 Welcome to Digital Asset News, the top stories in cryptocurrency and digital assets, and bring them down to bite-sized pieces today. We've got some concerning news, I want to be honest with you. So first up, Russia and China de-dollarization approaching a breakthrough moment. And I got to tell you, this has actually been predicted for quite some time, and I'm going to show you how the US is falling behind greatly and how these central bank digital coins could be something very massive, but in the end, it's not going to matter. And one of the reasons it's not going to matter is this article, which talks about the OCC chief says Americans gravitating toward digital currencies urges banks to embrace innovation. And I'm going to tell you why they're not going to do it, because basically the banks are just blockbuster. Lastly, Charles Hoskinson touts very significant performance improvements to the Cardano node, and he promises a release which just didn't get hit. Well, before we do all that magic, let's take a look at what's going on the mark today. So it is Friday, August 21st, about almost four o'clock Texas time, just a late day, just a long day. But you know what? Crypto never sleeps, so neither do I. So let's take a look at what's going on. So Bitcoin, a little bit of a drop here, 2.6%, which drops down to the 11.5 area. Now, if the bulls can keep this up, hopefully they can hit that 11.5. But I got to tell you, I see it slipping even farther. Ethereum did finally drop below 400. This is the one that I was worried about. And here we are. And Tether, oh, getting up that third space. Congratulations, Tether. Tether's Tether. Nobody cares. An XRP, 27 cents. Watch out. Wow. Chainlake also down bigly at $14.06. I see this going down to maybe 12, maybe 11, who knows. But I think it was overbought. And here we are, down 12.7%. But you know who knows, it's cryptocurrency. Don't know what's going to happen. Bitcoin cash in the sixth spot, 3.3. Actually, if I just kind of go down, let's see what's actually green. That would probably be the easier part. Crypto.com, 2%. Congratulations. And wow. Omisei Go, or Omis Go, whatever you want to call it, 20.5%. Massive run. So for everybody who has held on to OMG, I have not. I saw it a long time ago. Congratulations to you because you were up massively over the last week at 245%. Tip of the hat. And that's about it. Really everything else in the red. So let's break into today's top story. So first up, this is concerning. I'm going to tell you why. So Russia and China are going through a de-dollarization. And actually, in all honesty, they really should have done this a long time ago. But what's going on here? So the dollar share of trade between Russia and China was only 46% of settlements in the first quarter. Why is this a big deal? Well, this was the first time they used the US dollar for settlement of trades has fallen below 50%. The euro represented 30% of that and the national currencies, which would be the Russian and the Romimbi, have we say it for China, was 24%, both of which were at an all-time high. So I saw this and I go, well, that's not so bad. It's just dip a little 50%. So I mean, how much was it years ago? Well, here's how much it was. In 2015, just five years ago, about 90% of their bilateral transactions were conducted in USD. So you have to understand, in a five-year timeframe, very short amount of time, they've taken that and just say, you know what, we're not going to do this. And there's a reason why they did it. And I got to tell you, I don't see why it took them so long to do this. If I was these countries, and thank God, I'm not, because I'd be a horrible leader. This is something that I would have gotten away from a long time ago. I'm going to tell you why in a second. But Alexei Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, states the Russian China de-dollarization was approaching a breakthrough moment. Many expected that this would be a military alliance or a trading alliance, but that what really happened was it moved towards a banking and financial direction, and that is what can guarantee independence for both countries. And I got to tell you, if you're looking at military might or alliance or trading out everything else, that's great. But really what moves the whole world, the whole global community, it's all about finances. So if you can pair yourself up and become the next financial superpower, so much the better. And I think that's where the big win is these days. So, ING Bank's chief economist for Russia, Dmitry Dolgen, was quoted as saying this, and this is why I was saying they shouldn't have a long time ago. Not that I am rooting for Russia or China to take over, but I see like this is like a dull moment. He states any wire transaction that takes place in the world involving US dollars is at some point cleared through a US bank. That means that the US government can tell that bank to free certain transactions. And it's true. I mean, the United States could do that at any time just say, you know what, we don't like the transaction, stop it. And then sanctions come about pretty much put that whole economy of another country into a standstill. And again, because US dollar is the reserve currency of the global community, I mean, that's a lot of power exercise over a lot of different nations. Anyhow, getting into the meat and potatoes, the SWIFT system, which sucks, which has originally been used for trade settlement, is overwhelmingly controlled by the US. So it is controlled by the US, but I had to take a look at that real quick because where is the actual, you know, SWIFT society? Where is its, you know, centered? I guess you could call it. So SWIFT is a cooperative society under Belgian law, owned by its member of financial institutions with offices around the world. SWIFT's headquarters are at in Belgium near Brussels. So unfortunately, though, it's or fortunately, however you want to look at it, it is really dictated by American banks. Anyhow, here's where it gets interesting. So many countries are trying to construct their own alternative payment systems. For example, China launched a cross-border interbank payment system in 2015. Anyhow, global policies for de-dollarization include sharply reducing US debt holdings, dropping US dollar status as an anchor currency, increasing non-dollar bulk commodity trade, growing the reserve of non-dollar currencies, which they're doing right now, and ramping up gold's hedge against the dollar. And not only are they going to ramp up the gold's hedge, my big question is this, I'm going to ask you right now, listen to this video. Do you think other countries are buying up, not just gold, because we know they're buying gold, right? Gold is at an all-time high. But on the flip side, do you think they're also buying Bitcoin because they want to hedge their bet, just like other different types of investors are going, you know what? I think that Bitcoin could be great, maybe gold, but I don't like all this quantitative easing, all this money printing, I don't know what's going on with this economic policies of these different countries. I need to hedge my bet. If I had to, if I was a betting man, I would say that other countries are buying up Bitcoin, just a thought. When we know the Chinese government and major economic entities have recently begun to worry that they might end up in a similar situation as their Russian counterparts, they are concerned that they may become the target of sanctions and potentially even getting shut out of the Swift system, he explained. And this was actually a quote from Zhang Zhen, researcher at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai's East China University. Not only are they increasing their holdings there, but the Bank of Russia revealed early last year that it had slashed dollar holdings by over a hundred billion, which account amounted to over half, half of its existing dollar assets. There are a NIMBY's share of Russia Foreign Exchange Reserve, one from 5% to 15% by investing 44 billion in China's currency. And I can only see this actually increasing as time goes on because it would only make sense for Russia and China to do the same thing. But here's the question I have. How long do you think? Because Russia and China are getting pretty close right now, how long do you think it's going to take before they start to decouple and fall out? Because how much trust is really there? Maybe they need a trustless type of system. And I put a little note here that I said US is slipping on the global economic stage. And part of the reason is that banks, banks will not move out of the past. They are continuing to do the same thing. They are continuing to do the same types of actions, the same type of outdated technology and the same type of outdated thinking. And they're not even in the 20th century, it seems like. So I'll just say this. I know your brain's probably spinning right now and thinking about different things that could be, what about a central bank digital coin? What about XRP? What about another type of cryptocurrency? What about Bitcoin and something like that? And I can just tell you this, that central bank digital coins are coming. The CBDCs are coming. Every nation is experimenting with it. China is beating the pants off everybody. They actually have rolled it out and are actually testing it in certain parts of China. The problem with all CBDCs, everything about it is that it is tied to a failed economic policy for that country. So if you're going to look at different things and go, well, will these CBDCs work? Well, maybe in the short term. But if you look at, if you have an option to use any type of CBDC, a central bank digital coin, and it is now a global community, why wouldn't you use something that has one of the best economic policies that cannot be fluctuated, cannot have quantitative easing, cannot be manipulated, be something like, I don't know, pick your favorite digital currency and our digital asset and let me know in the comment section. But I have mine, let me know what yours are. I just don't see that. I think CBDCs are just a stopping point or just a step over or a stepping stone until we get to the main one, which is fill in the blank. Anyhow, speaking about banks and slowness, let's go to the next article. So next up, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Chief says Americans gravitating towards digital currencies urges banks to embrace innovation. Good luck with that, Brian. So this is Brian Brooks. He's the acting Comptroller of Currency at the U.S. Office of OCC says America must adopt digital currency payment rails if the country hopes to compete with global payment rails in the future. He insists changing consumer needs must be prioritized over the interests of powerful banks that may be against the rise of cryptocurrencies. I was talking to a friend of mine, Jaime today, and he said, you know what? I wish I was back in the 70s. He said the 70s were awesome. You weren't tethered to this phone. People couldn't find you or people couldn't track you as easily. And it was just awesome. And then you could actually, you know, interact with people instead of interacting with all this technology. And I said, you know what? That's true. That would be fantastic. I go, everything has just, you know, a leap in advancement as far as like 2020. I said, but you know what has not done that? Every bank that's out there, they are still stuck in the 70s. And I got to tell you, I got to agree. It's amazing how I can send an email to somebody, a friend in India, and it gets there within seconds. It takes me three or four days to transfer money. Unbelievable. Not only that, sometimes a wire transfer fee is just ridiculous. Although I got to tell you that there ain't these are getting out of control. But moving on, speaking in an interview, the formal chief legal officer at Coinbase Global said it is a fact that 50 million Americans own digital currency. And we can't ignore that. I didn't know there was that much. That's pretty amazing. So if you're looking at American population, you're looking at around 330, 350 million somewhere around there. So 50 million, not too shabby. Moving on to states, consumers of financial products want fast and error-free services. And this means the United States needs to get to a place where payments can be transmitted virtually instantaneously and where errors can be eliminated. I got to tell you in 2020, I don't see why we're not there yet. Under Brooks leadership, the OCC has already issued a banking license to a fintech company called Verrill Money. I had no idea who these people were. So I took a look real quick. I'm going to actually get a bank account with these guys. They sound pretty awesome. Verrill is in an American mobile only, Neobank based in San Francisco, Shocker. The company provides financial services through its mobile app and currently has 1 million customers. I wonder what they're, hey, look, 1.21 interest rate, or up to 2.8. That's pretty good, actually. I mean, for a bank, free debit card, easy tools, save automatically. I checked them out. Right now, I've got Revolute. I'm pretty happy with them. They're mobile only so far as well. So not too bad. Anyhow, on top of that, he was, Brian was also the one that gave the green light for banks to start offering crypto custody services, which we know is not going to happen anytime soon because the banks move with slow snails. What are you going to do? Brooks still thinks banking systems are outdated, and I agree. And not suitable for today's changing environment. I also agree. And then he starts talking about when the lockdown started and the stimulus check payments and everything else. And it was an eye opener for not just him, but everybody in the government like, wow, these banks suck. So they know exactly what we knew, but they just had to figure out the hard way. So I'm going to let you hear it from the horse's mouth. This was an actual interview. This was on CNN. And this was the part where the host just pretty much asked Brian like, what's your plans? What's your vision? What's going on here? It's pretty interesting. Take a listen. Sort of have a 21st century view of what the banking sector should look like. And I said it's raising a few eyebrows. It's raising a few more. Give me a sense of what your vision is. Well, Julia, thanks so much for having me. And these are really important questions to ask in a time like this. This is a time when Americans are depending on their banking system more than they ever have before. When we made a decision collectively in this country to shut down the economy very broadly back in March, we depended on the banks to deliver benefit payments in the form of paycheck protection program loans and checks sent from the Treasury Department. And the problem is we were sending those across 19th century banking rails. Many people said that it took days or sometimes weeks to receive their payments. And my vision is that we need to get to a place in this country where payments can be transmitted virtually instantaneously, where errors can be eliminated. And it turns out technology exists today that can help us do that. So we need to get there, I think, sooner rather than later. That's the answer you want to hear. However, don't get too excited because with every positive, there's a negative and I'll get to that in a second. So moving down, Brian also elaborated and said banks are sort of the last bastion of the amalgamated comprehensive supermarket of financial services. He anticipates continuing resistance by banks to new payment rails. And of course, the course is going to be resistant because they had a great run and they don't have to change anything. But I gotta tell you, that's fine. They can do whatever they want to. They can be super resistant. It doesn't matter. Blockbuster, the cab companies, even Woolworths, they refuse innovation too. And look where they're at. So I'm just waiting for the next evolution. And later on, the host asked him about like, well, how are you actually looked upon in the banking sector? And he says, this is what he says. He goes, I'm not a crypto bull or a bear, but I recognize reality. A lot of people have this stuff, crypto, and they have it for good reasons. First of all, I think he's full of it. I think he is a crypto bull because he knows that there are a lot of great advantages to using crypto currencies and assets to speed up exactly what people want. And I think that is the next evolution. He just can't come on and say, like, hey, you know, I'm a super bull. I can't say that. And he goes on to say, we need to make sure it's a success to them and the safe and the same safe and sound way they get a check into their account. Our role is to innovate as people change the way they consume financial services. There's a part in here. And I'm going to link this tweet and this interview so you can listen to it. I'm not going to go over it. But basically what he says in the end, he's like, look, we want to do innovation. However, what we also want to do is make sure that my office and certain watchdogs can oversee everything that's going on to make sure that everything is safe and sound. So you got to understand, if you want safety, sometimes you got to give up some freedoms. And with that, there's a lot of people that are like, nope, don't want to do that. Let me know what your thoughts are. Let's move on. Last up, Charles Hoskinson touts very significant performance improvements to the Cardano node. So what's going on here? The creator of Cardano, who also is a CEO of IOHK Input Output Hong Kong, noted that the Daedalus version 2.2 will be released on August 20th. And today is August 21st. So real quick, let's take a look at the actual website. This is DaedalusWallet.io and that was 2.2. Still got version 2.1.0. If there's some other place where I can download this, please let me know in the comment section because I'm going right to the website and I don't see it. And then my Daedalus wallet, when I open it up, it says the newest one is Daedalus 2.1.0, which is on August 7th, which I still haven't updated to, which I really need to do. Anyhow, that's what's going on. So if I missed it, please let me know. But Charles states, there are very significant performance improvements, pending some formalities, IOHKs, IHKs, Thursday release for all users, Mac landing some window. He states, some aspects of the software are 100 times faster and QAs reporting that everything looks pretty good so far. So there's still some formalities and last minute checks that need to be done, but if there's nothing discovered today, all things knock on wood, we should be looking at a Thursday release. And this was put out. This was on August 20th. So this was yesterday and just didn't happen. Now, am I going to sit here and poo poo all over IOHK and Cardano and Charles for not hitting a date by 24 hours or 48 or 72? No, I don't. I'm impressed. I'm greatly impressed that they're able to actually do all these things and get to this point and all the different things that they had to do. So I was very critical of Cardano. I mean, and everything was going on, but I'm going to give them a pass. And it's probably because I'm biased because I hold Cardano just so everybody knows that. But I do think that they're doing good things. I need to try to do the right thing. So again, if they're off by a day, I'm okay. And now if this goes on until 2021, they're like, oh, we couldn't hit this time frame. Then I'm going to be like, what the heck's going on? You guys are doing so good. I do think Cardano is going to be big. I think it's going to be fantastic. I just don't know when it's going to happen. And here's the last part of it. You say it's Cardano is also working on a multi-signature or multi-sig transactions. In fact, Hassan strives it as a high priority. So first of all, what's multi-sig? Multi-sig refers to requiring multiple keys to authorize a, this says Bitcoin transaction, but it's any cryptocurrency transaction rather than a single signature from one key, dividing up responsibility for possession of Bitcoins or any kind of crypto among multiple people, avoiding a single point of failure. That's the big thing, avoiding a single point of failure, making it substantially more difficult for the wallet to be compromised. This would be only for people who actually opt in for an additional security measure. So like I see it like for me, like me and my wife would have to sign a key to actually spend any kind of cryptocurrency. I think that's fantastic. That's a great idea. I'd love to see that. But here's my final thoughts. I was on Alex Maschioli's live stream, our premiere, and he was talking to a bunch of guys who are way smarter than me and do a bunch of things with TA and such. I'm not big on a TA, but I just like to hear, you know, the macro view of what's going on. And somebody asked a question. They said, I think it was Alex, maybe it was all right, soft. I forgot. But they said, which one will be bigger, Ethereum or Cardano? And I said, this is what I truly believe. If Ethereum, if they organization in Vitalik, they can get ETH 2.0 to hit. Remember, they have to hit their timeframe for the next two years. I mean, stage zero just for the proof of stake is supposed to happen November 2020. So if they can hit that milestone, that'd be a big push. And I think it'll do pretty well. And then they have to hit the other two, phase one and phase two. If they can do that, it might be game over. But if they can't, and Charles and the Cardano Foundation are like saying, hey, we can do all these things, we can make 100 times faster, we can use Hydra, make the transaction per second, you know, massively increase it. And we can do smart contracts and we can do DeFi. There might be a little fight in the hands. And that is why I hedge my bet and I have both of them. Ethereum heavy, Cardano heavy. That's just how I am. So let me know what you think in the comments section below. And that is it for today. So if you want to check out Alex's live stream, it was pretty interesting on a link at the very end. Also, I want to say thanks to all my supporters, really appreciate you guys and gals. If you don't know, there's a join now button underneath, you can click on that. It's like a, you don't get anything special. So it's like, I think it's like a tip. It's like a buck 99. And I just do random shout outs for that. So I'll do a MDR NA samurai. I know I messed that up. Romain Maurice, Paul G, what do we got? Iran Rodriguez. I am not I who also do Joe Griffin, David Mills and Timothy Dillon. So that's it. I want to say thanks so much for stopping by. If you'd like types of videos, there'd be two ones going to pop up on your left and right. Don't know what they are because YouTube controls that just like they control those maybe scammy ads you saw in the beginning or middle. Again, don't shoot the messenger. If you got a problem with those videos or those ads, go talk to YouTube. I'd love to hear from you. And that is it. So thanks a lot for checking out the video and I'll see you on