next video. Peace out.