In this October 2021 YouTube episode, Crypto Mason (Mason Versluis) delivers a high‑energy market roundup and deep‑dive into several news items. He begins by celebrating the confirmed launch of the Digital Pound Foundation, noting that Quant, Ripple, Electroneum and other partners are officially involved, and shares a video clip of Quant CEO Gilbert Verdian confirming the milestone. Mason then examines the controversial move of Ripple veteran Cassie Craddock to Fireblocks, a firm whose advisory board includes former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, and explores the competitive implications given Fireblocks’ backing by BNY Mellon, Sequoia, and Digital Currency Group. The host provides a bullish market overview: Bitcoin hovering near $58k with a target of $63k per PlanB, a "cup‑and‑handle" pattern on higher‑timeframes, total crypto market cap approaching $2.4 trillion, and strong performances for DOT, HBAR (including a new low‑interest loan product on Bitrue), and Electroneum (up to 2 cents after the digital‑pound news). He critiques Coinbase’s NFT sign‑up surge as a referral‑driven illusion, questioning the authenticity of the million‑user claim. Additional snippets include Mark Cuban’s endorsement of Ethereum’s upside, Vladimir Putin’s remarks that Russia will not ban crypto, and a brief mention of the Digital Pound’s associate members such as Avalanche. Throughout, Mason mixes personal investment philosophy—profiting from “evil” (CBDCs) to do good—with a call for viewers to like, subscribe, and follow his social channels.
Chapters
What is up? I am Crypto Mason and welcome back to the Crypto Mason YouTube channel. Shout out to the Gold Squad. We look for gold in every single aspect of our lives, and today we definitely found it in one aspect, man. We have a great video today. Make sure you hit that like button. We're going to talk about this juicy this juicy Digital Pound Foundation confirmation. That's what this is, it's a confirmation that we do real research here, man. We're also going to talk about, um, this, which is very controversial: a Ripple employee leaving to go to Fireblocks, which has Jay Clayton sitting on the advisory board. What? So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about my thoughts on the entire market. Electroneum, the news is out. It wasn't what I was expecting. It was even better than what I was expecting, to be honest. Now smash that like button if you want to see Bitcoin reach Plan B's, uh, predictions, which is $63,000 in October. I think he said it'll close at $63,000. Smash that like button if you want to see— if you want to see that happen right here. Um, I'm seeing like, is this a cup and handle? This is pretty like it's shaky, but it's there. I mean, most charts have a cup and handle on them right now. That's the only thing I'm really focused on because I can't be asked to turn this chart to 5 minutes and like look for little weird things on the 5-minute chart. I, I'm more, I'm more on the 4-hour chart, the daily chart, and the 3-day chart, you know, because I'm not actively trading. Now if we look at the entire market, it is literally Green day. It is the, the greenest of days except for Shiba Inu. XLM is down a little bit. We have OMI down a little bit. DOT is still going crazy, or holding its little crazy levels right here, $40 and above. You know, I'm a, I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of DOT. I would never personally invest in it, but it's pretty cool. HBAR is also up, uh, 10% here. Seems like the whole market is moving up. $2.4 trillion, right, on the total market cap. Let's take a look. By the way, you're definitely going to want to watch to the end. I can't stress it enough how this is a celebration today of just good research, man. Good research. So if we check this out, like, we are almost approaching that, uh, that previous all-time high in market cap. Like, we're like We're getting there, dude. $2.4 trillion. Um, I still believe there's going to be a small shakeout just because— I don't know, I do. I just feel it. I feel there will be a shakeout and then the parabolic run will start, you know. Then, and you could buy that dip or you could do whatever. Now, Electroneum is up to— up in the 2 cents today off the news. Um, man, I'm gonna keep— continue holding Electroneum, especially after this. The Digital Pound Foundation stuff, we were shaky on it, right? We were shaky. It could have been fake, it could have been this and that, it could have been a fake thing. But no, we've confirmed it and we're going to talk about it today. Um, yeah, so this is what we have for the market, man. Bitcoin slowly climbing right here. Yesterday we broke, uh, $58,000, which was nice to see. Dude, that $63K target from Plan B is right in grasp. It's right in, like, we could easily reach that, dude. It's not far away. So if he's right, we got to be, look, we got to be taking his stuff seriously, man, because he's got something going on there. Now look at this. HBAR. HBAR can now be pledged in loans in Bitrue Loans. So you can pledge your HBAR and receive low-interest loans for XRP USDT, ETH, or Bitcoin. So you could do, you could do low-interest loans. Why would you go through a bank when you can do low-interest loans with, with your HBAR? Pretty crazy. Now we're going to speed through the mainstream news because I want to get to the juicy stuff at the end of this. Um, Coinbase NFT, basically they got a million signups in one day, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you how they did this, right? I am going to tell you how they did this. Does this link to it? Oh, it doesn't link to it. Okay, I'm going to tell you how they did this. Um, here's how they did it and here's why it's illusionary. You guys know I like to, to expose the illusionary stuff. So basically right here, join the waitlist for early access, right? Basically what they did is a pyramidal structure referral program. This breeds a bunch of people that don't really care about the platform, but they're actually signing up to help friend, right? So this breeds like, basically you get one person who's actually into NFTs, they send their referral link to 10 friends who could, couldn't care less, just to help them out, they sign up, right? Just enter, hey friend, just enter your email and it boosts me up. So this breeds signups that aren't there, that aren't even real, basically, right? So they did a million signups in the first day. If we look at the OpenSea users, right? There's only 500,000. I don't know, I showed this on TikTok before. There's only about 535,000 OpenSea, uh, users. So they doubled— they doubled it in one day. But keep in mind, how many of those are real? Probably like 200,000. I'd say 200,000 to 500,000 of those are actually care about the platform. Now, Mr. Whale, Ethereum Russian, Bitcoin Chinese, XRP American. Okay, I'm confused on this, Mr. Whale, though. XRP is basically being used everywhere but America, right? I believe XRP is the American beauty, right? The American beauty. It is the American beauty. So if it's accepted in the USA and they get proper stuff around it, we— this, this will be valid. But as for right now, it's being used in Japan, right? Korea and that type of thing. Okay, before we get into the Digital Pound Foundation, let's look at this, uh, uh, young lady right here, Cassie Craddock. Basically, Cassie Craddock was, um, worked for 4 years at Ripple. She worked for 4 years at Ripple, and she has just chosen to leave Ripple and go on to a new challenge, which they joined the Fire— or she joined the Fireblocks team. So, okay, what's Fireblocks? Let's follow the rabbit hole. Well, Fireblocks is this right here, an all-in-one platform for building your digital asset business, powering 600 financial institutions right here, powering 600 financial institutions. Um, yeah, so you know what this is, right? This is like a, like a, some kind of direct competitor to like Ripple almost. It seems like they're positioning themselves against Ripple. And as you can see in the bottom right corner of their website right here, former US SEC Chairman Jay Clayton joins the Fireblocks advisory board. If we click on that, Jay Clayton joined them. So what this is saying is this, this employee, this Ripple employee left Ripple to go to a company who has the person who sued Ripple. Hmm, what is going on here? This is super interesting. There's two sides being formed. I think the Ripple lawsuit was a deliberate attack to slow them down. Also, let's go to Crunchbase, my favorite, favorite website. Nobody in crypto is using this. I feel like I'm the only one using this to do research. Let's see who's invested in Fireblocks, okay? Who's invested in Fireblocks? BNY Mellon. BNY Mellon actually has a proof of concept with Ripple. They're invested in, in this. Sequoia Capital as well. Huge. Digital Currency Group, which runs this whole space. They're in everything, dude. They're in everything. Digital Currency Group, 3 major investors and 1 that's involved in Ripple. I think DCG is in Ripple too. So I actually think this might be a competitor to Polysign for some reason. Don't quote me on that, no facts to back that up. I just think this— I think when Polysign comes out, um, because you guys know Polysign is like the hidden, um, it's like the hidden, uh, project by David Schwartz that he can't talk about. This is Polysign right here. He's, he's a board member, David Schwartz. Okay. So, um, so this is for, um, securing digital assets and custody, right? Polysign is also for this, for financial institutions. So I don't know, man, it's looking interesting. Okay, so let's talk about Digital Pound. This is the focus of this video. Amazing news came out. It is confirmed, right? Confirmed by multiple sources. The Digital Pound Foundation themselves has confirmed this is real. The Quant Network. We're gonna watch this video. Gilbert Verdian himself has confirmed this is real. Ripple has launched this, which confirms this is real. So I know I was shaky on it. I'm like, hmm, this thing looks kind of weird. It was just set up, right? The article of incorporation, which we're looking at right now on my screen, was on June 22, 2021, and we saw that it involved Electroneum, Billion Financial, Quant Network and Ripple Labs. Okay, I want to give a big shout out to Quanthony right here, as well as King Solomon. Quanthony was the initial find. He found this article of incorporation. I believe he told King Solomon about it, and then I ended up seeing it from King Solomon. But shout out to Quanthony for finding this. I give credit where it's due. I gave credit in the first freaking video. Um, okay, amazing. If you want all the best Quant research, right there. If you want all the best XRP, HBAR, Alliance Block, right there, dude. He's got them all here. Quant. I guess he's into Casper or something, or what is that, Casper maybe? I don't know. Dope. So let's watch this Gilbert Verdian. Watch this.
Hi, I'm Gilbert Verdian, CEO at Quant.
By the way, I hate playing videos on here. I was muted. I hate playing videos on here and long videos because a lot of people, they just play the video and they don't actually give any opinion or insight on what's going on. So let's play this though.
Hi, I'm Gilbert Verdian, CEO at Quant. We're very excited to be part of the launch of the Digital Pound Foundation today. This is an important milestone for the UK. We've already got the most advanced payment system in the world. And having a digital pound allows us to innovate further and to increase competition, openness, and the exportability of a digital pound across the world in various use cases. Um, why is this important?
So look at that, he's literally confirming and he's saying that, uh, we already have the best, uh, the best payment system, right? So with this, I'm not like— when I clap for something like this, I'm not clapping for CBDCs. I freaking hate CBDCs. That is the most evil thing to do to humanity. It's a bad thing. I'm clapping because this is going to solidify Quant as a good investment for me. You, you kind of have to be a freaking soulless being in crypto if you want to make money. Richard Heart, he's like a soulless being, dude, just out here to make money. That's it, right? So I invest in the evil— no, I shouldn't say that. But I make money off the evil so that I can do good with the money, with that money, right? The only reason I want to get rich off their CBDC pandering is because I want to use the money for good, right? And free myself of time and free everybody else of time and help them free themselves. So to clarify how this actually affects Electroneum and Quant and Ripple, right? The input of Electroneum and other Ripple, Quant, blah blah blah, will be vital in the development of the digital pound. So they're basically giving input and maybe being used. We're betting on them being used in some way. Now let's check out, uh, the new updates to the digital pound website. We have Avalanche as an associate member, and Avalanche is one of the coins that I've been very slow to really try to get on. But this one looks good, man. Avalanche is a strong, strong project. It looks like it's definitely had a nice year this year, right? Oh yeah, definitely had a nice year this year. It's a cool one. It looks like a blue chip, just, just a strong, strong project. We also have Mark Cuban saying that Ethereum is a better— as an investment, I think Ethereum has the most upside and Bitcoin is better than gold. If you don't think that Ethereum has the most upside, something's wrong with your head. You're brainwashed by Bitcoin. Ethereum, absolutely. I agree with Mark Cuban right there. Vladimir Putin says crypto could possibly serve role as a settlement unit. Hmm, yes. So Vladimir Putin has an interesting take on, on crypto. He says they're paying attention to the development trend of crypto, which may also become a means of savings at one point. Hmm. We have seen how the market fluctuates, and it is still early. So even Vladimir Putin understands that it is still early, and the finance minister has confirmed that they will not be banning crypto in Russia. Okay, so that is all we've got for today, man. That is a big roundup, celebration of good research being done. We were months early. We were months early to that. Months, right? I think a month and a half or something, 2 months maybe, early to that news. We were talking about Digital Pound Foundation when they didn't even want people to know that they were a thing. They wanted to announce it today. So the press has caught up with us because we're ahead of the press. Crazy stuff. Make sure you follow on, uh, Twitter, Instagram, join the Telegram, and goodbye.
