 I've got a ton of stuff to go over, so let's just skip for the pleasantries and really just jump right in. First of all, after this show, I will be on Randy's channel on Miss Teen Crypto, and you can carry on the conversations of the Q&A that we're gonna have to carry on over there. So I linked that in the description at the very top, and after this, just meet me over there, that'll be at the top of the hour. So, here's what we got for the news. And of course, we're gonna start out with some good stuff, and we're gonna finish off with a little bit of bad stuff, and I'll tie it all together with where I think things are going. So first of all, tip of the hat to Ripple and XRP. This is a long time coming, and this is just a secondary win of what's going on in their case against the bullies that are the SEC. So the judge, this would be district court judge, Annalisa Torres, rejects the SEC motion to file an appeal against the Ripple ruling. And this is claiming that the regulator did not show that there were substantial grounds for difference of opinion. This is why I have that beautiful big fat L on Gary's head, which will be on the actual thumbnail itself. So, I gotta tell you, this is positive news. This is just the news part. Remember, we are in the bear market, so it may make a little difference, but in the long run, next three to six months, who knows what'll happen. Here's what we got. The SEC's motion for certification of interoculatory, interlocutory appeal, excuse me, is denied. And the SEC's request for a stay is denied as mute. So that's great news, and everybody's happy, everybody's celebrating, but just remember this, the decision is not an outright loss for the regulator, which be the SEC, as Judge Torres scheduled a trial for April 23rd, 2024, to address the remaining issues in the matter. Well, Rob, what are those issues? Great question. On July 13th, Judge Torres ruled partially in favor of Ripple, declaring that the retail sales of the XRP token didn't meet the legal definition of a security. The court did find, however, that Ripple had violated securities laws by selling XRP tokens to institutional investors. Let me say that one more time. The court found that Ripple had violated securities laws by selling XRP tokens to institutional investors. What does this mean? So to make this very simple, it goes like this, Judge Torres, what she took a look at and said, I believe it's like this, as far as like the SEC secures, I'm not a lawyer, I don't play one on TV, but she says when we are interacting, as far as like on a centralized exchange, I'm selling my XRP to you and you sell to somebody else, we're just individuals. So we don't know where it's actually going. It could be on the backs of a third party doing certain things to raise the price, but it's just me, to you, to your neighbor and everybody else, so individuals, not a big deal. However, when Ripple went to, what did it state here? When Ripple went to, by selling directly to institutional investors, that is them saying, okay, we're gonna sell these to you, whether it was or not, I'm not gonna get into legal debate, again, I'm not a lawyer, but what the judge is saying is like, look, if you sell them to institutional investors, they are kind of under the assumption that you were doing things to actually make XRP, do an increase in valuation. So there's a little bit of a sticking point, we'll have a trial on July 13th and moving forward, but regardless, it's a big win for Ripple, everybody's happy, I'm happy. And on top of that, Ripple also takes a big W for today as they secure the Singapore Payments License. So Ripple, this just said this today, that they secured a payments license to operate in the city-state within transaction thresholds as far as in Singapore. This is granted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, MAS, it'll allow Ripple to provide Regulated Digital Payment Token Services, that's pretty good, at least I'm glad that one place on the planet can actually understand what's going on as far as like with regulation and move things in the right direction, Gary, they had received an initial approval in June. It's one of 14 companies that are licensed to offer digital payments from token service in Singapore, which is the, and of course, on top of Ripple, you also have Coinbase, who was approved, Britain's Revolut, and LondonBaseBlochain.com. And before I read this next part, I know a lot of you are not big fans of regulation and as far as like the positivity of it, but it's just something that we really have to do. And I think if we want to put everybody underneath this umbrella, we're gonna have to appease some people. It sucks, but that's just kind of like how it goes. And because of the fact that Ripple went through with it and did a lot of the due diligence as far as like anti-money laundering, they're able to open up in Singapore and give Singapore and their residents what they want, which is crypto-nigel assets. And this is what it all comes down to. Singapore's central bank and financial regulator said it only grants license to crypto firms if they have robust anti-money laundering controls and most applicants have not been successful. So Ripple knows these things going in, it's like, let's just do it, let's just get it out of with because we gotta deal with these people anyhow. And they did it, and now guess what? Things are positive than moving into Singapore. So I like where things are going, this is positive, let me know what you think about that in the comment section. And also on top of that, I went for Ethereum. Do you know what Project Guardian is? Neither did I. So this is from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which we just took a look at. Project Guardian is a collaborative initiative with the financial industry that seeks to test the feasibility of applications in asset tokenization, which is what Larry Fink has always talked about lately, which with his nine trillion Asset Center Management in BlackRock and DeFi while managing risks to financial stability and integrity. This is going to explore the use of public blockchains to build open interoperable networks and enable digital assets to be traded across platforms and liquidity pools. What I'm saying here, public blockchains, not some crazy private blockchains that are built by institutions and corporations, public blockchains. One of those would be Ethereum. And if you don't know, UBS, very large bank global. It has total assets of $1.1 trillion as of 2022. And UBS just launched a tokenization trial on Ethereum. Again, not a private blockchain, a public blockchain. And this is being done in Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian, which we just took a look at. So here's what we have. The fund represents a legal entity for investment funds in Singapore introduced in January, 2020 to enhance the city-state's position as a hub for fund management activities. The firm will leverage its in-house tokenization service, tokenization of assets, called UBS tokenize to initiate a controlled pilot of a tokenized money market fund, which comes in the form of a smart contract on Ethereum. So again, these are good things moving in the right direction. I know some people hate banks and they despise them, but I think we have a big enough tent to really make things actually work. Now, this all came about because of positive regulation in the area. Again, I know people won't like it, but it actually works out pretty well. And in America, we're kind of stuck. However, things might be turning. If you don't know who this guy is, this is Kevin McCarthy. He's the Republican House Speaker. Sorry, he was the Republican House Speaker. He was the first one to be ousted. I don't know if this is in history or lately, but he was just ousted yesterday. And he's not a very crypto-friendly person. Good news, Congressman McHenry is gonna take over for him. And he is going to be the new House Speaker in Congress or in the House of Representatives. So crypto-friendly rep, Patrick McHenry, landed in the driver's seat of the U.S. House of Rep. Why is this such a big deal? It's because legislation to establish digital asset regulation is on the table and it looks like they're going to vote for it. So I'd much rather have somebody who's a lot more positive for crypto regulation. And that would be Patrick McHenry. So nothing bad to say about Kevin McCarthy. I think it's a step in the right direction. So more good news for crypto. Also good news, Solana. Solana, I know Ben talks about altcoins and how awful they are. I personally don't think that they're awful. Price appreciation, he is right. I mean, we've lost a ton of value in 2022 and 2023. And we're actually gonna take a look at that in a second. But as far as like what institutions are looking at, they're looking at Ethereum and mostly Solana. So Solana extends its investment streak of 27 weeks of inflows. Here's the article, institutions love Solana. And to be transparent, I'm biased. I'm dollar-cost averaging Solana and Cardano and Bitcoin and Ethereum and a whole bunch of stuff. So of course, when I see something like this, I'm like, ooh, this is good for me. Maybe you might take interest. This is according to CoinShares latest crypto fund report. This is James Butterfield, who's the head of research for CoinShares. He says, very little activity was seen in the altcoin space except for Solana. In the last seven days, institutions have gobbled up $5 million which I personally don't think is that much, but whatever. And the success of Solana lately and institutions getting into it is due to things like its partnership with many French institutions such as Visa, which they're actually using for payments because Solana is so fast and people love and all that stuff. I know there is an argument against the decentralization of it, but hey, I think it's a little bit more decentralized than say like Wells Fargo. Despite not having the same number of users or developers that Ethereum boasts, Solana is doing quite well. And that is very true. Users and developers have dropped off. And this is where it gets interesting. The network notched its highest total volume locked of the year, reaching $338 million according to DeFi Lama. And I'd say to look at that, links in the description also, defilama.com, very simple. You can see that all the TBL locked for all the chains. And I found it interesting because it said here $338 million. When we take a look at DeFi Lama itself, Ethereum is by far the biggest. You mean, it just is. I think it's gonna be the winner. I don't see any so, I don't see any theorem killers coming up. You can make the case in the comments below. But they've got almost $28 billion, $27.78 billion to be exact. Tron, which everybody makes fun of in America and apparently in Southeast Asia, everybody loves it, $6.8 billion. Binance Smart Chain for a billion. Arbitrum, one of my favorites, $2.5 billion. Avalanche, 1.36 billion. Ton with their 50 wallets that has 85% of all the tokens in it, whatever. 1.3 billion. Ultron, I guess, I don't know what it is. Optimism, $820 million. That's the one with base from Coinbase. And then here's Solana, $795 million. So even though, I always said $330 million. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but it looks like Solana is actually, oh, excuse me, excuse me, optimism was $795. Solana was $674 million. So that's a pretty great thing. But I mean, if we take a look at TVL, there's other things out there. Now, I'm not saying that Solana should be in that second or third place when institutions do, but just be aware and take it with a grain of salt. And sometimes institutions, they're just voting with their pocketbook. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, who knows? I'll just write it out and see how it works out. Anyhow, let me just think about that in the comments section. And then also as a quick reminder, don't forget, we're giving away 100,000 sweat coins. There's a link in the description for the tweet itself. All you gotta do is follow me, follow sweat economy. And we're gonna give 20 individuals 5,000 sweat coins and 10 different NFTs. And then of course, again, you guys know I'm biased, but the big question I have when I talk about this is for Solana is like, well, what's the big use case and how can you use them out of the wall? So just so you know, this just came out yesterday. They partnered up with Orderly Network. Orderly Network is, it creates DeFi platforms and they partnered up with sweat economy. What they're gonna allow people to do within the wallets, which is gonna be released to US citizens on the 17th of October, is you're gonna be able to trade the sweat coin for other crypto, pretty sweet now, huh? So you're gonna be able to swap out and you can kind of, it's kind of blurry here, but you can just swap out near for sweat or sweat for near, near for ETH, near for ETH. And then right down here, it's hard to see, but you realize that's euros, my friends, euros for a sweat coin. So again, some people say, ah, what's the point of it? And even though it's a free app and Rob's giving away free crypto, how dare he do that because he's gonna rug us? Hey, it's free. I'm just telling you, if you wanna watch the video, there's a link in the description for a deep dive. I think it's gonna be pretty good. So now we talked about the good stuff. Let's get into the not so great stuff and I'm gonna tell you why it's not that bad. Regulation again. So the SEC kind of is a big pain, but they're just trying to do their job and it's up to you to decide if they're being manipulated by outside forces. I have no idea. But their sister organization, the CFTC, looks like they wanna start regulation DeFi. This is Rostin Benham. He's the head of the CFTC and it looks like he was doing a speech and he talked about how DeFi is essentially unlicensed positions, meaning that he's saying that we want to put regulations in place now before people get hurt. Okay, we'll see how it works out. The repair remarks was at the Futures Industry Association Expo in Chicago and it came about a month after the agency settled charges against DeFi protocols open, 0x and Dairy Dex over registration violations. I take a look at this and I'm like, well, I mean, if they took him to court and they settled and they're still open, it's not a bad thing. I can see that actually being a positive way moving forward. So what he's saying, again, is they're gonna try to regulate the DeFi space. We'll see if it actually works. So just be aware that these things are gonna happen and we have to get through this stuff again, just like I talked about with Ripple. So sometimes we gotta play ball and move forward. And then also, you're gonna see a lot about this coming up. And this is about the different agencies and central banks, which are gonna be tracking crypto and digital assets. So just know what's gonna happen. But when I read this article, you're gonna see why this is actually, now let's maybe just read the article. I'll tell you why this is good. Central Bank Test Lab develops global Bitcoin mapping system. What does this mean? The BIS, the Bank for International Settlements Project codenamed Atlas, began at the Dutch central bank more than five years ago. Let me read it again. This project began more than five years ago for central banks. What does that say to you? It says, what it says to me is that central banks are, either they are worried, they're concerned, or they wanna figure out how to control this. And even though they talk about how crypto and digital assets are ridiculous, Bitcoin is going to zero and this is the most awful thing of all time, they still five years ago were figuring out a track it. And if this was a nothing burger and something that would roll over, they wouldn't have given a second thought, but here we are. So to me, this just says that, hey, this is something that the central banks trying to get in front of. Atlas created a proof of concept platform which is data from both publicly available on-chain crypto, as well as off-source or off-chain data reported by only some exchange and users. An initial analysis of data collected by the platform indicates that cross border flows are substantial in economic terms and unevenly distributed across geographical regions. So look, if you are part of the cartel or you are part of some drug trade, if you wanna do the dumbest thing of all time, then go right ahead and put it on these open ledgers so you can get tracked. I'm just saying, if you really wanna do things, and I'm not here to give drug advice, but if you really wanna do things, you really should just use straight up cash. It's the greatest thing of all time. You can't track it. You can move things around. I mean, it's hard to move a little bit, but you can't track it, it's very nice. And of course, that's created by the US government. That's what we do here in America. So again, the argument about elicit activities, terrorism and cartels is kind of ridiculous and this kind of proves it that if you really wanna track something, put it on an open ledger, which will leave me some of my last points. The US Department of Justice charges eight Chinese companies using crypto to facilitate fentanyl trade, genius move. So even though, I like this as the Department of Justice, even though participants use a variety of payment methods, they use a little bit of crypto under their cash flows. I think this is how they get caught. And note that crypto transactions allow participants to conceal their identities and obscure money trails. Maybe perhaps, but I gotta tell you, if it's that easy just to go to the bank and say, I just would like to open a bank for a couple hundred million dollars and okay, I'm going to use the bank to transfer $20 million. What are you using that for? Ah, nothing, don't worry about it. Of course, they can track it super simple. It just takes a little bit more work when it's on an on-chain ledger, you don't know the wallets. But once you figure that out, very simple. And it's not just me talking, it's the head of the CIA and I'll talk about that in a second. The agency specifically stated that two individuals linked to Heibaishinghao, import and export company, Quingsong Li and Chunhuai Shen nailed it, held crypto wallets for remittances related to precursor chemicals using drug production. Another individual, Wei Zhang, operated a crypto wallet that facilitated transactions for sales of fentanyl precursors and opioid additives. Genius move. So why do I read this? It's because you're gonna hear this same song and dance as well about what crypto is actually used for and crypto is so awful. There is a case going on against Sam Well, Bankman Freed and FTX. And of course, people are gonna say how awful crypto actually is. And just remember, FTX, the only thing it had in common with crypto is you were able to sell and buy it there. Crypto, DEXes and most of the centralized exchanges did quite well. This of course is an issue with people who have no souls according to Sam Bankman Freed and are just Ponzi scheme and manipulators. So you've got the FTX, the Celsius, the voyage in the block fires the world and you got everything else. So again, lastly, to bring this all home, this was an article, or this is actually a study report by Michael Morrell. He is the ex-head of the CIA. And he took a look at aspects of blockchain and digital asset technology because he was asked to look at it to see if this was actually a grid forensic tool. And he says, look, two things, the broad generalization about the use of Bitcoin to listen to finance are significantly overstated. And the blockchain ledger in which Bitcoin transactions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can use by more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and disrupt the listed activities. Put simply blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime funding and intelligence gathering tool. And again, I'll link in the description, you can check it out. But this is, what do I say here? Michael Morrell, director of intelligence at the CIA. So it's not just me talking, that's Michael. And then to bring this all home, as I know right now, we're in a bear market, it kind of sucks. But just remember this, there is a link in the description. There's always a link in the description. And I put together this spreadsheet and I took a look at what the highs of 2017 and what the lows were for the next four-year cycle. I took a look between 2018 and 2021. Where were the lows? And out of the top 53 from December 17, 2017, did you know the all-time low out of all the 53, it was only two, only two out of 53 hit an all-time low before the halving. We have a halving coming up in April, I think it's April, 2024. Correct me the comment section. It's either April or May. And the question that I have for you, I just had this this morning. I took a look at the high of November 14, 2021, 53 different crypto projects from Bitcoin all the way down to Iota. And what I took a look at was just how low we are. Because over here, the all-time low date, the majority happened one year after the all-time high, December 17th, 2017 to December 16, 2018. The next second most prevalent all-time lows was a pandemic, the survey survivors. This is in March 16th, March 12th of 2020. And even with an economic slowdown, a global pandemic, which I don't care if you believe about it or not, I don't care. It doesn't matter because other people believed it and you had 768 million people that were infected. I don't care if you think it's infected or not. It affected economies greatly. Let's just say that the shutdowns and everything else. You had close to a billion people infected since that everything shut down. You had a small recession because there was two quarters of GDP stagnation or reduction. And after all that, you still didn't have many all-time lows for that four-year cycle. So moving forward, I'm taking a look at the all-time lows and how much they've dropped. And Bitcoins dropped 76%, Ethereum's 78%, Binance going up that 68%. 96% for Solana, 91% for Cardano, and so on and so forth. Could it drop more? Yes, it could. But to me personally, I don't know if we've seen the all-time lows, but what's it gonna take? What's it gonna take? If we go through a recession, and it is a mild recession, sure, we could see some more lows, but how low are we gonna go? And the question I have for you is when are you gonna start dollar-cost averaging? Even though I can't tell you what to do, I can only tell you what I'm doing. And I continue to dollar-cost average. I was kind of ticked off that September was actually a good month. I was kind of hoping for the September that everybody promised me, which was gonna be low. I thought it was gonna be low and it wasn't. And you know what I did? It was still buying. I would have really appreciated some much lower tokens, but it wasn't. But the question I have for you is how low can we possibly go from here? Are we gonna go another 50% down? Are there 75%? I'm not for sure. If it does, I'm happy, because I know what's gonna happen in a year or two years later. And that's it for today. So look, if you like today's video, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing, all that good stuff. Usually things are time-sensitive. As a reminder, in the next 40 minutes or so, I'll be with Randy of our Miss Teen Crypto and we'll continue the Q&A. But if you gotta take off, take off, I will do a little Q&A with everybody here until I gotta go. But that is it for today. Thanks so much for stopping by.